T’shuvah literally means return. Also repentance. The tenth episode of FATHER. MOTHER. GOD. is about bringing my mother’s ashes back to Ireland at the turn of the Jewish year, the traditional time for amends making and repair. That was autumn of 2024.
Yesterday I took part in another form of return. Returning to my true self and true home. I still struggle for words to describe this new modality I have found. It’s intuitive and spirit-led, much like the work I already do, and each decision and pattern we run is directly backed up by muscle testing for accuracy. You could call it superconscious alignment, but it extends even beyond the superconscious to include all my guides, holy helpers, and Source itself. I’m learning it as fast as I can so that I can fold it into the coaching work that I do. The impact is immense and immediate. It feels like being upgraded, at a systems-level, each time we meet. It’s like a psychic power washing, from the inside out.
Yesterday, a lot of the work we did was directly at the level of my programming. My self-conscious mind would say ‘yes, of course I’m willing to make this change, it’s so reasonable,’ while my programming would say ‘nope, not going there yet, it isn’t safe.’ And so we’d unpack and play around in there until we could free it up and get my full system alignment and buy-in to proceed.
I’m going to attempt to describe what this session was like. Because on a brass tacks level, and also on the level of metaphysical metaphor, we were talking about moving. Something I’m still in the middle of doing1.
Specifically, both symbolically and also quite practically, we focused on my leaving what we called the House of the Fallen, and moving into what I am calling the House of Light.
The House of the Fallen? That’s where I’ve been living pretty much my whole life, probably even longer. Honestly, most of us have. I was born right into it, inheriting my place there from multiple generations before me.2 Without any judgment or condemnation, this is how it was described to me. People are needy there, people are broken (aren’t we all?). But if they stay there, then consciously or not, they are looking for someone to serve them. To rescue them. Someone they can rely on, collude with, and enroll in their stories. Or worse, someone to control. Someone to keep them nestled in their own dysfunction. Someone they can count on to keep them unaccountable, so they don’t ever have to do their own work themselves.
What kept me committed to staying there so long? On the one hand, there’s apparent compassion and loyalty. But when I dig deeper, I find it’s really idiot compassion3 and misplaced loyalty.4 The longing to free others from suffering, when enacted mistakenly through acts of enabling, is what’s known as idiot compassion (a term coined by Chogyam Trunpa). And it gets held right alongside the mistaken idea that leaving that place or those people and patterns myself, despite the deleterious effect they’re having on me, would be abandoning them, a betrayal that I can’t make. It’s the misplaced loyalty to dysfunctional family systems that programs like ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families) work so hard to help us disrupt. I survived my dad taking his life rather than leave a house, a marriage and a situation that he couldn’t face walking away from. And I keep learning that my own work is to chart a different path. I can’t actually uplift people who don’t want to do their part. I don’t have to be loyal to patterns that do not serve. And despite all the tools at my disposal, I can’t help anyone who isn’t ready. Even the Buddhas and all the masters cannot take away or ripen a person’s karma without that person also doing their part.
I also had questions of readiness and worthiness. Who am I to leave? Am I really, finally, ready to? What held me there, in essence, were my own limiting beliefs, and a deep-seated fear of the unknown. The thing is, I know how to live in the House of the Fallen. I know how to navigate drama and volatility. I know how to bend myself around the demands of depression and avoidance, whether mine or another’s. I’m so good at appeasement. It’s not comfortable to me, but it’s familiar. Further into the session, the main doubt that surfaced in investigating my hesitancy was this - but are my skills from here actually portable? Can I take them anywhere else? In other words, am I actually viable in the House of Light?
The first moments of considering my departure from the House of the Fallen were accompanied by a strong physical sensation - a full bodily shuddering of deep terror and fear. The statements that emerged to align me around this shift were two: I owe it to myself to leave the House of the Fallen, and I survived the House of the Fallen. I knew these to be true in theory, but still I couldn’t move. Unpacking this further, building rapport with all my parts, underneath these there was a third necessary statement - I understand what it feels like to leave the House of the Fallen. But I could only partially sign onto this one too. And so we dug deeper, working on the fear. The statement that emerged then was, I shrink my fear and embrace my fierceness. An action that I could own, could imagine, and could take. A door opened. Movement began. Calibration of these statements often involves repetition of the words, synchronized with specific patterns of breathing, eye-gazing, visualization and other movements. I can almost see the little rainbow wheel spinning on the desktop of my mind. Stand by, system updating…
Harmonizing my system, I receive all that is truly mine. Stable, healthy love. Safety. Creative expression and authentic embodiment on multiple channels. Knowing that my perspective is desired, and is itself a gift, I am free to curate my own environment. This environment to create, I was asked, what is it? I answered spontaneously from the deep wellspring of my vajrayana Buddhist trainings. There’s an outer, inner, and secret environment, I said. All these levels are required.
And so we worked on another statement. I, and all the parts of me that say ‘I’ here and now, am ready to receive all that is mine.
Then we looked at where I’m living now, this interim home, which is a welcome refuge and yet still not a place my being feels completely safe (though this was news to me!). Mostly because it’s not a place to stay - it’s a place to move through. What is unsafe about this, then, besides its impermanence? Again, this perception has roots in my limiting beliefs. My egoic self, seeking orientation from outside, chains itself to identity and to facts of the matter, rather than the truth of the spirit. Incidentally, this is where most of us spend most of our time - resolving our identity, managing our circumstances. Mistaking this apparently ‘responsible engagement’ with current and past realities for the pursuit of what we truly want. It’s not creative, it’s reactive. The impulse to do this never goes away. But we can shrink the time we spend there, and reorient towards the Light, and true choice, again and again.
Here’s where the question of transferable skills really arose. So what, I was asked, are these skills of mine that I’m concerned won’t be useful in the House of Light? What is keeping me from seeing myself as an equal to the people and archetypes that I imagine are already dwelling there? After all, there is no hierarchy in the House of Light. Hierarchy is a human construct.
Patience, I said. Understanding. Flexibility. Not taking things personally. Radical self-reliance. Discipline. Fortitude. Radical self-awareness. A sense of humor.
It’s funny to look at the list now. How could these skills not be transferable? They’re exactly what anyone in the House of Light might need… And so we began orienting myself around moving into this House. Asking who else lives there (not humans, exactly, but ascended masters, guides, teachers, benevolent and well ancestors, and so on) and could I possibly see myself living freely alongside them. Now I could.
I was asked about the best version of myself. Who would I like to be? My answers were free, daring, generous, playful and loving. Again, very transferable qualities, I was beginning to see.
We did another process to integrate this, to upgrade my response and my alignment around these qualities and how I perceive them coming forward with me.
Then came another I owe it to myself statement. This time, focusing on freeing up my attention and energy from the entanglements with the House of the Fallen, knowing that my turning away from that house, and its occupants, is not an abandonment of them, but a ceasing of the abandonment of myself. I owe it to myself to turn away and still be available. We dug deeper, until I could own the statement, I understand what it means to turn away and still be available.
This is, again, not about an abandonment or a betrayal. It’s about where I place my focus. I can turn back and extend a hand at any time. I can be exquisitely responsive. But I can also put my attention and care and effort directly towards the Light.
The effect of integrating these statements is that they are now woven into my outer, inner, and secret memory. These new higher agreements uplevel and overwrite my old patterns and stories about needing to remain in the House of the Fallen. Once we got to this place, where I had alignment about understanding what it means, and owing it to myself, to turn away from the House of the Fallen, everything rolled up. One by one, I found alignment with all of the previous statements, revisiting and actualizing each one until we’d closed every open loop, and we were back where we’d begun.
I understand what it means to turn away, and still be available.
I owe it to myself to turn away, and still be available.
I and all the parts of me that say ‘I’ here and now am ready to receive all that is mine.
I shrink my fear and embrace my fierceness.
I understand what it feels like to leave the House of the Fallen.
I survived the House of the Fallen.
I owe it to myself to leave the House of the Fallen.
And so it is. This IS t’shuvah, which can also be translated as Atonement. Repair. Restoration. At-ONE-ment. Rather than carrying any connotations of guilt, it hearkens a return to a primordial state of purity that already exists. I am returning to the House of Light.
Last week I caught a new song, concretizing the work from one of my recent somatic therapy sessions. I am choosing to celebrate myself, my heart, my well-being, my desires. I choose to no longer abandon or reject myself. Here it is.
My final trip to collect and remove my remaining belongings from my previous life’s house is scheduled for next week. My next home is yet unknown.
In particular, I was told, three generations back on my father’s side. But who’s counting?
