🌟 The year of the serpent has been a powerful series of thresholds: Michael is 60, I turned 50, and after Devin turned 18, he graduated from high school! But sadly, it was not all celebration.
The year started with a nervous system collapse. Due to a big split in my community, after 10 years of service as a lead facilitator for the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA, a mystery school that shaped much of my spiritual life), I decided to step down. The fracture between my soul work and the seminar school was too great, and I needed downtime to reconcile the gap within my own being.
❤️🩹 Shedding that identity was harder than I expected; my sense of purpose and belongingness was tangled up with that role. I spent the winter in a healing sabbatical, where I moved through massive grief, disillusionment, and dysregulation. Eventually, I learned to resource myself in new ways: working on my memoir, honoring my boundaries, and choosing rest.
By Beltane, something new was ready to be born. I completed the first draft of One Fool’s Journey: Life Lessons on Polyamory, Tantra, and Tarot. Writing this memoir helped me release the story of suffering and step into life as a series of initiations. I sent the manuscript to my beloved beta readers and submitted a proposal to publishers. I’d love to see it in print by my next birthday.
🌀 On the threshold of my 50th, I entered a whole new wormhole when I experienced my first QHHT session (Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique). I saw my nervous system like a radio antenna that could dial into different frequencies to receive new codes. I even found relief from the Chronic pain I carried in my feet. So I signed up for an internship to become a certified practitioner and spent over one hundred hours in practice. I’m humbled by how this method penetrates the veil between the mind and the mystery, revealing my soul’s lineage and widening my capacity to work with walk-ins and starseeds.
When traveling to Highden for ISTA, I fell in love with New Zealand. I allowed myself to be undone by the question: Who am I when I’m not holding space for others? This inquiry deepened at Monadic, a gathering with Bruce Lyon, where I had an embodied experience of the eternal core that exists beneath both personality and soul. From this third vantage point, there’s sustainable coherence between all three realms.
💗 Michael joined me for my last Queer ISTA in Seattle. Afterwards, we celebrated his birthday on Whidbey Island. We then participated in a ten-day medicine retreat with Ecstatic Mysticism, in the jungles of Tulum, Mexico. We adopted a beginner’s mind and were surprised by how it enhanced our shared spiritual practice. We discovered a new level of care, co-regulation, and radical acceptance of each other’s true nature.
Perhaps my biggest harvest was releasing the Bodhisattva vow. Throughout my life, I never questioned that I was here to serve the awakening of all beings, even if it cost my own liberation. But in the rainforest, I saw with aching clarity how some beings will always choose suffering, and I want to respect their free will. Letting go of that vow felt like a death and a liberation.
🐢 By year’s end, I went to Kauai with Bruce on a wild and holy mission to sprinkle the ashes of my extra-terrestrial shaman friend, Amrita Joy. We also enjoyed swimming with turtles and soaking in the blue.
Michael’s year was equally rich, starting with a lover’s retreat in Zipolite, a trip to Estonia with Evelyn, and surfing at Tressels with Devin. He took 3 weeks to recover from a surf injury. He’s reclaiming his creativity with improv and sketch comedy. Spiritually, he’s been healing the social stigma of being a male witch. He built a stone mandala at our home temple and converted our front porch to a “catio.”
Our household is now enchanted by two feline tricksters, Chloe and Cyrus, whose wild innocence and chaotic cuteness keep the laughter flowing.
Devin is enjoying a gap year filled with cooking, literature, writing sci-fi, a trip to Hawai’i, and long morning surf sessions with Michael.
📚 Milestones from my writing desk: I contributed to two anthologies: Lives in Tarot and Shaking the Tree. I helped edit my father’s poetry book. I completed a year-long memoir certificate course. And I’m celebrating that I just got my first royalty check after earning out the advance on Sex Shamans!
This year also held its share of goodbyes. I’m mourning the loss of my cousin Humberto and the mystic mother of the Phoenix Goddess Temple, Tracy Elise. And when James and Sharmila’s dog, Sugar, died, they left San Diego. There’s been a whole wave of dear friends moving away: Heika, Jonathan, Ria, Kenny, and baby Luna. Blessings as you follow your respective paths.
🔮 As I look toward next year, I don’t yet know what my next chapter of teaching will look like, but I can feel three distinct mystery schools braiding through me: Quantum Hypnosis, Ecstatic Mysticism, and Highden. I’ll be evolving the initiatory field with Bruce and Attila, exploring embodied soul work, and co-facilitating a new training called “Ecstasy of the Serpent” with Michael in Mexico. (I’m also looking for the right tattoo artist to land my galactic snake armband.)
I hope to connect in 2026, and despite deep political uncertainty, I trust our souls will meet beyond our polarized identities. Until then, I’m sending you warm waves of unconditional love, creativity, truth, and freedom!
Wake up & Dream,
KamalaDevi (They/Them)