Feral Awake

My challenge is that I am feral-awake.

I make my way through this world using an acute sensory system I’ve spent decades fine-tuning. It’s a primordial knowing, the ability to feel the energy as it rises and moves through me.

An invisible energy, impossible to see but as clear as the pricking on the back of your neck when something shifts—the lights turning on, an awakening hum all around. 

I woke up. Not in a monastery or an ashram, but in a place where the walls were shaking with life. My guide there told me early on that I was now part of a network—but that others in the network wouldn’t be wearing any obvious uniform.  They might carry the smell of a hard night or the steady gaze of a monk. They might be a street artist or a nurse. It would behoove me to develop the eye that could see beyond the projections. 

Once you wake up, a new world appears, but without a map. You’re left to trace the footprints of those who came before. Hunters and foragers know this. Michael Pollan wrote about it—how to see mushrooms by watching your guide, where they look, how they move. “Get your eyes on,” they say. And once you do, the forest becomes a constellation of clues, a whole world where before there was nothing. 

We live in a time where it’s not enough to quietly honor the natural. We are asked to deny what we know to be true, or face the cost. I’ve made my choice. Living by one’s own inner compass comes with risk, and few dare. But once you awaken to that energy and begin to work with it, you are no longer beholden to the external world. You gain a kind of direct access, without the need for intermediaries—neither religion nor state. 

And those who no longer need a mediator become sovereign. And sovereignty, in our time, is dangerous. Wherever I go, I keep my eyes attuned to the subtle frequencies that reveal my kindred. They are the ones who can work with the original energy—the archetypes living fully in their roles. These are the ones through whom the dynamism of change enters. And as that energy flows through them, it takes on the color of their nature, each becoming a necessary god in the unfolding of life.

We may resist or celebrate what the other brings, but we are bound together by the living current that expresses through us. The challenge now is that many of our own don’t recognize each other. They react to the content the energy wears and miss the power of the force itself.

In rejecting the expression in another, they dull their sight to their own. And so, they become congested—blocked by the energy they refuse to channel. The challenge now is that many of our own don’t recognize each other. They react to the content the energy wears and miss the power of the force itself. In rejecting the expression in another, they dull their sight to their own. And so, they become congested—blocked by the energy they refuse to channel. 

And yet, those who lack courage are writing the narratives of our time. They point to every failure as proof that these energies are corrupt. That we should never touch them. That the electric current of genius is too much for human hands. I don’t listen to the surface noise. I listen for signal, for transmission. Because I know the time will come when I will need the others in the network—those who move with archetypal forces. And I know in your heart, you want to find yourself in that room too. A room of gods, where contradiction becomes complement, and adversaries become creative pairs. Thesis and antithesis giving way to synthesis.

We’re entering a time of massive acceleration. The crumbling institutions would have us believe that it’s “goodness” that will prepare us for what’s ahead. But the force of change moves beyond any metric of good or bad. What’s rising is raw potential—and the shape it takes will be determined by the depth of archetypal power we are willing to embody and the strength of the network that holds it.