Tenacious Magic Spacer/Process ~ Notes from the Alchemical Process of Writing

Some behind-the-scenes insights as the action heats up

Odilon Redon, 1910

This post is about the original serial, emergent novel, Tenacious Magic, I’ve been offering on this Substack since January. Every Friday I post a chapter and the story unfolds with reader input. It’s part memoir, part historical speculation. If you’d like to know more about the project, I recommend you start here with the Introduction or here with Chapter 1. If you haven’t been reading, this post may be a little out of left field. But, maybe still worthwhile!

Dear Friends,

I hit a block in the writing. Rather than push through it, I thought I’d offer a bit of behind-the-scenes. I think the remedy for helping my characters is to share where I, 2023 Skye, am right now.

The truth is: Things are about to get serious and I feel scared.

The scared has lots of stories attached to it. Some of them are mine; some are ancestral; some are collective. The wound of persecution is present—that collective feminine fear of being burned at the stake for baring your soul, breasts, or truth; for daring to be bold and free from the constraints of the patriarchy. The fear of judgment (maybe less terrifying, but more pernicious) is also present with its eternal question: “What will they think of me?” And the fear of being misunderstood is here with its sincerity of purpose. I would be dishonoring myself, the story and you, Reader, if I didn’t presence these fears.

But, fear is just a shield. Fear keeps me from feeling the more intense feelings roiling under the surface of the waters, in the depths: anger and regret. This is what I have been working with for the past weeks and this is where the gems of wisdom in this alchemical process lie.

Before I unpack the feelings, I want to state the facts. I know that some of you are reading along with me and won’t need this update. Others of you may. To bring us all together, here’s where we’re at in a nutshell:

I’m writing a story about my relationship with a spiritual teacher, H, in the 2010s in New York City. This story is autobiographical—which is to say it’s my version of what happened and not at all something you might call “true” or “untrue.” It’s a memory of a particularly vivid and important time in my life catalyzed by the arrival of this man, a great teacher and wise being. The story has been condensed and there have been many choices made already in the telling. Your comments and questions have shaped some of my choices and my intuition has guided the rest of the process.

The story is about an initiatory process that I went through with this teacher…I’d call it “the initiation of the priestess” or the awakening of the Divine Feminine. You might call it a kundalini awakening. It was a process of great spiritual, psychological, and physiological transformation. I was not on retreat or in India or ton a pilgrimage in the Himalayas, I was living my life as a wife and new mother in New York City. H was also not a guru in the traditional sense—he didn’t even like the label “teacher”—he was a being of considerable wisdom and power who came into my life and taught me maybe more than anyone else has. In the Tibetan tradition, you might call this a “root guru.” I certainly loved him the way one might love a guru.

Actually, let’s make that present tense: I love him that way. I love him still and always. The relationship between the student and teacher on the path is a relationship of deep love and trust, ideally. Things got complicated…as they often do. But, I still and will always love this person and feel deep gratitude for what we went through together.

After three years of platonic love, our love became amorous and also erotic. ALL the loves were present. We never became sexual partners, but we crossed the line into an intimacy and physical touch that changed everything about our relating and ultimately led to our parting ways. That’s where we are in the telling of the story. We are just now approaching and will cross that line in Chapter 19.

As soon as I can write it.

The problem is…Oh, where to start? The problem is we were both married. The problem is the power dynamics were asymmetrical. The problem is I was nearly mad with spiritual energy—Shakti. The problem is the wounds in the archetypal relationship of the sacred marriage—the shadow cast over our work together. The problem is the cultural obsession with making someone right and someone wrong. The problem is…we are humans: fallible, imperfect, messy.

The other part of this book is the story of the writer, Katherine Mansfield, who lived in the early 20th Century. Her relationship with the great spiritual teacher, Gurdjieff, had many parallels to my relationship with H. When Katherine started coming to me in visions and dreams while I was working with H, I believed initially I had been her in the past life. Later, I came to understand what I think is closer to the truth: her restless spirit came to find liberation through my experience and karmic processing of a situation much like the one she found herself in right before her death. She and G had an affair—whether physical or subtle, I can’t be sure—and she had feelings about it all that died with her; her process was interrupted by physical death. I made a vow to tell her story and in the telling, find a path to expressing and integrating what she could not.

So, back to the emotions. It’s funny because H always said to me: “No emotions, be dry…to not feel is to be free.” For three years, I tried to control and master and transcend my feelings and to some extent, so did he. In the end, what happened was as a result of feelings and I believe the liberation also lies in the feeling of the feelings. So a few words about the nature of the feelings that arise on the edge of this precipice…or trust fall…or leap of faith…or fall from grace…depending on your perspective. For me, it was all of them.

As I always say, “feeling is healing.”

Anger. Anger is the emotion I have the hardest time with for reasons having to do with who I am and my upbringing, I never learned to express my anger outwardly in constructive and beneficial ways. Instead, I turned it inward on myself. That seemed to me safer at the time, but it led to the development of a harsh inner critic. I’ve worked with this for a long time. So, it’s no surprise that the most intense feeling in this experience…the one that is blocking me most…is anger.

To be honest, it wasn’t until a close friend—an advanced tantric adept—encouraged me to own my part in this process that I even knew I was carrying anger.

I was talking to him about the shadows in the consort dynamic; about how the masculine shadow of domination and extraction is easy to see and condemn in this cultural moment, but the feminine shadow is murkier.

He wrote to me:

The feminine shadow in these instances is much less talked about and much harder to name. That does not diminish or excuse the *actual* dark patriarchal shit going on one bit. Not one bit. But the conversation still needs to widen for real change to arrive and stabilize. 

In your writing, name the voice that (still) wants to cancel him and how that move would give you power in the eyes of the public. Name how even now that part is present and that groove is cut in culture to make it easy to play the victim role.

The masculine is often blamed because the power tends to lie there, while the feminine is seen as the victim. The feminine shadow includes wanting to cozy up to the power-holder or being attracted to worldly power; wanting to surrender the will in order to be free from from karmic responsibility (not possible); being afraid to wield our own enormous power and projecting it onto the male other; the desire to be desired (which is one form of currency the patriarchy grants us)…this hasn’t been as widely discussed or explored. And then there is the shadow of righteousness that seeks to destroy when the perceived (or real) trespass has happened.

When he sent me this message I looked for the anger he was talking about within me and couldn’t find it. For a couple of days I walked around thinking, “Oh, yeah. I can see how someone might feel that way, but I don’t. I don’t want to cancel him. I love him. We were both doing our best. We made mistakes, but so much beauty came out of it all…” This is true, but incomplete.

I walked around believing this was the full story until one day I got really curious. I thought…How can it be that I have NO anger? When I meditated on it, something started to swirl in me…and then it began to rise and radiate and suddenly I was engulfed in flames of rage. The flames were so intense, I feared they might destroy me…or him…or everything. I wanted to SLAY. I was finally in touch with a part of me I had been suppressing: the one who was and still is angry.

Finding my anger helped me realize the feeling of impotence I’ve carried with me all these years was actually MY OWN DOING. I’ve spent so much time trying to make sense of what happened, trying to protect H, trying to see the whole thing compassionately, that I’ve ignored the most searing feeling. The anger is actually where my power was then and is now. This is, I think, what scared me about it and why I suppressed it. My power lies in my anger and outrage and expression of grief over the violation of boundaries and trust. I squashed that anger and in doing so, squashed a big part of my potency.

My friend was right, this suppressed rage can come out in the form of vengeance, retribution. For me (true to my pattern) it turned into silence and shame. I still don’t want to take him down—but, I do feel really angry about some of what happened.

I can see now how NOT owning my anger would diminish the story, how it neuters me as a player in the action. I can feel the suppressed anger and silenced voices of so many in this and similar dynamics of asymmetrical power. I want to own my anger without needing to take him down.

I can say now with certainty that I am angry about what happened. I am angry that my trust was violated. I am angry that I suppressed my own creativity and writing, my voice, for years because he told me to. I am angry that he used me, my Shakti—like the dark masculine extracts from the Earth herself for gain. And I am angry that he knowingly took advantage of my love and my innocence for a baser gratification.

(Now, I am resisting the temptation to excuse him again. I will leave it for now at this clear expression of my anger.)

Shame/Regret. The shame mostly comes from the suppressed anger I turned back in on myself. But, there are parts of this process I can and must own. Maybe the better term is regret. I feel regret and remorse for ways in which I participated in what happened.

I feel regret about the infidelity even though my husband and I were in a murky relationship to our commitment at that point. We were exploring an “open marriage,” but I can feel how I manipulated our situation subtly to excuse what I really wanted. I wasn’t totally honest at that time because I felt bound by the marriage vows. I excused this by pointing to our growing estrangement and his anger. I also told myself it wasn’t that bad because H and I never had sex. I was walking a fine line in order to justify my actions. I wish I’d had the strength and capacity…the maturity…to handle it with more transparency and honesty. I didn’t then. I regret that.

I feel regret about allowing myself to be controlled, not having the strength of character or personal power to stop what was happening. At the same time, I can see that I was being controlled by forces way beyond me—archetypal, personal shadow (wounds) in me and H. So, maybe this is wishful thinking. There’s also some shame about the fact that I was happy, even thrilled, about what happened; about H’s wanting me, his desire for me. I longed for this moment and it came to pass. I felt chosen. I was riding that high for a little while—I could say my confidence and my sexuality needed the jump start after the birth of my daughter. I could justify it. But, I can also own that it was also aggrandizing. My ego was involved.

The remaining feelings are easier to share. Maybe I find them easier to understand or more palatable. There are also contextual complexities of this dysfunctional culture of “normal” we live within. I will name a few to presence them:

Compassion. I feel enormous compassion for everyone in the story and all the beings who find themselves navigating spiritual/erotic dynamics. Who is to blame? Him. Me. No one. Culture. Everyone. What is the point of blame? It’s about being accountable for our actions, learning, repairing, doing better. What is unconscious, concealed and in shadow will ultimately be revealed. And this is good.

I must also acknowledge that while H was and is a highly developed spiritual being, I believe he wasn’t as developed or mature sexually and relationally. When we became romantic and intimate, he reverted to a quite young and seemingly inexperienced part. He was uncomfortable expressing his feelings. He was awkward and it seemed to me, almost like a teenager. At the time, I couldn’t see this. I thought I was dealing with one H. The discrepancies confused me, but I put them aside because they were incongruent with how I wanted to see him. Now, I can see that he was out of his depth in this domain. I have compassion for the boys we do not initiate into manhood.

It must be recognized that spiritual development and sexual development are two different things. I feel this ignorance/shadow is present in the MANY, MANY stories of gurus abusing their power for sexual gratification. Holding great spiritual power is a trip! People throw themselves at your feet. How can an uninitiated, underdeveloped human being handle this? This is a big question.

Finally, I feel awe. I feel awe at the power of the archetypes moving through us human beings as we relate and grow. It may be that neither of us could have changed the course of what wanted to happen through us. I feel grace and gratitude to have been a part of such a beautiful and incredible tale. And I feel humility and a sense of responsibility in the process of repair and healing at work here. The truth is I am STILL IN IT. This writing is part of the same movement of energy out from source and back again.

I guess the ultimate healing would be what we call “forgiveness”…for H and for myself. I have to forgive myself, too. A teacher of mine, Nicholas Janni, once said this about forgiveness:

In this work experience tells us that forgivenesses is not something we ‘do’. It is something that can arise when there has been enough emotional nakedness, enough true owning of choices, and enough real facing/feeling of all the effects of an action or a situation. In a relational space. 

Then hearts may open again. And ‘forgiveness’ may naturally arise. 

I will write towards forgiveness, friends.

I know I would do things differently now. I have already. I learned so much from what happened. One great gift of the experience was that I made a promise to myself after it was all over that I would never do that to anyone—I would never abuse the Shakti or use my spiritual power over another person for personal pleasure or gain…or really for any reason. I saw firsthand how magnetic, how powerful these forces are. Even now, I take the ethical aspects of holding the power and wisdom of the Shakti very seriously. Does this mean I always know how to wield it? No. But, it does mean I think twice and I try to bring my motives into the light in every interaction where I feel these energies at work. I also consult with trusted advisors and have spiritual peers I can be very vulnerable with. I know they will tell me what I cannot see myself. More spiritual leaders need to be in communities of peers with whom they can continue to process their own shadows.

The hard part is that Shakti has little regard for conventional morality. She is in love with LIFE and will break a rule to inspire passion and Eros. I don’t think this *has to* mean hurting others or behaving unethically. But, it does mean evaluating some of our cultural values, practices, and norms that are NOT in alignment with the Laws of Nature and with LIFE. She will have to keep breaking things as long as they are already broken.

I offer these feelings as “mine” because I am hosting them. But, I believe they are bigger than me and belong to many. I believe that the passing of initiation through the sacred consort dynamic and harnessing the magic in the polarity of the masculine and feminine to awaken the divine force of Shakti, Kundalini, Eros is an important human capacity and spiritual technology that must be brought out of the shadows and into the light in order to cleanse it of generations of patriarchal conditioning and suppressed sexual shadow dynamics. I honor the rich tradition of this path—call it Tantra or Alchemy or as Gurdjieff did: The Way of the Sly Man—it extends back through time to the beginning and it will be with us always. I pray we can return to—or find our way to new—rituals that encourage a healthy and beneficial relationship between the masculine and feminine (within all of us) and use of spiritual power as the force that runs the Universe and runs through us.

When I started this project in January, I knew it would work on me. It is called Tenacious Magic, after all. And the magic has been in effect from the moment I published the first chapter. I am so grateful for this space to give voice to what has been living inside me. I can only do that because of the quality of the reception I feel here in this shared space. Thank you.

I will let these revelations sit here in the light and with you for a few days before I get back to the writing. I already feel more clear about the way forward. My hope is that we can—together—hold our heroine now in her naivety and not be too harsh or hasty in our judgment of her actions or his. I leave you with some words from a poem by Hafiz that come to me now:

You have done well in the contest of madness.
You were brave in that holy war.
You have all the honorable wounds of one who has tried to find love
Where the Beautiful Bird does not drink.

If you’re curious about Tenacious Magic, here is the introduction to the project and here is Chapter 1. The last chapter was Chapter 18. The next will be Chapter 19, which you can find here…