Ep 35 The Journey After the Journey
No amount of alchemical death and rebirth cycles can change who you are. It can only reveal it. And then the task becomes to live it, to anchor the unchangeable essence of Who You Are into your ever-changing human existence. Wildness and form. Dancing.
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Falling Into Soul. I’m McCall Erickson, creator of this space, author of The Second Half of the Mountain–a guide to personal alchemy after awakening, and a diehard explorer of life, love, and the mystery. It is truly my deep honor to be exploring in this space with you.
So far in this podcast, I’ve mostly talked about the second half of the mountain journey, which is my name for the alchemical processes that happen after we have some kind of initial awakening to our true nature. While we may have awakened to the true self, come into contact with it through a heart-opening or mind bending experience, it still takes a lot of alchemy to permanently align with and live from that core self, which is the Philosopher’s Stone. So the alchemy that helps us get that from that initial point of awakening where we’ve touched on our true self to being able to live in contact with the true self abidingly no matter what. The alchemy that helps us get there, the alchemy of the journey I’ve talked about most in this podcast, includes the dark nights of the soul, the dark nights of the spirit, and distillation. But what happens after that, when you truly see those processes of transformation all the way through? What stages and what kind of alchemy happens after that? That’s what I want to talk about in this episode–the journey that comes after the journey to the true self. Depending on where you are in your alchemy, this may or may not resonate with you right now. If you are deep in The Second Half of the Mountain journey, that is amazing, you can circle back to this at another time. But if you know you’ve kinda been there, done that with the dark nights of the spirit and soul and distillation and you’re wondering what comes next, there may be something in this episode for you.
Reincarnating Into Your Own Life
The other day I came across a line I had written in a notebook from years back that said “there sure is a lot of life after enlightenment.” I remember exactly when and why I wrote that. I was disillusioned about the results of taking the alchemical journey to my core. I honestly thought there was going to be some sort of dream life or “best life” or at least something a little shinier and maybe a little easier waiting for me when I got through all my alchemical work, when I finally got my alchemical shit together. Like once I passed all my tests and did enough work, cleared enough karma, I’d finally be able to live the life I dreamed of living. But instead…what came next was what I was called to reincarnate into my own life. I had to bring the distilled essence of me and reincarnate into my same life, not a shiny new life, but my same old life, some of which I had put on hold or set aside to do the inner work necessary to find the gold within. My same life, same relationships, same challenges...were all there waiting for me and it felt more intense than ever because I actually had to enter it, enter life with more of me, with my undying essence which was no longer buried under layers of conditioning, coping mechanisms, learned behaviors and beliefs. I had to bring that essence back to my life, to the same old mundane life that was always there, always mine to live.
The Buddhists have a saying “before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water.” And this is why enlightenment is coupled with disillusionment. Why would we do a journey of healing and transcendence if it’s gonna keep being the same life shit as before? If there is no grand reward for all our hard work, why do it? What does transcendence even mean?
Well, we don’t engage in inner healing and transformation so we can escape life, rise above it, or move through life floating a few feet above the ground. We do it so we can sink deeper into life, live it more fully, become even more human. The call to become even more human intensifies after we complete the dark nights and distillation. The main point of these higher operations of alchemy is to put us into touch with that spark of divine within. We want to know who we are beyond the small who we are in this world, in this time. And we find that, we do find that in spades as we experience altered states of consciousness, traverse other realms, other lives and times, tap into and discover our creative, psychic, and mystical and intuitive gifts. But there comes a time when we receive a call to come home to the physical body, to become even more human. It can be a very fierce and unrelenting and somewhat painful call when it happens.
I’ve witnessed a lot of people (myself included) go from identifying heavily with the magic of the unseen worlds of the divine mystic goddess and it comes mystic goddess this, divine mystic goddess that to being dropped on our human asses going omg, goddess or not, mystic or not I’m actually and mostly just so fucking HUMAN. And we begin to take comfort in and even crave BEING in our ordinary, finite, limited human state, our human realities. It actually becomes a comfort and a draw. We discover that the point of the journey wasn’t to wholly identify with our spiritual mystic inner worlds and have the reality and beauty of those inner worlds eclipse the physical world or even escape our physical life because of them, but to bring what we’ve found in the mystical spiritual realms, to bring what we’ve found through our journeys, those universal and transcendent truths, gems, wisdoms, gifts and integrate it into our human life. The task is to merge both our human and spiritual selves. Not choose one or the other, not keep flip flopping back and forth between the two, but really bring both selves into alignment with every step we take in human form. This is a journey of integration. And the integration is intense. It’s painful. Awkward. It’s a little awkward because at this point alchemically, in a new way our spiritual and physical selves actually cannot be separated anymore. This is alchemically known as coagulation, which is a result of the lift drop crash processes of distillation. Coagulation is when all opposites have finally been married or congealed within. This time, irrevocably. Yes, irrevocably. Which means they cannot be pulled apart again. So in a way this can feel tight and constricting at first because even when we try to stray from this core marriage of opposite selves within, it will follow you. There’s no annulling the marriage. There’s no getting out of it. Not when you make it this far. And the thing that makes it possible to move forward in this new inescapable way is our newly acquired and indispensable tool–the Philosopher’s Stone.
What Is The Philosopher’s Stone?
So let’s talk about the Philosopher's Stone. What the heck is it? It’s such an esoteric term, but I like it and I use it alot because I think we need more language around what it means to live from the core self and make magic with human life. To live fully in physical reality without losing touch with spiritual reality and vice versa.
Acquiring the Philosopher’s Stone is the whole aim and reason alchemists undertake the Great Work. The Philosopher’s Stone is the thing needed to turn base metal into gold or the lead of self into the gold of spirit. It’s what’s needed in order to take the raw materials of life and make art, to make something meaningful and beautiful from our painful human experiences.
But here’s the thing. The Philosopher’s Stone is not something outside of you. The Philosopher’s Stone is your heart, specifically the very core of your heart, the very core of your being. It’s your truest self that remains when everything else is worn away. It’s the enduring and eternal part of you untouched by the traumas of life, though I know, it may feel at times impossible that there’s actually a part of you the trauma has not touched. No one can bestow the Philosopher’s Stone upon you because it is and never has been in anyone else’s possession. It has been and always will be inside of you. However. It gets clouded and hidden under layers of conditioning and trauma. I mean, life piles it on. No one of us escapes this. The journey of alchemy helps us work through all that trauma and conditioning to get to the core. When we get to the core, we can finally live from it. It’s a magical place. The great thing about the Philosopher’s Stone is that it’s a fixed place within. Not a fixed outer form, but the fixed essence of you. Who you are in the core cannot be changed. It is the most certain thing, the bedrock of all your true creative living. It’s the one thing that is immovable and nonnegotiable, even though, paradoxically, it can’t be labeled or pinned down. It’s the unbreakable, immovable essence of Who You Are, and since you now have clear access to it, it becomes a touchstone as you navigate life’s challenges and relationships. It’s like a homebase. So you can truly stand with yourself to matter what's happening with anyone at any time. I personally think this is the most amazing thing in the world, to be anywhere doing anything and no longer lose touch with my true self. I always wanted that exact thing more than anything. And believe me, I paid the price for it. We all do, we all pay the price through the alchemical journey.
Now. Here’s the tricky part. Uncovering and acquiring your magical Philosopher’s Stone within feels anything but magical at first. The completion of the seven stages of alchemy does not end in triumph. It ends in defeat. Well, triumph for the soul and spirit, but defeat for the ego. It’s the most anticlimactic ending to such an all-consuming and exhaustive journey there ever was. In order to align with the Philosopher’s Stone and gain the ability to make and be sacred magic with all manifestations of life, we have to give up all notions of what it might feel or be like to do so. It’s actually a very rare thing to come into this alchemical stage because it is extremely difficult on the human ego. The ego is stripped of everything it used to have that helped you feel good about being a spiritual and magical and loving person. You have no way of knowing anymore whether you are any of that or not. Yikes. What?
The Alchemical Phase of Radiation
This is where the next alchemical phase of Radiation comes in. Radiation is the phase that signifies the beginning of the journey after the journey. After successfully distilling yourself down to essence (which is excruciatingly hard, and rare to do) radiation is the next BIG DEAL. Radiation is when you’ve given everything to find the gold within, so much so that you feel nothing because you’ve surrendered it all for the sake of knowing the truest thing.
In her book On Becoming An Alchemist, Catherine MacCoun uses the analogy of the sun. I love this. You think it would feel warm and cozy to be the sun, to be the source of all that warmth and love and energy, but the center of the sun is dark and devoid of any warmth because it’s radiating all its light and all its warmth outwardly. This is what Radiation is like and this is what it feels like for the ego. Devoid. You surrender everything for the sake of radiating your inner essence outwardly no matter the shape or form. The ego is devoid of its former connection to the shape and form, to roles and rewards that ever made you feel good for being something magical or for being a good human. This has to happen. This is sooo important because if the ego is still getting a payoff from any of your magical deeds, then that can too easily become your motivation for doing anything. And if you’re doing it for the motivation of ego payoff, how can you know it’s truly sacred magic? Radiation is a tip off. Radiation is how you know. You know because you have no way of really knowing, or, at this point, even really caring. The motivation for doing anything shifts, it comes from your sheer being first through being and what comes from that being is magical will, which I talked about in episode 19 “Born from nothing.” The motivation for doing anything comes from magical will instead of the ego getting its payoff.
But the ego doesn’t go away. The ego is an inextricable and important part of our human makeup. No amount of alchemy and inner healing work can make the ego go away. It isn’t meant to. But it can and does help the ego come into better alignment with the soul and spirit. This is the beautiful thing. The ego gets a new job. It comes into service of sacred magic, of magical will.
But it doesn’t feel good about its new job at first, which can be really hard if you are used to feeling things and gathering strength through your ego receptors, which most of us are. The ego is not getting its pay off in the way it used to, which changes things. Radiation is not for the faint of heart because it is so disappointing, disillusioning, and desolate for the ego. I cannot stress this enough, but I also don’t think it can really be understood or believed until you experience it. I didn’t believe it myself until it happened. How could my hard alchemical work and healing of TWO WHOLE DECADES lead to such a place of nothingness? Devoidness. Radiation takes a ton of alchemical strength, muscle, and maturity. Which is why we don’t come into this phase easily, which is why the phases of initiation, especially distillation, leading up to it can be so brutal.
When I first came into Radiation, I could sense deep in my subtle being that something had shifted, that all my attempts to surrender EVERYTHING over and over again even though there always seemed to be something more to surrender had finally led somewhere. But I couldn’t feel excited about it. I was too accustomed to receiving sustenance through my ego receptors, so it felt really weird to not be fed in that way anymore. It’s a really strange and sometimes disconcerting sensation, but it was also intriguing and relieving because it was something new.
So I just want to share with you a few keys that I have found for dealing with Radiation.
- First of all, it’s imperative to maintain an ongoing conversation between the ego and soul. Or what I sometimes call the immediate self and the infinite self. It’s really hard, if not impossible to bypass one for the other at this point. Both have to work in tandem now because neither one is going anywhere anytime soon. They’re both reincarnated into your life with you. The ego and the soul. I would say this conversation between the ego and soul is the central conversation to stone wielding, to wielding your Philosopher’s Stone. We cannot make magic with the human life without this conversation between ego and soul. So it does no good to pretend the ego isn’t sad, mad, disappointed, or whatever just as it does no good to reject the subtle intuitions coming from the soul or the things you know with your higher vision. Both need to be honored, and both are important to get us where we’re going. The minute I stop tending to the difficult feelings of my ego, those difficult feelings intensify and often come out sideways. I have found that the ego, like a child, needs to be heard and acknowledged. Unattended, it runs amok and can create a lot of havoc. But included in the conversation, it becomes a team player.
- Number two, dealing with Radiation. It’s imperative to earn to receive your sustenance and nourishment through the soul receptors, not the ego receptors. Ego and soul register the same things differently. They register things differently. This is really tricky and really important. Before Radiation, I honestly thought I was getting my nourishment from my soul, and even though I was to some extent, it was still mixed with a lot of ego, which I didn’t know it was until I had something to contrast it with. In Radiation, it becomes starkly apparent that the ego is not being fed in the same way it used to. For me, it became a matter of survival to learn to receive sustenance through my soul receptors first. And first all to learn, what’s the difference? What’s the difference, how does it feel when something hits my ego and my soul? Something can hit them both differently. What does that feel like? Separate those out. Learn the different feelings and learn to receive sustenance from the soul when the ego isn’t really getting much from it. And then those soul receptors are turned on and turned on a little higher, you can learn to let that support your being. It takes some training at first to learn how to receive the sustenance from the soul and trust that that’s enough the ego’s up there always wanting more, always wanting another hit. Sometimes things still do hit my ego first, and there’s nothing wrong with an ego boost, but the way to tell the difference is that an ego boost wears off pretty quickly and then you need another hit. The ego always needs another hit. Sustenance coming in through the soul feels more solid and doesn’t wear off as fast and somehow it builds upon itself. It’s a more sustainable way of being, a self sustaining system. It doesn’t hit or satisfy the ego at all at first. It’s less like a drug with the high and then the crash. It’s more like a slow steady stream coming through the subtle within.
So, this ability to receive sustenance through the soul receptors instead of the ego creates a whole new scenario, a whole new possibility. It allows us to work with whatever happens instead of being dependent on certain outcomes and responses for our nourishment and wellbeing. We gain nourishment from life itself in all its manifestations. The soul through the physical body helps us get what we humanly need to sustain our work instead of the ego constantly getting what it wants at the cost of us building anything lasting and meaningful.
This switch, this shift allows us to work from within radiation as terrible as it can feel at first, it helps us work with magical will to build a new life from the unwavering foundation within. This time, we build without the rug being pulled out from under us all the time. If you are in or have been through distillation, you know how maddening it can be to not be able to get solid ground no matter what you do. But in Radiation, there is solid ground, made possible by no longer needing to pin the particulars down. It’s a more fluid and sustainable way of navigating.
But building from this new solid ground is so hard because you have to go slow. Excruciatingly slow sometimes. Mostly because you can’t override your soul or any other parts of you in ways you used to. Before reaching the Philosopher’s Stone and coming into Radiation, we are very often getting ahead of ourselves. Putting the cart before the horse, having great ideas, but then burning out in the execution of them because we’re disconnected from the organic unfolding of them. But at this point in Radiation, we can’t disconnect from the organic unfolding of them without acute consequence, which is a very painful gift. Organic unfolding is slllloooow. It’s like watching a garden grow. It seems like nothing is happening if you just there and watch it in the moment, but it’s the fastest way to honestly get there, if you want your plants to bear fruit. You have to tend to it from the ground up. Soil first. So going forward with the soul creating in this new way, living in this new way is the same, from solid ground up first. Once again, this is not fun for the ego. This true freedom is a short leash for the ego. Because we’re subjected to processes that take longer than we think they should sometimes. We don’t get to control the timing or the course of the events unfolding. That’s what it means to go with soul. Soul is the unconscious continually made conscious every step we go, we have to spend time in the not-knowing in order to know again and again. We have to continually take a step in the dark to weave a path of light.
There’s a lot more to say about this process of reincarnating into your own life, radiating like hell, and creating with the Philosopher’s Stone that I can’t cover in this episode. This is just a taste, but I hope it gives those of you who are now entering the Journey after the Journey some context to work with, something to chew on. I’m currently working on writing a book all about this Journey After The Journey and what that alchemy is like. Hint: It’s thrilling and boring, wondrous and sad, devoid and full. It’s life.
Thank you so much for being in this special space with me. If you want to explore more about the Philosopher's Stone, visit episode 8 “living from the unbreakable core that is uniquely yours.” If you want to learn more about Magical Will visit episode 19 “Born From Nothing.” I’ll link to them in the show notes. Until next time, be well in soul.