This is not a guide, and it’s not meant to teach or preach. It’s a remembrance. A meditation on what we’ve lost, what we’ve been taught to forget, and what calls to be reclaimed. We move through life absorbing so much — beliefs, rules, limits, identities — not realizing we’re carrying stories that aren’t ours. This reflection is a kind of unweaving. A peeling back of the layers. A way to speak directly to the soul and remind it: you were always more than this. You still are.
. . .
When we come into this world, many would agree that we arrive as blank canvases — perhaps erased of our memories from before or in the interim, or decisively and purposely cleared of anything that might corrupt or complicate the novelty of a new human lifetime. There’s a kind of inherent knowing within us — perhaps a wide-open door to the realms or energies from which we came. Source is near, unbridled, and ready to be called upon. In those early moments, we don’t need language. We don’t need comprehension. We don’t yet stand under anyone’s rules. We are accepting, curious, playful, and emotionally unrestrained — seemingly volatile, but more accurately, free and open to simply be in an unmitigated, present-moment flow state. Nothing and no one has a label, yet we know mama and papa without question. Life is vibrant, exploding through all our senses — overwhelming, yet purely and unmistakably invigorating.
But slowly, we are thrust into the paradigms, parameters, and conditions of this realm. We’re swiftly conformed and constrained by our circumstances and surroundings. Our bodies adapt to what’s available — whether nourishment from our mother’s breast or artificial substitutes if she cannot provide, or if we are, for whatever reason, removed or distanced from her. Though we might once have lived on sunlight alone, we begin to take on the clothing of narrative — the accepted limits of our new environment. We already feel it: the pressure, the imbalance, the unnatural push and pull — but we don’t yet know how to name it or explain it.
As general consensus suggests, much of who we are becomes deeply embedded by the age of seven, perhaps even more solidified and hardwired by twelve. Though we may not act on these foundational elements until adolescence or early adulthood, when we begin to wear the identity-game of “I, me, mine,” the framework through which we explore life — its eventualities, experiences, ideas, and impositions — is shaped early. These early parameters form the edges of our individuation.
What remains of our intrinsic knowing — our openness, innocence, lightness, and clarity — is often suppressed or transmuted into something more acceptable to our immediate reality. Whether for survival or simply to get along, we begin to shape our identity and experience around what’s expected. We mold ourselves to suit every situation, environment, and circumstance, learning to twist and bend and distort ourselves to fit whatever role or narrative is on offer. In the beginning, this may feel like a game of curiosity or untested obligation — but over time, we begin to comprehend the misguided attempts at conformity and the mistaken or unjustified reasons for engaging in them.
If we’re subjected to public education, we’re taught by rote, trained and entrained in ways shaped by subjective truths and standardized reasoning. Mainstream narratives dominate the airwaves — and mind waves — further entrenching ideas often counter to our original innocence and inborn wisdom. Day by day, week by week, month after month, what was is replaced by what is, and by what supposedly matters.
It matters to fit in. It matters to understand in ways that align with those around us. It matters because, in a primal, animal sense, this is how we survive. And so, our spiritual, intuitive selves are often subjugated to the material, the animalistic, the socially acceptable.
Throughout life, we’re invited — perhaps millions of times — to choose between our intuitive impulses and the paradigms imposed on us. Yet we so often dull our senses, set aside our intuition, and conform — again, for the sake of safety, inclusion, and survival. We bend to the will of others because belonging feels essential. Staying alive feels more urgent than being free and independent.
We inevitably adopt ideas contrary to what is real, authentic, and true — contrary to what is natural, provable, and deeply sensed. Even when we feel that something isn’t right, we still choose to go along to get along. Until one day, we don’t.
At some point, a shift happens. We start to question what’s real and what’s true. And in this reality, this culture, this society — we’ll be presented with challenges, confrontations, and opportunities to ask again and again what we really believe, and what we really want.
If we remain unaware or unwilling, we simply endure. We accept pain and suffering as necessary, even without fully understanding why. And while there are forms of suffering that can empower, strengthen, and shape us, most of the pain we carry stems from blindly adopting beliefs and contracts we never stopped to examine.
But as the saying goes: when it gets bad enough, we’re forced to choose otherwise. We’re cornered — bedridden, heartbroken, traumatized — and pushed to find a new way. A new truth. A new path.
And so begins the process of unlearning. Of realigning with the soul. Of reconnecting with what’s authentic. Of shedding the layers of conditioning and stories we’ve long mistaken for ourselves.
This process can be jarring. It threatens the very foundation we once stood upon. Some will not survive it. But must life be only about survival? Or could it be about something more?
We return to realization. We reconsider enlightenment. We become our own initiates, embarking on the deep remembering. We unshackle the spirit, allowing the soul to rise — not as an afterthought or affectation, but as the guide it was always meant to be.
With each level of realization, we shed the weight of lies, distortions, and impositions. Our bodies transform. The toxicity — energetic, emotional, chemical — begins to lift. This journey isn’t easy. Some, perhaps most, won’t complete it. But those who remain open, who ask the questions — Where did I come from? Where am I now? Where am I going? — step into a profound process of remembering.
And yes, we may want to blame. To shame. To direct guilt at those around us — or more often, at ourselves. How could I be so blind? So gullible? So daft? How could I have clung so tightly to an identity built from borrowed beliefs and external ideas?
These are painful questions. But they are also rites of passage. If we truly want to uncover what is real, true, and liberating — if we want to be resilient and discerning in the face of modernity’s constant bombardment — this process is not just necessary. It is sacred.
Let yourself remember. Let the questions eat away at the delusions and distortions you’ve held for too long. Let them strip away the false identities you’ve worn like armor. Speak again in your one true language. Align again with your inborn truth.
Remember: you are in this world, but not of it. Your avatar is made up of and subject to the rules of this material construct, but it is not you. This vessel is temporary. Your beliefs, your paradigms, your practices — these shape how your body behaves, how long it lasts, and how well it serves your soul’s expression.
Much of what you experience is a process — chemical, electrical, metaphysical. Whether through out-of-body states, near-death experiences, psychedelics, or other means, there are endless simulations within this simulation. Some are insights. Others are traps. Choose wisely.
Know that we can blind or deafen ourselves when we’re weary of seeing and hearing what this world offers. We can lose the ability to digest — not just food, but life itself. We can weaken, atrophy, and decay, all because we believe we are fragile and incapable.
Everything begins in the energetic and the etheric long before it reaches the body. Before it shows up in your bones, your gut, your skin, your nerves — it begins in thought, in belief, in vibration.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. No true agency or authority exists outside of you. Nothing extrinsic — chemical, industrial, technological — is ultimately necessary. Everything you need is already built within you.
You can trust that.
You can remember.
Remember who and what you really are.