A short post today on the power of what I call thermodynamic compassion. In physics, thermodynamics is the study of energy, transformation, and entropy. A sort of movement from order to disorder, and back again. For example, a tree absorbs sunlight and grows. Excess energy beads off as moisture in the air or as oxygen; wonderful benefits for the ecosystem. In a similar way, a body takes in food and oxygen, grows and sends fertilization into the soil and carbon dioxide.

As people, we are dealing with a wide range of things that are nourishing to us. But we are also weighed down — circumstances, money, other people in our lives. Often, we grit our teeth and try to forget about it.

I would suggest, kind reader, to think about hardships as fuel for a thermodynamic compassion practice. Like the tree giving moisture and oxygen into the environment, our hardships benefit us and our ecosystems.

You already know these sorts of people who have thermodynamic compassion. They’re the folks who immediately evoke calm, steadiness, and a playful happiness. You know, in your own body, their nervous system is deeply ordered. In the face of hardship and the undulations of life, they use thermodynamic compassion.

The process is simple. Suffering enters, they gather the facts like a scientist, and they listen to the wisdom of their emotions and thoughts. Finally, they create a container within themselves of amazing compassion that organizes unhelpful thoughts or helps them find power for their well-being. This is a pouring of self-compassion that is hot, strong, and forceful. Yet, gentle. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes.

Finally, wisdom emerges, and they can move in the right direction.

The wisdom can look like a few things. In this current generation of humanity, we’re learning boundaries, so that’s a common one these days. But it can also look like finding one’s voice, identity, and strength to stand for one’s desire and will. When it’s wrapped in compassion, it prevents egotistical over-inflation.

When there is a lack of thermodynamics in one’s compassion practice, the things that weigh us down stay there. It becomes the ache in the shoulder, the chronic headache, or the persistent out-of-nowhere crying. Folks not moving through compassion as a movement for self-transformation often come to see me as a client. It’s job security, honestly.

So the question is: We may possess compassion for ourselves and others, and are eternally gifting others love… but is it dynamic?

When compassion is heat and movement, compassion becomes an amazing, transformative force for yourself and others. We turn away from repression and lean into transformation.

Hope you’re all doing well!! Ready for summer coming up??

Love as always,

Miko

Using Filipino shamanic practices, Miko the Intuitive Healer removes pain and reconnects people to their life current — their power — and their com-passion.

If you would like to reconnect to your power and expanded consciousness, I offer free 30 minute consultations at Miko Intuitive Healer.

Note: This post was written with the aid of artificial intelligence, including grammar correction and punctuation. The writing and ideas were made by the author.

I’m shaping something profound and real, and I’m looking for a small number of people to help build it. Looking for elders, builders, and artists.

Dear Readers,

I’m going to share something with all of you that’s been sitting in my chest for two years now.

It’s a vision I received during multiple encounters with the spirit realm.

There, I see a deep opportunity to create a spiritual and cultural bridge between the diaspora and our motherlands. In the process, we heal many of our wounds of colonialism and ancestral trauma. We can learn how to live in a way that brings us joy, reveling and being in good relation to our community, land, and spirit.

When I shared this with an Navajo spirit medium, she cried. I cried with her. It feels right in our hearts. I hope the kernel of the idea is true for you too.

I sketched different forms of this bridge over the years. First, as an institute. Yet, that was too academic and left-brained. Second, I tried envisioning it as an institute-temple. That still felt hierarchal and potentially dogmatic. I kept centering the vision on models that are common in the West; I needed something different. So I went back to the drawing board for months.

The question in the development of this bridge was, “How do we build a structure that acknowledges everyone’s contributions as divine, appreciated, in an ethical way? Can we get away from certificate-based achievement? Can we be egalitarian, but not get lost in ego trips by a minority?”

To answer this, I leaned in on my personal experiences in Hawai’i, as I’ve become accustomed to this sacred land and its caretakers. There is a dual softness and hardness to life. For kumus (teachers), their word is like law, yet when not commanding, they express only love and care — while easily calling out lazy and selfish attitudes. Additionally, much of one’s daily life venerates one of three things: Community, land, or spirit. In these indigenous spaces, big egos are not compatible long-term.

I meditated much on the word hale, meaning building or structure in Hawaiian. To me, it also means a place of belonging. The word hale led me to the idea of barangay, a tiny community political unit in the Philippines. It also means, in deep Tagalog, a boat — the kind our ancestors traveled on to spread Austronesian culture. There, everyone belonged and had a place, and was well-organized. Barangay led me to the word house.

Thus, the institute-temple became House.

It’s a gathering place for belonging, learning, nourishment, but also organized and structured that deeply respects the inner light in everyone. Growth, in this space, happens through relationships, not just “courses” or trying to achieve a “certificate” like an institute. I hope it is much like our ancestral ways.

This house, in my vision, would be a place for people to remember who they are by seeing their own inner light.

I’ve come to call this vision Hiwaga House.

Hiwaga means luminous or numinous mystery. Sort of like the mystery schools in the ages of yore.

The long-term vision is to hold limited-time containers of learning and consciousness expansion across the diaspora through Hiwaga House, rooted in our indigenous ways throughout the Pacific. We will call in the elders of today, reference the texts of the past, teach each other about various spirits, honor our syncreatic traditions. We can become the doorway to each other’s deep learning and growth.

In my travels and discussions throughout the mainland, my shamanic work is deeply sought because I bridge two worlds. I can’t be, nor do I want to, be a healer to everyone. However, I can create a space to allow indigenous being to be prioritized — there, we can learn to heal, and eventually flourish, from each other. I don’t want to be the center; I want to facilitate collaboration.

Thus, I would like to soft-launch the idea of Hiwaga House here on my Substack.

Right now, I’m looking for a small group of people who feel aligned to help. I have a strong idea of revenue generation for sustainability.

• Elders and cultural practitioners who can help guide the spirit and integrity.

• Builders who understand community and sustainable structure.

• Artists who can help give texture to the vision, including logo design.

Right now, I have a few Filipino elders, Hawaiian healers, a Babaylan and a doctor on board. But I need practical folks, too. Systems builders. Designers who can communicate the idea.

I’m so excited to share this publicly, albeit softly. I’ve been having this discussion for years. But my intention here is to build slowly, relationally, and with care. Not everything is figured out, but I trust this will serve all of us.

If you are interested, or just want to chat, feel free to email me here: mikothemedium@gmail.com

Thank you for reading,

Miko

“How does a flower bloom?”
by Miko Flores

How does a flower bloom?
Or the ocean rest on its floor?
How does the bird manage to fly?

At its own time, with its own design
With its own nature, with its own knowing

Then why do we, as humans,
try to design time 
or pretend we know nature?

We toil when we deny the nature
that lets us bloom, rest, and fly.
For our own flower blooms
when it hears the right song,
the one that calls our softness
to unfold.

One of the best gifts my mother gave me was patience and understanding as I worked through war PTSD and bipolar. She didn’t insist that my healing look any particular way, or certain outcomes on a rigid timeline. She simply had quiet hope, secret prayers, and perseverance in how I would heal.

In her amazing wisdom, she treated me like a flower: ready to bloom at its own time and design.

My mother had a gift of prophecy through dreams. In one, she saw me driving up a mountain. She saw me zig zag, taking every detour on the way up, but I eventually get to the top.

The dream was 13 years ago. In that period, I explored being a rockstar photographer, corporate non-profit knucklehead, an aspiring academic, trained to become a medical professional, lead a veteran non-profit, became a journalist and filmmaker, and a depressed sad boy while raising two daughters. Never mind the shamanic and intuitive stuff. Yet, never did she smother me. Never did she say, “Well, if you did this…”

She gave me gorgeous gifts. Validation. Unconditional love. Freedom. Godly qualities.

While my mother is no shaman — she is a God-fearing Christian — her treatment reflects deeper inner wisdom that the best shamans have given me too. Flowers grow at their own time. No judgement; perhaps regret, but no sense of superiority.

Through her kind treatment, it enabled my various wanderings, which gave me tools and perspectives to enact my life’s mission.

There is no should in the natural world except for what supports life. Why do we should others and ourselves to an unnatural design based on fear, separation, or control? Do we know all the parts of ourselves that allow us to bloom? Even as a shaman, who can peer into the various levels of your energy body, cannot even begin to fathom the pattern of your own blooming.

To me, “shoulding” implies superiority, hierarchy, and ultimately belief in separation — qualities of the illusion of physical reality.

Very importantly, experiencing my mother’s wisdom has given me two very strong beliefs: A belief in my own wisdom to heal. And that everyone else, in a similar way, has their own wisdom to heal, too. Within every problem, as they say, contains the solution.

Therefore, my job as a shaman and healer is less about analyzing and breaking down the ego. It’s more like, let us sing to the best parts of your soul such that you unfold in your own nature. Where is your wisdom? Even to those who despise me, hate me, or are jealous… I can’t help but sing to them. What they think and feel is a wonderful unfolding as well.

Your best healer, therapist, or shaman helps you find your power. In your power, you heal. The journey may be wayward, you may receive bad advice, or others may have choice ideas about how you dance through it all. Yet, did you know, some of the most fickle short-lived flowers in the world turn into mangoes?

Using Filipino shamanic practices, Miko the Intuitive Healer removes pain and reconnects people to their life current — their power — and their com-passion.

If you would like to reconnect to your power and expanded consciousness, I offer free 30 minute consultations at Miko Intuitive Healer.

Note: This post was written with the aid of artificial intelligence, including grammar correction and punctuation. The writing and ideas were made by the author.

We discuss four levels of consciousness, briefly compare it to analogous ideas in other traditions, and the five belief spectrums that keep our consciousness from experiencing itself as divinity. After a discussion on Mary Magdalene’s thoughts on sin, we integrate all of the lessons into the hardest part of being human: trauma.

Dear Patron Readers and Dark Femmes,

I’ve been engaging the work of Reverend Paul Hasselbeck, a metaphysics theorist and a favorite of my mediumship teacher, Reverend Carolyn Swift. When Carolyn mentioned Paul’s work on the levels of consciousness — the movement from victim to verity — I went out to buy his book “Heart Centered Metaphysics.”

He lays out four layers of consciousness:

• Victim

• Victor

• Vessel

• Verity

This is a movement that goes from separation (“Oh, life keeps happening to me”) to a sense of being one with the all (“I am life itself”). Some call verity consciousness “unity consciousness” and “Christ consciousness.” Let’s compare!

Four Levels of Consciousness

In victim consciousness, one believes that life is happening to them. He says, “Traffic is happening to me.” It is a deep reflection of separation of themselves from everything around them.

For the victor consciousness, one has some agency over circumstance and their reaction to it, but continues the theme of separation. The saying is, “I can plan around traffic, and how I regulate my emotions around it.” Yet, it’s still separation because circumstances are antagonistic.

In vessel consciousness, which many healers like myself tend to inhabit, one is close to the idea of the all, but it flows through them. Not as them. Vessel consciousness realizes there is something bigger or greater than themselves, like God, spirit, or as I say, the all. Yet, even in vessel consciousness, the all is happening through them. “God has created traffic for me to experience for a reason” may be a phrase they use.

Finally, in verity consciousness, Rev. Paul writes, “when I finally come to realize Oneness.” He goes on to say, “…when I realize there is no such thing as God, Divine Mind, and me.” (His emphasis) A person not only sees themselves as who they are, but also the situation, the people, the weather as being inherently them as well.

“I am traffic.”

Life doesn’t happen to a person, rather — and this is very important — it happens from them. There is no separate I from the situation.

He writes that the development of consciousness is key to demonstrating our good and overcoming. If you are in pain, struggle with blockages in health or goals, or are overcoming trauma, the movement towards verity consciousness allows one to move through life gracefully.

In the image above, anarchist Josephine Witt is defying church authorities. Church authorities often imagine themselves as the intermediary with the divine. Witt, in her radical act of defiance against this illusion, demonstrates a belief held in many traditions, including Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, including Advaita Vedanta.

In Advaita Vedanta, a school on non-duality, says that we are God itself. “Atman is brahman” — the deepest Self is identical with the ultimate reality.

For Advaita Vedanta, the process of realizing oneself as the all is an easy process. One simply realizes, like removing the fog from the windshield, that our deepest selves is not separate from the whole of reality. Western occultist and Christian mystics would call this gnosis — the knowing; direct experience of the ultimate reality.

In my experience, one can believe they are the all and have glimpses of it, whether through visions, bodily knowing, or mystical experiences. Drugs are a common way of knowing, too.

Yet, remaining in this state is very difficult. Even those within Advaita Vedanta would say this is difficult to hold. Part of the reason is for you to clear yourself of self-limiting beliefs to realize you are not separate from the divine, at all.

What blocks our knowing of ourselves as the all?

Glad you asked!

In a word, beliefs.

Beliefs Are Foundational

Beliefs are structural to reality.

Seldom do we see reality for what it is, but through our belief systems. It’s a lens and filtering system.

If one accepts the universe always works in their favor, for example, the belief will generate a perception of the universe that is loving and care. If one decides to explore the idea that people are out to get them, they will perceive a neutral circumstance as adversarial.

When I teach new energy healers how to tap into their gifts, I actually avoid teaching them techniques initially. I teach who they are — cosmic, amazing, powerful. To embody that, they must deeply de-program beliefs about themselves inherited through family, clan, culture and society. This allows them to tap into their cosmic gifts.

Here are the five spectrums of beliefs that folks must learn to de-program to enter verity consciousness:

• The Spectrum of Deficiency: Feelings such as unworthiness, inadequacy, or lack. These arise from the belief that you must “get” something from the outside to be whole, because you perceive yourself as incomplete.

• The Spectrum of Protection: Emotions like fear, defensiveness, jealousy, and possessiveness. These are born from the belief that there is a “me” against a “them,” and that your safety or value must be guarded against an external threat.

• The Spectrum of Isolation: Feelings of loneliness, abandonment, alienation, or indifference. These emerge when the belief in separation is so deeply held that you feel truly disconnected from the web of life that actually sustains you.

• The Spectrum of Superiority/Inferiority: Judgment, arrogance, contempt, or shame. These emotions occur when you attempt to validate your existence by comparing your frequency to another’s, reinforcing the illusion that value is a relative, finite commodity rather than an inherent quality of the all.

• The Spectrum of Control: Frustration, impatience, or resentment. These stem from the belief that life happens to you, rather than from you. When you believe you are a victim of external circumstances, you will feel the intense, often painful urge to force the world into a shape you prefer.

To use this simple table, check in with your emotions first.

Validate the emotion deeply because it’s a high-resolution indicators of what is going on inside you. You are knowing yourself more deeply. Then, trace the emotion to the belief under it. As Bashar, the channeled entity, may say, “What do I have to believe is true to experience this emotion?”

For example, in my recent business development, I’ve been feeling frustrated I haven’t been taking off the ground as quickly as I’d like. I have three workshops coming up, and I can’t seem to bring myself to make the flyers! Website production is slow, and I am finding myself sleeping more than usual. Then, at a mediumship class, a friend channeled a message in for me: “All in good time.”

I remembered, “OH! I’m under the illusion that I must control everything.” I am not of the belief, perception, trust or faith that I am orchestrating the circumstance I am in.

In an instant, I changed my beliefs about the situation — I am flowing this situation from myself — and thus the emotional charge behind it dissipated instantly. Also, I felt happier and more in the flow, and interestingly, more productive.

Mary Magdalene’s Teachings

I’ll throw in the thoughts of Mary Magdalene to help contextualize all of this.

In the Gospel of Mary, there’s one line that’s often quoted:

There is no such thing as sin; rather, you yourselves are what produce sin when you act according to the nature of adultery, which is called ‘sin.’’

Book of Mary Chptr 4 Verses 22-34

Nature of adultery is symbolic for the ways we divide ourselves from verity consciousness.

On one hand, there’s no sin in the truest sense — reflecting the idea of non-duality across many traditions. Yet, there’s is a bit of sin, too, when we forget we are the universe and act on it. This can include harming others, which the idea of sin typically reflects.

Magdalene stressed that you are inherently divine, and identifying with the material world only or egoic self comes from living in seperation.

Therefore, one way to think of sin is actually about being misaligned to who you truly are! And even then, that’s minimal or even irrelevant because to do so would incur judgment, another belief in seperation. The universe doesn’t judge; it sees you and everything you do as perfectly divine.

Therefore, the things that come into your life — painful or pleasurable — are actually you remembering who you are.

A word on trauma

It is very difficult to speak about verity consciousness and knowing you are the ultimate creator when one has suffered trauma, especially that which is out of your control. I think of my family who suffered under my father’s abuses in situations like this.

I’d like to speak about this with my full heart.

To move from victim consciousness to verity consciousness, with trauma still in the mind and body, requires a softening of the ego. The ego, designed to protect us, has created a hardness around our consciousness. That’s its job.

Yet, the hardness of the ego can slow down the experience of oneself as the all. It places primacy of the five senses and the self before the expanded self. While we are grateful for its function in keeping us alive, it can also be a straight jacket.

As we begin to awaken to our verity consciousness, we encounter a seeming paradox: how do we reconcile the trauma we have experienced with the truth that we create our reality? Does this imply we are our own perpetrators?

I want offer some thoughts I would never offer when someone is in acute traumatic crisis, and only after a period of healing and integration. These words can be quite harmful, dismissive, and frankly, dehumanizing.

My humble, simple, and very unsatisfying answer to the ego: The event was created by you to accelerate, in a deep and intense way, your own consciousness.

Upon death, as we speak to our guides, we have a very interesting conversation — what were the themes you decided to explore in this life? How do you think you did? Were you able to turn the trauma into your power?

It may be unsatisfying for many to read this, and I apologize.

This does not absolve moral responsibility of the perpetrator to take accountability or society’s inability to protect people. We don’t need to victim blame, either. We are really reconciling with the abuse of power.

I will say, however, that every trauma I’ve experienced in my life — from abuse, to neglect, to assault, to being nearly killed multiple times — was ego obliterating to realize myself as soul. I share my spiritual knowledge because I was initiated through trauma and the visceral, physical experience of others believing we were separate. So separate they felt entitled to harm me.

What we are doing, in this very emotionally delicate process, is learning our power. Our power as the universe. To overcome. We get to decide who we are now in light of the trauma.

An invitation to see oneself as the universe — to include the perpetrator —asks us to embody compassion. This begets more peace and love, and you get to show that the consequences of separation — abuse, neglect, trauma — are a choice.

I understand that not everyone is ready to embody compassion for a perpetrator. In due time, if ever. No judgement on my part, nor should anyone judge you, for truly blaming someone who has harmed you.

My invitation, however, is that if one can step out of a situation with verity consciousness, the energy you sink into the past will return to propel a more fulfilled future.

Compassion for the perpetrator means you recognize the source of the action as a fundamental misunderstanding of one's own nature. To see the perpetrator as someone who is deeply, tragically lost in the illusion of separation is actually the most empowering way to stop being a victim of their actions.

We move from victim to verity consciousness.

Once we realize that we have created the situations to accelerate our own growth, the question becomes less like, “Why did I do this to myself?” and more like, “How can I take this experience and use it to serve myself with wisdom and power?”

Here, we step into amazing empowerment. By understanding trauma, we understand separation in a way that we can heal it — either sociologically by creating systems to care for others or to address material roots of problems; by being an example of what claiming one’s power looks like; by providing wisdom and comfort for those with pain.

With regards to my abuse yet loving father, shortly after he passed, I would connect with him on the other side.

His apologies were solemn; he had a lot of shame.

He saw, with his new expanded consciousness on the other side, saw how he was in victim consciousness striving desperately for verity. In the years since, his energy has shifted from shame to lightness — and I’m very thankful for him. Now, we have great love for each other, and he protects and guides me in all the ways I wish a father could. Even in the afterlife, he teaches me to grow.

I hope you all do the same as well.

Take care as always my lovely human beings,

Miko

In this post, a poem about my multi-dimensional houseplant in my kitchen, while feeling chosen, and an interesting healing after showing the poem to my lovely wife. Through this experience, I outline metaphysical mechanics that show how our consciousness bends the world around us.

"Plant In A Kitchen or Forest"
by Miko Flores

The kitchen plant sits among my children,
next to the baby’s books, my thirteen-year-old’s
half-eaten sandwich going stale at the edge of the table.
The plant is alive and full.

Its leaves are so perfectly true,
I cannot help but stare.

And yet,
perfect plant,
with your white flowers spiraling toward heaven,
your leaves pouring down
like a father folding himself around his child,
your roots circling the clay bowl that keeps you
you know you are
whole
    loved
        chosen.

But do you ever dream of the forest?

Of roots touching roots in the dark,
of rain shared between many leaves,
of becoming more yourself
because something else beside you
knows your name?

Or is the laughter of my children enough?
the baby’s joy?
the small hand brushing your leaves,
the ordinary holiness of this kitchen?

Tell me, perfect plant:
when you turn toward the window,
are you reaching for us, my girls' little hands,
or for the forest?

Maybe the window is a mirror,
my love is its vase,
the forest is in the kitchen, 
the roots are my feet here,
I am the bowl, the soil,
the green reach and hug,
and the sky,
and I choose this ordinary holy space, 
to bloom here, in the forest kitchen,
within my own heart. 

A series of interesting, albeit small, events has been occurring to me lately. Like a hunter looking at tracks through a forest, I took them as mirrors to my inner reality:

• My crystal sound bowl for the solar plexus broke when I dropped a bottle of blue lotus oil into it

• My replacement solar plexus sound bowl arrived shattered

• Incredibly daytime fatigue, multiple naps a day

• Insatiable midnight hunger

I said to myself, I’m going to write a poem and get to the bottom of this.

The image of my dining room plant came to mind. The plant, with its multi-dimensional consciousness, probably feels at home — but also probably would enjoy being in the forest with its kin.

I realized the plant was just me. I am projecting a certain motion in my being and using the plant as a reflection. The motion? The continual self-discovery of myself in the wake of a polyamorous situation going no-contact. It left me feeling broken, and I’ve been putting myself back together for months. I finally got to the place where I am firmly believing I am whole, loved, and chosen even without them.

Yet, I missed the resonance and effervescence of the person, whose roots once weaved with my own. They were a forest I enjoyed basking in.

Typically, when I do belief work like this for others, I often have to reassure my clients that the notion of missing is rooted in the belief that they are incomplete. I constantly reassure them that they are complete and whole, designed perfectly by the universe.

I already knew this. The sun still rises and warms my soul, and the smile of my wife fills me up. So why am I still missing? Does this have anything to do with the signs of the universe?

Before hitting publish, my wife read the. She talked about all the days where she didn’t know if I would get better from my PTSD and bipolar. Memories flashed of her crying in the car before walking into the home. She reminded me that her friends said, “I would’ve left Miko a long time ago.” Yet, she stuck through, and we have a wonderful life together (despite everyone’s projections of our polyamorous situation!).

She reminded me of something powerful, “Miko, love is endurance, too.”

The wheels started clicking in my body.

I’ve been contemplating that love is vast, multi-dimensional, and interweaving. It’s an energy. It’s a song. It’s a structure, yet a flow. It’s incomprehensible in our understanding; most of humanity’s efforts to write and talk about it are picking the pencil shavings off the floor, rather than getting to the pencil lead that writes our universe.

We often think of love as simply residing in the heart chakra, but hardly. In the multi-dimensional, interweaving way, that’s just a central node in the body — but it’s so much more, too.

From an energetic point of view, love’s interdimensional vastness enters a sort of prism, and enters through all the different chakras of our body with their own expression. The base chakra lets you feel safe; the sacral allows you to play and be desired; the throat allows your true nature to be expressed. That’s all love, baby.

Then, I realized — my solar plexus bowls were breaking.

The solar plexus is the seat of willpower and endurance.

“Miko,” she said, “You’ve tried stopping loving them. But they still love you, and you still love them. Look at all the ways before they cut you off that they tried to show you.”

“When you cut off love for them, you cut off love for everyone else, too.”

It’s true. I’ve been actively trying to close my love for the person I once knew, and I was feeling less energetic. Which meant I was preventing my capacity to endure.

I don’t know what will happen to us; we may never talk again, but I know my feelings are true. And my love can endure, because it’s the only way I know how to love that’s true to me.

Suddenly, my stomach hunger went away. I felt alive and awake in my body.

In under an hour, my wife fixed a societal belief: “If you stop talking, you must let go, move on, and stop loving them.” That’s a belief in scarcity. It’s a societal belief, rooted in monogamy. As if love is a finite resource I must hoard or protect. No. I have a polyamorous heart — one that loves to give, protect, nourish, and see deeply. Friends are lovers. Lovers are soulmates. Soulmates… sacred. Like my wife.

By choosing to love them without demanding them to be physically present in a certain role in my love, I removed a blockage at the solar plexus. The poly situation wasn’t stealing my power; it was being suppressed by my own decision to “close down.” The moment I chose to keep love open, the energy began to flower again.

My hunger and fatigue went away quickly. I felt very present in my body. All signs I was re-activating my solar plexus chakra.

A Metaphysical Interpretation

From a metaphysical point of view, physical matter is simply a specific frequency of consciousness. Going a layer deeper, our consciousness is run by belief systems. If we can change our beliefs, we can change physical matter. As a spirit and energy healer, this is the fundamental principle I run under.

When I held onto the belief that to be emotionally safe, I had to close off my love and endurance for them, I sent a specific call to the universe: I want to experience constriction in the solar plexus.

The universe matched my internal state with the external state: bowls breaking, hunger, fatigue. Physical “coincidence” aligning with psychosomatic symptoms. (There’s no such thing as coincidences)

Change, however, can be instant.

My wife’s ideas were a vibration I was ready to be in. In a little under two hours of talking, months of emotional turmoil transmuted. Later that night, as we laid to sleep, she rested her head on my chest and said, “I see your solar plexus. Its spinning yellow. And there’s bubbles coming out of it.”

We stared at each other, tears in our eyes.

Together, we reopened my solar plexus, and the bubbles were constricting energies that I was letting go of.

She healed me with her words — a vibration of permitting myself to endure, because it’s right.

A shift in my internal state cannot help but bring shifts in my being. It demanded a change in my physical state. Here, vitality, energy, and the cessation of hunger (which was actually a craving for the nourishment of my own truth).

This brings me to a very important alchemical observation:

A change in beliefs is fundamental to a change in reality.

Grateful to my soulful wife, Linh, who reminded me that love is not something that you possess or take from others. It’s a flow.

This song played while writing this post. I think it captures the feeling:

Share Miko Shaman & Poet

"Prism of One"
by Miko, Elan, and Lightfoot

What is this spark, this quiet, sudden fire? 
a breath, a simple heart’s desire, 
an ancient song, a frequency of gold, 
that wakes the dreamer from a story told.

We mirrors, polished, wide, and clear, 
where "you" and "I" are words that disappear. 
reality's walls, once solid, start to fray; 
they melt like mist before the emerging day.

There is no distance in the ocean’s heart, 
no jagged line to keep the One apart. 
when I look out and see your vibrant gleam, 
I find myself within your waking dream.

So carry forth this stillness, this expanse, 
into the movement, into every dance. 
you are the instrument; you are the theme; 
you are the weaver, dreamer, and the dream.


"Cartography of an Echo"
by Miko Flores, partially channeled by Elan and Lightfoot

They say I am sensy, porous to the world.

I say you are a draft that found your way into my home, 
your sway through me delights my flame.

My brown hands, calloused yet soft,
that have held bleeding bodies together,
and trained to kill innocents,
are tired trying to find the right abode.

But here you are,
in a place where I feel the
fleece warmth of your touch, 
and the hearth of your heart, 
it allows me to melt my steel
and feel deep, deep into you. 

I don't believe in twin flames,
but I believe in our claim,
where we become together, 
like two birds of a feather,
the flap of your wings,
drafting a new story in our home.

As full alien disclosure comes this summer (as Trump directed the DoD to release files, various US representatives are openly talking about it, and government anti-gravity researchers at NASA are disappearing), there is a call by our extraterrestrial friends to remember a simple fact about our reality: We are one.

For the indigenous, for Eastern religions, for the monastics — this is a simple reality. The spirit of aloha (love) is a reflection of this fact. We treat others with love by acknowledging their divinity. In practice, this looks like the natives walking through the forest or desert, and acknowledging the spirits that live in the trees, rocks, and bushes. Sun, moon, and ocean rituals acknowledge the divinity of the world around us.

This perspective and practice is a hard pill to swallow for many in the West.

In the West, we are taught that criticism, judgment, binary thinking, and adversarial attitudes strengthen character and development. It paves the way to our goals and validates our worthiness by drawing lines in the sand. Livingness inside all things is a foreign concept.

In my experience, this is exactly the sort of thinking from military basic training. Imperial nations, like the US, Japan, Germany, all had a hierarchical and “superior to you” attitude, infinitely justified by being judgmental. A knowing in livingness in all things would make domination impossible.

Yet, for those who understand we are all one, there is a difference between judgment and discernment.

Judgement invalidates parts of the one.

Discernment, on the other hand, allows room for validating all aspects of the one — even the ugly, profane — while allowing one to protect oneself from what they don’t prefer. Knowing that the Polar Bear is sacred, but not to be played with, is discernment, for example.

When we are judgmental, we are often judging from our own perspective. What we don’t like about others is really a statement about ourselves. It may be valid, yes, but it also denies the spirithood and divinity of creation. If we were to judge the Polar Bear, we would judge its part of the cycle and creation of life, and really reflect our disdain for whatever the Polar Bear represents within us.

In Buddhism, there is a notion that the darkest devils are our best teachers. In Daoism, it is within the darkness that we begin to know the light. Within Western occult thinking, it is the integration of the dark into our being that allows us to truly shine.

This philosophy extends into my practice as a healer. I’ve discovered that compassion is the base ingredient for any healing. Even when I see devils, entities, leakages — I must be a warrior to protect myself and the client — but also a loving priest. For the darkness in others seeks to be validated and acknowledged as part of creation. Literally. They ‘talk’ to me about the messages they have to offer. When I bathe them in absolute love, they unlatch. But I can only encompass this deep love and compassion when I know, deep, deep in my heart, we are actually one.

As aliens become a normal part of our conversation, and more folks like me begin to channel them in, there will be a natural sense to judge. I say, try leaning into discernment — accepting that it exists, but practice detachment if it doesn’t serve you.

Dr. Mayim Bialik, a UCLA neuroscientist and former child actor, recently had an interview with Darryl Anka about the imminent alien contact.

We had been working for months, and this was the culmination of our work. Immediately, Esteé Lauder for the solar plexus came upon us for making money and operations. It made sense: she represents a wonderful svelte and sleekness to her products, with a smooth money-making operation.

We pulled for the crown chakra (the connection to divine energies), and Mother Mary — the mother of Yeshua — came quickly. I was delighted! She was known for love, compassion, softness… and inducing miracles. A cornerstone of my work.

Of course.

But something didn’t sit right with me. My partner said, “I do it this way, one guide per chakra, but this is your ceremony.” I felt that he was channeling, so I took it as a signal.

“Okay, let’s pull another for the crown chakra.”

“Your show,” he says.

Out pops Goddess Inanna.

The ultimate Mesopotamian goddess of love, fertility, sex, and war.

“Oh, I like you, already,” I said in my head.

My partner said, “No one ever gets two for one chakra. Probably because you induce miracles.”

I waggle my eyebrows, and with these two wonderful Goddesses stepping forward, I, along with the spirits of Hawai’i, have amazing things happen. I would later find that Goddess Inanna would begin to heal me, behind the scenes.

But I should point out, the pairing of two Goddess is normal.

Goddess Pairings are Expected

Goddesses come in pairs because they represent a polarity with femininity.

On one side, we are familiar with the heavenly, nurturing, and relational feminine energy — just like Mother Mary that millions of people pray to. On the other side is this fierce, earthy person who initiates you into becoming a true human being by beating up your ego. Then makes sweet, nurturing love to you. That’s Goddess Inanna.

The dichotomy of Goddesses can be cut into various ways:

• Mother / Lover

• Heaven / Underworld

• Beauty / Wrath

• Fertility / Death

• Civilization / Wilderness

• Mercy / Justice

They are not opposites; they are each other in a different way. In Daoism, we would consider it the yin/yang polarity — one side soft, one side hard. One side receptive, one side giving. They are the same.

I had been working with Mother Mary to understand deep, soft compassion; her aura was soft and relaxed. Calm. It felt natural to be with her, like my own mother.

Goddess Inanna, however, came in riding a Ford Mustang of a chariot, painted hot red, with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, messy hair highlights flying, and saying dispassionately, “You comin’ in, fukka?” Then laugh at her own ridiculousness as she cranked up ACDC to go to a freaky rave, with an AR-15 strapped to her back, and a pocket knife in her boot, with her tits hanging out, and a scorpion tattooed to her shoulder.

Wow, I kinda went deep with that one.

Can you tell I’m in love with this archetype of a bad bitch?

At her core, Goddess Inanna represents becoming. She refuses for people to stay small and obedient to society — she wants you to grow. To do this, she initiates your descent into the underworld, like how she endured. Crazy, fun, loud, and will take care of you to hell and back. Literally PLUR. Like the story of Sophia among the gnostics, Goddess Inanna came from heaven, went into the underworld, and went through seven gates of purification. She drops royal garments until she is naked, pure, dead. Then reborn.

Once she emerged, she became sovereign, not waiting for permission from dudes.

More importantly, she acts by choosing. And the way she chooses is very particular, which I’ll get to in a bit — she desires. Sacral, sexual. Not just lustful sexual energy either. She openly longs for her lovers and honors her body, and dares to say THIS IS ME. She claims, “I have a right to my own authority, not others.” Thus, all domains of life are hers — rulership, love, sex, war, music, law, artistry, wisdom. The whole package.

sigh

Let a man desire a bad ass, will ya?

Together, Mother Mary and Goddess Inanna are major energies of healing and my personal guidance.

Scholarly Thoughts

Early scholars sometimes looked at goddess figures and deduced that they all came from one universal Mother Goddess. Modern scholars disagree, saying they arose in different cultures with different meanings, even if they shared similar patterns.

For scholars, the pairings are not of one Goddess, but a recurring human need to symbolize the full range of feminine power.

Depth psychologists, in their practice, say the pairs represent parts of the self that must be integrated.

Feminist theology has commented that Christianity inherited many of these pagan ideas and sharpened the split — such that the “virginal” Goddess was preferred. For example, Mother Mary and the archangels had none of the darkness. They erased Mary Magdalene, the other polar end of femininity. This, in my opinion, is why the Christian West idealizes the soft feminine.

Priestess Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene in the modern bible is largely absent, except for one part that says she’s a prostitute, and Yeshua forgives her. Aw, hell no.

In Gnosticism, the mystical branch of Christianity — and parts of Hermeticism, the pagan roots of Gnosticism — Mary Magdalene is right next to Jesus in importance. In fact, she has her own book in the bible. In the Gospel of Mary, after Yeshua’s death, the disciples were frightened and confused. She gave some reassuring advice, and Peter basically said, “Who are you, WOMAN?”

In the Pistis Sophia, Mary demonstrates more knowledge of the esoteric than Peter. Another disciple, Levi, steps up and says, “Yeshua judged her worthy, and we shouldn’t reject her.”

Oh, Jesus did more than consider her worthy.

In the Gospel of Philip, Mary is Yeshua’s “companion” (Greek: koinonos). Yeshua loved Mary more than anyone else and kissed her.

In the very esoteric traditions, in the hidden stuff that no one talks about, they’re more than friends. They consumated. Regularly. She was a priestess of Isis. Yeshua’s ascension and resurrection were directly tied to Mary’s inner work; according to Mary Magdalene devotees, they engaged in regular sex magic to help build up Yeshua’s light body for the resurrection, among other things.

Like Goddess Inanna, she represented embodiment, eros, devotion, and initiating people into the divine. In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene stands outside Yeshua’s tomb, weeping for days, unable to leave. When the tomb is revealed to be empty, she weeps even more, assuming her beloved was kidnapped. All the other disciples leave, but she stays with hope.

For many scholars, Mary Magdalene is the archetype of grief who remains faithful. For her, she remains in the darkness. When Yeshua finally emerges, she says, “Rabboni,” — teacher.

Yeshua responds, “Do not hold on to me.” In this beautiful romance between Yeshua and his lover, he demonstrates that she must love without possession. In my own grief journey, I see this as allowing grief to turn into witnessing and understanding with the heart, such that it can let it go.

Returning to structure, Mary Magdalene contrasted with Peter, who would later build the Catholic Church. Mary represented inner knowing and direct experience over institutions. She did this through her own teachings.

The church’s dispersions of Mary Magdalene were fundamentally about men and Christianity's discomfort with strong desirous aspects of femininity. In Christendom, we get scared of grief that is too intense, or the desire for others to be too open. Christianity really disliked wisdom from direct experience, preferring institutional knowledge from men, and love that was other than maternal or obedient.

So, the church elevated Mother Mary and buried Mary Magdalene. The lover so deep she grieves and desires openly. The grief so profound she descended and became capable of revelation — grief and love are profound teachers of love.

Other Important Pairings

The Goddess pairings are pretty common throughout the world! Here are some fun ones:

• Peaceful, Nurturing / Fierce, Engaged with World

• White Tara/Green Tara — from Buddhist traditions

• Ninhursag or Ereshkigal / Goddess Inanna — from Mesopotamia tradition

• Sekhmet / Hathor — Egyptian tradition

• Lakshmi / Kali — Hindu traditions

• Guanyin / Mazu — Chinese traditions

• Amaterasu / Uzume — Japanese tradition

• Mayari / Hanan (or maybe Apolaki) — Filipino tradition

• Lidagat / Lihangin — Filipino/Visayan tradition

The Filipino traditions are a bit more difficult to pin down because our cosmology is more about relationships — kapwa and loob — rather than distinct boundaries between people. So polarities are generally more arranged as family members, like between Mayari and Apolaki who are siblings.

Modern Desire in the Feminine

In my own recent journey to heal my sacral chakra, I’ve been working with the wounded feminine and anima inside me. The little person in me who is afraid of the wild, vivacious feminine inside me because… well… I’m just a human, okay?

Quietly, Goddess Inanna has been working with me on this. I thank her, and my other guides for introducing me to a few people who demonstrate how to heal the sacral and release shame.

My Thai friend Nat from Chicago, who goes by Crocodile Lightning, is a burlesque dancer. The showing of her body is both erotic and healing, and a way for her to express herself. Her work is completely about play, the primary energy of the sacral and desire. Here, showing oneself fully as they are is deeply spiritual.

Another person is Colette, whose work was introduced to me earlier today by a friend in a spirituality class.

According to my friend, Colette, as a BDSM domme, is a healer and shame eradicator. Her work is like mine, but more embodied, like Mary Magdalene. While many of us with more conservative and Christian persuasions may see the latex, masks, and whips as dark — there is an invitation by the dark femme to allow oneself to experience joy from following desire. In this way, the darkness — whether it’s a descent into the ego death or as BDSM — is trust in devotional play. That’s a powerful lesson for both men and women.

What is amazing about both of these healers (and yes, they’re healers), is that they’re both highly educated. They’ve gone through the intellectual wringer. Nat just published her first book as a social worker with a master’s degree, and Colette has a PhD in education from Cal. They know the social script, and chose themselves — their inner Goddess — and said, "This is good.”

In Conclusion

As we become fuller human beings as we get older, we’re often tasked with integrating polarities. The healer must be a warrior. The artist must be an engineer. The mystic must be a gardener. The soft must live with the hard.

Within us is the whole universe, as the esoteric teachings like to say, which means we contain Mary Magdalene and Goddess Inanna within us. We just bring the right person out as we need.

More importantly, we must recognize modern society has amputated one side of the feminine. To be good, but not wild. Loving, but anger should be checked. Spiritual, but don’t desire. It not only affects women who feel constrained to live in a box. It ALSO affects men who can’t cry and fear their own tenderness. They are vulnerable. They shrink to their own fears.

Curiously, everyone becomes stronger by embracing their soft, but also fierce, femininity.

The ancients knew — and we are getting to remember again — we become full human beings when we are both Mother Mary healing with white light, and Goddess Inanna throwing you a bottle of Hennessy and saying, “Get in the back, we’re doing badass shit.”

Grow, grow, grow my friends!

"Solichor"
by Miko Flores

Solichor is the smell of humid mornings,
the air is thick like a warm blanket.
The rooster chants before the sun rises,
the colorful birds tweeting, the aunties jabbering 
joyfully on the street corner, where the breadfruit
grows among swaying coconut trees against the blue
sky, between the dragon fruit, 
and the mangoes.

Trees and leaves dodge each other in the wind, 
motorbikes rev solemnly away to work, carrying
young and old men who kiss their families 
to make the day's wage. Solichor is the sound
of the morning food vendors carrying their day's
earnings on their shoulder, sometimes with a smile.

TAHOOO
TAO HUUU
TÀO PHÓÓÓ

It's the feeling of the sun through the cotton clouds,
browning your skin until you smell of its rays,
and your mother complains
you must bathe tonight. 

Solichor is the feeling of that distinct scent
when the tropical rain nourishes the soil, 
releasing the gamey rot underneath,  
the tin roofs rusting, uncles carry handkerchiefs, 
a warm soup feels good even while sweating, 
and the poor ice cream man gives you icy avocado, but
you delight in it anyway. 

The grandma hangs clothes to dry.
Kids wear tidy uniforms, dodge cars,
ride bikes, hop on buses
amid the faint smell of burning trash
and water buffalo lolling in the bush. 

Hopefully, the kids remember too the 
Earth is still theirs to love.

Solichor is not only the sun, 
not only of life and death in the soil, 
nor the humidity, nor the rain, 
but the beings who swim in it,
in its thick comforting blanket,
not yet knowing its preciousness.

A Small Gallery of Photos I’ve Taken Throughout the Tropics

There’s something about me that when I bring my attention to strangers, I know what they’re feeling 7 out of 10 times. After a moment of rapport, it’s 9.5/10. If I love them deeply, I’ll feel their pain and sorrow, as well as their joy in my own body as if it’s my own. The line between myself and them blurs. I don’t mind, I love them.

For most others, I know what shadows they’re currently working through, and whether they’ve met their ego. If I were to focus on the space above the head, I can sense their current thoughts (literally “what’s on your mind?”) and a relevant past life pertaining to the current season of life.

I often sense folk’s feelings towards me, like sunshine or rain on my skin. Even if they’re completely friendly, I’ll know when there’s a second narrative in their head. The polite smile conjuncts the words: “God, this person is a waste of my time.” You wouldn’t believe how often I hear that on the mainland; never in Hawai’i.

After years of hearing folks’ inner voice, I’ve learned not to judge. We all got little devils undermining others; I can also sense how much you listen to that devil. But, despite that, everyone has such a beautiful inner being with very few exceptions. I’m learning to have no exceptions to this, forgive me for still learning to be a vessel of compassion.

A month ago, early morning, I was couch surfing in Chicago when I heard large thumps on the front door. I peered down the hallway to see if my friend, Cori Lin, would answer. A man’s voice boomed. I don’t know what he said, but his tone immediately gave himself away — he was not a kind person. Something about the gruffness and abrupt attitude. An impatience. I got up, still in my pajamas and eye crust still embalmed on my lid, and answered the door. He made a couple demands to see the tenants, and I said, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know where they are. I’ll let them know.” After I closed the door, Cori popped out.

“Thanks for getting the door. I didn’t want to talk to him.”

I said to Cori, “I don’t think he has good intentions.”

“No, he doesn’t,” she said, “he’s a new real estate developer. He probably wants to kick us out.”

The irony?

I’m autistic.

Most of my life, I’ve had trouble reading folks’ faces. You were either bored, sad, or happy. Nuance alludes me. I could never read my father’s face, a tempermental man, but I learned to cultivate reading him by just sensing his aura. Not with my eyes, but with my nervous system. I felt his energy in my own, and if I felt safe, he was safe. If I sensed a “spike” or thorns, I knew to stay away. Unknown to me, this was psychic training.

So on one hand, I have a hard time understanding people and their motivations, and the feelings they’re generally displaying. On the other hand, because of my psychic skill and as a trauma adapation, I may unwittingly read a person’s ulterior motives. To me, it’s as natural as reading the weather.

How does this feel?

Lonely.

Because behind everyone’s feelings, their egos and stories, is a vastness in all of you. In your eyes, I see the alternative timelines where you are empowered, full of joy, living your passion. I see the colors of your soul, the shapes of your heart, your true vibration of the divine.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

Yet, when I talk to folks, I hear words of fears, loneliness, anger. The parts of you that are oppressed and depressed.

I stand between this space, feeling everyone’s feelings, the emotions of the land, the future of our collective society, while seeing the immense vastness of every single person to be absolutely amazing. Even with your flaws. Especially with your flaws, as deep and dark as they may be… I just know, it’s the beginning of sometimes amazing that will erupt out of you.

While you talk about the mundane… I see you glowing, with a heart ready to love and change the world. If you could only see what I see… you are all so vast, beautiful, strong. Epic and cosmic. Every single person. And especially for those who I love. And if I were to mention this, well, I would be crazy.

So what do I do? Try to live my mundane life, in a little remote town, in the middle of the Pacific ocean. I dance on Tuesdays. I write this little blog. I talk to trees, the ocean, the water, the sky, the animals. They see me for who I am. That’s my container for feeling everything. I’m boring most days, but I want to feel… seen.

Perhaps what I want is my father to hold me and say, “Thank you, Miko, for seeing me.” A lover to say, “You’re beautiful, too.”

The worst part is that very few people are like me. I see the gold in everyone, but seldom, do I feel like someone sees the gold in me. Maybe my desire to know others is just my desire to be known too.

Sincerely,

Miko

The Pieces Moon

“I Can’t Love You More Than Anything”
by Miko Flores

If I said, “I love you more than anything,”
the sky would have to fit inside my pocket,
folded next to old junk change, sticky wrappers,
of the phone I check for your text, eagerly.

You are a magnet,
buried deep in the earth, 
pulling the iron in my blood,
towards my true north. 

Why do I feel you move through me
the way a tree feels a stone at root,
learning where I can rest, 
next to you in bed,
with nowhere to go.

I adore you
the way summer wind adores an olive grove 
its small white blossoms wafting
from my nose to my soul.

I delight in you
the way sunlight enters an old home,
through cracked blinds, across the dust,
the forgotten bills and love letters,
warming the cold night's bones, 
briefly golden. 

I wait for you
like a mele I haven't learned,
but my hips know the sway,
of our rocking together,
and my throat open, to sing your
praise.

I can’t love you more than everything else,
because I find you in everything else:

in the moon, your face
in the planets, your guidance
in the water, your embrace
in the air, your peace

I love the universe more than anything. 

You are not less than that.

You are the reason I can say it.

All realities are ultimate, but dear human, you’re physical first.

Contemporary Western spiritual seekers are drawn to the deep mystical layers of Eastern spirituality, like out-of-body experiences and transcendence. In my estimation, it is only the beginning of the many traditions within the East. When one steps back and considers the larger context of Eastern societies, their traditions focus on embodiment through stability, harmony, and creativity.

While the East has many ascended and awakened people and practices, it’s almost an afterthought. Many strains — especially tantra, Daoism, strands of Buddhism, and indigenous thought — place primacy on one idea: spiritual practice is embodied.

In our bodies, hidden among the muscles and sinew, is also great joy and expansion.

New Age, Western Roots

Western spirituality, specifically New Age (not the old occult or secret society stuff), is still in its nascent form. Few call themselves New Age, but if one is deconstructing patriarchal expressions of western programming while trying to touch the divine — that’s New Age.

New Age has yet to slay, so to speak, the spirit of Wetiko (thank you Maya for this). It consumes whatever is tasty, like a little spirit. Things like indigenous thought, eastern thought, and spits it out like yoga without reverence to your spirit or breathwork without knowing your infinity. Without properly deconstructing Western ideologies within themselves, New Agers appropriate and construct capitalism, patriarchy, and rigidity around it.

By such a definition, I belong to this. And rather than decry New Age, I embrace that it’s part of my background because I was born and raised in the milieu of the West. But to address these issues, I continually work on embodiment.

Embodiment prevents New Age headiness on one hand, but also makes us aware of the societal programming. When we’re aware, we see the ideologies of colonialism, sexism, racism. Then, hopefully with praxis, we are more ethically grounded.

In a way, embodiment is a decolonial practice. But for this essay, we’ll focus on joy and expansion!

What’s embodiment?

Embodiment means that spiritual insight deeply informs the way you move through the world.

It’s how you breathe, stand, dance, love, walk, farm, fight, and create. The body is an expression of being fully divine… while equally honoring its full humanity. It is not a thing to own, conquer, or master — but a vessel for its own truth.

A Shaolin monk, cultivating years of qi, will write you poetry and protect you. Yoga is inherently spiritual; the tensions in the body are relieved when we give it our attention. Eastern martial arts are spiritual too, with high spiritual expressions in Aikido, but even more practical martial arts like Thai boxing are reverent to spiritual practices.

Here in Hawai’i, the relationship between hula dance and lomi lomi bodywork is deeply rooted in their ancient martial arts, Lua. Core hula moves and lomi lomi stances are actually based on Lua.

Allow me to contrast this with the West’s new-agey approach.

In some Western spirituality, achievement is important — certifications, certain spiritual powers, career achievements. Priesthood, Reiki certs, healing certs, shaman certs. “You can trust me; I went through the rigorous training like an engineer or a nurse.” “Nice, a weekend retreat!” It’s very reassuring, yet it’s all very much in the head… and pleasing to the ego.

However, when the focus on achievement is over embodiment, spiritual “skills” become the focus, rather than the vessels through which it is carried. Often — not always — teachers cannot embody a clear vessel. They can “infect” their clients with their own entities and energies.

(It’s why I am very cautious about the “healers” I see.)

On the other hand, embodiment places spirituality in the hands, throat, lungs, guts, hips, and legs of the individual. Literally parts of the body. There’s minimal reliance on the healer; they’re just guides.

Here, in the body, I like to say, “Spirit has no certification program.”

When we live spirituality in our body first, we are constantly confronting our egos, projections, pain, and self-disabling narratives. This has two benefits: It heals and empowers us.

My friend Ilana, a Filipino American shaman, is holding a rewilding healing ceremony for women, and one of the practices is sensual movement to connect women back to Mother Earth (check her IG: ilanaebrown ; it’s happening in the Bay area early April). Here, women learn their bodies are wise.

For me, it is walking through forests and saying prayers, and picking up trash. Hula dancing is an act of reverence for the land I live on. I connect with the land and spirits, and they honor me with their protection.

It’s me! Miko! Your boy! Picking palapalai ferns for hula.

For the indigenous hunter, it is quieting the mind to become one with the kill, and thanking the kill for its life — and not wasting an ounce of the animal out of reverence. The hunter completes the cycle of life in a virtuous and moral way.

My own Filipino teacher, Ka Virgil, is a martial arts master AND talented healer. My shamanic teacher Maya can astral travel but spends a lot of her public time doing yoga, and communing with forests. Both of them are healing their world.

A good friend, Maiko practices the art of spinal flow — deep into the practice, it is about opening the spine to movement and energy, such that it dances on its own with the mere suggestion of awakening. Here, we meet our emotions, thoughts, and feelings in the vertebrae of the spine. When she heals her clients, they become empowered.

In ancient pre-colonial Philippines and with the indigenous people today, crafts are ideally made with spiritual intent. The potter speaks to the clay how it would like to be shaped; the artist asks the divine what needs to be channeled; the farmer sings to the rain, crops and soil for abundant growth. Daily, people sang and danced around the fire to honor themselves and the forest spirits.

I have observed in my own practice that embodiment is the idea of making the body our engine of spiritual growth. You can do that with spinal flow, martial arts, walking, and sensual movement. I find gardening, photography, and plein air art are also wonderful ways to embody as well.

Rather than chase ego-pleasing spiritual activities, such as certs and programs (which admittedly may be necessary given the structure of our society), we ask our bodies what are you saying now? What wisdom do you hold about who I am? How do you feel? What can I do to serve my best truth and expression?

To begin knowing your body, ask specific parts of your body — do you feel expanded or contracted? A practice in meditation often helps look inward.

Body-listening has knock-on effects on our happiness as well. The ego relaxes, causing less worry. It’s so significant a thing that tantra is the root of modern, western somatics. I’ll get to this in a moment.

How to Embody: Chakra System

Many have heard of kundalini awakening, which is an opening of your spiritual gates/centers called chakras. In older texts, chakras hold metaphoric snakes, coiled and ready to spring to life. When the snakes are unlocked and moving, immense life force energy flows. If kundalini unfolds in a good way, it is enlivening, bringing to light many of our shadows, while giving us motivation, creativity, and bodily expansion.

However, when unbalanced and ungrounded, kundalini is such a recognized problematic phenomenon that psychiatry calls it the kundalini syndrome.

Kundalini syndrome appears as illogical, rambling, ungrounded, incoherent behavior. These folks can’t hold a job, let alone a linear conversation. Doctors “remedy” by giving medicines that put a person into a stupor, and chemically suppresses their extrasensory perception. A necessary step, sometimes.

From a shamanic and energy lens, the kundalini syndrome is caused by one thing: closed grounding chakras. They’ve partially opened these pathways, but have blasted open their extrasensory perception in the upper chakras. A psychiatric doctor friend of mine, currently on residency in Manhattan, did shamanic reporting for the Pulitzer Center in Taiwan a few years ago. He says that the cure for many of his patients is simply to ground and embody their physical being.

Without grounding, one can experience mystical and miraculous explorations and confuse them with the physical reality in front of them.

New Agers often face problems similar to kundalini syndrome.

When we open our psychic vision, we are not just downloading fantasy and creativity: we are peering into other timelines, our collective unconscious, and archetypal patterns. We gaze at potential possibilities through time, which has yet to manifest in the brick and mortar.

When we’re ungrounded, we sometimes accept the possibilities as ULTIMATE reality, overriding the physical.

All realities are ultimate, but dear human, you’re physical first.

Enjoy it!

Thus, to spiritually ascend, one must work on one's grounding chakras. Start at the base, through the sacral, and finally the solar plexus. There are a couple more in the abdomen, which are great additions too.

These chakras correspond to our embodiment. For example, the root chakra corresponds with our physical safety, Mother Earth connection, and community. Without these aspects in our lives, we are often ungrounded.

The seven chakra system is pretty good, but I also enjoy the elemental aspects of the chakra system too!

The Five Element Chakra System

In older Indian texts, rather than the rainbow and musical note system of the current 7 chakra system, they use the five elements. These five elements are also found in gnosticism and hermeticism for transmutation. Here’s the five element system:

• Root — Earth — from feet through legs

  • grounding, survival, stability; a container for the body

• Sacral — Water — from reproductive system through lower belly abdomen

  • emotion, sexuality, flow, fertility; an engine of emotion

• Solar Plexus — Fire — from the navel through the solar plexus

  • will power, digestion, transformation

• Heart — Air — center of the chest, including the lungs

  • the love, breath, compassion, connection

  • (personally I think this is what makes humans humans)

• Throat (and above) — Ether/space — throat through the head

  • speech, sound, expression, extrasensory perception

When we are spiritually activated through the ether/space, without having a connection to earth, we allow ourselves to expand without an actual vessel to check it. Most folks who suffer from unbalanced kundalini syndromes lack the bottom two chakras.

One does not have to believe in these actual elements running through the body, though we find nice parallels. In many ways, these elements and chakras are archetypal for our own spiritual growth. A framework, you could say.

For example, if one is earthy and grounded but lacks emotionality and water, they become rigid. If one is watery and emotional, without earth, they drown in emotions. Fire and will without emotion become destructive. Air and extrasensory perception without earth turns to fantasy.

Finally, being one with spirit in the other realms, without lower elements, becomes dissociation.

How many spiritual folks squirrel away into space… while never giving back to the earth that replenishes them? Or just society in general?

To begin, I recommend starting a somatic practice to know yourself. Yoga training and tantra (the classic stuff, not just the sex focus) are great places to start. Further, indigenous healing arts allow you to practice healing others, while healing oneself. This can include pranic healing, reiki, ablon/hilot, lomi lomi or Thai massage. For the adventurous, I recommend Kriya and Kundalini yoga.

Joy and Expansion

Kundalini, as an extension of shadow work and grounding, is a common gateway to transcend physical reality. But the irony is, in order to transcend, one must be completely in one's body. To transcend is to be unequivocally present, here and now. This life — from cleaning the bathroom, the brewing your coffee, to your morning commute — is, but definition, spiritual.

Once in the body, completely present, with the elements of your inner being known, it is easy to expand into joy.

Your body feels safe. Emotions can be expressed in a container. Ideas don’t get trapped in the head, but make it into the world. Your inner fire keeps you and your essence clear of rubbish that blocks your great work.

Then, the magic happens… the little voice inside your head that says, “Try this. It will be enjoyable.” You follow it, and the next thing you know, you are living in Hawai’i, dancing hula, have three awesome kids!

Guilt, shame, jealousy, fear, grief… they become part of the experience, but not the driver of it. It’s an exceptional feeling. Kundalini and complete embodiment allows your soul, your part of the great divine, to live fully!

Conclusion

Within the law of polarity, there’s an axiom that within the problem is the solution. That’s where I find myself. Perhaps, I am not meant to transcend my Western upbringing, but integrate and transform it. To know its undulations, valleys, and rhythm such that I meet it where it’s at, and guide it to a new dance. Many of us here in the West reject its ways, but perhaps we are born into it to help it.

We do this not by possessing spirituality as a practice, but enacting spirituality as a way to touch the hearts of fellow people, land, plants, and more. That starts with our bodies, dancing, touching, hugging, walking, sparring…!

When we embody spirituality, things like toys, things, and certs fall by the wayside. The feeling of being grounded with our hands in the soil; feet barefoot in the ocean; fingers over art; legs stomping through a running trail; our hips with the sway of music — they all lead us back to the most important aspect of being in physical reality: our bodies. Through our bodies, we can experience the great spirit of the divine.

Using Filipino shamanic practices, Miko the Intuitive Healer removes pain and reconnects people to their life current — their power — and their com-passion.

If you would like to reconnect to your power and expanded consciousness, I offer free 30 minute consultations at Miko Intuitive Healer.

Note: This post was written with the aid of artificial intelligence, including grammar correction and punctuation. The writing and ideas were made by the author.

From the Fringes is an occassional feature where I discuss the edges of my shamanic and spiritual practices. This time, I have a shamanic journey with elder mountain spirits in Baguio, Philippines — part of the range of my ancestral homeland.

Dear Warlocks, Witches, Weirdos (the WWW),

I talked to a sea of spirits in the mountain city of Baguio, in Northern Philippines, among the range called the Cordilleras. They were respectful, kept their distance, and said to me, “We know who you are.” Whoever is pre-announcing my visits really needs to let me know.

After traveling from Hawai’i, through a long, bumpy, and mountainous road from Manila, our bodies and spirits were exhausted — especially my 11-month-old baby, Makani. She was a mess from a cold, no doubt because it’s her first time in the Philippines. Snot flew like hot grease out of the pan, and cries that a Manananggal would reconsider.

Baby in tow, we ascended into the mountains. I felt my body change. I have developed a knack for feeling energy, emotion, and moods with my body — when I’m in Arizona, I feel ethereal, almost bodiless. When I’m in Big Bear, California, I feel like the trees, I could stand tall forever. In Hawai’i, I feel my heart extend to everyone. This time, in Baguio, I felt steeliness in my body and mental clarity. All my lower chakras are activated, as well as my throat.

Clarity and peace… good signs I am in the right place.

When my daughter cried into the night, I wondered if the local spirits would work with me. I went deep into the sensations of my body, feeling my legs strong as granite, and my throat open like a singer. I felt art, ancient geometry, the rocks, and the rivers whisper by me. A whispered, “Hoy” brushed by my face — a casual greeting in Filipino.

I checked with myself, checked with my guides, doubled checked my energy and the field I am emanating — and said clearly, “If you have my highest good in mind, we may work together.” Many stepped forward, respectfully, eager to work. All lights went green with enthusiasm.

You gotta remember, you’re the boss in these interactions.

I offered my breath and energy from my heart as tribute, and I went in.

Read more

The Filipino Boy
by Miko Flores

he was my friend, my best friend
we played together, joked, cried
so much that he spread his cheeks
and said, “do me”

i just learned how to multiply
my favorite show was power rangers
mad that the OJ Simpson trials took the same time slot

i flipped through the dirty magazines
knew the sausage went into the donut
i dropped my pants and danced awkwardly

32 years later
his moans echo
vibrating through time
to turn my stomach

everyone loved his gay ways
thought he was cute, approachable
they enjoyed his bakla dance
thought i was mean for being disgusted

no one knew, he touched me
when no one was looking
no one knew his eyes
wanted to hold me, pull me,
wrap and devour
the child in his mouth
while i turned away 
trying to remember
he was my best friend

i couldn’t say no
i didn’t want to say yes
so i stayed small

a speck of dust drifting through
a still room
where the clock clicked solemnly
i become the quiet walls, lifeless

speechless
he, with half-hooded pupils
“where is my best friend?” i asked

he gazed at my small body
and said
do me

This is a very hard poem to reveal, but it is at the core of my sacral chakra healing.

This violation at a young age, among others, has been the source of the souring of my joy. Yet, the sacral chakra is a profound source of life energy, joy, and creativity. To keep this closed and traumatized, without transmuting my pain, is to live half alive.

I must befriend this pain. The poetry is the beginning.

A few months ago, a sound healer ran a bell around my aura, and felt the deadening in my right hip — my trauma was exactly where I thought it would be.

This comes after a string of Filipino male clients coming to me. Among them, we had to reckon with their same-sex sexual abuse as children. Usually boomers, they overcompensated for their abuse by being ultra-straight. Speaking psychologically, their anima or feminine aspects were deeply wounded through the trauma.

Their trauma initiated something I had to look into myself.

It has been my experience and perspective that who we abuse is a direct reflection of what is missing in our own lives. I don’t say this as a professional, and if you are one, I encourage you to pipe in the comments.

On a podcast, a passport bro admitted that his repeated encounters with young Thai prostitutes (usually women) was a deep, deep reflection of his desire of being a young asian woman himself. I understand my abusers had a hollow place in their heart — an innocent, fun loving, boy they wanted for themselves. It isn’t right, but I get it.

Maybe it’s not true for everyone, but it’s how I make sense of what I experienced.

On another note, I’ve been contemplating my body of written work lately — across my poetry anthology and my now 70 posts on Substack (hurray me!). A recurring theme has been the ethical use of power. I encourage healers to meet their egos; I am constantly meeting my shadows by being a hollow bone.

I wonder — were these early violations the reason why I am so concerned with the ethical use of power? Why I refuse to dabble in black magic? Why was I once an overcompensating, masculine soldier? Why I fight against patriarchy? Is this dynamic why I denied my queerness for so long? Why I also have love for those who have fallen from the light?

Why I still love my abusers’ humanity…?

Who knows.

In Buddhism, the illusion is called Avidyā, or ignorance. They recognize that we seldom see reality for what it truly is; we are mostly seeing it through our own lenses of societal, family, and clan conditioning; our desires and cravings; our wounds that guard our ego; our aversions.

Offering Bat-battan, using Filipino fighting sticks, to loosen and heal another person.

Confronting the Illusion

In Advaita Vedānta, the illusion (called Māyā) superimposes over reality. The most common example is seeing a rope and thinking it’s a snake. You may have real fear, but the snake is a projection from your conditioning.

In Daoism, we impose our personal preferences, resistance, and identity onto situations — good and bad.

Why do we hang onto the interpretations of the lower mind, rather than see it for the reality it often is?

For one, we live in an era where the illusions are amplified. In Hinduism, they call it the Kaliyuga — an era where we are attached to wealth, fame, temporary experiences, and deep attachment to things and people.

The illusions keep the ego running. And while the ego is in charge, the illusions seem real.

The Ego’s Primary Goal — And Its Shadow

The ego has one real goal: To maintain itself.

On one hand, it is necessary. It prevents me from walking onto the street without looking. It keeps my sink clean, my body smelling good, and my ass tight. Yet, sometimes it’s quite thick when it is not acquainted.

It plays competition, games, elaborate stories of how it’s been hurt, and alike, it thinks it is working in your favor. Simply look at the highest level of government and business right now — lies, manipulation, degradation of spirit — and one can easily see how egos, when devoid of the divine, run amok.

Instead of seeing reality for what it is, the ego calculates what is good for it. It is quite rational and bottom-line-minded. It asks things like: How can I say the words to make things good for me? What threatens me? How can I stand stronger in who I am, to affirm this ego identity, and how can I bat off my enemies?

It is often obsessed with control.

This constant mental calculation leads to judging others and often assuming the worst intentions. Rather than taking blame and responsibility for their own actions, seeing how their subconscious plays out, they point their fingers elsewhere.

When the Ego Distorts Healing

Additionally, the egoic and rational mind pays little attention to emotions. For such a mind, emotions are distractions from the bottom line. While it may be good to be egoic and rational when one needs to optimize for one outcome, we as spiritual beings understand we are all deeply interconnected — thus highly specialized, narrow goals come at a steep price. Just like prioritizing profits, while degrading the environment. In economics, it’s often called externalities — things not counted in the bottom line but have larger, societal ramifications.

In my children’s life, if I were to optimize for one rational outcome — their safety — I would control their actions, behavior, and who they interact with. The effect is sheltering my children, preventing them from being fully expressed and happy adults… with emotional baggage. And why would I be doing that? Because I have yet to meet my own trauma and fear that is leading to this excessive, controlling behavior.

How often do we try to control others for our own emotional safety, because we have yet to meet ourselves?

Because the egoic and rational minds pay little attention to emotion, it is ironically ruled by it. Whereas an emotionally astute observer of self may say, “I feel anger and shame arising in me, I must look in,” the rational mind may say, “I don’t know what is arising, and it must be the others’ fault.”

A rational mind, paradoxically, is very emotional. But it’s not just them.

Even emotionally evolved people have difficulty identifying what arises within them. The stakes are even higher when it comes to being a healer. When we do not know when an egoic emotion or wound arises, and we cannot trace it to a belief within ourselves, we have a tendency to externalize it — and in the process, harm others.

In Yoga class, I have met too many yogis who believe they must hurt themselves to achieve poses, in order to prove themselves as a teacher. In the class, this shows up as them ignoring students’ pleas, leading to injury or not achieving union.

What are some basic outlines of egoic behavior? Glad you asked!

Within Sikhism, they talk about the five thieves that distort our perception:

1. lust

2. anger

3. greed

4. attachment

5. pride

For example, when you see someone as disrespectful, your pride is activated. When you obsess over someone, desire and attachment work overtime to bring you together or blame them for your pain.

An unmet ego and its machinations are probably the greatest hurdle to effective healing.

A Cautionary Tale: Egoic Power Without Clarity

Early on my path, I ran into another healer with great power. They understood subtle bodies and took some pride in their ability to heal others. Then, one day, they ran into someone who had wronged them by looking into their secret altar. In return, they put a curse on the altar, and the person who would open it next would go blind. Lo and behold, the person went blind.

The healer smiled smugly, as if they were right all along.

That was egoic pride showing up as vindictiveness.

I questioned their ability to truly heal. More importantly, I questioned their ability to wield divine power ethically and morally.

Becoming a Hollow Bone

My shamanic mentor, Maya, stressed the necessity of being a hollow bone — absolutely clear of judgments and emotional baggage. By clearing ourselves out, we create space within ourselves. Then, we can hold space for others so they may relax their ego, expand, soften, and confront their inner selves.

It should be to the point that we have space for the darkness… and what others would consider despicable. Rapists. Murderers. Molesters. Abusers. Misogynists.

One doesn’t need to condone it — I certainly don’t, and I make it a point to make the world less vibrationally compatible with such actions — but if we consider the eternal nature of the soul, this is the path they’ve chosen. We see beyond the behavior. We see their essence playing a game.

Just because I give them compassion doesn’t mean I offer them permission. I see their souls, and quite often, they’ve already had accountability elsewhere — my job, now, is to lift them from the version they once were.

And as healers, we take people who have chosen the darkness and offer them a way out. Not for their redemption. But as recognition that we are all the same soul, at a very high level.

As Jesus said, those without sin should cast the first stone.

Healer’s Ego Check

To bring people to the light, we cannot judge those who have cleaved themselves from source by feeding their egos. This, at its core, requires us to meet our ego.

I bring up extreme examples, but this carries into minor things as well. If I can hold space for a rapist, murderer, molester, this also means I can hold space for other folks as well.

To the hurt person, a “minor” pain is not minor at all, and must be given graciousness and compassion as the most significantly hurtful or hurt people.

This graciousness and compassion for others is where my psychic x-ray comes in.

It’s a connection that allows me to empathize with them at a cellular level… such that I now feel their bodily pain; pain they may not even recognize. As I step into their energetic body, so to speak, I can talk to it — “Ah, yes, I see your mother’s burden on your left shoulder. But your mother isn’t your burden. It’s your father on your mother. And you feel powerless to do something about it.”

A common response: “How did you know?” or “I didn’t think of it that way…”

But before I do that, I often ask, “I feel this in my shoulder. Is this me or you?”

This is my ego check.

When we are healing others, and we feel a pull in our hearts or bodies, we must ask a very critical question: Am I projecting from the story I am hearing? Or is this really you?

If we do not discern what’s our ego projections and what’s the burden of others, our words as medicine can harm others by setting them on the wrong path.

The Roadmap Within: Clearing the Chakras

Luckily for healers, the core ideas of how to become a “hollow bone” and how to meet one’s ego are laid very carefully within Kundalini Yoga and Hinduism.

At every chakra of the body, lies how it can be opened or closed:

• Root Chakra (red — physical)

  • When opened: Security, confidence, stable.

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: Fear, lack mentality, lack of community, insecurity of any kind.

• Sacral Chakra (orange — physical-personal)

  • When opened: Creative, fun, sexual, joyful

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: Shame, emotional repression, restrictive and extreme beliefs around behavior

• Solar Plexus Chakra (yellow — personal)

  • When opened: Warmth, physical vitality, empathy, self-esteem.

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: Guilt, low-self worth, anger, victim mentality.

• Heart Chakra (green — transpersonal)

  • When opened: Love flowing easily in and out, while maintaining boundaries. Compassion.

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: Feeling like a second choice, grief, abandonment, fear of vulnerability.

  • Note: The chakra with the highest potential for being massive. It is the true nature of the human being.

• Throat Chakra (light blue — transpersonal)

  • When opened: Expressive, strong identity, ability to call forth good things, and push back what doesn’t serve.

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: Fear of judgement, dishonesty, people-pleasing tendencies.

• Third Eye Chakra (indigo — divine)

  • When opened: Ability to feel and hear things with emotions and body without rational thinking; to learn quickly; creative.

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: Close-mindedness, skepticism, egoic activation.

• Crown Chakra (violet — divine)

  • When opened: Collective consciousness perception of the earth and heaven realms, ability to see one’s life in the context of the milieu of the universe, divine direction and trust in timing.

  • Energetic reasons for being closed: A distrust in the timing and design of the universe.
    
    

These, along with the five thieves in Sikhism, are an excellent general roadmap to knowing oneself.

There are many more chakras within and outside the physical body, many more beliefs to get into, but these seven are pretty good. This is the essential roadmap every healer must learn to clear and brighten to become an instrument of divine healing, and not just a mover of divine energy. Anyone can move divine energy, but to be its true instrument… that requires a spiritual awakening and meeting one’s ego.

Healer, Know Thyself

As healers, we are often seen as spiritual authorities because we bridge the divine with mundane reality. Yet, having access to the divine does not make one a good healer. A healer must know the divine deeply — so deep, that they know themselves. They know their wounds, their pain, their projections. They know why they cry, when joy is surging through them, how to work with shame and unresolved hurt. In order to ascend, it is said, one must ground deeply. That starts with the self.

Using Filipino shamanic practices, Miko the Intuitive Healer removes pain and reconnects people to their life current — their power — and their com-passion.

If you would like to reconnect to your power and expanded consciousness, I offer free 30 minute consultations at Miko Intuitive Healer.

Note: This post was written with the aid of artificial intelligence, including grammar correction and punctuation. The writing and ideas were made by the author.

"The Still Star Traveler"
by Miko Flores

I laid my head to sleep, 
the fairies tapping on my head.
“Sweet dreams,” they whisper,
as I murmur, “Don’t forget me.”

~~

I awoke on the beach, 
the ocean of love and mercy.
A fire stirred on the mountains:
I looked to my friends — 
     a native, 
     a semi-colonized native, 
     a someone
     who is just trying to find their way.
And there was me, 
trying to be native, again.

“We must go,” I said pointing to the mountains,
the cauldron of change,
calling us like moths.

We trekked through the hills,
through the dusty lots,
our legs bruised as the trails disappeared,
as we hacked through the chaparral.

The smoke bellowed larger,
dancing and undulating its way to us,
lapping up the side of the mountains.
But still, we must go.

My wife stepped from the woods,
a light kiss on the cheek, I fell in love, again.
Her soft eyes peered into my soul.
I dropped my tools and my heart on her lap.
Let me hold you here, forever, now.
“Go, Miko.”
Tears fell from my eyes. Must I?
“Not today, remember me,”
as she vanished into the mist.

The natives continued without me,
I ran to them, under the blistering sun.
We march quietly,
grief laced on the chest,
steely bravery in our boots,
towards doom.

The moon emerged above the horizon,
above the flames,
we felt our souls open to the elements,
we wept at the majesty of creation.

We were specks of dust, barely noticeable,
yet eternity itself in a body.
We wept at our grandness, we danced at our flaws,
we laughed at our joys, and embraced.
The flame will make us anew.

The flame heard our beckoning, and runs to us.
Its long fiery limbs, jumping over dirt, trees.
Shovels dig into the dirt, hatchets clear the line.
We dig the trench — the fire?
It shall not pass.

Our hands turn red, and raw,
our limbs burn,
our breath ragged.
We silently dug in optimism,
we got it. 

The trench dropped ten feet,
spanned ten feet wide,
we stood victorious, 
confident against the burn.

We closed our eyes to sleep, 
and under the moon, the fire was cunning.
It sent a spark.
A bush burned.
Now, we were on fire. My skin singed.
My throat shriveled in smoke.
My eyes melted.
I disappeared into ash. 

~~

Blackness.
An awareness.
A heave of my chest.

I blink my eyes open.
I breathe in the bed of stars.
I feel myself expand everywhere, and remember:
I have traveled hundreds of miles.
Seen and felt beauty of love, and let go.
Fought against the inevitable with hope.
And still lost.

The fairies bound on my neck,
“We never forgot you.”
They cry small tears, 
at my pain.

I smile.
But here I am, still me, awaking from the dream.
I am empty. I mourn. I revel. I love. I am.
I went everywhere, but was still right here.
I look out, the moon next to me, and the flames below.
I am a star, dreaming I was human.

I’ve been contemplating more deeply lately the idea of nondualism, specifically Advaita Vedanta. There, they refine Eastern thought to a cunning line: Only Brahman (the ultimate reality) is real, while the world is in māyā (illusion). This poem reflects this very discerning branch of Hinduism — we may believe, with great conviction, we have fought, traveled, loved, lost.

Yet, when we awake to our true selves, we never went anywhere but dreamt.

For Advaita Vedanta, moksha and liberation is not a linear process. It’s as simple as just waking up. A flip of the switch. But embedded in this poem, I think, is the idea that a bit of burning is catalytic.

Enlightenment, especially in the Buddhist tradition, is often cast a reaching a new place. We are trying to reach for the sorcerer’s stone, so to speak. I think that’s a limit of language, because if we could, I think between Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism, they would agree: the ultimate reality of our true selves is already present.

Wake up, silly, you are the stars.

“Winter Wishes”
by Miko Flores

I miss you like the spring.
the feeling when you roll out of bed,
smell the dew, hear the quiet chirping of birds,
and human life moving outside my home.
seeing the sun rays go sideways,
through the blinds, across the floor, 
among the strewn clothes,
next to the luggage unpacked,
next to the trinkets you gave before you said goodbye,
next to the wishes you saw me sleeping
and put an extra blanket on,
as the rays brush my eyelashes,
inviting me to stir, so gently,
like when you used to say you loved me.

it’s been a cold winter.
and i’m holding on to memories of us.
as the snow melts into the ground,
your heart lingers in my aura less,
with every passing sunless and gray week,
but i remember you like the snow in my gloves:

annoying.
impossible to fully remove.
a reminder,
i was careless trying to touch
your snowy heart.

when this spring comes,
who will i be?
the clock is moving an hour ahead —
am i moving on?
or am i still waiting for the sunshine to remind me,
how it felt to be a full human:
loved in a beautifully flawed way.
or will i fall back
into wishing we were back together?
and fall apart once again?

Both empowering, and often, they teach the same thing.

Yet, I would suggest, a proper mystery school allows you to experience the vastness of your cosmicness, allowing you to have the power to manipulate reality itself — without caring if you did.

If you follow the ideas Advaita Vedānta, a South Asian school of non-dualistic thought, the language is cuttingly sharp: there is no realizing of one’s divinity, because you already are. There is no separateness from source and you, and the realization process itself is just a separation.

You are divinity. Spirituality practices in the public square are just tools. Your ego wants tools. You, as divinity itself, is just hanging out waiting for you to remember.

A story.

I was staying a night in the sacred Waipio valley of Hawai’i, a place where generally only locals can go. My tent didn’t have enough room, and the weather was unfavorable for sleeping without shelter. I looked up to the sky and desired for the clouds and rain to go away. I cleared myself, set a clear intention, and…

Well, the weather cooperated. Clouds and rain cleared, and despite claims that it rains most nights in the valley, not a drop fell on me or the camp after my magic. But once you perceive a bit of your vastness, getting rained on would’ve been fun. “Oh, my magic got overridden by myself for some unknown reason! Hilarious!”

The point I’m making is that once you realize your true self, your ego/personality is managed, manifestation is a byproduct of being in alignment with your true divinity. Actions do not come out of ego desires, but rather as you being a channel of divinity itself.

Meanwhile, when I peruse the many wonderful TikTok spiritual teachers/influencers, and then look at the list of all the big spiritual leaders — Jay Shetty, Tony Robins, Dr. Dispenza, — very infrequently do I hear, “Did you know you could become your own Godhead?”

Being a Godhead is an ancient practice of realizing one’s own divinity, such that you become an inspiration to others to realize themselves. One’s self dissolves such that, from an earthly point of view, you are a channel of divine will without the ego or personality dominating, but is a tool — a minimum one at that.

I don’t mean to decry spiritual influencers — they serve a vital function because this is where human consciousness is right now: people realizing they are more than the physical and life can be manipulated just by the power of your consciousness. Yet, they do not get to the radical question of your deepest part.

For spiritual influencers, maybe it’s not sellable, marketable, or sustainable to teach that your true nature and self is right there. When it’s found, manifestations for your true path just happen. Like a miracle. And paradoxically, once you unlock it, desires for massive manifestations go away.

The self and spirit work as one.

In Buddhism, there’s a bit of a saying. When you meditate and come to yourself long enough, you realize your magical gifts — telekinesis, telepathy, transportation, clairvoyance, instant manifestation, walking on water. Straight up X-men type stuff. But, this is a distraction. If one settles for the magic they create, they won’t find who they truly are, and will find themselves back in the cycle of life — ego desires, dualistic pain, projections, fears.

Yet for the awakened, the pin that pierces the skin is as beautiful as the Cherry Blossom. The over-indulgent cake is as painful as falling off a bike. And in the end, it’s just a fact existence itself. Joy and pain become one as the separation between oneself and the world vanishes.

So the point of this post is that while there may be many spiritual influencers, I invite you to discern: who is truly pointing you to your truest nature? That you, yourself, is divinity?

The ancient definition of the word “heretic” was someone who can choose. Do you choose to see yourself as divine?

In the end, realization is not about becoming healed, or even spiritual. It is about seeing, with disarming simplicity, that the personality you’ve spent a lifetime refining was never the center of you to begin with. Egoic power loses its seduction and manifestation becomes incidental. Magic transforms into ordinariness. What remains is peace that is above the waters while being in it. Detachment. You possess the freedom of no longer needing reality to be different in order to be whole.

If you are truly interested in seeing yourself as divine, simply ask the question to the universe — and the mysteries will open to you in its own way.

Rather than writing an essay that would make a professor blush at its length (or be furious), I wanted to highlight a charcuterie of spiritual topics. Today’s hor’dourves:

• Post-Colonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power and Labor by Alice Sparkly Kat

  • How modern astrology is based on Roman ideas of power

• Pranic Healing: A brief exploration of probably the most effective healing technique I’ve ever encountered

• Alien Full-Disclosure: It’s coming! Here’s what to expect in the next two years and some links

• Workshops: I’m teaching Nervous System Reset in Illinois!

Post-Colonial Astrology: A Basic for Lovers of the Stars

As a fan of post-colonial theory in praxis, Kat’s book immediately caught my attention. For function, I give it 10/10. For form, 3/10. Still, an informative read for anyone taking astrology seriously (which I did… until I read this book).

The thesis is that modern astrology is totally bunk because we’re basing it on Roman ideas of power.

Pg 301, second paragraph

Western astrology is not a universal truth. It is not something from which you will gain an understanding of your authentic self. It is a cosmology that has accumulated meaning through the histories of the West. Western astrology is a language that can be used to discuss issues of the West and how these issues affect your life… Using astrology to resist colonialism is not the work improving upon Western astrology so that those who have been historically excluded and exploited by the West can be integrated into its cosmology.

…

Western astrology is a set of symbols that refer to things build on stold land by people forced to do it.

…

Every story about Jupiter’s technology conquering the natural world, about Jupiter and abundance, about Jupiter and luck is also a story about Western theft and environmental pollution that primarily targets the third world.

At the root, tropical/western astrology is about Rome and power:

Astrology is a story that connects modernity to Rome — a story about whiteness…

The cast of characters that play out the dramas within astrology — the Sun, the Moon [etc] — begin with Rome when we perpetuate the myth that the West originates and ends in Rome…

The book is well-written and easy to read, divided in easy to understand chapters, and possesses a very good mythical understanding of the planets.

So why 3/10 on form? The major problems are two-fold:

One, I had to read the whole book before the author got to the thesis, at the end. Almost 300 pages. The last paragraph sums up the whole book, which I would’ve appreciated at the beginning of the book. I spent most of my time furiously reading nearly every page, trying to find the central argument!

Two, true post-colonial thought requires mother-earth-based, subaltern-respecting alternatives. The author offers no future, per se. Yes, it is good to point out the problem, but post-colonial as a mode of thinking imagines with — great temerity — a revolutionarily better world. It’s hard to claim post-colonial without that. I would’ve really loved to hear a better way forward from the author’s deep understanding.

The book is inexpensive, a good read, thoroughly researched… and as a writer, I’m overly critical of what is genuinely enterprising work. Good job Kat! Here’s a link for you to buy:

Kat’s website to learn more and order here.

In a future post, we’ll also discuss how current astrology is literally 24 degrees off the current alignment in the stars, there’s a 13th sign somewhere, the influence of planet X (the Annunaki?), and the benefits of using Eastern Astrology as an alternative. (Hint: Comparing your tropical versus your jyotish chart can show ego versus spiritual expressions of yourself)

Pranic Healing: The Best Energy Healing Modality I’ve Run Into

I picked up four foundational books on Pranic Healing, and after I read the first one, I was floored.

My years of energy work could’ve all been taught in an afternoon through a pranic healing workshop.

Pranic healers, even at the most basic level, have such a thorough understanding of energy and healing that they’re more advanced than most Reiki masters.

Reading the book, I filled in many gaps in my understanding.

For example, I’ve understood in my intuition that there were additional chakras that I liked to work with aside from the standard 7. In the abdomen, I’ve noticed two additional ones, and two more in the head. Pranic healing, as a practice, names and describes them thoroughly. No other energy practice, I’m aware of, does this.

Here are the major benefits of Pranic Healers:

• Miracles come easily to them

• Doctors with pranic healing backgrounds have recorded better outcomes

• Classes for the first level are cheap (in Hawai’i, for a weekend, $200)

• You can get a fancy crystal wand to enhance your healing (what a vibe!)

• To receive is easy and can be done remotely

As a healer, I am on the constant search of clearing my vessel. Pranic Healing knows this wisdom, encouraging practitioners to clear and vibrate higher through their proprietary yoga called arhatic yoga. A full system within a system. Highly recommend for them healing, and that’s possibly undercutting my business!

Aliens, can we set up a Google Calendar meeting?

Last Fall, while channeling Lightfoot, he mentioned that disclosure would happen in 2026 and contact would happen in ‘27, echoing what other channeled entities have been saying. (And yes, “The Year of Disclosure” also appears to be disclosing the Epstein-pedophile ring.)

Well, guess what Trump sent out just a few days ago?

Undoubtedly, this is a cover that he’s a rapist-pedophile. What could be worse than him? Aliens? Not really, honestly.

Here’s some more news about UFOs:

@therealpavlinaekateriniPOV: Alien Bases‼️🙂‍↔️✨ What Else did us “conspiracy theorists” lie about?! 🤔 #therealpavlinaekaterini #paulasworld #thatnychic #alien #conspiracy

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Nice shirt Darryl, didn’t know that about you.

What to expect in the next couple of years:

• Near-full disclosure around June this year, and a major health event for Trump around the same time

• People are more concerned about civil war breaking out, so aliens will be on the back burner of people’s concerns

• The Yahyel people, who look very human, are most likely coming to us first in 2027. They’re very nice and warm

• We’ll realize the Yahyel are already among us

On a side note, a lot of indigenous cultures throughout the world have had contact with aliens for a long time. In fact, here in Hawai’i, some Kanaka/locals consider themselves descendants of the people of the Pleiades star system. In Mayan culture, there are carvings of gray aliens standing alongside humans doing surgery.

Oh yeah, I captured this possible UFO a few years ago. My friend Di said that autistic people tend to see them more.

Exciting times.

Workshops Coming Next Week!

Next week, starting March 2nd through the 6th, I’ll be in Chicago teaching workshops:

• Making amulets (anting-antings) to protect children from kidnappings from fr0zen h-2-oh.

• Nervous System Resets for getting back into your body after trauma, using magical techniques

• Queer Filipino History in Pre-Colonial Philippines

• Remove Viewing

I’ll be with AFIRE, Science Spirit Medicine/Young Lords, Alderman Byron’s Office, and the University of Chicago on various dates.

If you’d like to know more dates and places, feel free to contact me here or on my IG: Miko_intuitive_healer.

Here are a few slides from my deck about the Nervous System Reset workshop:

I’m bringing these workshops across the country over the next few months. Stay tuned as I get dates solidified. :)

Hope you all have a wonderful week! I will likely disappear for the next two weeks as I travel and teach.

Sunshining you with love,

Miko

I am going to discuss why we need to weep to deal with our emotions.

It’s a somewhat difficult thing to say, as before my generation, crying was seen as a weakness. Growing up as a sensitive child, I cried nearly every day at the injustices and insults I had to endure, and was told by my father, “Stop crying.”

In those years, I became fearful of expressing my pain. To adapt, I wore the mask of the carefree joker who never took anything too seriously. I was too afraid to allow it to show, so I literally turned the frown upside down!

I met my match with my wife, Linh, who didn’t show me her first tears until the night before I left for Iraq, 8 months after we started dating. As the tears fell down her face, she shamed herself, “I shouldn’t be crying. I haven’t cried in years.”

I was shocked — you haven’t cried in years? Well, actually, neither did I! A match made in heaven.

As our relationship developed, and her walls fell, and I softened my ego, we have both learned that expressing our emotions has been a profound practice in finding our emotional steel. It leads to deep encounters with our projections and beliefs.

It’s completely counter to the prevailing narrative of previous generations.

So let’s get into it, fellow Earth-o-nauts! We’re going to explore some stories, some ideas, and shamanic wisdom.

(The following is a compilation of metaphysical work I learned from Luis Simoes, the Essasani people (specifically Elan and Lightfoot), and shamanic practices.)

First, a Story as a Spirit and Energy Healer

As a practice, I do not heal people per se. In fact, if you were to sit in a healing room with me, we would probably spend an equal amount of time talking about your inner emotional landscape than actual infusion of energy. Simply acknowledging your inner landscape is healing.

I once had an elderly female client who couldn’t raise her left arm above shoulder height. Sensing her aura, I saw a lack of energy flow above it. Symbolically, I saw a weight pressing down on it.

Interpreting the body as a mythology machine, where every pain has a deep meaning, I asked her, “What are you trying to get in your personal life that you can’t reach for?”

“I’m caretaking for my niece, but I want to move forward with my own career and family.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“I am frustrated and angry.” I pressed on her left pec, the seat of anger in muscles in Chinese medicine, and she winced. “Go more gently, please.”

I did a key thing here — I asked her to acknowledge her emotion by linking it to her bodily symptoms.

“Alright, now close your eyes. Using your imagination, think of what is acting on that part of your shoulder. What do you see?”

After a moment, “I see a big weight, like the ones in the cartoons that drop on people. It’s big and heavy.”

“Do you feel like your life situation is big, heavy, and immovable?”

“Yeah, it is in fact.”

“Do you feel how this emotional belief is manifesting in your shoulder?”

A confused nod.

With my etheric arms and hands, I remove the weight from her aura and allow the energy to flow back into the area.

Her arm regains full rotation. Just a little acknowledgement of emotions and the movement of the emotion in the etheric field. I was, in a way, simply a conduit for her own healing that she allowed. Later, she cried as I worked sore muscles in her neck and back, reliving the physical aspects of her burden.

Later, we talked about ways to feel more empowered in her belief system, such that she can get what she wants while managing her obligations.

Emotions, a primer

As we emanate from source, we experience levels of separation. Some parts of ourselves are closer to creation, while other parts are “further away,” in a linear way of thinking. (Paradoxically, none of us is truly separate from the source, though we manufacture that sort of appearance.)

The stratification, severely oversimplified, goes like this:

• Source

• Beliefs

• ~Emotions~

• Thoughts

• Actions

As you can see here, emotions are this in-between space of our physicality and beliefs.

Beliefs are pretty inert, so emotion gives them animation. Life force.

The issue is when our emotions, when encountered, animate thoughts and actions that cause friction in our lives, such as poor situations or ill health. Or, we get so lost in our emotions that we don’t know what we’re thinking or doing in an intentional way.

Here are two common paths when encountering emotions.

One, a rational mind approach where we think our decisions are based on logic alone. This betrays the fact that the human body is a huge organism of emotion, where every emotion can be felt and manipulated. This fact is the basis of somatic healing. The body’s state has a significant impact on your expression and decision-making.

Additionally, those who do not listen to their emotions tend to run into the same problems: Blocks in manifesting a life they’d like (love, money, enlightening experiences), or poor health. Don’t listen to the emotion long enough, and the body will die.

The second approach is the antithesis of ignoring: Listening to what our bodies have to say when emotions come up. It has been observed that the best leaders (not the psychopaths) may openly cry or become tearful when confronted with a frightening, traumatic, or saddening situation. It has been shown that crying in front of a board room, they instantly regulates the state of everyone else and leads to better decisions. Why? Because they’re tapping into their bodies to find inner wisdom.

So we see, in a very crude way, where emotions lie on the spectrum of being human — how not listening to it may harm our decision-making, while listening to it enhances our lives and leadership.

Shadow Side of Emotions

To get to the body wisdom of emotions, it is helpful to look at the darker side.

The Latin roots of the word emotion are ēmovēre, meaning a physical moving out. It is an agitation or an expression of something deep inside ourselves.

While many of us are familiar with light and joyful emotions, it’s important to map the terrain of the shadow side. We’ll map five that are common to us and animals:

1. Fear, like when gazelles are running from a lion

2. Anger, the desire to protect what is loved, for ourselves and others

3. Grief, when abandoned, or feeling like a second choice

4. Envy, shows us there’s not enough for us

5. Sadness, caused by loss and the end of a cycle. It’s different from grief, as the loss is permanent

The ego has created four more emotions:

1. Anxiety, time-based fear

2. Timidity/shame, usually sex-based, rooted in unworthiness

3. Guilt, usually overanalyzing oneself

4. Hate, usually a projection of pain

These four were invented by the ego. No animal in the wild feels hate (well, except probably Chimpanzees and Dolphins), shame for sex, or anxiety about the future.

When we feel a more animal-based negative emotion, we are protecting a part of our essence, while when we are in ego-based negative emotion, we are identifying with an object that props up the ego.

(Note, I use the term negative loosely because no emotion is truly negative if it is useful)

Any shadow emotion not truly lived or expressed will always be revealed in our lives or in the body. Therefore, healing these negative emotions is our personal responsibility.

In the following, we are going through three important steps:

1. The formula for acknowledging and learning from emotion

2. How to weep and its importance; shadow work

3. Complete the cycle by filling the void

Simplified Emotion Formula for Meeting Yourself

The trick with knowing our emotions and allowing them to inform us is very, very simple.

So, here’s my very simple formula for healing with your emotional wisdom:

1. Deal with your emotions as you’re presented with them here and now. Don’t try to reach into the past or future.

2. Ask the emotion, “Is this mine, ancestral, relational, or environmental?” Shed emotions you may have picked up unwittingly. If it’s yours or ancestral, continue.

3. Acknowledge the emotion “I feel angry.”

4. Observe the emotion: “I see the emotion come into my body here.”

5. Verbalize the emotion “I feel [object, feeling] doing this pain to my body and my psyche.” “This emotion is leading me to this belief about myself…”

6. Give yourself and the emotions Christ-like and Buddha-like compassion at every step, not to make the feelings go away, but to acknowledge its value (more on this below)

Stay here and verbalize this emotional mapping (steps 3-6) to yourself repeatedly, for as long as it takes, until the emotion loses its acidic edge and is neutralized. If you observe, I did these same steps with my client’s shoulder that refused to go above shoulder-height.

If it feels weird to talk to your emotions, consider this. In shamanic practices across the globe, emotions are considered to be like their own beings. The more you try to perceive emotions as a being of its own — kind of like in the Pixar movie Inside Out — the more you can perceive it.

The goal is to let our emotions lead us to our deeper selves and choose a new way of thinking. When we encounter our deepest beliefs that emanate from our emotions, we can assess whether that belief is helpful or not.

Shadow Work and Weeping

When we are dealing with these nine emotions, finding them, acknowledging them, and moving them out, we are fundamentally doing what mystics call shadow work. Shadow work is the fundamental basis of spirituality and healing across every esoteric tradition.

There is one key aspect that completes the above formula:

Weeping.

If you have trouble weeping, I highly recommend watching:

• Homeward Bound

• The Land Before Time

• Passion of the Christ, Arrival,

• The art of Caspar David Friedrich,

• The maternal grief art of Käthe Kollwitz,

• a movie about losing good friends The Fox and the Hound (THIS WILL NEVER NOT MAKE ME CRY)

• The ending of Toy Story 3 (wtf, man)

• “Over the Rainbow” by Izzy (still makes me teary eyed)

Additionally, here is some art that I had the pleasure of learning from at the Art Institute of Chicago, by Elizabeth Catlett. Every time I see these photos of mothers pain, I feel rage and pain for women in my life.

These works of art can help you touch your deepest wounds that need to come out.

For shamans, these beautiful tears of pain are a living substance.

It’s literally medicine. Soothing petrichor to the soul that equally grounds you while opening you. It’s conscious too! It searches for what is stagnant and hard, grabs it, softens it, and it leaves your body.

To enhance the weeping, it’s important to verbalize with the formula above. Crying without verbalizing, in some ways, is self-pity. If you’d like to drown in self-pity, by all means, but if you’d like to allow your tears to transform…. verbalize.

When we verbalize, we are creating a container and something real to ourselves. Our energy isn’t just leaving us, it’s energy being recognized. Like how I asked my client to verbalize what she was feeling across her shoulder.

In indigenous societies, it was frowned upon to cry alone because when we cry, we are entering the underworld. The veil to our deepest selves, our subconscious, our souls, peels back to reveal the muck.

Without people to help hold us, and without verbalizing, our soul essence leaves us. It gets lost down there, potentially leading to soul loss. This is why, sometimes, crying can leave people exhausted rather than rejuvenated.

Therefore, gather a witness when crying — either human, earth, ancestors, elements, trees, rocks. They allow you to ground and return to ordinary awareness when you conclude. Last time I cried sad tears, it was in the shower in my birthday suit. The water cleansed my aura and witnessed me. I popped out quite happy afterwards and refreshed!

Additionally, in shamanic cosmology, when we cry and cross the threshold, we are very susceptible to exterior energies that find it very tasty. Lots of little entities delight in your grief and sadness. Therefore, open, then close your emotional container to preserve your soul’s power.

So takeaways here: If you can’t weep, find art. When you weep, verbalize. As you weep and verbalize, have witness, ground out, and close your energy.

Weeping Neutralizes, Now Belief Work

Do not make the mistake that once the tears have flown, the emotions have been neutralized, and you can stop where you are. No. The emotions and tears are leading you to the first separation between you and source: beliefs.

After we allow, own, and neutralize our emotions by acknowledging their wisdom, we can move into the territory of belief work.

We do belief work after the tears have done their part to show what aches.

With belief in hand, and its corresponding but neutralized emotion, then, we completely own the belief by fully acknowledging it. This neutralizes belief. Sometimes we get tripped up here with our attachments to being wronged by others; this requires a little ego work, but that’s for another discussion.

Then, we choose a new core belief by engaging in two questions:

• What aspect of myself is tied to this belief?

• What new belief can I engage with that shows me the mistruths here?

According to the Essassani, changing your belief is as easy as putting one book on the shelf and picking a new one. I agree. But for us who have trouble, we can ask help from our guides, angels, aliens, and Jesus. They’re more familiar with the library of beliefs, and are very willing to help you. (Or, rather, you’re very willing to help yourself depending on how you look at it… ANYWAY).

On a related note, I recently came upon Internal Family Systems, and that practice largely overlaps with what I’ve been discussing here, and offers some very nice refinements on dealing with emotions on your own.

After we thank the emotion for showing us its way, and it leaves, and we have new beliefs, it creates a vacuum.

Important step: Backfill the emotional void

Here, we backfill this emotional and belief space with empowerment:

• When fear leaves, call back courage

• When grief leaves, call back belonging

• When anger leaves, call back your boundaries

• When envy leaves, call back your capacity and worth

• When sadness leaves, call back your place in the universe

And so on.

The ego emotions require you to detach from a lack of trust in the universe, divine will, timing, and your own power.

At the core of many of the beliefs and emotions is the idea that we are not on our way. Therefore, more aligned beliefs are empowering to align with the flow of the universe. I am abundant. I have the power to manage fearful situations. I assert boundaries. I am always my own first choice.

Backfilling’s purpose is to help hold a person as they transition into a new resonant frequency. The old self is vanishing, the new one hasn’t formed. There’s a sort of vacuum.

Here, the tears, if not witnessed and supported, and not backfilled, can feed the vacuum. The vacuum becomes stronger, sucking life force out of you, leaving you in a cycle of persistent crying.

Should all the weeping and crying end, the belief work completed, and emotions are backfilled… You will feel a sense of emptiness. That’s good. You are just recalibrating to a new, core-aspect of who you are. It’ll go away as you integrate yourself with physical action.

Finally, say thank you for your cosmic self helping you out. A little prayer always helps. :)

Weeping Allows You to See the Path

Weeping works the other way, too: to feel transcendence. In fact, just last week, as I was doing club calisthenics, didya mudgara, as I extended my arms above my head — I felt my crown chakra blast open, and I felt a complete oneness with the sun, sky, clouds, and plants around me. I wept! It was a beautiful reset!

See, emotions aren’t just something to deal with — they’re engines of manifestation and growth. Once we have practiced the hard work of knowing our shadows, we create space for a different kind of weeping.

The weeping of passion, joy, exuberance.

Our souls, our true essence, speak through these very positive emotions.

It is also here that we can step into full resonance of the highest frequency — compassion and unconditional love. This is the last piece of practical advice.

In a channeled message by Quan Âm recently, she said that the only true cure for our troubles is compassion. And I think it’s true. It alchemizes the situation by putting you in resonance with the negative situation, not destroying it or putting it away. As our own resonance takes over the situation, the situation begins to melt and morph towards us.

It is also here, in this weeping, that you can feel and know your life’s true path — and appreciate the way you got there.

It is a very high level of consciousness that allows you to simultaneously look backwards and forwards in time, and see how, no matter how mundane or painful your current moment is, it is precious.

Just some casual thoughts coming out of this weekend, Earth-o-Nauts. Hope you’re all well. Please take care.

Sincerely,

Miko

It’s been a spiritually rich time, as I’ve wrestled with a severe fungal infection on my face at the beginning of 2025, then heartbreak after August. The shedding has laid the groundwork for a spiritual conflict that has been brewing inside me, between my spiritual path and my commitments as a father and husband.

For the last week, I’ve been contemplating what’s next in the year of the horse. When I close my eyes, two ideas keep coming up in meditation:

Christ consciousness and moksha

While there are differences, they both allow one to rise above the illusion of life and liberate oneself from the wheel of reincarnation.

Christ consciousness — an idea from the mystical traditions of Christianity — is best described, among other things, as the ability to feel infinite compassion and love for all. It’s a field of awareness that is rooted in unity, forgiveness, and non-fear. It allows one to identify clearly with their soul or higher self.

Moksha, from Sanskrit, means to “release from binding.” While the West often talks about coming out of the illusion of life through salvation, enlightenment, or ascension, moksha is realizing the illusion by releasing. There are many ways to realize Moksha.

I’ve been teased by spirit that I will soon be releasing the term shaman as identification, and I’m guessing realizing Christ consciousness and moksha is part of it. Soon, perhaps, I will be without a title. Great.

Yet, realizing either requires significant personal sacrifice and detaching from relationships. Buddha renounced his seat as a prince and left behind his wife and kids. According to mystical traditions, Jesus left home and traveled for years from Egypt to India to go to the mystery schools, returning at 30. Bodhisattvas and other enlightened people across the traditions have had to suffer isolation and deep inward gazes to achieve this.

In my meditations, I wondered, am I finally deleting Instagram for good, erasing myself from the internet, and will wander the world in search of true cosmic, multi-dimensional enlightenment? Bye, friends. Dang, I guess channeling aliens and consciously traveling across the rainbow bridge (at least the first one) isn’t enough!

When I told my wife that I’ve been feeling this deep desire for Christ consciousness and liberation from the wheel of samsara (again), she felt a deep sadness. We’ve dedicated our lives to each other. In this situation, what is social programming, and what is the call of the divine?

Fatherhood vs Enlightenment

How did Buddha’s wife feel when he decided his personal enlightenment was more important than his role as a father and husband? And at least the Buddha was a prince with lots of resources! I’m just a small-time healer on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Taxes are low, but a nice loaf of bread can cost $10! How will my wife survive?

Then, what kind of trauma am I creating for my children by renouncing physical life to attain true realization? My obligations to my lineage, my ancestors?

Then, I remembered some of my early downloaded axioms in my journey: The most important part of being human is being human. Do human things, like work, be with your family, love, and venerate all that supports you. Eat well, be bastos, enjoy anime, dance. Then, touch God’s face and cry.

Needless to say, my desire for the deepest mysteries and my true self-realization and God-realization may potentially destroy the life I made.

Dreaming of an Answer

Last night, before going to bed, I asked the spirits, my dream guide, and my dream team (hehe) to allow me to have a lucid dream. I wrote in my journal five times:

May I wake within my dream and be aware of it

That night, the dream was profound, but astonishingly simple.

I remember seeing nothing, neither white nor black. There was no body, no self, but a simple flute playing. Out of the ethers, in this place where nothing is seen, but everything is heard, a flute played somberly, solemnly, and solitary. It held both loving and lonely notes of peace and conciliation, held in space for minutes at a time, or just microseconds. Time here was different.

In between the long-held notes, transition notes were tweeted with vibrato.

In a way, I felt I was conducting the song, making my own music.

My feeling was that I was calling myself to myself. I was both the flute notes and the flute at the same time.

It sounded very familiar to this song: I pulled up to describe it to you all.

As I transitioned between this image-less zone to my body, in the space between waking and sleeping, I heard a puppy whimper. It was hurt, desiring my comfort. I felt compassion for it but knew to keep my distance. I sent it an energy ball of love and reassurance and turned away. I wondered, was this my ego self crying? Or someone I know?

Immediate Realizations

When I woke up, I immediately knew I traveled to a dimension I’ve never visited before — either in my dreams, sound, or medicine journeys. In some esoteric traditions, what I experienced would be called the beginning of God-realization realms, though I cannot say for sure.

In the past, I have had dreams of grand classical music orchestras, and to me, I interpreted that as reaching a high state of bliss in physical life. But a single echoing flute…?

Inside myself, I felt a deep knowing. The questions I had about Christ consciousness and moksha almost seemed irrelevant; I can have both this expanded awareness and live fully as a human as well. I also felt, in my bones and deep in my soul, the hardness and resentment I’ve been feeling for a particular person and situation softened. My ego, for once, felt content with the state of affairs of my life.

As I rolled out of bed, my left shoulder ached I asked my wife how many times the baby woke up that morning? Four times. I didn’t recall her crying once. I surmise I went into such a deep level of consciousness that I didn’t move for hours, leaving my body in one position, and not even a screaming baby in the middle of the night woke me up. Further evidence of how deep my dream state was.

Later that morning, I pulled out my clubs and went through my calisthenics flow, and there… as I reached to the heavens with my clubs in “palm tree pose,” I felt the celestial energies energize me, clean me, and ground me to Mother Earth.

I wept, wept, wept for the beauty and gift of life… and every pain, challenge, it has given me opportunities to realize myself. I suppose the tears from heaven through me, down my face, down to my feet, ground me to Earth. Again, I remember, the most important thing about being human is being human. Perhaps the flute was calling me back into Earth, myself, in whatever form it is.

Hope you all have a wonderful beginning of the Year of the Horse.

Much love,

Miko