Sabin of the Green Mountains
A short reflection on the dissertation I couldn’t finish. Before I went a little mad and had to leave my PhD program, the dissertation I was writing was called “The Inheritance of Gilgamesh.” It was about the patriarchal systems of thought, perception, and control that originated in ancient Mesopotamia around 3100 BCE and have been […]
The structures I’d built my life around—the roles I performed, the identity I’d constructed, the ways I showed up in relationship—all of those were designed by and for someone I no longer was. Trying to keep them intact while also honoring what I’d learned created an impossible tension. Something had to give.
What gave was almost everything.
Peak experiences—whether from plant medicine, meditation retreat, spiritual emergency, or spontaneous awakening—have a way of feeling conclusive. Like you’ve finally broken through, seen the truth, become the person you were always meant to be. The clarity is so profound, the shift so undeniable, that it’s easy to believe the transformation is complete. For me, rather, […]
I’ve decided to more fully open up to offering spiritual and integration guidance, so I want to share reflections on the praxis of personal healing and spiritual integration alongside my other writing. These pieces draw from my own journey through dissociation, awakening, and the slow work of becoming whole. If you’re navigating your own transformative […]
One of the challenges of living with the kind of mental state I work with is remembering a complete flow of life. Waking up tomorrow holding on to what I’ve accomplished or learned from today is a conscious effort for me, just shy of tattooing (which I’ve seriously considered doing, Memento). I think it has something to do with the hypnosis as a child, or maybe just side effects from the PTSD, but either way, I’ve decided to devote some time on Sundays to check in with what I did and tried to do the previous week.
For most of my life, I stressed about proving myself and achieving perfection, but everything changed four years ago when I discovered the beauty of dilettantism—engaging in things out of love and curiosity rather than obligation. Experiences like Ayahuasca and mindfulness taught me to embrace imperfection and just be present. Now, I create without the pressure to excel and believe exploration is more valuable than mastery. It’s about joy and freedom, not achievement.
I felt transparent and ethereal, and so I reached out to the floor for the soft carpet and left my hand print in it. The carpet reminded me I was real and the hand print proved I was solid. I’ve done a ritual of this kind of thing for most of my life.
Later that year — the same year I had a spiritual awakening and fell profoundly in love — it came up that my mother hypnotized me nightly from about 2 years old to the age of 9 or 10 or so.
One of the defining characteristics of my personality for the past 30 years has been a decided lack of integrity. Deadlines, promises, schedules, appointments: these were all fluid in my mind, and I frequently ignored them. I was good at justifying why I couldn’t make a doctor’s appointment, or why I didn’t need to attend […]
Thanks for stopping by my journal. This space is important to me because I’m having a difficult time finding a place for myself in this world. It was like that when I was young, and also as I pulled Danielle and I into our abyss, and it’s moreso now that we’re emerging into our actual […]
