The dangerous art of shapeshifting

Why change is so hard.

Yo fam - tune in to the audio version if you are more of an on the go listener. This one is laced with a little bit of hip hop fitting of the topic

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I was watching a butterfly try to get through a window this morning. It kept butting itself up against the closed glass. It was there for a while, the whole time agonisingly close to escaping where freedom was just a few inches to its left via the open window.

But it kept fluttering back and forth against every part of the closed glass, as if the open path didn’t exist. Eventually, it found a way out. The opening was there all along, but it stayed where things were familiar, to its own detriment.

How often do we do the same? Try to escape, but stay stuck in the field of familiarity. If only we’d be willing to take a few steps to the left and veer just slightly from the known path - where the fresh air of freedom awaits.

We all want change. Better body. Better pay. Better world. But how many of us are willing to pay the price of entry?

Life will always require us to sacrifice a pound of flesh before we get to ride the magic carpet of freedom. Our Soul will often put us in positions where we have the choice to choose differently, multiple times if needed, until we choose to do so.

But some of us never even make it through.

That’s because real change is fucking HARD. And unfortunately for some, a luxury.

I’m not talking about the kind of change that comes with a new haircut.
Not the kind of change you make after skipping town.
And not the kind change that comes with seven days of keto before diving into a Meatball Marinara.

I’m talking about the agonising terror of change that completely dismantles your internal infrastructure. The kind that makes you question everything you have ever known. It is only when you meet the edge and face off with death that you realise what is important and what is possible.

The version of you that is living the life you want, is a completely different person to who you are right now.

They give less fucks, they appreciate the small things more, and they for sure as hell don’t faff around anywhere near as much as you do.

The reason why the lottery winner ends up bankrupt, the desperate lover ends up single, the talented artist remains broke is not because they aren’t deserving. It’s because their outdated programming is incapable of holding the life they desire.

The relative comfort for most of us in the modern world; and the lack of initiatory experiences that guide us to the abyss and gently back again, has created a sedentary population and, in turn, a static culture. It leaves adolescent versions of us festering inside our being, flies buzzing around its dead corpse as it awaits burial.

Without the inner scaffolding that can support the birthing process of the version of ourselves that is trying to come through, as well as ritual processes that honour our former selves, we will forever remain stuck.

Stuck in surface level shifts - new tattoo, new partner, new job, while our adolescent and child tendencies stay hidden in the shadows quietly controlling the whole damn game. That’s why each and every single culture that existed in pre-modern times had initiation rites for their youth.

Just like the rose bush needs pruning, we need to surgically remove psychic and emotional density so we can serve the wider ecology at our fullest.

Nature needs our true nature.

When we tune in to cosmic radio and dance the dance only we can dance, the world around us begins to take note. Support is enlisted. Miracles happen.

No amount of reading Atomic Habits or shouting out morning affirmations can overcome a body that is emotionally constipated - one still holding decades of undigested grief and confusion.

Think about all those times you said yes when you meant no. And no when your whole body screamed yes.

To untangle that much history would be too much for many. But for the curse-breakers - the ones who carry the torch of truth - anything less would be self-betrayal.

The animal body clings to the familiar. The ego resists the unknown with everything it has. That’s why no morning routine alone can break the deep holding patterns keeping us stuck.

Breaking the curse

I used to push the boat back on big responsibilities all the time. And no matter how much journalling I did or how hard I pushed myself to focus, I would just find when it came time to do the Thing, I would quickly find myself doing everything but.

When I look back, every major step forward I took in my life - whether it was starting this Substack, launching the Celestial Gathering, or running my first retreat - was preceded by months of avoidance, waiting for inspiration to come, and questioning whether I was capable of pulling off something so audacious.

“But you’re a DJ, why would you become a writer?”
“But you run parties, why would people come to your retreat?”
“But you run retreats, why would anyone come to your gigs?”

Over and over and over the story goes. I imagine that there is another timeline where I gave in to those sad stories that narrated my inner world and am still in London, shacked up with my mum, and living an abomination of an existence.

Things really started to shift when I realised that the voice will always be there.

We have to be bigger than the voice.

Why?

Because THAT VOICE IS NOT OURS!!!

That voice is Mum. That voice is Dad. That voice is the high school bully.

No - the only voice we need to tune into is the voice of Soul.

We have inherited scripts that don’t belong to us. We have vibrationally installed the fear, lies, and propaganda of others and have held on to it as if it’s our own story. These stories become so deeply fused with our nervous system that we take it on as second nature.

But it’s just that, our second nature. Our True Nature is buried beneath that.

Only by noticing that voice, and taking regular, ritualised steps to discharge the emotional bio-tags of betrayal encoded within us, can we create space for the voice within.

For something new to come through, something old must die.
And the bigger the shift, the bigger the ritual process.

So for you, I’ve got good news and bad news.

I’ll start with the bad.

The path of Soul cultivation can be a long and arduous one. I remember taking the first steps around seven years ago. Those first few were rocky.

If you stepped into my room, it would’ve been similar to walking into a bando with scribbles and Post-it notes all over my walls as I prepared the delicate process of brainwashing myself to find truth, beauty, and magic wherever I looked.

Quotes from books, pings of deep insight, deep rememberings plastered everywhere - from my mirrors to the ceiling - reminding me to constantly breathe, smile, and remember who the fuck I am.

I would go through months of vibing high only to crash hard again, often ending with a relapse that spiralled me to place where I was worse off then when I started.

The Great Forgetting is a process we all go through. It is encoded in us all.

And as a close brother reminded me, it is such a trip that this is all a part of the cosmic joke of life: “Not just forgetting, but forgetting that we’ve forgotten.”

Until we remember, and life begins again (until we forget. Again).

And I’ll finish with the good news.

The world is slowly waking up from the neon lullaby of modernity. And it starts with individuals waking up at scale.

The trance we have all been under is coming to its zenith, as the gap between inherited stories and observable reality is becoming too wide to ignore.

As Terence McKenna himself said - “It’s just going to get weirder and weirder and weirder and finally it’s going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is.”

To halt the tsunami of self-destruction your job is to not make change happen. It’s to make change welcome. It’s to create an inner landscape that is capable of holding the change you wish to see. To pull out the weeds at the root. And plant seeds of hope in its place.

Ritual processes allow you to do so. Ritual is not therapy. Though it was the original form of it. Ritual isn’t even trauma healing. Though it helps you do so. Ritual is a full alignment of mind, body and soul. An initiation into brilliance.

It’s no surprise we are seeing a resurgence of breath-work, tantra, yoga, plant medicine - even tattoos, as these mythically imprinted practices offer pathways back to our ancestral roots and serve as conduits for integrating deeper truths into our modern lives.

All your transformation has come as a result of rituals that disrupted holding patterns and opened up new ways of being and new ways of seeing.

The emergent Second Renaissance will be the greatest chapter of human existence. It’s one we get to co-create.

And it’s all being fuelled by the Revival of Ritual.

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If you’re ready to step into the new world with the tools to truly meet it, join me at Soul Camp Melbourne.

The formula is simple but potent:

Somatic clearing + shadow work = soul activation.

At this level we are as free as the day we were born. Trauma and conditioning blocks the truth of the soul and distorts your signal.

All the ways you play small. All the ways you cockblock yourself from success. All the places where your inner trust has been broken - they’re gently brought to the surface so they can be alchemised.

The most common feedback I get from past guests is this: they return to their normal lives and can no longer tolerate what they once willingly accepted as their former selves.

When you step into your deepest truth, the lies you’ve been telling yourself begin to crumble.

So if you’re ready to take the next step and cross the threshold into a new chapter of your story, reach out today.

We gather again on the upcoming Solstice, June 20–22.
Hit me up if you’d like more info.