Capture by Casea Rose
Note: All words are mine and my own experience, which isn't personal to you. I have seen clearly how everything is my projected reality and that I take full responsibility for every aspect of my experience, choices and perceptions.
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My journey is not just my own. It is the journey of so many that come before me. Generations of women and men in their journey as human beings, in these physical bodies, incarnated souls here on a mission.
I share vulnerably my story in the hopes that it will inspire those on their own heroic journey across the world. I will be sharing this as a series in this journey of VESSEL, to stand in my own nakedness so that we all have the courage to face ourselves honestly before we move through the gates of transformation.
Our nervous systems and cellular memory is encoded with generations of trauma, deep stress, anxiety, fear, chronic illnesses, sexually-transmitted diseases. For those who are ready, we are in a profound process of re-parenting ourselves. Learning how to tend to these vessels is an indigenous skill that as a culture we are at risk of completely losing. Having the deep awareness of the deep nutrients our bodies need to balance and heal themselves, and create lifestyles that support their natural vital process.
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My relationship to the word VESSEL was destined from the minute I was born.
The word “vessel” literally is what my name “Ting” means in the I Ching. It is Hexagram #50, meaning:
“Ritual tripod vessel or cauldron used to contain abundant nourishment for the gathering of wise men.”
When I read this, my jaw nearly dropped. My whole life made sense in one sentence.
I am an avid student of the Gene Keys system as well, and the key #50 also means the Divine Order of the “gathering of the Illuminati”, and the harmonic equilibrium of the Nature of Self-Organizing Intelligence.
This is what I was born for. To gather the new leaders birthing the new paradigm, the new Sacred World, with high discernment of virtues, with spacious order, and with supreme grace and beauty.
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LENS ONE: KARMIC CONTRACTS
The emergence of the way that the VESSEL project came into my life is quite extraordinary. My life path has been at the intersection of vitality and creativity. Staying inspired and creatively vital has been my premise.
The journey begins with a deeply intricate journey of layers of karma with dear sister Maricarmen. Mari and I first met through a beautiful creative collaboration as co-designers on a project called Wisdom Hackers in Berlin.
Immediately there was a deep reverence for once another and the level of discipline and cultural experience we had both cultivated to be able to share our gifts in this way.
And then, the most interesting dimension: Mari was married to my previous romantic partner, Carson, and thus shared a similar social community in San Francisco; so we were destined to be great teachers for one another. In many ways, we shared many traits and talents, the overlaps felt uncanny and even eerie. The normal human-level dramas were part of the journey in the first few years — we held a respectful distance and silence between each other as we entered our journeys. Mari shared the journey of her divorce quite widely with our shared community.
Mari was also the gatekeeper that invited me to join the innovation agency called Factory in San Francisco, which would become my career and central vortex for my community and friends for the next 5 years. And she was in fact the very person to introduce Carson and I, through the invitation to a “Hacking the Dao” tai chi workshop. I will never forget the moment we met in the kitchen of Factory before that workshop, and felt each other’s energy as we did tai chi around that tree. It was destined — and it was because of Mari that we met. Fast forward another year and a half, and they had divorced, Carson and I were collaborating on dozens of creative projects, and the three of us were reunited in Berlin to collaborate on a client project. It was in a dark Berlin basement bar on the night of Halloween that Carson and I broke the seal and acknowledged our deep love for each other, while Mari was present in the same room. The karmic ties became entwined in that moment, forever changed.
In this karmic process, Mari and I didn’t share any words or exchange. It was a telepathic communication of boundaries and territory, as the feminine is so very good at. In the year following, Mari and I entered a period of deep spiritual work in our silos, allowing space for all the shadows of jealousy, judgement, anger, fear, worry, etc. come up. She returned to Mexico City her home town, and I moved into the home that Mari always wanted to live in, a wabi-sabi nest in Mill Valley. I had claimed that space, and yet — Mari’s spirit continued to reside in the space. Many of their shared belongings, relics of their marriage, artwork created together, and precious heirloom pieces lived in the space. Carson would often talk about Mari and all the things that he loved about her — while neglecting to cherish me, failing me in attune and listen to me, to love me in the deeper ways that I desired. His porn addiction and financial irresponsibility including tax evasion that broke Mari and him apart was still present, unresolved, and manifested in a deep wall of separation that prevented true intimacy and safety between us. He blamed our lack of deep intimacy on me and made it about my lack of feminine seductress and connection to my feminine. In my eyes, Carson hadn’t healed from his marriage and hadn’t taken the opportunity to do the deeper personal work, therefore putting his pain onto me. I would cry at night in pain by how much I loved him, and the gap between the way that I deeply desired and deserved to be loved in return. I constantly gave away my power, intimately and professionally, kept myself seduced by the fantastical romance of our life, and repressed the true voice within that was crying out for help.
I felt the oppression of entering a new relationship and space that felt already occupied and filled with another women. From the beginning of the relationship, my sense of sovereignty and safety was compromised. I felt a constant jealousy and oppression of Mari’s presence in the relationship and home. And I didn’t have the tools or strength then to ask for what I needed — a new canvas that we could co-create together, and a clearing of the previous relationship. My voice was blocked, and it started to manifest in many ways, most primarily in diminishing of my inner voice, and the presence of constant inner criticism, filtering and doubt whenever I spoke up. I started to get major inflammation in my throat, so much that sometimes it would hurt to swallow. My body was crying out for attention, and the more that I ignored it, the worse it got.
And yet, the part of me that felt shameful for being a “bad partner” propelled me to try harder, to give more, to do anything in my power to stay in the relationship, even when my body told me otherwise. I would cook and clean the house diligently, shop and cook delicious meals, host dinner parties, connect him to clients and my professional network, read the books, wear the clothes and go to the places that Carson recommended — and was a textbook “good girlfriend.” All the while, my inner artist and sovereign self was dying. My connection to my own desire, what my womb really wanted, the spaciousness to be in the yin, the mystery, the unfolding, was being stifled. I was paying for an artist studio but couldn’t make any art in. I hired coaches and healers, bought the self-help books and signed up for the workshops, but felt so creatively and spiritually blocked that nothing was being absorbed, and thus completely ineffective. I was exercising and doing diets but didn’t feel any better. I had a passion for interior design, but felt like I couldn’t shift anything in the house because I would fear of being judged for my “bad taste” or fear of him getting angry to shifting his things around. I became a scared mouse, petrified to be myself. I constantly felt like I was walking on eggshells.
In our professional lives, we were busy running around the world running our design studio doing “innovation” and “integral design work” with startups and large organizations — working with highly masculine industries and teams, and in unstable, highly idealistic organizations such as Burning Man, venture capital and the crypto-currency industries. We were traveling every few days to different countries, working and partying hard, and depleting our physical and energetic resources for the sake of other people’s pie-in-the-sky projects. We gave away our power, talent and core IP to these companies, without getting to participate in any of the equity or regenerative value come back into our system.
As a result, I suffered in that home, and our relationship quickly began to wear at the foundation. The physical manifestation of this was mold started to grow in our bedroom from the underground of the wooden floors and within the walls, until I discovered it displayed in our closet. This began an 8-month mold remediation and construction project that soon kicked us out of the house and started the dissolution of our life together.
After a year of our union, Mari invited to join her retreat in Oaxaca the three of us to make peace. She had since partnered with a new man and had stabilized her life in Mexico. After sitting with it, we said Yes. People thought we were crazy, but it felt like the right thing to do. A mutual friend of all of ours, Palomi, also decided to come, and upon hindsight, she was there to support all of our process. Although Mari and I didn’t share many words directly, our inner children got to learn how to feel safe around one another as we did yoga together and explored Oaxaca. She had the courage to let herself be seen and vulnerable as the teacher and organizer, and I got to humble myself to receive her teachings and be in the surrender role of a participant of her retreat. As the days went by, we softened. We started to listen to each other, experience the other as a human being, a fellow woman. I was able to appreciate aspects of this human that I had resented in whole new dimensions, and discover all the ways that we were one: our deep reverence for the sacred, a talent for creating beauty, knowledge of cultural history and heritage places, architecture, an appreciation for good food, and a similar approach to experience design and systemic change. On the last day, we came together to hold a ceremony together, to fully honor the past, let go, and move forward to celebrate the future — tears rolled down our face as we looked directly into each other’s eyes and acknowledged the past and chose to hold each other with unconditional love, as a karmic family that shared DNA. A new energy was birthed that day between Mari and I that would plant its seeds for the following year.
And starting that day forward, our relationship began to tear apart. The next day at the airport, I asked for a break and nearly walked away. All the repressed anger started to well up in me and come through. My voice was starting to crack and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. All the unexpressed grief, anger, resentment, feeling unloved, came up. The next year was a process of opening those gates and allowing it all to come out. The goddess Kali peaked her jaws and sword out, supporting me in cutting through the obstacles and helping me pierce through to the truth. I stood in the valleys of the mountains and tops of waterfalls and screamed with rage, deep sadness and ultimately, a remembering of who I was before all this began, at the source. The coping mechanisms and walls began to crumble. I couldn’t hide from myself, Carson or the world any longer. The boggling part of this all was the illusion that we continued to uphold, pretending everything was perfect. We imagined our future children and home that we’d build, continuing to uphold the illusion of perfection, as part of our own egotism and narcissism.
We were forced to move out of our home by the gift of the universe — having the landlord decide to sell the home, and in a process of desperation and fear, I agreed to Carson’s persuasion to move into the Factory house — the belly of the beast, the manifestation of the shadow masculine and the paradigms that I was gaining the courage to call out. In divine timing, I was forced to fully confront all these aspects of these dynamics with the collective masculine in this container to make things even more clear — this process started in June and continued until last April. I continued to play out similar patterns of being the “nurturing giving mother” to a group of 5 boys, cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry and getting the “house in order”. In every second, my body was in deep resistance, deep suffering. No part of my soul wanted to be there, and yet my mind was forcing it to stay in it to be “good”, to “make Carson happy”. My body would tremble in the house, re-traumatizing itself. I couldn’t sleep and my face broke out in acne from the excess heat and anger within. My digestion suffered and there was a toxicity and imbalance in my hormones that began to worsen. There was no space for the feminine in that house. All of the micro-micro-dysfunctions exploded into a much grander, spectacular dysfunction. Carson had irresponsibly taken on a $25k/month dysfunction that was ultimately driven by Carson’s ego and fantasy, and because of his charismatic power, had magnetized a group of 5 of us to join in the madness. And yet, out of my need to “save or help”, I joined the venture 50/50 to take on some of his irresponsibility, and same with his car — which also was a total irresponsible purchase, both environmentally and practically.
Why I didn’t leave at that point baffles me. The self-sabatoging, lack of self worth kept me in it. Luckily, it was only about 6 weeks before the universe made the move for me — a fire got one night in the Sanctuary where I was sitting on a call with my friend in Turkey inviting me to come lead a group there by myself. — due to an irresponsible placement of mattresses too close to a lightbulb in the closet. This was the final signal. Right afterwards, I quickly packed my bags and left for Turkey — it was a call to sovereignty. I wouldn’t return to San Francisco until the Fall Equinox when I packed a small suitcase to embark on my 6-month sabbatical journey.
Thus began the heroine’s journey of claiming my sovereignty, and beginning to take stewardship of every life decisions, of my health, this vessel, and move from the deep desire of my womb rather than the script of the “good girl helper.”
And in the midst of all of my journey, Mari reached out again on New Years at the beginning of 2019 to reconcile with her relationship with San Francisco and Factory, to play homage to Factory and the place of her and Carson’s marriage and becoming. By the divine orchestration, my plan to be in Santa Fe with Palomi was deflected by a record snow storm in Santa Fe and overbooked flights, so we were given another opportunity to spend New Years together in ceremony.
We were in ceremony together for New Years, and through a somewhat rocky process of denial and avoidance, and finally acceptance of this divine orchestration, we entered a healing space together where we acknowledged our karma together. I shared about Ritual and she vulnerably shared about her work with Roundglass — and it became clear that we had work to do together. But there was still a subtle fear and denial of our shared dharma, a resistance coming from our egos.
I decided to fully leave Factory (now called Taohaus) in March, and experienced the deepest confrontation of the death of our relationship while in Japan for my sisters wedding. I was very unhappy the entire time as I was confronted with her marriage and being in Kyoto, the very place where we had started our relationship. I felt heavy and worthless. All of her friends from my high school were there, many of them married and “successfully” living their lives. I felt like such a failure in partnership, and with my body, and a terrible sister. My lowest point. It took until the last days for me to finally be honest with my feelings and express how I felt — sad, devastated and miserable in my skin. I wanted to change so badly.
And then, the first week of April as soon as I got home, something miraculous happened. Shauna opened the door for me for this opportunity and to come to NYC. I was finally able to receive the invitation. I spent a week in NYC with her and immediately felt an elevated homecoming, a gift from the universe that I didn’t feel like I deserved. And it wasn’t completely shiny and clear. It was rough and obscure, but I knew there was a shining crystal inside.
Amidst everything, I receive news from my doctor with my blood test results showing my hypothyroidism that was confirmed, as well as the remenince of my parasite and deficient system from all the stress. None of my disciplined and extreme efforts had worked, and I had gained 20 lbs and was completely exhausted and emotionally fragile. I had to face these truths.
Soon afterwards, I had a wedding in Mexico City with two dear friends and asked to visit Mari. It was clear that it was time for us to have 1:1 time together, intentionally. She first had me there for the week, and then retracted to just a few days as she felt overwhelmed with work. We had some sweet moments, but I was still felt ungrounded and in the metamorphosis. An uncomfortable process of releasing and healing. Incredibly tender.
I also ran into Bjorn, my previous partner, Mexico City in the midst of this darkness, with his new girlfriend and feel the trauma get triggered again, but another signal of the journey that I have been on since. A deep mirror that said “keep going”.
And then, the next few months go by and there is a slow melting, a letting go, a relaxing into. The crystal project starts to emerge, but it still feels unstable. Yet, I’m gaining to tools to be with the instability — to not let it mean anything. To be strong in the discomfort. That is what this time is about. I split my time between Santa Fe and NYC, and start traveling again — but with my toolkit and everything I’ve learned from the desert. Its a challenging, full of obstacles, but I have no choice. Its an awakening. My heart is being broken open with love.
All of this reflection is showing me how much I get to experience, and how much I want to FEEL it all. How important it is to FEEL it, to be fully present to it. To allow myself to break, to have my heart open and alive — knowing that the moment will pass and everything is okay. That is the beauty of the heart.
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For New Years, I spent 5 days at Sea Ranch writing my year end review. After he saw it, he asked for more “credit”, and for him, I wrote this gracious letter of gratitude, which holds true, and yet still leaves out the ugly, the honest truth of what really happened behind the scenes. It was the polished version. Looking through the year end review, I realized that it didn’t include this version — all the ugliness that pervaded and catalyzed the change. I see now how it was an act of my ego and spiritual arrogance to hide what was really happening, and make everything seem resolved and perfect.
Honoring Carson + Our 3-year Relationship
Looking back at our relationship the last 3 years, it fills me with overwhelming awe and gratitude. The deep resonance between Cars and I was an immediate one. The way that our minds would meet, the synapses of creative exploration, our shared sense of adventure for all of life, a deeply seated curiosity and love for good questions, a tantric dance of delight and humor, a deep devotion to beauty and taste making the nectar of life, and the list goes on. As Carson shared with me most recently in his writing, “we’ve lived in the belly and the heart: working together, loving together, cuddly, caring, hilarious, kind. Our purpose was to heal together, to walk together, to laugh together as we meandered, side-by-side, away from our Known Worlds into the Mystery; to share the joy of discovering Nature’s infinite delights as we saw Beauty through each other’s eyes; to keep each other warm and fed and loved as we stopped for rest beneath the soft moonlit skies. We’re so safe to be our little ones together, which feels so scary to lose, and yet keeps us trapped in an infantile pattern that inhibits our maturity and dulls our truest edges.”
We met at a Daoist tai chi workshop at Alamo Square Park, appreciating the subtle and the constant quest to refine ourselves and taste deeper dimensions of life. We soon began working together, side-by- side, concerting whole new worlds through design, architecting new ways of working and creating in collaboration, pushing the edges of our thinking with one another, living and breathing our life as our Art, being students together at museums, libraries, cafes and bookstores. We moved in a harmonious dance across the globe, finding gems and curating delightful experiences for one another through Japan, Morocco, Oaxaca, and Bali, and sensing into wisdom and the nature of Reality together in profound language and creative expression. We are each others teachers, lovers, collaborators, and best friends.
Carson opened up an entire world to me that I always imagined, but never knew was possible in this lifetime. He introduced me to the world of futuristic design, a lens of seeing the world through the meta-patterns inherent in Nature herself, from the mental plane to the physical. He opened my eyes to the great thinkers that transformed our understanding of the metaphysical universe, from Alan Watts to Walt Whitman, Emerson to Buckminister Fuller. The poetic way he moved and articulated the nature of reality allowed me to sense and feel the world through the sensuous, rather than just talk linearly about it. His memetic genius would permeate through every facet of life, from the way that he made space, to his appreciation of ritual artifacts and books, to the way he dressed and carried himself, down to the way he told stories and narrated reality. His genius has touched so many people — and the way that he lives in service every single day is truly astounding. The life-long refinement of his multi-disciplinary design practice, coupled with his innate curiosity and self-driven study of world affairs, philosophy, business, science, geography, semiotics and media technology — made him a rare and unique collaborator, let alone partner. We would geek out on hikes or by candlelit dinners over topics that spanned the universe, finding the meeting places of our curiosities through asking each other good questions, and holding irreverent space for truth to be revealed through the other. We held each other in our Kingship and Queenship at times, and reflected the beauty that often remained invisible to others. We often would reach a point of stillness and reverence that was inexplicable, tasting Truth in union, treasuring the simplest moments with deep appreciation and long sighs. I deeply honor Carson for teaching me how to truly see — and teaching me how to aesthetically and artfully incarnate this perspective into form, into art. This work of art is a direct product of the teachings that have been transmitted to me over years of practice and learning together, and I am deeply humbled by him for all that he has shared with me. As they say, you become a clearer reflection or your partner — so any beauty that you see in me is a refrac- tion of the lens that we have cultivated together in our divine union.
In many ways, we were brought to each other to help heal and reveal our deepest wounds. We were both healing from serious relationships when we met, and consciously created space for our love to grow organically (starting with a 4-month romantic embargo), and we created a nourishing and grounding home nestled in the mountains in Mill Valley to allow our bodies and souls to rest and “find home”. Carson welcomed me into his sanctuary with a beautiful warm embrace, and the way that he was able to step into his own manhood and domesticity laid the ground for our love to grow and wings to spread as we began traveling intensively and collaborating on major global projects togeth- er. It wasn’t until spring 2017 that I hit a wall and went into the deepest depression of my life. The rest of 2017 and 2018 were extremely challenging years for me with health issues and deeply psychosomatic responses to stress and old patterns, as I was being tumbled and prepared to step into this new chapter. And yet, during the periods of intensity, Carson held me and the situational context with the deep wisdom and an attitude of support. His devotional love was steadfast, deeply compassionate and genuinely selfless. He worked tirelessly on deadlines and was always available to spend precious time together, often sacrificing his own needs and desires to meet mine. The spirit of generosity and service are two of the qualities I most admire in him, and he taught me in profound ways on how to be in devo- tion to Love. I honor his patience, acceptance, deep listening, space holding and loving affection that he always held for me, especially when I was in deep pain. He taught me how to hold that same patience and acceptance of self, and showed me new dimensions of Love I never had experienced.
I also want to acknowledge here how remarkable his devotion and attitude has been during this last 6 months of my sabbatical and transition on our relationship, despite my lack of clarity and pushing and pulling back that created more karma and friction between us than necessary. In the heat of the destruction of our world in the first half of the year, there were several times when I lashed out my anger and frustrations upon him — and his ability to listen openly and receive me in my BIGness was astounding. I honor the maturity, respect and trust that he has held during this period, and the profound willingness to meet me where I was at, and trust the process. “Loving with an Open Hand”, he called it. I know what a practice of surrender and profound Grace is required to let someone you love so deeply spread their wings and open myself to new connections and possibilities for the future, knowing that control and grasping are the roots of suffering. And on top of everything, he would always help me pack my bags with the best survival tools to equip my next adventure, in complete service to my process and always wanting to ensure I was safe and well prepared.
The humble way that he has continued to hold and steward TAOHAUS, in the nights of darkness and feeling deserted by me, and against all normal impulses to escape or distract in such situations (and with enormous financial pressure), he committed to STAY and do the grueling work, day in and day out. The house has completely trans- formed and come through its own death and rebirth process the last 6 months, and I want to fully honor him in the process. He has grown enormously in his leadership and spiritual practice through the process of stewarding TAOHAUS as a temple, bringing on board support and finding the alignment of the collective needs and the latent assets of the space. It has been a luxurious and welcoming home sanctuary during my visits to San Francisco on my sabbatical journey, and Carson’s devotion to the tending the space as a temple was such a gift. The space has been a gift for many artists, way-finders, frontiersmen, innovators, and healers — as a refuge in the urban matrix. Today in fact, we are having our first inaugural collective gathering at the space with over 100 people to activate the space and celebrate this rebirth and a birthday of a dear friend. We feel that we were the stewards asked to help in the transition of this space into deeper alignment with its karmic purpose as a node for the collective.
Thank you Carson for always holding a solid ground of being, a mountain that I could lap onto your shores,
Thank for holding the highest integrity for truth and beauty, and elevating my standards for excellence and higher evolution,
Thank you for living your life artfully and a responsible way to the emergence of the Dao, which has been an inspiring model for myself and many others,
Thank you for helping me see the underlying patterns of life and the essential laws that govern life itself, and play with new ways to reframe and see situations differently.
Thank you for your bright, gentle and loving eyes, and the way you have given your life to the Dao and teach me to live in deeper harmony with Nature.
Thank you for sharing the poetry of our lives, and for being the best co-creator of an artful life, an intentional life and a meaning ful life.
Thank you for opening your heart, family and community to me, even in the crevices and shadows of
your being. I bow to the vulnerability and courage to be wholly you.
Thank you for your loyalty and devotion to the Beloved Queen within me,
Thank you for your gentle spirit and the grace in which you carry yourself and everything around you,
Thank you for the goodness of your heart, and the genuine devotion to service to others,
Thank you for seeing and reflecting my beauty and shining a light so that I can know myself more deeply,
Thank you for your wit and intoxicating sense of humor that would make
my tummy hurt from laughing, your interplay with words as shaping reality, and deep transmission of seeing all of life as a sacred dance to fluidly play with and to honor deeply with our absolute presence.
Thank you for allowing yourself to receive my love, knowing that it has been the greatest gift to love you and nourish your soul. I appreciate and love every cell in your body, and know your soul like my own.
PRAYERS
This is the story of our our little love. Our Deep love in unchanging, unwavering, infinite. Our dharmic alliance exists in Deep Time, and our love permeates beyond time and space. I have loved you from the beginning of time and will until the end. I trust that our paths will lead us toward awakening to our higher purpose together, when the time is right — in this lifetime or the next.
It is one of the greatest things acts of divine Love to let go of your partner and best friend of
3 years, so that they can become who they are meant to become. As we embark on this next 6 months of space with minimized contact, I trust that we will receive the exact medicine and experiences on our journeys, and we will re-meet as different human beings; fresh, awake, whole. It is with a heavy heart and straight back, looking ahead, that we send each other on our journeys.
My prayers are for both of us to allow ourselves to enter deeper embodiment of the “anima” or soul (also
could be called “ensoulment”) toward our purest potential, and becoming more intimately in tune with the power and beauty that lives within — whole and becoming at the same time. My we enter deep remembrance of the infinite love and support that exists everywhere, at all times — so that when we feel alone or lost, we remember to return to Source. May we deeply trust and deeper our love with God and ourselves first before serving others. And may we engender spaciousness and ease in our days to allow for the unimaginable magic and beauty that is awaiting us, if we are willing to surrender to it fully. Thank you God for bringing us together during this chapter of our lives, for the gift of this Life, and for the opportunity and capacity to love and feel so deeply. Thank you to the Eros that animates all of life, and for the gifts upon gifts upon gifts that have led us to this moment of profound clarity and unconditional loving acceptance of Truth. May we carry this Eros in our bones as a well of deepest knowing, a rekindling of truth, so that we can bear the torch for others in our collec- tive remembering.
I am in awe, in intoxicating Eros, in acceptance of the Dao.
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ANOTHER LENS: JOURNEY WITH MY BODY VESSEL
We create what is our medicine. From my observations during my life so far, this is a sacred law of the creatively spiritual path.
My journey with this vessel I’ve been given has been the most difficult dimension of my entire life. Coming in, I always knew who I was and why I was here. There was little doubt in my mind. However, I lived most of my life completely out of my body. I constantly had bruises on my legs, stains on my shirt, hair disheveled. My mother was herself quite sensitive, and had some pretty major health challenges, from mild arthritis to high blood pressure and nearly blind eyesight. For that reason, she was particularly aware of healthy diet and lifestyle and made sure that we ate lots of green vegetables, fish and rice. In fact, sugar and gluten were rare in my household, and I was very fortunate to have eaten a more indigenous diet since being small, and had a resilient immune system from eating dirt in my back yard, and backpacking to Asia and eating a varied diet of street food and animal parts that gave a deeper sense of nutrition.
However, as a child I started to rebel and wanted to fit into the American diets of my peers, eating white pancakes and sugary cereals for breakfast, and hamburgers and pizza that contained zero nutrition. I would binge on sweet and chips after school, and bake pastries so I could indulge in sweets. It was both a passion for baking but a sweet rebellion against my roots. I used food as the way to soothe the depression and anxiety I started to feel at age 10, the heaviness of the world and my inability to do anything about it.
I started to struggle with my weight at a young age. I was always bigger boned from my dad’s thicker, Irish build, and so there was deep shame and self-hate starting in middle school when I compared myself with the other girls in my class, most of who were petite Asian girls. Growing up without a TV also made me feel embarrassed and out of touch in school, unable to follow the reference points of celebrities and TV shows. I felt like an outsider, and my size also made me feel less desirable and able to visually fit in.
And then, there was competition with my older sister who often people mistook us for being twins. She was much more athletic and competitive than me, playing on the varsity tennis team and one of the top swimmers on the varsity swim team. I always felt slow and steady, and didn’t have a competitive bone in my body. Sports never made sense to me; I was much more drawn to the subtle fluid arts like dance, yoga, hiking and figure skating. Yet the story I told myself was that I wasn’t athletic, fit or strong enough to do those things.
In many ways, everything comes full cycle. I am returning to this aspect of my childhood and imprinted values. The indigenous diet my mother raised me on is exactly what my nutritionist has prescribed for me. I am coming back to the kind of movements that feel good for me, and I am supplementing them with high-intensity strength training and running to remind myself of how strong I actually am, to re-write those stories.
As a young adult starting at 18 to 25, I started partying and traveling intensively, which meant eating out, doing drugs, drinking and smoking. It was the years of experimentation, indulging in life’s pleasures, doing “what I wanted” in the immature sense so that I could numb myself from the depression and also hide my power. I didn’t let anyone really know who I was and what I was capable of, my deeper intelligence. It was about tasting all the flavors, pushing all my edges. I’d stay up late, pull all nighters, not give a crap about the quality of sleep and follow my “bliss.” And then, I started working super intensely — running my own business, which meant high financial stress and being “always on”, which quickly led to getting burnt out and creatively dry. I also had 4 major relationships in a row which were working through my shadows — 3 years dysfunctional open relationship, 3 years in my early 20s and another 3 in my late 20s. The birth control started and all the energetic imbalances in my relationship manifested as major hormonal imbalances and pain in my womb — sharp pains, cramping, yeast infections, UTIs, missed periods, losing sensitivity, lower libido. I was completely disconnected my cycle and womb, and therefore wasn’t able to receive any messages from her on my YES and NO. The shame that I felt inside continued to dig a deeper hole, as I continued to compare myself to other women my age and in the media that I felt inadequate to.
From 25 to 28 I was able to find more stability in my home in the mountains and trees, and a deeper belonging to real community. I consciously began to shift friend groups to a much more conscious and aligned community. However, my work was still deeply unhealthily and tied to the Factory community, whose ethos were about over-working, highly cerebral and strategic, and extractive and highly depleting. With my consulting and love for travel with Carson, we were on the road every 4-5 days, and not grounded in any practices. I started gaining weight, vertigo, hormonal volatility and major thyroid and adrenal depletion. Even though I started eating healthier and cooking, yet the consciousness of “not good enough” kept running its script, and nothing I did was ever good enough.
And finally in the last year since last September, I started a series of extreme cleansing and diets, where I shocked and irritated my system further with too much change, too fast, and not enough consistency. I did a month of juicing, bone broths, two times a day coffee enemas and over-supplementation, yet in a period of psychological instability and taking micro-doses of LCD and dealing with deep emotional instability with a new relationship. I was still healing from the year prior of trauma at the root chakra of losing my home, last relationship and death of my identity, with a rejection and intentional disconnection to my community and family to have space. Stepping into the unknown also brings up major primal fears of safety and reptilian consciousness.
Finally, when I moved to Santa Fe in the winter, my body began to decompose and calcify, the bones becoming rigid and my body fatigued and burdened with the high altitude and extreme diets — a strange thing happened. Over only 2 months, I gained about 20 lbs. In my solitude and in the confines on a home exposed to the elements in the middle of the desert, my deep unconcious mind began churning and the mind racing, my OCD and deep neurosis that were never addressed kicked in. I started to experience a sequence of intense symptoms, such as insomnia, hypothyroidism, missing periods, headaches and faintness. The intensity of the spirits and exposure to the desert elementals sometimes left me feeling disassociated and shaky, confused and psychologically very vulnerable.
It has only been since April/May this year (4 months ago) that I have started to feel these symptoms improve and my spirit begin to lift, as a deep remembrance of who I was as a child has begun to return. A slow rebirth, a return to my essence, a falling in love with life again. A commitment to self-love and my body as the vessel, a disciplined practice that is for my highest good, and a reconnection to the community that has held and supported me all along.
And from this place — VESSEL is born.
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Mari is called to Santa Fe in early June. She has a death of her best friend that breaks her down over the last year, and she is called to Santa Fe to create a book to honor her life and her work. Sh rents my home. It has all these weird connections to her childhood home. And then, there is a new love in her life that rents a home down the street for them. She is opening, falling back in love with life. She’s been doing the dark shadow work and now she is ready to be with me.
We are ready to be with each other, as true friends and sisters. We spend an afternoon at my home playing music, drinking tea and talking about collaborations. We see the threads combining, they are undeniable.
She is freed from Roundglass, and I am freed from the crystal project. Our egos have been humbled, we are open. In this space of divine grace, we forgive, we love and we plant seeds together — neither one of us holding back, trying to compete, to be separate. We acknowledge our interconnection, our karmic DNA, our shared dharma. We honor it. We share our joy and renewed sense of zest for life! We celebrate the journey.
And we commit to co-creation. We didn’t know what it would be called, but we sensed it needed to emerge from our shared passion for the body and our love for life design.
VESSEL was born that day, and it would take the next few months of our cultivation to birth it.
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In this present moment, I am returning from spending two weeks in Mexico City in August, instead of going to Burning Man or getting distracted with other events — it was clear that is exactly where I needed to be. She hosts me in her home after only moving into it 4 days, and allows me to be in her space.
We spent a week together, side by side, as deep sisters, working together on this and birthing it together. We talked through the difficulty and really faced each other in our truths. We thoughtfully guided and held the experience for each other, making sure it felt safe, pleasurable and inspiring. We took breaks to share our gifts of embodiment practices, good food and the skills of Gene Keys and divination tools to support our process. We dined and worked in the way that I always dreamed a collaboration could be — spacious, fluid, deeply pleasurable and balanced.
And then, I went into a deep dive with Mariana and Sadie to experience each others magic, to face our shadows and help lift each other higher, to strengthen our bodies and purify our intention. I hosted them in the beautiful home in Tepoztlan for a small creative retreat, and held space for our collective intentions and seeds to manifest into the larger cauldron. We met as equals and in our full potency. Mariana offered her womb healing, and I offered her Gene Keys. Sadie offered her medicine, and I offered her a taste of my world over dinner. Sadie had been shamanic ally called me in, and Mariana shamanic ally showed up to clear my field when I was disturbed by deep unconscious reptilian fears that were still in getting in the way of full trust. And now, I feel more trusting and deeply in alignment than I ever have.
Sadie’s session provided insights into my health journey that I had been searching for months — an intuitive analysis of my blood work that my doctor said “I was normal” and gave me an extensive protocol of expensive supplements rooted in bio-hacking, masculine consciousness. Sadie had all the experience of 30 years of looking t bloodwork, but the deeply rooted, indigenous Mexican shamanic practice that I deeply connected with. And she had specific karma with my soul.
Mariana offered me a tangible experience of simple shamanic practices, a connection to Tantra and herbalism that feels so accessible, and deeply joyful and light — pure and real. Not tainted by the spin of capitalism or American commercialism. She is the real deal. And with selfless service and so much enthusiasm and lack of judgment that is so refreshing. It is hugely attractive for me to spend time in Mexico City learning and growing together.
Through this project, from the inner most truths to the outer expressions of the offering, we are embodying the future we were invoking and re-writing the scripts conditioned and believed in. This offering truly was birthed out of a profound correctness and alignment with the universe, as a celebration of our paths and struggles. We are doing the deep work ourselves, and walking the talk. There is no room for anything else. And we are healing the deepest wounds of the feminine through our creative action and abundance mindset. I know that this will be an offering that changes people’s lives, deeply. I trust that exactly the right women will show up, and I know that it will be exactly what it is meant to be.
I am moved to tears in divine grace of this journey, as it continues to unfold. As I continue on this path, my life gets simpler — the next step gets revealed and my choices for where I spend my time are clearer as I become more sovereign. I become lighter and more joyful. I stop carrying so much on my back. I learn to let go and truly surrender. The retreat with John was a before-after kind of experience — I feel like my life completely changed afterwards, and it obliterated and made clear what my life is about. Its help allow my dharma to become much clearer. This is the process that is happening through us. We no longer need to know the plan or be “in charge”. And it is truly the biggest relief of all.
