What if transcendence isn’t a ladder we climb but a descent we resist?

In this solo episode, I explore an intuition that first confronted me in my own therapy — especially when I began taking my dreams seriously. The symbols that unsettled me most were the ones that betrayed my conscious morality and stirred disgust or erotic charge. And yet, those very images carried psychic energy that felt unmistakably sacred.

Bringing together Bataille’s claim that the sacred can be entered through the latrine, Philip K. Dick’s idea of the “trash stratum,” alchemical transformation, Lacan’s notion of jouissance, and Kristeva’s theory of abjection, I challenge the spiritual-material dualism that elevates prayer above orgasm and transcendence above embodiment.

If the sacred erupts precisely where identity destabilizes — in what we expel, repress, or deem impure — then the places we most want to reject may not be obstacles to depth. They may be its doorway.