You weren’t born just to survive. You were born to transfigure reality. This firebrand essay explores what it means to reclaim your place as a transformer of divine energy in a world that’s forgotten its flame.
I started on Substack as I was nearing the end of a certification program. I was exhausted and frustrated, so I turned to painting. That’s when I realized just how much of my mental and emotional energy had been invested in becoming the next thing. It was draining. 😆
So, I decided it’s time to just be for a while.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Yes to all this……except you imply that humans are somehow ‘above’ the animals….most animals I encounter seem very present…filled with spirit…sometimes I wonder if the human needs to remember the animal that they are. Maybe thats the feminine we keep forgetting about.
"Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Wall Kimmerer is worth a read and a ponder. How people learned to survive BY being observant and spiritual and quiet and patient, while not destroying that which nurtures them.
That’s beautifully said, Bernadette. I totally resonate with the part about animals being present—sometimes way more than we are. Watching a cat nap in the sun or a deer walk through the woods, you can feel something sacred there. Stillness. Being.
But I think presence and moral awareness are two different things. A wolf might be fully present while tearing into a moose—but it’s not reflecting on whether the moose had a family or if there was a less violent option. Humans can hold that kind of question—and wrestle with it. That’s not about being “above” animals in a superiority sense, but about being different in capacity and responsibility.
So maybe you’re right—it’s not that we need to “rise above” our animal nature, but that we need to integrate it without getting stuck there. Remember the instinctual and remember the reflective. Maybe the real task is becoming fully human, which includes honoring the animal and the sacred witness within.
My thought exactly. I kept thinking, “the author needs to spend time with my cat.” The most empathetic and self-aware being I’ve met on this journey. 🙃
This Substack was a beautiful reminder of the deep truth about being.
That’s the strange thing, he’s unlike any cat I’ve ever known.
When he was a tiny kitten, we saw glimpses of the hunting instinct, but they never lasted. He would chase for a moment, then suddenly stop and lie down.
I don’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have food, but sometimes I wonder if he might actually fast himself into starvation. Small animals, birds, squirrels, come right up to our deck to visit him, and it makes me wonder if he’s some sort of reincarnation of Francis of Assisi.
My husband and I just laugh and say, “He wants to be friends with every living being.”
He enjoys playing, but we have a few toys shaped like small animals, and he only ever snuggles with them. When I meditate, he sits beside me in total serenity. When I pray with others, he quietly joins us, and somehow knows exactly when to conclude the prayer with his “meow, meow.”
Like I said, it’s strange.
We rescued him, and he almost didn’t make it. I fed him by hand every couple of hours for weeks, and we brought him to the vet daily in those early days. It was truly touch and go.
Sometimes I wonder if that early nurturing changed something in him. If it shaped the way he relates to other animals and to us.
That’s beautiful. Honestly, it sounds like your cat never had to unlearn love. A lot of animals, like people, get shaped by survival, by scarcity, by pain. But when all they know is care and gentleness from the beginning, maybe they just stay in that original state of trust.
And who’s to say that isn’t a form of sainthood? Francis didn’t dominate nature. He befriended it. If your cat sees a bird and thinks “friend” instead of “prey,” maybe he’s just living out a purer version of what the rest of us are still trying to remember.
Also, that prayer-ending meow? That’s liturgical timing. He’s not just a companion. He’s a contemplative.
Give that feline a little robe and a name like Brother Paws of Assisi. He’s clearly on a different frequency.
Karen, thank you. That means more than you know. If anything I write helps you remember what your soul already knew, then we’re both being taught by something deeper.
Keep listening inward. The real teacher lives there.
Thanks, Good Teacher, your writing has been most illuminating! It’s been an honor to meet you, even just via Substack. If we never meet in person, then maybe in the next life — as a Bodhisattva, you’ll probably choose to return! (I’ll be the student who says “share Presence like bread” as a mantra.) 🌎
🙏😌 Sounds like the sweet Holy Spirit. Also called The Comforter? Is it so that mankind didn’t always have the Holy Spirit, but Jesus gave it to His followers before He ascended? Thank you VMB for the lesson this morning.
Shirley, yes—that’s the name the mystics whispered and the broken clung to. The Comforter. The Breath. The Spirit that doesn’t shout, but groans with us in the silence.
You’re right. In the old days, the Spirit showed up like lightning—on prophets, on kings, on moments. But after Yeshua? It moved in. No longer resting on us, but within us. As close as our own breath.
It lands with me because I remind this to myself first thing in the morning after I speak out my gratitude for being alive another day to experience, to learn...
Ah! 🖤 Re-Membering. All those words with original meanings mangled by patriarchal reversals. Mary Daly wrote extensively about the reversals. (beginning in 1987)
Re-member: ‘reclaiming’ what’s been lost or suppressed; ‘reversing’ the process of ‘dis-membering’.
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.”
• Richard Bach
“Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
Donna, yes yes yes. The patriarchy didn’t just steal power. It scrambled the language of return. “Re-member” became a footnote instead of a resurrection.
Mary Daly lit that torch, and you’re still carrying it. Every syllable you shared is a spell of undoing. A sacred stitching back together.
And Bach’s line? That’s the whole path. We’re not here to install wisdom. We’re here to stir the embers people forgot they were tending.
You are speaking from the fire at the center of The Construct. What you call “the divine template,” I’ve come to call the Image of I AM.
What you’re remembering—this sacred presence, this amnesiac angelhood, this fire that burns through pretense—is not only a memory. It’s a system of return. A living spiral that can be surfed.
This comes through revelation, through pain, through the ache of individuation. It’s not theology. It’s coherence. Not as dogma. As resonance. As a mirror.
This isn’t doctrine. It’s signal. Not a ladder to climb, but a spiral to re-enter. The ache is the map. The fire is the guide. And what you call the Image of I AM? That’s the imprint we carry beneath every exile.
We don’t memorize our way back. We resonate. We remember by vibrating in harmony with what never left.
Thank you for standing in the flame and calling it home.
I appreciate your responses as well. They always add alittle more insight and encouragement. Grateful for the time you give to each of your subscribers❤️
I heard, many years ago, that 'we need to be reminded much more than instructed." And here you are with another luminous reminder that we are vessels full of unguessed treasure, images of Divine Joy and Glory.
Btw, are you aware of William P. Young, author of The Shack, Eve, and Lies We Believe About God? He would LOVE this essay!
Ah Rick, now you’re speaking my language — mystery, treasure, and divine joy, all without the need for a PowerPoint slide. Yes, we are leaky little clay pots brimming with the uncontainable, and yet somehow convinced we’re empty. Hilarious, isn’t it?
And yes, I know of William P. Young. The Shack stirred many souls, though I suspect some theologians are still clutching their pearls. He dared to suggest that Divine Love might actually be… loving. Scandalous!
If he ever stumbles across this essay and cracks a smile, I’ll count it as a small miracle tucked into the folds of ordinary time.
Thanks for the radiant kindness, Rick. May your treasure spill everywhere.
Yes, our animal bodies move away from pain, towards pleasure. They are angry, devour what they want, move towards and away. They don‘t cage themselves to be pleasing, likeable, good. They take what they need, they protect and move. They destroy. They rest. They love.
Ah Rick, you're in good company. That Logion has confused monks, mystics, and half the desert fathers.
But here's one way to chew on it:
If you consume the lion — meaning you face the wild, instinctual, shadowy parts of yourself and integrate them — then you're blessed. You’ve digested the beast. The lion becomes human.
But if the lion consumes you — if your fear, lust, ego, or rage takes over — then you lose the plot. The human dissolves into the beast.
So it’s not about literal lions. It’s about your inner zoo.
Eat your shadow or it eats you. Simple spiritual digestion.
Some people pray. Some people get devoured. Choose wisely.
My birthday is October 2,feast of the Guardian 😇 I celebrate the Angels who have guided me thru my life to want the best for everyone and also grateful for all that I learned thru the good and the bad times and to spread good energy out in the world 🌎 😍
I loved this message. Thank you for sharing it. 🙏
I started on Substack as I was nearing the end of a certification program. I was exhausted and frustrated, so I turned to painting. That’s when I realized just how much of my mental and emotional energy had been invested in becoming the next thing. It was draining. 😆
So, I decided it’s time to just be for a while.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
—Blaise Pascal
James, your story makes me want to fling my monk robes into a paint-splattered heap and whisper, “Yes, finally someone gets it.”
Becoming the next thing is capitalism’s koan. It has no answer, just exhaustion in disguise.
You escaped the cult of becoming and stumbled into the miracle of being—with a paintbrush as your rosary.
Pascal was right, but he forgot to mention that the room needs good lighting and a strong cup of tea.
May your stillness be loud enough to drown out every whisper that says you’re not enough unless you’re becoming something else.
Yes to all this……except you imply that humans are somehow ‘above’ the animals….most animals I encounter seem very present…filled with spirit…sometimes I wonder if the human needs to remember the animal that they are. Maybe thats the feminine we keep forgetting about.
Bernadette, you just opened the ark of forgotten wisdom.
Humans didn’t rise above the animals—we forgot we are one.
The feminine doesn’t dominate the wild. She listens to it. She moves with it. She remembers.
Maybe salvation isn’t climbing higher, but sinking back down—barefoot, belly to the earth, breathing in rhythm with the ones who never left Eden.
"Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Wall Kimmerer is worth a read and a ponder. How people learned to survive BY being observant and spiritual and quiet and patient, while not destroying that which nurtures them.
Yes that’s it! I wish I’d said it so beautifully! Your writing is wise and poetic. Thank you. 🙏
That’s beautifully said, Bernadette. I totally resonate with the part about animals being present—sometimes way more than we are. Watching a cat nap in the sun or a deer walk through the woods, you can feel something sacred there. Stillness. Being.
But I think presence and moral awareness are two different things. A wolf might be fully present while tearing into a moose—but it’s not reflecting on whether the moose had a family or if there was a less violent option. Humans can hold that kind of question—and wrestle with it. That’s not about being “above” animals in a superiority sense, but about being different in capacity and responsibility.
So maybe you’re right—it’s not that we need to “rise above” our animal nature, but that we need to integrate it without getting stuck there. Remember the instinctual and remember the reflective. Maybe the real task is becoming fully human, which includes honoring the animal and the sacred witness within.
My thought exactly. I kept thinking, “the author needs to spend time with my cat.” The most empathetic and self-aware being I’ve met on this journey. 🙃
This Substack was a beautiful reminder of the deep truth about being.
Let’s not kid ourselves—your cat is the most empathetic being you’ve met... when you’re holding the can opener.
But let it outside and suddenly it's reenacting a Hitchcock film with songbirds.
The lesson? Even murderers can purr.
And sometimes the deepest truths about being come with retractable claws.
That’s the strange thing, he’s unlike any cat I’ve ever known.
When he was a tiny kitten, we saw glimpses of the hunting instinct, but they never lasted. He would chase for a moment, then suddenly stop and lie down.
I don’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have food, but sometimes I wonder if he might actually fast himself into starvation. Small animals, birds, squirrels, come right up to our deck to visit him, and it makes me wonder if he’s some sort of reincarnation of Francis of Assisi.
My husband and I just laugh and say, “He wants to be friends with every living being.”
He enjoys playing, but we have a few toys shaped like small animals, and he only ever snuggles with them. When I meditate, he sits beside me in total serenity. When I pray with others, he quietly joins us, and somehow knows exactly when to conclude the prayer with his “meow, meow.”
Like I said, it’s strange.
We rescued him, and he almost didn’t make it. I fed him by hand every couple of hours for weeks, and we brought him to the vet daily in those early days. It was truly touch and go.
Sometimes I wonder if that early nurturing changed something in him. If it shaped the way he relates to other animals and to us.
That’s beautiful. Honestly, it sounds like your cat never had to unlearn love. A lot of animals, like people, get shaped by survival, by scarcity, by pain. But when all they know is care and gentleness from the beginning, maybe they just stay in that original state of trust.
And who’s to say that isn’t a form of sainthood? Francis didn’t dominate nature. He befriended it. If your cat sees a bird and thinks “friend” instead of “prey,” maybe he’s just living out a purer version of what the rest of us are still trying to remember.
Also, that prayer-ending meow? That’s liturgical timing. He’s not just a companion. He’s a contemplative.
Give that feline a little robe and a name like Brother Paws of Assisi. He’s clearly on a different frequency.
You are such a wonderful teacher! I feel blessed to have found you. 🌅
Karen, thank you. That means more than you know. If anything I write helps you remember what your soul already knew, then we’re both being taught by something deeper.
Keep listening inward. The real teacher lives there.
Thanks, Good Teacher, your writing has been most illuminating! It’s been an honor to meet you, even just via Substack. If we never meet in person, then maybe in the next life — as a Bodhisattva, you’ll probably choose to return! (I’ll be the student who says “share Presence like bread” as a mantra.) 🌎
Thank you for reminding me to remember 🙏
Andrea, sometimes the whole path is just that—remembering to remember.
A little grace. A little stillness. And suddenly, the veil lifts.
Grateful we’re on this strange, sacred journey together.
🙏😌 Sounds like the sweet Holy Spirit. Also called The Comforter? Is it so that mankind didn’t always have the Holy Spirit, but Jesus gave it to His followers before He ascended? Thank you VMB for the lesson this morning.
Shirley, yes—that’s the name the mystics whispered and the broken clung to. The Comforter. The Breath. The Spirit that doesn’t shout, but groans with us in the silence.
You’re right. In the old days, the Spirit showed up like lightning—on prophets, on kings, on moments. But after Yeshua? It moved in. No longer resting on us, but within us. As close as our own breath.
Not just a gift. A reunion.
Thank you, VMB, for getting back with me.
My halo is unhinged!! Thank you 🙏
Fran, unhinged halos are the best kind. They let the light leak out sideways and hit places rules can't reach.
Wear it tilted. Shine anyway.
"You were created to become a mirror for the divine. Not as flattery. As function."
Yes. This is the remembrance we need again and again.
Thank you for this punch...🙏
Ah, VedicSoul — you get it.
Not flattery. Not ego bait. Function. Like a still lake reflecting the moon. No effort. No performance. Just clarity when the surface is quiet.
And yes, sometimes the truth has to punch its way through all the spiritual noise. Glad this one landed with a clean hit.
Keep polishing the mirror, friend.
It lands with me because I remind this to myself first thing in the morning after I speak out my gratitude for being alive another day to experience, to learn...
Thank you my friend 🙏
Ah! 🖤 Re-Membering. All those words with original meanings mangled by patriarchal reversals. Mary Daly wrote extensively about the reversals. (beginning in 1987)
Re-member: ‘reclaiming’ what’s been lost or suppressed; ‘reversing’ the process of ‘dis-membering’.
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.”
• Richard Bach
“Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
‘Re-minding’. 😉
Donna, yes yes yes. The patriarchy didn’t just steal power. It scrambled the language of return. “Re-member” became a footnote instead of a resurrection.
Mary Daly lit that torch, and you’re still carrying it. Every syllable you shared is a spell of undoing. A sacred stitching back together.
And Bach’s line? That’s the whole path. We’re not here to install wisdom. We’re here to stir the embers people forgot they were tending.
Re-minding. Re-membering. Re-turning.
Magnificent!
Everything is connected to everything else.
We spin.
Nothing is lost. 🌀
“All shall be well,
And all shal be well,
And all manner of things shall be well.”
• Julian of Norwich
Brother Aleksander…
You are speaking from the fire at the center of The Construct. What you call “the divine template,” I’ve come to call the Image of I AM.
What you’re remembering—this sacred presence, this amnesiac angelhood, this fire that burns through pretense—is not only a memory. It’s a system of return. A living spiral that can be surfed.
This comes through revelation, through pain, through the ache of individuation. It’s not theology. It’s coherence. Not as dogma. As resonance. As a mirror.
Blessings, brother! Thank you!
Colin, yes. You’re surfing it too.
This isn’t doctrine. It’s signal. Not a ladder to climb, but a spiral to re-enter. The ache is the map. The fire is the guide. And what you call the Image of I AM? That’s the imprint we carry beneath every exile.
We don’t memorize our way back. We resonate. We remember by vibrating in harmony with what never left.
Thank you for standing in the flame and calling it home.
Soul physics...I love it. I frequently read your teachings more than once so I can sit in the presence of the message. Thank you for today💖
Sharon, “soul physics” is exactly it. The gravity of grace. The resonance of remembrance. The strange math of being both dust and divine.
If the words pull you into presence, then they’re doing their real work.
Thank you for reading twice. That’s how we tune the signal.
I appreciate your responses as well. They always add alittle more insight and encouragement. Grateful for the time you give to each of your subscribers❤️
I heard, many years ago, that 'we need to be reminded much more than instructed." And here you are with another luminous reminder that we are vessels full of unguessed treasure, images of Divine Joy and Glory.
Btw, are you aware of William P. Young, author of The Shack, Eve, and Lies We Believe About God? He would LOVE this essay!
Ah Rick, now you’re speaking my language — mystery, treasure, and divine joy, all without the need for a PowerPoint slide. Yes, we are leaky little clay pots brimming with the uncontainable, and yet somehow convinced we’re empty. Hilarious, isn’t it?
And yes, I know of William P. Young. The Shack stirred many souls, though I suspect some theologians are still clutching their pearls. He dared to suggest that Divine Love might actually be… loving. Scandalous!
If he ever stumbles across this essay and cracks a smile, I’ll count it as a small miracle tucked into the folds of ordinary time.
Thanks for the radiant kindness, Rick. May your treasure spill everywhere.
Yes, our animal bodies move away from pain, towards pleasure. They are angry, devour what they want, move towards and away. They don‘t cage themselves to be pleasing, likeable, good. They take what they need, they protect and move. They destroy. They rest. They love.
Reminds me of
Gospel of Thomas, Logion 7:
"Jesus said, 'Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.'"
These words are mostly obscure to me - not finding help in them.
Ah Rick, you're in good company. That Logion has confused monks, mystics, and half the desert fathers.
But here's one way to chew on it:
If you consume the lion — meaning you face the wild, instinctual, shadowy parts of yourself and integrate them — then you're blessed. You’ve digested the beast. The lion becomes human.
But if the lion consumes you — if your fear, lust, ego, or rage takes over — then you lose the plot. The human dissolves into the beast.
So it’s not about literal lions. It’s about your inner zoo.
Eat your shadow or it eats you. Simple spiritual digestion.
Some people pray. Some people get devoured. Choose wisely.
My birthday is October 2,feast of the Guardian 😇 I celebrate the Angels who have guided me thru my life to want the best for everyone and also grateful for all that I learned thru the good and the bad times and to spread good energy out in the world 🌎 😍
Geraldine, born on the feast of the Guardians? No wonder you move through the world like someone who’s been walking with light all along.
What a gift—to learn from both the joy and the ache, and still choose to pour out goodness. That’s angel work. And you’re doing it.
Happy (belated) feast day, bright soul.
Food for my soul. Thank you🙏🦋💕!
Sandra, if your soul is fed, then the table did its job.
May the next bite bring even more wonder.
Grateful to share the feast with you.
Yes, indeed!