"Perfectionism is the attempted tyranny of a concept over the messy reality of embodied living. "
My Twitter friend Anthony Lawlor tweeted those words recently, and they are spot on for what I want to talk about in this episode.
Thank you for tuning in. I'm McCall Erickson, and I'm so glad you're in this space with me. This month, marks a year of doing this podcast. So I want to take some time to reflect on that and let you know what to expect next from this podcast, as well as some other projects I'm currently working on.
First, let's talk about those words from Anthony. "Perfectionism is the attempted tyranny, of a concept over the messy reality of embodied living."
Let me tell you, doing this podcast has been a huge exercise in the messy reality of embodied living for me, I mean, that is so good attempting to tyrannize ourselves with concepts of how the way things should be or how we should be, versus allowing ourselves to enter the vulnerable and messy reality of life and creativity as it's actually happening. Which if you've listened to this podcast, or followed my work at all, you know, that is exactly what the soul desires and asks of us. The soul desires to enter the creative stream of life in this body, in this flesh, in this reality, as is actually happening. First and foremost, that is the number one desire of the soul.
But this struggle with perfectionism is all too familiar for many of us. We have ideas, wishful thinking, false and inflated hopes. I mean, if there is any way to be saved from having to live the messy reality of incarnation, from having to face the painful things within my goodness, we will try right, and trying to not have to face the hardest things is part of the journey.
Because meeting and living life as it's actually happening is incredibly difficult. We have to clear a certain amount of trauma response from the body before we can even do that, we first have to build tools and alchemical muscle to even do that. It's also difficult because life as it happens, what the soul asks us to show up for is always more messy, and asks us to be more vulnerable than we would initially choose. It exposes us to experiences that we can't control, which exposes us to all sorts of things that are not always comfortable or fun to feel, insecurities, anxieties, humility, embarrassment that gets us to that place of humility, shame, all sorts of triggers that point is to our wounds. Ah, those wounds, why does life and love have to be so disturbing sometimes?
But this messy, organic life as it's actually happening is the rich and fertile soil in which the soul grows. Remember, the soul seeks experience, the spirit seeks perfection and to rise above the challenges of life. But the soul seeks only the deeper experience and the reality of this constant tension.
This constant pull between the spirit that wants to rise above and the soul that only seeks to sink deeper into is always a tension we work with on the alchemical path. Believe me, I don't always love this. And I can't say I'm always really good at it either, at the part where I have to let myself be in the messy flow of life, in the flow of creative processes as they are actually happening, especially when they are not satisfying my ego whatsoever, when they strip me of control when they are making me feel way too exposed. But I do it anyway. Because I have to because I can't not, usually because all other ways of trying to get around it have failed. And there's nowhere else to hide. When there's nowhere else to hide, ah there we are. There we are.
So this month marks a year of doing this podcast which has had me contemplating a lot. When I started this ,it ignited many old and familiar triggers in me. I mean trying to figure out how to record a podcast that included music!? Nothing has caused me more anxiety, insecurities and neurosis over the years than trying to record my music. It's never been easy for me. I can't tell you how many studio sessions I've walked out of in tears, wracked with a terrible feeling that the sound engineer just did not "get" me or my songs, that the recording just did not sound right. Somehow, whenever I tried to put my music out there, it felt all wrong. So wrong, I couldn't do it. Simply put, the tech side of making music has never worked. It's never flowed. So much so that I eventually took the hint and decided the best thing to do was to just stop trying to record my music or share it with the world in any way to just let it be, ah, for fuck sake, just let it be, which was the right alignment for a long time, mostly because I was still way too much in my own way, I was still way too attached to music to the songs to the way I wanted them to be to the kind of musician I wanted to be that I thought I should be, which was mostly the kind of musician that would get me some kind of response that I thought I wanted from people, that would give me some kind of validation for living and being this amazing person.
I couldn't get over my salvation fantasy, salvation fantasy that if I could just find the right producer, the person who could see my songs for what they were, and make them come alive, make them sound a little less like me, I realize this in retrospect, because sounding like myself was way too exposing. If I could find that right person and make my song sound a certain way, then, then I would be okay. But that never happened. I never found the right producer. And I actually ended up straining many of my musical relationships in the process. I alienated myself from intimacy with myself and others. And honestly, looking back, I just wasn't ready for that kind of intimacy yet, I still had so much more alchemy to do.
This is where my perfectionism kept me isolated from for a long time, it kept me isolated from the truth of who I was, from having to live that with no guarantee without controlling outcomes. Maybe this is what perfectionism is, in one sense, an attempt to be saved from the reality of who we are. Terrorizing ourselves with a concept ideal, a fantasy, that if things were some other way or we were some other way, we could be more loved, more accepted, validated, and worthy.
But through every alchemical fire, I have learned this, what is real, precious and truly golden inside me, does not give a shit about my perfectionism. And the worth of that real, precious golden me that shines from within is not dependent on anything but my own existence, and that it is my job first and foremost, to be there for myself, to be my own midwife midwifing my soul, that precious, golden, real, raw, rare soul of me into the world. I have learned that being there for myself, being my own advocate is my first job.
So after 10 years of letting the songs rest in their own sweet darkness while I was busy doing life, writing a book, and tending to my own inner alchemy, last year, I was called back to the songs, called to bring them to the world through this platform. This time with no wishful thinking, no magical sound producer or soul song aficionado to save me from my insecurity and the raw bear nature of the music that comes through me. I had to face it all as it was, which caused an enormous amount of anxiety and emotional triggers to work through. Similar to how I felt years ago when I first started recording music, even the mere thought of trying to record my songs for this podcast, send me wanting to weigh my pockets with stones and sink into the ocean of Virginia Woolf style. How the hell was I going to navigate all this? I never managed to use GarageBand successfully. I had no mic or equipment anymore. No skills in editing or mixing. Not to mention, I didn't even really know what a podcast was.
But as I talked about in the last episode, alchemy prepares us to do the same things differently. It's one of the rewards we get from doing the inner work, and it's amazing. So that's what I did. I faced this music recording thing differently, bringing my music into the world in this humble and unassuming way has been a huge exercise and doing the same things differently. This time I was ready and able to face each trigger one by one. I stayed put, I stayed with them. I used the tools I've developed over years of working inner alchemy, to allow each thing to arise to be felt and released with every step of the way. I've faced my technical insecurities of not getting it right, but doing it anyway. And I have definitely not gotten it right. The first episodes I recorded, I didn't even have headphones. So I didn't know how I sounded, which as it turns out, is a huge recording faux pas. I was doing all sorts of things wrong.
But I've held tight to the creative mantra that I learned from doing Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way in my early 20s. Anyone know the artists way? The mantra that anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first, anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first. As a recovering perfectionist, this one really sticks with me. Through this podcasting process, I've reclaimed my right to be bad to get good, to not have to be getting it right all the time. Not only that, but the reality that it's actually impossible to get it right. When perfectionism is in the mix, "right" is a standard that's just always out of reach. As there's always something else, there's always something more to learn. There's always new technology being developed, there's always new mics that sound better than the old mics. I mean, there's always something.
But the birthright of the soul is to fall to fly, to not be getting a right all the time, to stumble forward, to just be in it. Standards of perfection are usually made up by someone outside of us anyway, and our psyches learn to take on that habit, that habit of holding ourselves to standards that crowd out the flow of our souls.
Thinking there's a right way to do anything and that someone other than you knows what that is and that you should give all your time and energy to figure it out, can really fuck over your soul. But trusting your own direct, non conceptual experience, trusting it not as the right way, but as the way that's flowing, the way that's happening for now, will save your soul.
For me, perfectionism became a way early on in life to shield myself from intimacy with life, which doesn't really feel good to my soul, to attempt controlling the outcome, to buffer me from the raw experience, which is what creativity is, I don't mean creativity as skill or talent, but creativity, as being able to use what is given to us what presents itself in flow, and make something meaningful with it. Creativity isn't about what we produce, but how we live. Creativity is the direct conversation between your soul and life and what flows from that conversation unhindered. At some point, you just have to do it. And let your imperfections hang out signs of your humaneness, your here-ness, your willingness to be in the flow of life and let the outcomes come as they may. Beauty and all.
As Leonard Cohen wrote in his song A Thousand Kisses Deep, "you lose your grip and then you slip into the masterpiece," You lose your grip, and then you slip into the masterpiece.
So here I am, a year into this podcast vulnerable and so technically imperfect, in my mind, the whole time, but aligned in energy and soul hoping and also deeply knowing that my love and intent and soul is shining through. So there still are some songs lined up to be shared through this podcast. But it's just taking me a little more time to get each episode out than before, more like every three to four weeks instead of every two weeks because I'm currently working on a few other projects.
First up an audio book for the second half of the mountain. This is something I've known since I wrote the book that I needed to do. But once again, hello, anxieties over recording, so it didn't really work. But now it's finally coming into fruition. So these things take a lot of time and energy for me, especially when you're me and you don't have a team of people helping you do it. Okay, that's not fair to the hermetic network. My guide the hermetic network guide is telling me, I have a full on spirit team and that is very true. Yes, I have a full on spirit team helping me. But my team is mostly spirit. But as far as the tech and physical work in the 3D realm, it's just me. So it takes time. And I'm just doing what I can with what I have, and that is the absolute reality of my soul work in life.
And the next exciting announcement is that after I finish the audio book and hopefully release it sometime this fall, I will be finishing my second book, which is currently a third of the way finished. This is a follow up book to the second half of the mountain. What comes after we take that grueling Journey to the Center? When we acquire the philosopher's stone and have that full time alignment living from our core? What is life like then? What is life like when we are so free we don't belong to any one thing, idea, belief? What is the alchemy like then? What can you expect when you've freed yourself from all the karma? cleared yourself of that trauma, to be able to be aligned with yourself? What can you expect? What's the next frontier?
This is exciting stuff. I've been living it for a while now. I always have to live it for a good while before I can put words to it. But it's time. Here we are. The book is coming through, and it will be in your hands soon.
So these are the projects I have lined up. I'm not sure what will happen to this podcast after I finish sharing the songs. Maybe it will roll into something else. Another type of podcast. Cool. If not? Cool. Honestly, I take my marching orders from the hermetic network. I don't decide what wants to be made through me next, it decides me, it tells me. This is one of the hardest, most important things I've learned to do through all my creative and life endeavors, is to allow what wants to come through to come through and when it's done, it's done. And so it is.
Thank you for being here and supporting this show. If you know someone who values keeping it real on the spiritual path, consider sharing this podcast with them. As always, you can find more of my work at McCallErickson.com Until next time, be well in Soul.