What if your existential dread is actually progress?
We think awakening starts with bliss, but the real threshold is heartbreak.
That quiet ache that says this can’t be it—that’s not dysfunction. That’s the beginning of remorse, the sacred nausea that stirs when the soul realizes it’s been living on junk food. It’s the moment when Netflix, politics, and even your “self-care routine” stop hitting the spot, and something in you whispers: Give me a new universe, Lord. This one isn’t big enough. (William Styron saw it coming.)
Helminski calls this the City of Separation, but it’s really just where every honest mystic begins—staring at the cosmic wallpaper, realizing the pattern makes no sense. It’s not depression; it’s homesickness for the Real.
Most of us misdiagnose this ache as failure. We call it burnout, disillusionment, midlife crisis. But in the deeper tradition, remorse isn’t a problem to fix—it’s the portal that opens when the false self starts to crack. You can’t heal what’s still pretending to be fine. You can only melt.
Remorse isn’t guilt.
Guilt is still about you.
Remorse is about reality.
It’s the soul’s first gasp of clarity—the recognition that no amount of productivity, pleasure, or spiritual flexing can substitute for Presence. You finally see that your best ego tricks can’t get you home, because you aren’t the one who gets there. What you call “you” is what melts on the way.
This is why smug spirituality is so seductive. It sells transcendence to people still in love with their self-image. But remorse ruins that honeymoon. Once you’ve tasted the ache, you can’t go back to pretending gratitude journals and manifestation boards will save you. They were fine until they weren’t.
So if you’re in that raw place—
too awake to fake it,
too foggy to function,
too tender to go back—
congratulations. You’ve entered the City of Separation.
It’s limbo, yes. But it’s holy limbo.
You’re wandering toward your own beginning.
Stay there long enough, and the map will redraw itself around your tears.
Remorse doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It means you’re remembering.
Blessed be the homesick,
for they’ve begun to find the way home.
—Virgin Monk Boy
(patron saint of divine disillusionment)
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