Well, hello.
It feels like I just wrote to you all and I’m still engaged in lots of discussions and conversations about the content of my last letter (it stirred a lot in many) but, time being what it is, here I am and here it is.
I think I’ll do something different this month and tell you a story.
Back in 2016, when I was lucky enough to purchase the hill we call Rootstock, I was suffering greatly. I had just left a harmful relationship, the last in a long line of ‘mean daddies’ while simultaneously inhabiting my long-standing pattern of revolution and mutiny in my professional life, essentially trying to take down ‘The Man’, in my role as Dean of Enrollment at Sterling College.
The pattern was this: in my private life I was a meek, submissive victim of the men and people that I craved love from, desperate for affection and validation and willing to do anything to get it. In my professional life, I was a strategic mastermind, powerful manifestor, and ruthless gladiator, willing to outsmart people or fight them to the death for what I believed was ‘right.’ I was desperate for recognition and control and my workaholism gave me a lot of time to channel that white hot heat into lots of professional success and personal pain.
Distorted, underdeveloped feminine. Distorted, overdeveloped masculine.
Lots of suffering.
Not. hot.
Some version of this pattern, this fractal, had been playing out since my inception, conception, and first breath. My natal chart tells it’s own version of this story, but two core wounds - first abandonment and then rejection - planted a seed in me that grew like Jack’s beanstalk and bore the fruit of hunger and doubt and vanity and worthlessness, failure and more. Sure it also bore the fruit of charisma, creativity, and courage but that’s not the story I’m telling right now. I was born into this blueprint and then the conditioning by my parents and upbringing, education, and early life generated a big pile of shit that fertilized that seed and, boy, did it grow.
I grew.
I grew around and between and underneath and above, in spite of, and entangled in it all. My pure, solar heart knew about love and belonging and compassion and generosity. My sharp mind and clear vision knew about justice, and karma, and balance and becoming and those soft parts of me grew too, but they were tangled in that vine that was (and still is) my conditioning.
Deep inside myself I was always connected to something pure and alive and creative and beautiful and I could feel it swelling inside me wanting to burst through my pores and feed the world, but, like a potter or blacksmith or wood carver who doesn’t yet know how to wield their tools, my impact was coarsely ground, unbridled and distorted in ways that didn’t reflect my love and didn’t eminate mastery. Immature might be a simpler way to say all this but I prefer the scenic route.
Moving through that dark night and becoming myself took a toll.
On me and them and on ‘It.’
Tangled in that vine and caught in that momentum, I carried on for a solid four decades before I realized I was the gardener and I could prune that vine. The constriction of that knot, the velocity of that ride….it was all I knew. It was me, I thought, and so I throttled along curious why the therapy and diets and success and accomplishments didn’t ease the dis-ease. I made a nest inside the hurricane, donned my armor like skin, justified the costs and loss as ‘how it must feel to be alive,’ made friends with the furies, and utterly lost the thread of my truest expression in my tangled, windblown hair.
My trauma and survival patterns had become, like lichen on the skin of the Dragon Rock, indistinguishable from my identity.
I was my strained relationships. I was my conflict at work. I was my rejected and neglected little girl. I was my exhaustion and my indifference and my confusion and my suffering.
My story of ‘what I was’ (a failure! a genius!) was what was between myself and my Self.
I imagine that some version of this was - and is - true for you and everybody reading this. I don’t think I’m particularly special in this way. I trust that the unbecoming work of becoming was - and is - not just my path to This Now Moment, but all of ours. We all have to find our way into our lives and only a small handful of us have masters like Michelangelo there to help reveal the angels hiding in our marble.
My pattern finally shattered in 2016 when the 2nd in a series of three sacred ‘deaths’ knocked me out of my fractal and onto my knees. I had lost or let go of everything that had forged my identity to that point - success as an executive, reliability as a friend, safety in the arms of a man, confidence in myself as a woman - and had no idea what value I was supposed to give the world, how I was going to make a living, and whether I was a safe person to love or employ.
I think that this is a more likely story than we all want to admit. More than courage, more than readiness, more than maturity….it’s catastrophe, illness, death, divorce, termination, lay off, rejection, collapse, pandemic, war, or some other kind of break that lets us go…that let’s us grow. Very few people can embody the archetype of The Fool and just walk off the precipice smiling, most of us need to get pushed or tripped or tricked into falling down.
A beautiful revelation I had at the bottom of my well in that spring season of winter was that, finally, I could rest there…there was nowhere lower to go. I couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together and I was done trying.
So, I rested there in the basement of my life. As much as an Aires Sun rests, of course and, here’s the thing, at the bottom of my barrel I caught the reflection of my mask slipping away in the stagnant puddle by the sump pump, and I let it go. I let it all go: my righteousness, my victimhood, my certainty, my resentment, my worthlessness, my unlovability, my self-pity, my fear, my identity, and my armor.
Spiraling tendrils and sticky, clinging leaves, I began to cut myself out of the beanstalk. Blood flowed again to the parts that had been strangled and constricted and my shape changed. The polarity between my feminine and masculine got less extreme, more integrated, and I slowly found some sure footing on the fulcrum between my personality (the lichen) and my essence (the Dragon). I found that red thread of purpose and beauty that I thought I had lost in my feral, wild hair and now wear it around my neck for safe keeping.
I changed.
Out of my patterns and into my essence.
I keep changing.
It’s been almost 10 years since that ‘death’ and I’m not quite a teenager in this new incarnation of Selfhood. Pre-pubescent and still innocent, this new season of growth into my midlife isn’t leggy and wild like the Beanstalk. It’s slow to germinate like a trillium, deeply rooted like an aster, full of fragrant blooms like an apple, and we are all yet to taste the fruit that will be born from this new season of my life. It’s asking for patience which I finally managed to grow in my garden.
The pattern has shifted. The reflexes have changed. The balance is being restored and, though I will likely be coming of age far into the future and long after my death, I have disrupted the narrative, changed course, and kept my life alive. My didn’t-feel-much-like-a-choice-at-the-time choice has rippled into a life of devoted service helping *many* other people keep their lives alive too.
What a miracle!
What an unlikely underdog story!
I think this isn’t just my story.
I think it’s OURS.
Those old, annoying fractals have been twisted into our DNA forever trying to help keep us safe from saber tooth tigers and even though they’ll trick us into surviving some days instead of thriving, we don’t need to be slaves to their impulses anymore. We don’t need to live in the old, dead skin of what was. We can harness that pain and failure and fear and, like my unbroken pony or, better yet, the Fire Horse, we can ride them into a whole new expression of reality. A higher vision. A less dense frequency. A new human. Homo Luminous. Homo Sanctus.
Remember that letter a few months ago about the nymph and the dragonfly. It’s time to climb out of the water, up the stalk, into the chrysalis, and be reborn.
If you need to leave your job, don’t hesitate anymore, it’ll be ok. If you need to leave your partner, trust in your knowing, it’ll be ok. If you need to stay, it’ll be ok. If you need to say sorry, it won’t kill you. If you need to forgive, it won’t break you. If you need to let an aspect of your identity die
(the people pleaser! the martyr! the cynic!), trust that it’s safe to do. If you need to rise up and live, trust that it will most certainly kill you.
May all beings reading this letter have the courage to change. Right now. Right here.
Today.
May you reclaim your attention from ‘out there’ and return it to ‘in here’ and have the x-ray vision needed to discern reflex from identity.
May you be gentle with the molting that is sure to follow, patient with the foggy snake eyes, itchy shedding, and new, tender underbelly.
May you breathe deeply into your liberated, authentic being and place the question of ‘now what?’ onto your altar to kneel and pray before, content not to know for a while.
May you trust, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that right now, is the right time to live how you’ve always dreamt was possible and to build what you’ve always longed to build.
So, it started out as a story about me but, as it turns out, I am just a reflection of you and vice verse. We are all just skin cells on the sense organ that is Gaia and my pain and triumph is yours. Your reluctance to change and fear of your own power are mine.
We’re in this together.
It might be a strange paradigm for you to consider but this war, this division, these cannibal pedophiles, this failure of civilization to be civilized?….it is us and it’s here for us. A test, of sorts.
The change you want to see in the world needs to start in your heart, your habits, your frequency, and your community. You are the front line. Your attention is the commodity that’s being fought over. Your forgetting that we are all connected - all of us - is the enemy. You are the victor and the victim and peace, true peace (in the world and in your being), will only come when you remember this and act accordingly.
It might feel hard to believe that but, from my seat on the floor at the feet of my clients, I can attest first hand to the seismic ripples that turn tsunami when a person forgives their Mother and their lineage for the neglect and insecurity it levied on them…when a man feels real empathy for the plight of his daughter and all women and gets curious about patriarchy, misogyny, and divine masculinity…when a women releases her fear of aging and steps into Cronehood empowered and alive and wise, or when a group of strangers find solace and real satisfaction in simply sitting together inside the same question for an hour with no answer in sight.
Individuals reclaiming power, unmasking, laying down conventions, projections and victimhood is LITERALLY changing the world in real time and real ways.
You can march and send money and advocate too, of course, but not instead of cleaning your own closet, addressing your own hypocrisy, decolonizing your body and habits, purifying your heart and mind, and radiating your authenticity into the collective. If, upon reading this, your first instinct is ‘I’m fine and I’m definitely not the problem’ I will loving invite you to pause there, find your gaze in that stagnant pond, get more curious, go a little deeper, and greet your resistance at the door laughing and let it in.
If you’re a human, you have shadows and it’s those of us that can’t or won’t admit that that are a big part of the problem. Inside our shadows, our failures, our fears, and our imperfections are the seeds of our brightest becoming and most holy expressions. It’s not that cozy to shapeshift into yourself but, damn, is it worth it once you get there.
The Spore, an ethereal watering hole and online gathering space, has been a delightful experiment to inhabit at this strange time when consensus reality is melting and ‘what’s real?’ is genuinely in question.
It’s simple. People gather in a variety of ways: around themes, around creativity, around psychedelic integration, around the Gene Keys, around the seasons, and around a desire to have at least one ‘place’ where the task at hand is simply to be yourself.
I want for 5 of you who have been reading this love letter for at least 2 years to sign up for the Spore right now.
If you are feeling isolated, lonely, confused, scared please come. If you are feeling energized, activated, clear, and empowered please come. Over 80 interesting and real people are weaving together in there now and it’s not noisy, it’s not crowded, it’s not like anything you’ve probably experienced in an online community. It’s real. It’s alive. It’s organic. It’s beautiful.
$33/month ($66 for benefactors or patrons that want to support me and my work as a community weaver, truth teller, imagination farmer, and lighthouse) and you’ll see quickly that it’s healthy screen time and a generative investment.
Here’s what’s on tap for April and, don’t forget, Spore members get discounted coaching (though they hardly need it ‘cause office hours are included!) and priority registration with everything I offer. One of these things would cost $30… meet me in my generosity and let’s make something beautiful together.
Join now and get the 1st month free
Everything I am offering here - online and off - goes the same place: home in your heart. The circles, the retreats, the immersions, all of these are pathways home to your essence, your truth, and your beautiful, authentic, creative power. The moment you are brave enough to dwell right there in the center of your being is the same moment that you realize that you are connected, supported, loved, and held.
I want for everybody that is ready to finally love themselves to finally do it.
I want for everybody that is ready to rise to feel the support to do it.
I want for everybody that is ready to stop waiting to feel ready to start creating and feel the permission to do it.
I want for our species to seize this unbecoming moment to finally become what we have always been…divine and sovereign beings, co-creators of reality, and full of light.
In case this all scares you or overwhelms you a little, I’ll try and give you a map and a compass to navigate this exciting and foreign terrain:
For locals or folks within a 3-4 hour radius, sign up for the April Stone, Sun or Moon circle and just come say hello, sit in a circle and see and feel what it’s like to be with new people for a couple hours. If you want to bring your partner and come together, the Stone Circle is the best choice. If you want to bring a friend and do it together, feel welcome. All of these gatherings are free or by donation and cheap overnight accommodations are available for folks coming from a distance.
Learn more & join a Stone Circle
Learn more & join a Moon Circle
Join the Sun Circle mailing list
For those of you that are feeling some kind of stuckness, lethargy, apathy, hopelessness, or depression about your life and really wanting to shift something: Take the last spot in the Spring microdosing immersion, Medicine of the East, hop on the waitlist for the Summer immersion, or book a call with me and let’s see if and how the mushroom teachers and elemental forces can help show you how to change. You can always come to the free Discovery Zoom 2x monthly to ask questions and learn more about what I offer.
Hop on the waitlist for Summer!
Let’s talk and see what can help
There are other gatherings planned and happening here as well and new ones are added all the time…usually on the 1st weekend of the month to correspond with the monthly circles. Here’s what’s planned:
Ritual for Metabolizing & Grounding Grief (Friday, March 5) - Full! Join waitlist.
Biodanza - (Friday, April 3rd) - Event will be posted shortly and check out this beautiful video to learn more about this wonderful practice.
Some new offerings related to the medicine path will be ready to share with you next month but, as you can see and feel, all of what is happening here is geared to support human beings to feel, express, relate, create, and remember.
Ok, it’s time to wind it down…
But one last thing…
You might remember that I left the hill a few months ago and headed to the Harvard Divinity School to pour my heart out at the Expansive Wisdom Symposium. It was a wonderful adventure and here’s a bit of what I shared there:
I find myself emerging from winter feeling very alive and very well and very awake and very ready to - slowly, steadily, sweetly - meet this moment. I’m looking forward to grieving tomorrow with a community of people wanting to teach and learn that lost art. I’m looking forward to dancing in April and reconnecting to the spirit that binds us all together and to the Earth. I’m looking forward to Turning the Wheel inside the Spore and supporting a community of people to meditate together and create a beautiful ritual that will welcome Spring consciously and with intent.
There’s a lot to look forward to.
There’s a lot of work to do.
There’s a lot of life to live.
Let’s live it.
Thanks to infinity for your presence, attention, and willingness to receive my heart into your hands. It means so much and I’d love to reciprocate.
Blessings on this turning and, please please please, remember…YOU are the captain and the rudder, the ocean and the wind, and the stars by which you navigate. You can change the world just by changing yourself.
With love and trust and hope and mud for days,
Beana Bern