Space is hard space is good, you need it,
but you don't want to be misunderstood
It's not easy to make it or take it
But something's nagging and you just can't shake it
You want to look but it's scary to see
everything's choking and you need to breathe
If you stop for a moment,
the image you've been trying so hard to hold together
might shatter and fall
Wouldn't it be better to keep it all in
and love through these pretenses and walls?
You know there's risk either way,
but you have to move when the heart calls.
Separation might take us further apart,
but it brings us closer, closer after all.
Thank you for tuning in to falling into soul. I'm your host McCall Erickson. I so love meeting in this space with you to explore the deeper, more confusing alchemical processes that awaken and keep the soul well in this ever changing and challenging world. If you value keeping it real on the spiritual path, you are in the right place.
This is Episode 23. And I'm so excited to be sharing about my favorite alchemical phase separation, and how important underappreciated and misunderstood it is in our culture that runs on the grind on forward and upward movement at all costs. Let's explore separation, what it is, how it shows up in our individual alchemy, as well as our relationship alchemy, and how critical it is to a more rooted, sustainable, and connected way of living and loving.
The Purpose of Separation
One of the main purposes that separation serves is to help us get real about our part in any situation, drama, relationship, creative work, or collaboration, to get real about what needs to shift inside us, so we can shift ourselves in the world. It's so easy to get lost in the hustle and barrage of information and communication, the demands on our time and energy. It's so easy to become overwhelmed with conditioning and expectations and outside pressures and just fall into line. Go on autopilot. With all the pressures and conditioning, how do you know how you really feel versus how you are conditioned to feel or how you think you should feel? How do you know the difference between how you feel and how someone close to you feels? This is crucial to empaths and codependents. To know our true call and response of the soul in the madness and the mess aside from anyone else's expectations or narratives or love for us. And even aside from our own expectations and notions of ourselves. This is where alchemical separation is so needed, and so helpful.
Signs and Symbols of Separation
Some signs of needing alchemical separation or of separation coming on can be wanting to be alone, feeling the need to slow down, conflict with or needing space from loved ones, craving silence, stillness and time to sort through pieces, feeling territorial or jealous. A deep need to know your place, your contribution, your alignment, your truth in things in the great drama as it plays out. Separation is symbolized by birds like crows and scavengers, sharp objects like knives, swords, extraction tools, and also by splits divides, chasms, gaps, divorce, dismemberment, and surgeries. Separation is facilitated by the element of air or wind, the air that brings new breath and the wind that clears the space.
I personally love air so much. I've always felt a great need for space. Energetically and physically. I grew up in Wyoming, the least populated state in the United States. I was raised on Big Sky, open spaces and wide horizons. While this would make some people feel anxious, bored or exposed, it energized me. All that space allowed me to explore my inner world. I thrived and still do thrive on open space and air. My moon and Sun signs are both ruled by the element of air which might be also why I have an affinity with the separation stage. Separation is all about getting clear. And I've always been good at cutting through the bullshit, sorting through the pieces to get to the heart of things. Those who know me well know that when I'm sorting through something and separating, I will not let go like a dog with a bone. I won't let it go until I find what I'm looking for. And what I'm looking for is realness. What's real? the marrow. This is what this space of separation helps us do.
The Love and Unity Bypass
But separation can be so hard for the parts of us that thrive on unity and connection, community and togetherness for the parts of us that just want everyone to get along to keep the peace. And this is one of the dangers of love it can make you just want to be together at all costs, especially in a culture that doesn't applaud the person who rocks the boat, the Rule Breaker, the troublemaker, the status quo questioner, we can easily brush so many unexamined things under the rug of love. But glossing over the need for separation, for the sake of unity is like trying to make a yummy soup or a curry by throwing all your ingredients into a pot at once and expecting it to taste good. When you haven't spent any time bringing the flavor out of the distinct layers. I actually really love making curry. I've learned that if you take time to toast the spices, and then saute the onion, garlic and ginger in those spices, get it a good browning, and then add vegetables and let those brown in the spices and the other layers one by one, you'll get a much more complex and satisfying taste for the palate. The ingredients work better together, when you give them time on their own, to develop their own unique, subtle flavors.
This is true for us and working in relationship in the world. In order to work together well, we have to know our individual parts, our individual contributions, we have to know how we are alike and how we are different. Yes, we're all connected. And we're all parts of the same whole. But how do we know what part we are in the whole? How do we know our unique instrumentation in the symphony? Well separation is how we know.
Carl Jung said "there can be no consciousness without the separation of differences." There can be no consciousness without the separation of differences.
Unfortunately, separation is really hard to do in a culture that runs on the codependent drama triangle. For more info on the drama triangle, visit Episode 12, 13 and 20. If you want to know how codependent or enmeshed a relationship is, test it with a request for some space, some time or a new boundary. Yikes. This can be very telling.
Separation Anxiety
Separation can truly cause anxiety. I kind of think society as a whole has separation anxiety. We don't always know how to honor the slowdown, the time it takes to process, the time it takes to grieve the moving apart or away from so we usually try to avoid it at all costs. Because it does cost but it also gives so much. a
Examples of Separation in My Life
Alchemy has helped me apply separation a lot in my life. The easiest place to point out separation is of course in relationships. This first started with my family. Like many of us I grew up in a traditionally enmeshed and codependent family. At 18, I had the undeniable calling to leave home, and to know who I was outside of the role of those family dynamics, where everything was already written for me. I felt swallowed up in them. And I hated the idea of living a life without knowing whether I was just living what I was supposed to live, or whether I was truly unfolding the calling of my soul. I spent years apart from my family in order to do this. And it wasn't easy, mostly because I love them. And I missed them. And I still do, but also because they just did not and still do not understand my need to live my own story. But, because I took the time to separate out my part in the dysfunctional mess. I now know how to interact with them from a new alignment, my true soul alignment.
Learning how to do this separation with my family also carried on to other relationships too. I've always been very relationship oriented. Of course, I'm an alchemist. It's all about the relational space. And all of my important soul relationships have contained this phase of alchemical separation. So I learned early on, to get okay with this in relationships, to know that separation is how the relationships keep going and growing and unfolding, to ebb and flow, to be together and apart, like the waves in the sand, as a way of constantly renewing the connection. Another way separation has shown up for me, is in my creative work, especially music, for years leading up to making this podcast, I had a lot of space for music, it was a true blue alchemical separation space. Just as the space between the notes makes the music, the space between me and the music makes the magic.
The space between is, as Rumi says, "We're soul sweetens and thrives more than with the language." The space between is where soul sweetens and thrives more than with language.
I almost always have separation when I'm working on a creative project, I can sit down and work on something I'm writing for hours, and then all at once I need to space, I need time away. I need to let the words and the project to be on its own to sweeten and thrive in this space, in the silence, in its own coming into form.
How To Make It Through A Difficult Separation Phase
I know this sounds all great and wonderful. And makes sense. Separation is good, right? Separation is good. But honestly it can be very difficult while in it. So how do we make it through hard separation phases. The number one thing that has helped me through separation phases is to remember, it's not the end, it feels like the end, but it's not. And sometimes you might want it to be the end because that would be easier. But it's not. It's just one of many interludes to an ongoing story. It's like the blank pages between chapters in a book. Separation is how you move forward. It's how you level up.
Another thing that helps me make it through separation is being willing to withstand the judgments that will be placed on you when you ask for space or step out of line. When you stop, when you take time to rest. When you're doing nothing. Sometimes the only way to withstand the projections and judgments that will be thrown your way is to be fully engaged in a different narrative, a different storyline, a different energy, one that's coming from your soul.
And if you can, find someone who can see that storyline in you, and hold that space with you and for you. The paradox about getting utterly ruthless about your own truth in your own alignment is that sometimes you truly cannot do that alone. So finding someone who can see your shadow, who can see what you can't always see about yourself and who is dedicated to holding you to that more than anything is incredibly useful during separation.
Also, the willingness to be insecure, to be insecure in the meantime, to hold the tension of not knowing how the story is going to go. Separation may not bring us the outcome we want. But it will always bring us closer, closer to ourselves, closer to what's real, and to love that is more than love.
I wrote this song during a separation phase in a relationship that challenged me to the core. It was a separation that taught me to tune into the deeper soul story and to be brave enough to let the story be what it wanted to be. This is where I learned that being true to the soul story always brings us closer, closer to the truth of the soul, closer to the infinite source that flows through that soul...even if it means being physically apart.
How Some Stories Go
I don't know how I knew
I just knew
that the last time I saw you
Would be the last time I saw you
Well you always told me to say how I feel
to let it all out
to keep it real
I feel like a dark night
and you were my sun
and I don't like being a lone this time
I don't like being alone
There's a dark side to every soul
like the dark side of the moon
you love me in secrets and shadows now
and I'm trying to love that way too
But I gotta tell you just how I feel
to let it all out
to keep it real
Beneath the leaving
beneath the pain
I feel you holding me still
And I'm holding to hope
that somewhere down the road
I'll be with you again
but I know
that's not how some stories go
that's not how some stories go
So I'm gonna be brave
and I'm gonna be true
whatever way this goes
I'm learning from loving you
I'm learning from how
our story goes
whatever way our story goes
There's one line in particular in that song that has stuck with me over the years. "I don't like being alone this time. I don't like being alone." When I wrote that, I was truly shocked. I mean, I've always prided myself in being alone, and being a loner, and being someone who absolutely revels in aloneness. And I still do. But it was really interesting to me when that line came flying out of me from the depths of my soul. And it felt like some deep truth that I needed to live into, that I actually didn't want to be alone anymore. Or I didn't want to be only alone. I wanted to learn how to be together.
And that's what separation has given me. It's given me the ability to be alone, and to be together, to be alone together. Separation has helped me know myself, so that I can know myself in relation to another. This is the big paradox. When I know where I stand, when I've sorted through my stuff, when I know what my alignment is, I am so much better in relationship in community, I can open up to the relationship without getting lost or consumed in a narrative that isn't mine.
Separation is all about knowing thyself, so you can then know yourself with others. A thorough separation stage leads to truer unity. Anything that's been properly separated, can then be beautifully recombined. And this is exactly what keeps me open to separation whenever it is called for. Separation leads to truer unity. Separation indeed, brings us closer.
Thank you for tuning in and being with me in this space. And a huge thank you to those of you who've donated or continue to donate to support this podcast and my work. It means a lot to me to receive your care and support and it helps me keep things running. If you know someone who values keeping it real on the spiritual path, consider sharing this podcast with them. Until next time, whether you are alone, together, or alone together, be well in soul.