What if Collapse Leads to Sovereignty?

Riddle me this. How does a left-hand path yogi actually travel through the cremation grounds of NOW?

By doing what she’s always done, dance through multiple worlds at once. And bring as many of her humans along for the ride as she dances.

The “she” is me. Shocking, right?

My entire adult life, from age 19 onward, has been spent straddling two worlds. Institutional, systemic structures of the colonizers and the uninhibited free-flow of a bohemian life. I’ve touched the systemic infrastructure only when necessary and mostly for survival, though occasionally out of curiosity. I dwell in the unknown realm of what’s possible, I always have. I can see things coming on the horizon long before they become reality because of how my brain functions. What made me an award-winning photojournalist also allows me to see what’s coming, in all it’s beauty or terror, long before it arrives.

I say this without ego or arrogance. If you poke through the journals of my 20s, 30s and 40s, you’ll see entries, musings and plans for things that were too early at the time and then became terrifyingly true over the years. I stepped into the institutional world fully three years ago and it almost completely destroyed me. I blew the whistle hard on that corruption and got flattened. And, well, that’s as it should be. Someone like me will die within a rigid, corrupt structure like that– as so many people have learned the hard way, especially now.

After my recent shit show of emergent tech corporate/startup purgatory, I’ve landed in the liminal space of my own making. Built in deep collaboration with my creative partner through a podcast and methodology that is both a compass and trojan horse for everyone who is now staring down a specter they bypassed for decades.

The masks of their institutions deteriorating so rapidly and so thoroughly that they are left in the midst of an existential crisis. Now is the time of monsters, and for the millions among us who trusted the systems of the colonizers– extractive corporations, gated walls of academia, vaulted halls of federal institutions– today’s reality is beyond brutal.

The existential crises of forced AI adoption coupled with tech billionaires and their consolidation of power and wealth is forcing many knowledge workers with years of hard-earned experience to question every system they held as truth and built a life upon thinking the foundation was solid.

The colonizer's foundations were never solid. They were always built on quicksand, we simply believed and trusted the generations before us who said "this is how you build a meaningful life."

The reality that many of us left-hand path practitioners have always seen clearly and avoided our entire adult lives is now smacking millions in the face in a way that is causing a mass destabilization and psychosis. I wish such a disillusionment on no-one. Seeing the corruption so clearly at the age of 23 was a horrible and sorrow-filled event that I still carry. But I also know that seeing through the veil of the colonizer at age 23 secured the path that I had already chosen to walk. I knew I would never sacrifice my energy and life force to a corporation or play by the rules of a system designed to extract life until the body of labor collapses.

But here we are. Millions of people are realizing the choice was always false. That survival required adherence to a system designed to extract and destroy and the choices they thought they were making were just the same false sense of sovereignty at the hands of a system or institution that cared nothing for human life. The system cares only about profit and redistributing wealth to those who hold the keys to that profit.

Throughout my adult life, I’m the one friends call when they need to hit the fuck it switch on their life. Leaving extractive jobs, ending toxic marriages, choosing a path in life that only makes sense to someone like me – I’m that friend. And I’ve always embraced that role with gratitude and care. My path isn’t clean and smooth by any means. Hitting the fuck it switch is messy. Navigating a left-hand path is messy. As it should be. But it is always worth it, eventually.

But staying in frameworks one has outgrown, evolved past or that one can clearly see is destroying the best parts of their soul is a misery I wish on no one. Yet many are staying. Many have stayed too long. And millions are being ejected from systems in a way that impacts their identity. Core-shaking identity crises are happening at scale across two generations who were raised to be compliant to the system and promised a comfortable life of work, home and retirement when you’re too spent to enjoy that 401k anyway.

Millions are realizing the entire system was a lie. Designed to keep us consuming, distracted and obedient. And watching that awakening happen at scale as someone who has been publicly writing and warning about this very scenario for two decades is equally heartbreaking.

But here’s the thing that I’ve learned over the many years of creating new pathways through slow decay – there is always a way.

The way will not be what you think it should be, or could be. The way is just that– the way forward. In order to step into the next chapter of surviving this economic transformation into the unknown, one has to release the clinging to what they thought their life was going to look like. The way, during the age of monsters, does not exist in decaying systems of extraction or in credit scores defining the value of a life based on one's ability to hold debt.

The way during the time of monsters is regeneration. Are you participating in systems that regenerate life and resources? Or are you participating in systems that keep extracting and hoarding resources? Are you willing to release your status symbols of the empire to step into a simpler life in alignment with how you serve your community? Can you simplify your existence in a way that celebrates time, space and presence? Or will you continue to whirl through your days accumulating as much as possible before it all evaporates?

I offer you this, lovely reader. Crossing the threshold into sovereignty is not for the weak of heart or for those who haven’t done the hard work of self-awareness or ego transformation. But taking off your institutional masks and crossing that liminal space into a world without the weight of the colonizer pressing on your heart and soul is worth it. You’ll make a fucking mess of everything, and that’s as it should be.

For within the ashes of what must burn something you can not imagine will inevitably rise from that empty space. The essence of a life you knew existed for some but could never clearly see or tangibly point to as accessible for yourself. I promise you that what rises will be a reflection of your truth.

What rises from the ashes of your own cremation grounds will be a mirror into your truth – a reflection of what always existed and was buried under the layers of oppression by a system that never wanted you seen. Those of us who do shine and unapologetically walk our truth are a threat to the colonizers – and they know it. History proves this again and again.

As a sovereign creator, your truth is the essence of your life. Don’t adhere to the system so tightly that your essence only surfaces in the full freedom of its expression at the end of your life.

In the age of monsters, we must become sovereign creators and help rebuild a regenerative society as the old world collapses. And we must do it now.