A long-winded learning curve, or the winding road is better than the straight shot
For as long as I can remember, I could sense the characteristics and truth beneath the surface of things. In my youth I called this ability ‘knowing’ without being able to articulate how I knew. Even now, when I consider the way I process people and situations, it tends to fit outside of time and language. It’s more immediate, more sensory. It feels like it bypasses whatever part of the mind likes to create over- simplified stories and assumptions. When I meet someone new that I like, eventually they’ll try and explain their behavior to me. They might say: “I’m not actually like this” or “I don’t do this usually.” And I’ll say, “I know.” They’ll think I’m being gracious, but I’m not. I can read them beneath the surface, without the overtures. I already know that I like them, otherwise I wouldn’t be there.
The first conscious memory of this inner awareness occurred after my abrupt removal from a crowded third grade classroom that sat across the bay from South San Francisco. It was during this time I was given my first stint of precious solitude. This gift was heralded by an unexpected move to the Pacific Northwest, where mistakes and delays came together in such a way that my mother made the unlikely decision to allow me to independent study for a few months, a choice that turned into several years of me laying on my bedroom floor reading Greek Myths and meticulously studying the same curriculum that Barack Obama used when he was a child in Indonesia. By the end of 5th grade, I was not taught by anyone, I was alone and teaching myself for five hours a day from a mail order book seller. The surprise seclusion allowed me to become my own muse, mentor, and instructor. I dove deep into researching my interests, my own consciousness, the Bronte sisters, dissecting hidden meanings from old testament stories, and memorizing passages of poetry written during the French Revolution. This was my first realization that my own personal heaven was a do-not-disturb sign.
Before conditioning: San Francisco days & favorite elementary fiction
This season created the foundation for what was to come decades later. I spent hours writing stories, building my own graveyard outside for dead animals and insects, and writing sermons for a made up religion I started for the neighborhood children. I also learned that I could channel during this time period, though at the time I’d refer to it as “I can hear the Holy Spirit all the time.” I would ask a question internally, and it would be answered within a few minutes. Sometimes the question I’d ask would prove itself true in the physical world with immediacy and other times I’d have to wait a few days or months to see it come to fruition. I became captivated by repeatedly frightening myself by reading the book of Revelation over and over. I swore I could feel the sensation of a seal searing into my forehead as I lay beneath my canopy bed. Sometimes I’d wake up at 5 am and walk around the backyard talking under my breath to the sky, feeling the dewy Oregon grass under my bare feet. We moved back to California a couple years later. This time to a beach town in Orange County where I would be expelled from my private world and forced to attend school. I stopped talking to stars and sunrises and reading about the end of the world. I stopped channeling and writing in a diary. Instead I watched re-runs of My So Called Life in my parent’s bed when they weren’t home and went to punk rock shows with a secret boyfriend.
In university, I spent four years soaking up theological concepts, consistently staying after class to question gray haired professors who I suspected of omitting bits of interpretation and historical context from lectures. They always seemed to assume that my interest in dissecting scripture came from some kind of inner rebellion. I couldn’t help but notice that my natural questions and curiosity were often seen as suspicious. These were the last few years of naivety. I had assumed everyone wanted to get to the bottom of things, that’s why we were all here wasn’t it? I had yet to grasp that humans are conditioned toward security, and you must not poke at it with your questions.
Survival tip: Never question consensus. Never view things holistically, without group loyalty, with the intention of finding the underlying truth without bias.
These were the early years of feeling the pull to uncover the layers of ancient men’s societal conditioning, to find the pieces of wisdom from the Divine oracle they were writing from. It seemed obvious to discern, but this was heretical talk amongst faculty. For a brief moment, I considered going to seminary after graduation. However, I couldn’t figure out why I would spend the money to do so, other than to nurture my growing desire to examine scripture against the doctrine of prevailing religious norms, and perhaps to write some essays on why the New Testament doesn’t actually condemn homosexuality.
Americana road trips
Toward the end of college, I had checked out on trying to have a meaningful discourse with professors, family, or friends on the subject of scripture or the unseen. I skipped class to drive around listening to Bright Eyes and Bob Dylan, frequently ending up at the Norton Simon Museum to wander the sculpture garden, or comb through a Palm Springs thrift store for the perfect vintage dress. My final year I cleaned out my inner basement. I discarded my parent’s religion, my trust in the unseen, and in institutions. Any belief in benevolent mystical forces had long been erased from memory or mentally labeled as “I was a fanciful child.” I began to avoid those who professed faith, and became cynical toward Los Angeles girls dropping tidbits of new age spirituality into conversations. After a series of long distance moves, multiple irregular jobs that included, but were not limited to; writing for music magazines, teaching and public speaking, non-profit fundraising, styling for the rich and sometimes famous, nannying for the Newport Beach nouveau-riche, and very brief stint in therapy and social work in the Florida Everglades, I met someone over Myspace who I decided to marry.
After a series of disappointments and extreme fatigue, I gave up on working for other people and decided I was better suited to going my own way without outside interference. In my early twenties I started a business while living in a back house during a time of transition. It quickly exploded in popularity toward the late-aughts. How this occurred was a special concoction of; divine timing in the early days of social media, and some fated luck of having celebrities, musicians, and editors stumble across your work and become customers, collaborators, free publicity, and friends. I was definitely aided by my single-minded perseverance, an insatiable desire for freedom, and the ability to be self-directed (I thank the years of being left alone to school myself for that one.) I would suggest that you probably need self-confidence, but I didn’t have much back then, only one person who had confidence in me.
Survival tip: If you don’t have that one person, all you need is a crumb of confidence, and internal recognition. Later on, I learned how to be my only human supporter and fan.
photo-shoots from my clothing design, stylist, art director, blogger days
Over the course of a decade, I owned three separate entities of one business that became known by like-minded girls across the globe, and like the projector I didn’t know I was (Human Design reference), I was receiving invitations from those I adored for multiple projects. I could say that this was heaven, but in truth, I was getting schooled not just in business, but in abnormal psychology, public relations, finance, and relationships. I had a lot of innocence and openness, and a background of being around people with “challenging” personalities (to put it very lightly). It would still be years before shadow work had its way with my nearly crippling battle with anxiety and depression. I was standing on a sidewalk at 2 am on Hollywood Boulevard when I knew my time was up. Eventually, certain seasons expire, you can sense the end approaching before your mind is ready to let go. The unavoidable pull of the universal current marches on.
I sold part of the business and quit the rest. I had children, said goodbye to California and went back into a contented solitude. I made a lot of soup, attended summer writing workshops, and flea-marketed my way through a series of rentals, until I bought the house where my life shifted forever.
The best days with my baby soulmates
In the interests of transparency, the few who know me intimately have witnessed my life as being filled with sudden upheavals. Coincidental meetings that change your life forever, miraculous shifts, paired with multiple betrayals and deaths. By now, I’ve noticed a pattern in these changes. Every nine years life shifts from public to private, from insulated to exposed, from a solid foundation to the unknown. As a security motivated earth sign and someone with a lot of privacy driven 8th house placements, this has not been easy. But that is the nature of fate. After all, my incarnation cross in Human Design is the Cross of the Unexpected, Sylvia Plath and I have that in common. I know that in this lifetime, I can always count on the wheel to spin.
Unexpectedly, almost eight years ago, my agnostic mindset dissolved with a supernatural experience that ushered in a series of occurrences that I previously would have denied could happen in reality. Even recounting it in a cliffs notes version feels like the early scribbles of fantasy fiction. That year had been quiet. Strategizing survival wasn’t lingering beneath the trap doors of my mind, my panic attacks had gone on hiatus and I was sleeping at night. Years of pressure and extremity were replaced with abundance. I tried to push the door shut on thoughts that scratched at my mental boundaries asking, “but for how long will this actually last?” I had young children with relatively peaceful temperaments who loved being together, was finishing a draft of a novel, and had just finished remodeling a house. I was spending my days at historical farms and libraries, and for the first time allowing myself to pursue what I desired without excuses.
I blame what occurred next on Eli Jaxon-Bear. I had randomly found his lectures and became intrigued by the archetypes he spoke on. I listened to all of them over and over as I sat for hours in traffic. I became obsessed with The Fourth Way and the Enneagram after hearing one of my favorite bands mention it on a podcast, reading and digesting everything I could find on the subject. I realized I had a natural gift for discerning another’s psychology with very little information. I began teaching the archetypes as a way of efficiently assessing a person’s interior motives through hearing their vocal tones and energetic signature. At the time, I was surprised at my fervent research, I told myself it was out of character to be consumed with a mystical geometric figure. Now I understand that my devious subconscious was slowly staging a coup, with the intention of replacing my conditioned consciousness with my soul’s truth. The Enneagram created a tiny crack in my mental programming, that allowed for curiosity to slip in.
Naropa summer writing illuminations
It happened at night. I was getting ready to fall asleep when I saw a pillar of air that moved like water in front of my closet, next to my bed. I can only describe its appearance as somewhat similar to the dust devil simulations at children’s science museum, or like a blurry watery gel that’s 10 feet tall. My waking mind was relaxed. Instinctively, I said, “you’re here” to the amorphous visitor. There was a sense that I had known this “soul” or energy my entire life and perhaps beyond. I was filled with an overpowering sense of calm and familiarity.
This is where I can see the mechanics of the body described as “the vehicle” in Human Design. In HD, the subconscious is housed within the body “the design”, and has its own knowing and GPS system. The design is meant to be the driver of your life, the body is the vehicle. The mind, consciousness or “personality” is not meant to interfere by making decisions. The conscious mind is not the driver, but the passenger. This was the first time I truly saw this in action and understood. Had my mind or personality been driving, I don’t know that I would have had this experience due to skepticism and instilled beliefs.
The visitor said, “you know what time it is.”
I knew what it meant. And I knew what I needed to ask.
I asked the question, which had to do with beginning again in the areas of fashion and design (sounds like a light weight question, but that query at the time was hidden under layers of avoidance within me).
I fell asleep. At 3 am I was woken by an intense splitting sound, as loud as a crack of thunder. My closet bar had propelled itself out of the wall, leaving my clothes spilled out onto my bed.
When I say “propelled itself out”, that is exactly what I mean. The bar didn’t break and drop to the floor, but shot outward toward the bed, like it was thrown or pushed. My closet at that time was about 3 feet from where I slept. The bar was installed into heavy wood, the closet had just been built in the remodel. It also didn’t break due to weight, this was not where I hung heavy winter coats, only minimal lightweight items.
The answer to my question was loud and clear. My former partner thought the roof had been struck by lightning. That night, I was unable to sleep. I lay in bed, my body tingling with elation.
I had the abrupt realization that I was not alone and never had been, and not only that, but I was actually being heard.
For the sake of brevity, I will only include a few of the many events that happened in the days and months after. I was visited by one of my closest friends who had been murdered a few years prior (I’ll refer to her as B). It was 3 am when I woke up with a sense of hyper-clarity and alertness. Inexplicably, I knew that it was B who had woken me (though this had never happened to me before and at the time I wasn’t on-board with mediumship). I relaxed my mind and she revealed that I needed to deliver three messages to three different people in her place. One was to her mother, another to her friend that was with her during her passing (I’ll call her O), and another to her ex-boyfriend. B walked me through what happened to her the night of her death, as if I was living through it myself, but without the pain. She simulated moments for me using intense pressure on areas of my body to show me the particulars of what needed to be known, and gave me messages of peace to relay. I kept the information I received to myself for a week, mentally laboring with the concern of potentially reopening wounds that were still raw in people I either barely knew or didn’t see often as they lived states away. In the end, I decided to start with our mutual friend, O. I’m glad I did. What was miraculous was, the details of what I was told at 3 am was exactly what B’s mother had been asking O two weeks before. It was the information nobody knew or could locate, exactly what was needed. I also found out months later at O’s wedding, that they had received the extra details from the police on what had happened, but had remained unknown up until that point. The notes of the crime had been what B had transmitted.
Desert bliss, Polaroid taken by B, star born Mary near B’s hometown
This experience taught me one of my first lessons:
You will know who and what a spirit’s intentions are by the energy they emit, not by how they appear, what they say, or even what their actions are. It’s only by the energy. You will either feel peace and clarity or anxiety, criticism, and despair. This is the same for spirits currently in human form.
Don’t waste time questioning what spirit reveals, just follow through. It’s not about you.
During this time, I was also finding out that I could read the Akashic Records, though I had never heard the term before. I was seeing past lives in visions, of myself and people I knew, receiving names, time periods, jobs, birthdays, publishing houses, and sometimes addresses as confirmations. Later, I would look up what I had received on the internet, to see if I could find these people. I found all of them except one. What was interesting is, some of them were not necessarily famous or even well known. One was a pregnant maid who died due to extreme neglect and was in a newspaper as an example of worker’s rights at the turn of the century, one was a regional woman who had started a small feminist pamphlet over a century ago, others were the first female lawyer that lived in a city and state where I had also lived, a philosopher in London hundreds of years prior, a disgraced scryer from the 1500’s - you get the idea. During this time I had been experiencing extreme chronic pain for two and half years that I had seen several specialists for without relief. I was shown via the Akashic Records the roots behind the suffering from this condition, and how to get rid of it via a specific way to meditate. I followed through with what was shown to me, and the pain left my body within 5 days time and has not returned since.
It was as if my attention and acknowledgement of this supernatural presence and the actions I took in response, increased my awareness and sensitivity. Due to this, more incidents occurred, and at a faster rate. Though I had read and studied the Bible formally and informally growing up, (and then rejected religion all together), I still had many questions about its teachings that loomed in the back of my mind, especially in conjunction with what I was experiencing. I would think of a verse or passage that was in conflict with what my instinct or intuition was, and instantly know or hear what the scripture was communicating as opposed to how it had been presented for centuries as regurgitated dogma. At times I would see a word in its original language, or be immediately led to a research paper or lecture bearing the same contexts, revealing to me that what I was understanding was true, and backed up by others. How had I never comprehended these meanings? It was like removing distorted lenses and realizing your vision is actually clear. I was understanding the words of these ancient men in their purest form without embedded conditioning. It felt like decades of searching for answers were being delivered in a matter of hours. I was beginning to understand religion for what it is, a culture’s interpretation of the Divine. Channeled messages mixed with societal bias. Truth poured through a soiled filter.
The same guide who pulled my closet bar out of the wall was the one who taught me how to live. He called himself the name of a mineral compound, one I had never heard of before. When I looked the word up online, the properties of this compound aligned with feelings of anxiety relief, grounding, and peace. By using this name for himself, he was telling me why he was around me, and it turned out to be more literal than I could have known.
Lesson 3: The names your guides/guardians/ancestors give you always correlate to their character or what they are bringing you.
Brother & I, before the almost-deaths
I would feel the closet-guide’s anchor-like presence next to my bed as I slept, and began to hear a deep voice warning me each time before my brother tried to take his life, or inconceivably almost lost his life in multiple different ways in a short number of years. As haunting and somewhat anxiety provoking as that might sound, the effect was the opposite. I ended up being psychologically prepared for years of crises, and knew internally with each occurrence that this was not the end. This guide not only showed me moments in my personal life that I would survive, but moments in history for the collective that we would also survive. This was in 2018-2019, and I was able to see in great detail massive news stories that would break a year or more later, and told aspects of what would be unfolding in the decade to come. I was also told that I wasn’t given these details to necessarily “predict the future” for the masses and to make myself any kind of guru (thank God, I don’t have the desire or nervous system for it), but to A. build my faith in my inner voice and B. to support and instruct others on how to find, use, and trust their own inner awareness to become their own search engine, support system, and hero.
There was one point during this time span where my family and I were suddenly and unexpectedly left without income, and were living off savings. After a couple months of going after many leads and “practical” solutions only to hit brick wall after brick wall, I decided to turn my attention to what would be considered impractical. By this time, I had enough solid experience in evidential miraculous occurrences and happenings to seek answers in the unknown. When I asked my closet-guide what the best course of action was, I was oddly instructed to buy a smoking pipe. My initial reaction was “ok, well I suppose I’m meant to start smoking a pipe. Maybe it’s a calming practice that will decrease my stress and allow the answer to come.”
I told my former partner who collects pipes that I may start smoking with him. Later that week I had an appointment with my functional medicine doctor who had me on a strict protocol for my autoimmune issues.
When I mentioned the idea of smoking, her answer was “absolutely not.” I was confused at why I would have received the message of the pipe in relation to finances if it wasn’t actually useful. (As I had a few years at that time under my belt of following my internal messages with 3D evidence.)
I told him, “never mind about the pipe.”
He says, “I already ordered you one. Well, regardless I’m glad I ordered it. The most random thing happened. A day after I purchased it, I wrote to the company to ask a question about the order. I ended up receiving an email from the owner. He saw my website in my email signature and visited it. He wants me to work for them from home.”
The job that was offered ended up being extremely lucrative.
Relaxing into the subconscious, a hermit mode that lasted for years
One of the ways the closet-guide revealed his role was through changing my experience with the past. This began first in lucid dreams, where I would meet him in an old traumatic memory and go through an intense healing session that would clear the emotions of what had occurred. Later he began to appear to me in waking life, out in the world, right before an event would occur that would shift my life in some way, almost letting me know, “this will end up okay too.” During one of the most difficult seasons, this guide took me out of my body in a way that I can only refer to as an “astral projection” that occurred at midday and lasted for several hours, and matched other’s descriptions of a near death experience. The fear and grief in my body was transmuted into a sense of all encompassing peace and surrender that lasted for weeks after. This alone got me through an extremely dark time. During the “astral projection” I was with my closet-guide and shown the mechanics of the soul and what had disrupted many people’s minds on earth, and was also taken to other realms for healing and meeting family members who are not on earth at this time. (This point in time was before ever hearing about Dolores Cannon, and long before the government’s declassification of unidentified flying objects became known to the public. I say this only to understand the type of mindset I had when this occurred.)
I didn’t know I had a sister until I met her at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom. We were in an office with red velvet curtains and wood paneled walls. She was standing against the window when I first saw her, in a black motorcycle jacket and Levi’s jean shorts, long blond hair lit up by a rare day of sun. An older woman in an antique taffeta dress introduced us, referring to her as “my sister.” Before this dream, I had never heard of or seen the grounds of Bletchley Park (as someone whose favorite subject in school was history, this is embarrassing and yet unfortunately true). I found out what and where this place was a few days later when I was listening to a podcast for the first time. The host made mention of a strange dream she and her sister had on the very same night. She mentioned the location as Bletchley Park. I quickly googled the location, and almost fell over. The grounds were the same, the exterior of the building unforgettable in its exactness, the inside of the house just as I remembered. The following night I had a dream that “my sister” and several other family members I didn’t know were taking me home. “Home” was a massive sand toned castle somewhere in the United Kingdom, by the ocean, with a chapel nearby. I was taken around the grounds and toured the home. I was also told bits of the family lore, that included a generational curse. When I woke up I searched for this location online for hours. When I finally found the listing, it took my breath away. Not only were the grounds, the chapel, the sea, and the castle just as I had seen (alarmingly so), there was a story of a curse in its history, and the entire estate’s name was eerily named after my family line, my father’s last name, the last name I grew up with.
These dreams felt more real than anything I’d experienced in waking life. I expected to roll out of bed with mosquito bites, muddy feet, or holding actual items from these places. Strangely enough, I do receive physical items from these guides. This sister from a past life gave me a gift I have on my desk as I type this. After our UK introduction she visited me in a deep meditation, and in the true form of an unbeliever who was slowly coming around to the idea of the unseen world, I asked her to prove to me that she wasn’t just a product of my imagination. She gave me this message: “your mother will give you a crystal apple, you will know this is from me.” This didn’t make sense for several reasons. For one, my mother and I were not on the best of terms, we didn’t speak much. Also, what in the world was a crystal apple? I shrugged the notion off as absurd. That week, my mother texted me out of the blue asking if I wanted to go to a pop-up Parisian themed antique market with her and my father. To my surprise, I said yes. When the day arrived, we met at the entrance. My mother walked to the first booth she saw. It was a collector selling vintage paperweights. Neither me, nor anyone I know of in the family collects paperweights. My mother picked one up that looked like frosted quartz, and turned it over in her hands. “Do you want this?” She asked me, already handing the woman on the other side of the card table some cash. I went home that day with one small bag, inside of it, a crystal apple.
A “crystal” apple, an archetype with polaroids
Time seemed to change after I began to acknowledge that the unheard of was occurring. What was once a struggle, started to happen with ease. If I needed something, the item or solution would arrive swiftly and unexpectedly. In one of these moments, I was getting ready to sell my house the following morning. I had already had one offer fall through, and I was in a time crunch for selling. When I had meditated on whether or not the house would sell in time, I felt complete peace but in the background of my mind I was hearing the song “When I see an Elephant Fly” from the movie Dumbo (which I had not seen since childhood.) My very human mind immediately interpreted the song as meaning, “fat chance.” I asked the unseen for help, and then went into the Akashic Records to find a ritual that would help the sale. I was shown specific instructions on what to do. During its preparation, I spotted a long fracture down the center of my ceiling. (The previous owners had taken down a wall in that spot without a permit. I was concerned that it might have been load bearing, even though I was told by a few structural engineers that it likely wasn’t but they couldn’t give me a definitive answer without doing major damage themselves.) The fracture had grown larger and longer. I again asked my unseen forces for quick help as I completed the ritual. In less than two minutes, a neighbor I’d never seen or met was knocking on my door. It was a man asking if he could take a peek inside at the remodel I had done before the house was sold. I learned that this neighbor had recently moved from the same small beach town in California that I was from, and was a master builder that had built the homes on the cliffs near my parent’s neighborhood. He took a look at the crack in my ceiling and was able to tell me it was nothing to be concerned about, he had the same house model that I did, and had removed the same wall in the middle of the kitchen himself. It was not load bearing, but hollow and cosmetic. The home sold immediately. When I was signing the contract via email, I heard the song “When I See an Elephant Fly” playing in the background at that exact time of my acceptance. My kids had found the movie Dumbo, and were watching part of it for the first time.
Lesson 4: Interpretation only works if you are sensing the energy beneath the word, image, the sound, sense etc. The judgment-self preservation focused mind will never interpret correctly.
The house of awakening is the house with the ceiling fracture
When all of these occurrences were taking place, I began to see how our conscious mind interprets a manufactured truth based on conditioning and reasoning. It isn’t until an outside experience is able to jar us awake or break the spell the mind is under, that we realize that something different has been true all along. This real truth was floating on the surface of my subconscious, I just couldn’t see it until something beyond myself mirrored this back to me. We see that everything in our lives points to divine timing. Had the same events occurred a year earlier, I would have missed it, I wasn't ready then to understand.
These early days were filled with more miraculous stories. By listening to my inner voice I was able to save my own life from a medical emergency that several doctors had denied, and keep my kids out of harm's way in two potential disaster-like scenarios. I spent the next six years I had during this time studying, absorbing, and implementing. I went to The Los Angeles School of Spiritual Arts for mediumship, studied with one of the best astrologers in the world, spent time with two shamans who used the Akashic Records and shadow work for healing, immersed myself in abnormal psychology and depth psychology, and began experimenting with numerology and Human Design from Ra’s source material. I fell in love with meditation and found it effective for accessing information, discernment, and interpretation.
What became evident to me through these practices, was the immense practicality and benefit that was readily available and lacking for most people. Unfortunately, due to the way society has programmed us to view spirituality (or reality as Rainn Wilson refers to it), and how it's presented via media, it comes off as anything but grounded and practical. Shadow Work done properly gets to the root of our past trauma and insecurities allowing us to heal and become our truest selves, in a manner that is often far more efficient and transformational than traditional talk therapy. The Akashic Records done correctly can allow us to remember our purpose for being on Earth, along with providing us lightning fast accurate answers for everyday questions. Human Design teaches us how our individual body’s mechanics work so we encounter less resistance and have more success and satisfaction, and learn how to trust our inner authority with outward evidence.
As early as my elementary school days laying in my canopy bed waiting for answers from the unseen, or verbally sparring with dogmatic professors on hermeneutics, my deepest desire has always been to bring what is hidden to light and present it in a way that is easily accessible and brings about rapid clarity and transformation. I’ve learned that anything that presents as fear, confusion, anxiety, or control is always some manipulation of a truth, a cubic zirconia parading around as a diamond. The real truth is always simple, pure hearted, and rooted in neutrality. Here you will find stories and messages filled with channeled wisdom and specific guidance, personal stories, and revealed truths from the many forms of institutional dogma we’ve all been fed. This substack was created to support those who are called as change-makers during this specific time in history.
With love,
SZ
