Kaelan + Ecstatic Self
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Sneak Peek: Introduction to new book
🕑 Added 2025-09-09 21:00:50 +0000 UTCHey y'all! I know you enjoy a sneak peek of what is in the works. Here's the introduction as it currently stands for my new book. Sooooo excited to share this with you!
Introduction
Come, let us leave these poured-concrete city streets and wander barefoot back to softer, moss-lined paths. Let us drink in starlight through our skin, inhale mist into our root-like lungs. Let us journey past the crumbling farmhouses of decades gone, past the cathedrals with their spires that clawed for the heavens, past the fallen ramparts of forgotten kings. Let us slip sideways into ancient places where light shines from crystalline palaces forged from spirit and song. Let us remember the forgotten days where thought-waves were woven with fingers and soul-force could carve stone.
Let us revisit the places of deep knowing of the sages who dwelled in the ages when human voices were secondary forms of communication, for we spoke heart to heart. Let us return to times where consciousness was a tactile force we could alter with our breath and feel in our pulses and skins. Where thought could summon storms, steer winds, or melt mountain rocks. Where our intentions could open portals between worlds and impart deep wisdom beyond logic.
Let us reclaim the landscape of our ancestors, where we lived in harmony with the world. People who shed their inhibitions and fears, galloping wildly into the trees, capering madly, lost in ecstasy. Those who loved fiercely, moaned primally, and screamed rapturously, unabashedly.
To walk the Ecstatic Path is to journey down old roads that have been long abandoned, to return to forgotten ways of peace, joy, love, and presence. We must recover the old ways before we abandoned our ancestral lands for the lure of factories and industry. It is not a rejection of modernity; it is a recognition that far-greater civilizations have risen before. Communities tied to truth, balance, and reciprocity with the natural world. Ages ago, humans dwelled in such a way that spirit was tactile, consciousness could alter the physical world directly. Though the world has drifted from that idyllic state, we are slowly returning, and those with intentionality can access that higher-vibratory way of being here and now.
The Ecstatic Path is not a religion—for it asks you to accept no beliefs, take nothing on faith. It provides no dogma, dictates no Gods to worship, no moralistic structure of right and wrong. Instead, it invites you to explore, to uncover, and to remember a truth through your direct experience. To overturn stones and hear their whispers. To converse with roaring waterfalls and unearth wisdom within. To touch centuries-old trees and have them over insights. To believe nothing because some text or someone in robes told you, but because you’ve seen with your own eyes and felt with your own heart. It is inclusive of wherever you journey from, whatever path you tread. It does not ask you to convert or disavow what brought you to this point. It does not ask you to jump from one path to another.
Some paths are paths of lightning—shocking the waker into direct states of enlightenment. Some paths are paths of fire—burning away the accumulated dross until only truth remains. This is a path of falling water—no rush, just trust that one days the droplet will reach its destination and merge with the water below. There is no hurry; there is only presence. Many paths encourage aspirants to forsake worldly life in pursuit of the world beyond; this path encouragers walkers to savor each moment, for our present humanity is the most sacred.
Many spiritual traditions pit human against heaven; there is a cosmic battle between the saved and unsaved, the enlightened and the sleeping. They encourage a sense of relentless aspiration, accumulation, achievement. You work for empowerments, siddhis (magical powers), enlightenment, liberation, or more. Spirit is something beyond one’s self for which we must always reach. This path, in contrast, says God is here: in this breath, in this moment, in this pulse. You don’t need to achieve the divine, for everything already is the divine. Every aspect of reality is God incarnate experiencing itself. So there’s nothing to achieve because you already are. All there is to do is to remember.
This is a post-enlightenment tradition. Many spiritual paths encourage seekers to achieve liberation/moksha/enlightenment/nirvana so that the wheel of incarnation can be broken and suffering can end. They do not see that this life is a precious gift; we chose to come here to be in these bodies, to be in these lives. It is a sacrilege to view these fleshy machines as something to transcend or discard. They should be celebrated. We should dance with gratitude each day that we have been given the opportunity for a precious human life.
Furthermore, if you reach liberation one day, what then? Many traditions agree that you will merge back with cosmic consciousness or the divine oversoul that created all things. After that remerging occurs, after we reabsorb into the Godhead…is that the end? No. There are no beginnings or endings. For then, in our cosmic form, we will spin out new universes, new realities, and we will eventually again re-enter the cycle of death and rebirth, karma and karmic accumulations. There is no escape; there is no end point.
So then, there should be no rushing. We should cultivate exquisite gratitude for the here and now. We should celebrate these bodies, these human existences. We should strive to recover the practices and tools that lead to deep satisfaction and enjoyment of these earthly lives, for there is ever only this moment. And then the next moment. And we should relish them as deeply as possible.
The raindrop doesn’t hurry; it falls at the pace gravity pulls it. While it falls, it thinks itself separate from all the other raindrops around it; but this is never true. It is never truly isolated; it is merely its temporary state that makes it seem such. Eventually, it will fall onto rocks or soil and make its way to the deep underground aquifers or the ocean depths, where it will remember: I am the water. I am something more vast than I could have ever imagined. I am everywhere.
But even then, its story is not done, for it will evaporate, become vaporous clouds, and eventually fall as an isolated raindrop yet again, separate from all other raindrops. There is no beginnings or endings to this cycle. So the water must learn to enjoy itself, unhurriedly. Wherever it is, whatever it’s form, to simply flow and accept. To celebrate its current circumstances.
It is the dewdrop lingering on a curving blade of grass. It is the mist in the forest glen, heavy like a blanket hugging the earth. It is the waterfall’s roar, the fountain in the rose garden, the drip from the stalactites in the deep-earth caves. It is the sexual excretions that flow down your leg. It is the spittle that flies from your mouth when you laugh. It is the tears of loss and release. It is the sacred pool of the temple oracle. It is all things.
It was here before the cathedrals and their prayer books, before the pyramids and the sutras, before enlightenment became something to be earned. It wasn’t written down. It was danced, sung, and moaned into the night. And though empires rose and paved it over, the path remains for those who remember the barefoot ways we walked. Those who dare to find a spark of knowing carried on the fog, whispered into the moss, sensed in the bones.
So, let us stomp our feet on the rain-drenched grass and throw our arms wide, inviting the lightning to strike. Let the old storm Gods come and reveal our already-dwelling divinity. There is no-one and nothing that is not God. There is nothing that is not temporary—and also eternal. It is the fragility paired with timelessness that makes this journey so heartbreakingly beautiful.
Come, sit beside me by the falling waters. Let us remember who we are and from whence we came. Let us laugh and let us weep. Let us make love and let us linger. For the journey is long and we only have each other to walk with on the road home. Let the raindrops fall and the mist gather in beads on our bare skin. Let the sweat pour from our bodies.
This road leads back to source, but it meanders. It is not a straight shot to divine reunification, but a beautifully serpentine, undulating gravel path beside the holy springs. It begins where you are and takes the time it takes. And when you step along it, let it be barefoot, so the sacred earth may remember you.
So let the rains soak you. Let the waters wash away what isn’t you. Let your sacred longing to know God be your guide. And then, beloved, step on, step on.
Comments
Rob Russell
Beautiful Kae! My favorite lines: This road leads back to source, but it meanders. It is not a straight shot to divine reunification, but a beautifully serpentine, undulating gravel path beside the holy springs. Trust me I have been on that serpentine path. Now a sitting next to the stormy Atlantic Ocean appreciating the power of nature.
Kae Strouse
Aww thank you for sharing it with him. I am glad you guys enjoyed!
Robert
Sharing a leather chair I read this beautiful introduction to my husband of 28 years looking out over Crater Lake. What a magical place to share your magical mystical vision. All is perfect. Thanks!
