This is not the episode I thought I would make. This is the episode it was time to make. And so goes the soul. Tracking where it leads is an ongoing commitment. But I know of no better way to keep the magic alive. 

In this episode

• Seeing and dreaming with the soul
• A heartfelt thank you as I share why I'm moving away from making episodes here for now and where I'm going next

How to stay connected

• Subscribe to receive my occasional (but oh so soulful) writings to your inbox via The Terrible, Beautiful Truth
• Get on my Super Top Secret Email List to be the first to know when I make new things (a few times a year to your inbox)

Thank you so much for being in this space with me. All of these episodes will remain posted. Feel free to revisit and listen any time. 

In soul,

McCall

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
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• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

Western culture is rich in ways to keep us chasing the outer dream and pitiful in ways to facilitate the actualization of an inner soul vision. Our ability to dream with soul and bring forth what lies deep within us has been hijacked by the cultural delusion that tells us we can have whatever we want, when we want it, how we want it--an affront to nature.

How to create, heal, and live with soul in a culture that's done its best to cut soul out of the picture is the work and obsession of my life. 

In this episode I share what I've learned over the past 15 years from my own Falling Into Soul journey:

• Three main reasons it's hard to create with soul and three tools to make the hard of it easer
• The difference between dreaming with soul and chasing the dreams you've been conditioned to dream
• Self-inquiries to help you align with your own soul way

With love,

McCall

Related episode: How To Recognize the Will of the Soul 

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
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• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

What happens to the ego through the processes of alchemy?

In this episode let's explore:

• the progression of ego from Tyrant to Team Player
• the job of a healthy, alchemized ego in sacred alignment
• the partnership between ego and soul
• how to navigate the ego disappointment and dissatisfaction that comes with soul alignment 

With love,

M

‣  get the "disappointing and lovely" sticker

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

Alchemy is a terrible but brilliant series of processes that burn, drown, rot pressurize, and distill every extraneous thing out of the way so you can see what is there. What the fire leaves behind is who you really are. What the fire leaves behind is all the things about you that cannot be left behind. What remains when all else fades is how we know what's ours to live in a new way.

In this episode:

• the threshold between being initiated to the true self and the pressing need to integrate the true self in all facets of life
• the spirit addiction or impulse to keep cleaning the slate, reinventing yourself or undergoing one more process of alchemy that could maybe possibly change who you are and what your life is about this time
• how alchemy is not a process of transformation so much as a revelation
• prompts and inquiries for intuiting where you are on your alchemical journey

With love,

M

Poem by Kaviji

See photos of The Octopus Tree

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

Announcing my new book Down from the Mountain: On Being Human after Spiritual and Alchemical Initiation now available for preorder.

In this episode, I go over the table of contents for the new book so you can get a feel for what it's all about.

Whether you’ve read The Second Half of the Mountain and are ready for more or you’re just stumbling upon me now, Down from the Mountain holds its own as a book exploring the delicate coming-back-to-life work many of us face after undergoing the alchemical initiation required to uncover, align with, and live from the core self.

Thrilled to be back in this space with you!

McCall

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

What we think we want and what we say we want might not be the same as what the soul wants. The will of the soul is not always immediately known. It's the unconscious continually made conscious through astute listening to body aches, dreams and synchronicities, strange intuitive pulls, deep watery feelings, and life itself. We live in so much mystery, so much magic, so much unknown.

In this episode we explore ways the unconscious (will of the soul) attempts to make itself conscious in our lives:

• Loss of motivation or focus for things you once loved to do or feel like you should want to do.
• Being thwarted, pulled back or seemingly sabotaged when you try to execute your plans or move in a certain direction
• Deep watery feelings and emotions, often arising at inopportune times
• Body signals. Aches. Pains that come out of nowhere. Illness.
• Strange intuitive pulls that often seem backward or counterintuitive.

And the big question: What's the difference between following the pull of the soul and self-sabotage? Because yeah, they can look a lot alike sometimes.

With love for the the soul that is such a brilliant and gorgeous interrupter of plans, 

McCall

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

In this episode, Michael DeMaria and I explore the rich, complex, and paradoxical themes of burnout and renewal central to our lives as empaths, recovering codependents (over givers) and creative types.

Speaking from our personal experiences with burnout and how-not-to-burn-out, Michael and I explore: 

• The importance of the soul (water, earth) in tempering the creative fire and air of spirit
• How to honor and be in conversation with instead of pathologizing processes of the soul that feel dark, slow, and counter to creative productivity
• Learning to differentiate between the ego being fed and the soul being fed through creative purpose 
• How to be who we are....sustainably

I also share the story of how I burned out nine years ago on fulfilling my soul purpose, what I did to recover, and how I engage with purpose differently now.

With love,

McCall

Michael's Website
Click here to watch the video version of this podcast

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

No amount of alchemical death and rebirth cycles can change who you are. It can only reveal it. And then the task becomes to live it, to anchor the unchangeable essence of Who You Are into your ever-changing human existence. Wildness and form. Dancing.

So far in this podcast, I’ve talked a lot about what I call the Second Half of the Mountain Journey–the dark nights of the soul, dark nights of the spirit, and distillation. These alchemical processes are necessary to carry us from initial awakening to permanent alignment with the core self. 

But what happens when we reach the summit? What are the next alchemical phases and processes we go through once we have an abiding alignment with the unbreakable core within? What is life like then? What’s the reward for completing all seven stages of alchemy?

Exploring in this episode: 

• What comes after going through the dark nights and distillation?
• What is the Philosopher’s Stone?
• The alchemical phase of Radiation and how to deal with its devoidness 
• The ongoing conversation between ego and soul or the immediate and infinite self.

With love,

McCall

Related episodes:
Living From the Unbreakable Core That Is Uniquely Yours
Born From Nothing--Magical Will

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

The alchemy of inner transformation is not a self-improvement project. It’s a participation in the soul’s evolution. It may not improve your life at all at first. It’s a rather destructive process–dismantling your beliefs, identities, small hopes and dreams, tearing your life at each carefully stitched seam to reveal what’s unbreakable underneath. It gets worse before it gets worse sometimes, so faithless and consuming, leaving you hanging by nothing but a single thread–your own breath tethering you to life in a place it feels like you never intended to be. And at some point, you realize this is it…there’s nowhere else to go, nowhere to hide, nothing to save you from having to live what’s right here now. So you breathe the breath that is yours to breathe. You take the thread that is yours to weave, and without pretense, fanfare, or promise of any particular outcome you live the impossible–the dream that won’t stop dreaming, the breath that won’t stop breathing, the thread that won’t stop weaving you.

In this episode, we explore: 

• The difference between self-improvement and transformation
• The difference between using your creative powers and resources to manifest things to make your life look good vs. using your creative powers to go through inner transformation
• Looking at the Dark Night of the Spirit from a new angle--The Great White Nothing
• The "log and fire" analogy to understand the difference between the Dark Night of the Soul and the Dark Night of the Spirit and why the Dark Night of the Spirit can be so challenging
• Three keys for living through The Great White Nothing/Dark Night of the Spirit

Reading of my piece "The Great White Nothing" put to music at 18:45

With love for and from the Nothingness,

McCall

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening

"One of the hallmarks of maturity is to let some of what seemed like your best hopes go, especially if the tide of life is actually taking them from you and turning your face in another direction."  -David Whyte, What to Remember When Waking, The Disciplines of Everyday Life

In this episode, I explore:

• When hopes can be helpful and when they can get in the way
• Why following your heart might not be enough sometimes
• How to identify actual flow 
• Learning to recognize the tides of life, the seasons that are ours to live
• The hopes and dreams of the ego vs. the wild will and dream of the soul
• What is the will of the soul? 
• The alchemy that prepares us to partner with the unknown and the will of the soul

With love and gratitude for listening,

McCall

LINKS:
--> David Whyte's What to Remember When Waking
-->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening
-->Click here for 20% off audiobook
-->Click here for episode transcripts

EPISODE QUOTES:

If you can withstand the disappointment of your ego, you can live the wild dream of your soul.

"Are you really going with the flow or are you pretending like you're going with the flow and secretly paddling underneath?" -my dear friend and Anam Cara

Support the show

• Read The Terrible, Beautiful Truth on Substack
• Stay connected through my Email List
• Get a copy of my NEW book Down from the Mountain directly from me
• Read or listen to my new book Down from the Mountain
• Read or Listen to my first book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening