Falling Into Soul

Alchemy is a terrible but brilliant series of processes that burn, drown, rot pressurize, and distill every extraneous thing out of the way so you can see what is there. What the fire leaves behind is who you really are. What the fire leaves behind is all the things about you that cannot be left behind. What remains when all else fades is how we know what's ours to live in a new way. In this episode: With love, M Poem by Kaviji See photos of The Octopus Tree Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Announcing my new book Down from the Mountain: On Being Human after Spiritual and Alchemical Initiation now available for preorder. In this episode, I go over the table of contents for the new book so you can get a feel for what it's all about. Whether you’ve read The Second Half of the Mountain and are ready for more or you’re just stumbling upon me now, Down from the Mountain holds its own as a book exploring the delicate coming-back-to-life work many of us face after undergoing the alchemical initiation required to uncover, align with, and live from the core self. Thrilled to be back in this space with you! McCall Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

What we think we want and what we say we want might not be the same as what the soul wants. The will of the soul is not always immediately known. It's the unconscious continually made conscious through astute listening to body aches, dreams and synchronicities, strange intuitive pulls, deep watery feelings, and life itself. We live in so much mystery, so much magic, so much unknown. In this episode we explore ways the unconscious (will of the soul) attempts to make itself conscious in our lives: Loss of motivation or focus for things you once loved to do or feel like you should want to do.Being thwarted, pulled back or seemingly sabotaged when you try to execute your plans or move in a certain directionDeep watery feelings and emotions, often arising at inopportune timesBody signals. Aches. Pains that come out of nowhere. Illness.Strange intuitive pulls that often seem backward or counterintuitive.And the big question: What's the difference between following the pull of the soul and self-sabotage? Because yeah, they can look a lot alike sometimes. With love for the the soul that is such a brilliant and gorgeous interrupter of plans, McCall Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

In this episode, Michael DeMaria and I explore the rich, complex, and paradoxical themes of burnout and renewal central to our lives as empaths, recovering codependents (over givers) and creative types. Speaking from our personal experiences with burnout and how-not-to-burn-out, Michael and I explore: I also share the story of how I burned out nine years ago on fulfilling my soul purpose, what I did to recover, and how I engage with purpose differently now. With love, McCall Michael's Website Click here to watch the video version of this podcast Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

No amount of alchemical death and rebirth cycles can change who you are. It can only reveal it. And then the task becomes to live it, to anchor the unchangeable essence of Who You Are into your ever-changing human existence. Wildness and form. Dancing. So far in this podcast, I’ve talked a lot about what I call the Second Half of the Mountain Journey–the dark nights of the soul, dark nights of the spirit, and distillation. These alchemical processes are necessary to carry us from initial awakening to permanent alignment with the core self. But what happens when we reach the summit? What are the next alchemical phases and processes we go through once we have an abiding alignment with the unbreakable core within? What is life like then? What’s the reward for completing all seven stages of alchemy? Exploring in this episode: With love, McCall Related episodes: Living From the Unbreakable Core That Is Uniquely Yours Born From Nothing--Magical Will Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

The alchemy of inner transformation is not a self-improvement project. It’s a participation in the soul’s evolution. It may not improve your life at all at first. It’s a rather destructive process–dismantling your beliefs, identities, small hopes and dreams, tearing your life at each carefully stitched seam to reveal what’s unbreakable underneath. It gets worse before it gets worse sometimes, so faithless and consuming, leaving you hanging by nothing but a single thread–your own breath tethering you to life in a place it feels like you never intended to be. And at some point, you realize this is it…there’s nowhere else to go, nowhere to hide, nothing to save you from having to live what’s right here now. So you breathe the breath that is yours to breathe. You take the thread that is yours to weave, and without pretense, fanfare, or promise of any particular outcome you live the impossible–the dream that won’t stop dreaming, the breath that won’t stop breathing, the thread that won’t stop weaving you. In this episode, we explore: Reading of my piece "The Great White Nothing" put to music at 18:45 With love for and from the Nothingness, McCall LINKS: -->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook -->Click here for episode transcripts Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

"One of the hallmarks of maturity is to let some of what seemed like your best hopes go, especially if the tide of life is actually taking them from you and turning your face in another direction." -David Whyte, What to Remember When Waking, The Disciplines of Everyday Life In this episode, I explore: With love and gratitude for listening, McCall LINKS: --> David Whyte's What to Remember When Waking -->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook -->Click here for episode transcripts EPISODE QUOTES: If you can withstand the disappointment of your ego, you can live the wild dream of your soul. "Are you really going with the flow or are you pretending like you're going with the flow and secretly paddling underneath?" -my dear friend and Anam Cara Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Why is it sooo hard to connect with the worth that is inherent in our existence? Why isn't awakening to our true nature, to our spiritual and creative gifts enough to heal this wound and actualize our inherent worth? And why do I have such issues with how we use the words "deserve" and "worthy" in the trendy spiritual lexicon? Let's explore. In this episode: With love for the outliers, McCall LINKS: Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness by Adyashanti -->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook -->Click here for episode transcripts QUOTES: "your work, your life, your relationships, will feel so much more fulfilling when your worth isn’t always on the line” Thais Sky “I’d been afraid that I’d somehow been given a life I hadn’t deserved, but that’s ridiculous. We don’t deserve anything–not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.” Ann Patchett, These Precious Days Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Did I just make a trailer for this podcast after two years of doing this podcast? Yeah, I guess that checks out. It usually takes me awhile of doing something important before I understand it enough to say what it is. Such is the way of soul. You don't have to understand the magic for it to be happening. And I'm getting so much better and letting it happen and seeing what happens. With love and deep thanks for being here, McCall --Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening --Click here for 20% off audiobook --Click here for episode transcripts Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

To be a mystic means to want One Thing more than any other of the things. Mystics have an intense and unyielding desire to know and unite with the divine, god, love, beauty, soul, truth, the core of all cores in this life, not in any other life or time. And so, they willingly burn through the fire of any moment to find it. This is why I say mystics are so fucked and so blessed. The mystic heart can't settle for anything less than what it knows it's here to be and do--what can't be said in words or seen in ways the world immediately understands. And it won't stop until you've given your whole life to find it. Let's explore the three desires of the mystic that eclipse all other desires: These desires are actualized through the thread of longing that pulls our lives inside out. Sometimes disruptively. Sometimes quietly. "Longing is the golden thread that takes us home." -Llewelyn Vaughn Lee But what is "home" to a mystic and how does the Great Work of alchemy intersect with the mystic's journey home? With all the love in my mystic human heart, McCall --Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening --Click here for 20% off audiobook --Click here for episode transcripts Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Why do we have to fall into soul? Why can’t we fly or rise into soul? Why is the way of soul paved by disappointment and disillusionment? Isn’t there a way to skip all that? Surely we can outsmart the fall, if we could just tap into our highest and best selves and only act from there, we’d be okay, right? Rise above. Choose love over fear. Light over dark. Afterall, you are only one choice away from a whole different and better life, right? All you have to do is make that choice. What are you waiting for? Wow, do we love these kinds of messages in our frantic and disconnected world hyped up on conquering anything that threatens us. And while there is some truth to these motivational sayings, the fuller truth is more complex and most of us have to fall from the heights of spiritual awakening in order to connect with and live from the depths of soul. But why? Why is the soul down low? And what about the spirit that just wants to fly free? Doesn’t it also matter? In this episode, let's explore: There's some meaty alchemy in this one. Belly up and dig in. If you feel pulled. With love, McCall --Click here for my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening --Click here for 20% off audiobook --Click here for episode transcripts --Related Episode: The Difference Between Soul and Spirit and Why It Matters Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

When the maps you’ve been given don’t match the territory you find yourself having to navigate, you trust the terrain itself and your direct, unique experience with it. This is how to honor and live the soul in a world that gives you a million ways not to. What does it mean to “trust yourself” or “trust your intuition” or “trust the process.” We hear these cliches about trust so often in the spiritual growth and development lanes. But what does it mean to trust? Join me as I unravel these cliches and lay a more realistic groundwork for what it means to trust when you're navigating terrain that is always shifting. In this episode: With love + thank you for listening, McCall LINKS: -->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook -->Click here for Transcripts Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

"There is a secret medicine reserved for those who hurt so hard they can't hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew." -The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks In this episode I explore the dreadful stage of alchemical distillation--the final and brutiful cleansing before the formation of the Philosopher's Stone within. Signs of Alchemical Distillation Outcomes of Alchemical Distillation Distillation is utter disillusionment that leads to utter freedom. This episode is for you if it's for you. If you know, you know. With love, McCall LINKS: -->Click here for 20% off The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook -->Click here to go to show transcripts Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Is it okay to take a break from alchemy and the inner healing work? It's so exhausting and there's always something more to transmute and heal. Does it ever end? Let's explore causes for and ways to mitigate unnecessary exhaustion. I also explore what it means to rest, not only as a way to recover the physical body and energy but as a way to access soul energy and creativity. And finally, what to do when you CAN'T take a break, when the alchemy and life keeps hitting hard and you can't escape having to do things you don't really want to do. With love, McCall Download The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook here Quotes from the show: Even the most beautiful endeavors can be a distraction if the soul has other plans. The heart breaks itself on all its favorite things to align with something deeper, unknown and more true.Crossing the Unknown SeaJenna Whitman's book, SoftlyLINKS: Click here to go to the show Transcripts Download The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook here Related Episode: Ep. 4 Inevitability, Pull of the Soul, and Living the Life That Wants You (Song: Fall From the Lie) Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

When we face and transmute fear, we gain confidence. Confidence that doesn’t depend on things happening in a way we are sure they must happen, but confidence that comes from being insecure, facing the unknown and allowing support and grace to find us in unimagined ways, letting go of certain hopes and trusting that what we can’t yet see or know is there to hold us if we take the frightening steps far enough into the dark for it to find us. In this episode: With love, McCall Download The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook here Quotes from the show: --Alchemy doesn’t save us from shit. Alchemy holds us to facing the shit, facing our deepest fears. The whole point of alchemy is to transmute the shit, transmute the fears, to face the things we feel we cannot face and realize the depths in us that are equipped to face them. --Trusting things to work out in a certain way is not really trusting in life. Life is a manifestation of the mystery. Trusting in it means trusting things to work out in ways you can’t foresee or know. The willingness to move forward even though things aren’t going as planned allows us to be surprised by unknown helpers and graces along the way. --This is the terror, but also the delight and the magic of the unknown: when we face the things we fear we cannot face, we come in touch with the deeper, wilder parts of us that are actually equipped to face them. --“We can find what supports us when nothing supports us. By bearing the unbearable, we go through the desert to arrive at a nurturing oasis we did not know was there”. -James Hollis --"We don't need to learn to let go. We just need to recognize what is already gone." -Zen master Suzuki Roshi Download The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook here Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

An alchemist is one who takes everything as it comes, transforming the harmful into helpful, the ordinary into extraordinary, and the painful into beautiful. Not by way of bypass, but by way of engaging in deep and, at times, disruptive processes. Alchemists turn their back on nothing, knowing that every life circumstance, desired or not, is the critical base matter needed for making gold. Alchemy can be an overwhelming esoteric topic with weird words, cryptic symbols and images, and various interpretations. But you don't have to be a scholar of any of that to transmute and transform your life situations. In this episode, I pare alchemy down to three keys to remember if you want to work magic in your life. With love, McCall Quick quotes from the show: A magical life is no the absence of pain, disappointment, darkness, and heartache. It's living all of that so fully it becomes your beauty. “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” -Rilke "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin “What we cannot hold we cannot process and what we cannot process we cannot transform. And what we cannot transform haunts us.” -Zen Proverb Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Allow, allow, allow. Everything, every being, every process has its own wisdom and magic. I am learning to not interfere, to let it be, let it work its magic. I honestly think this is love: space to be. Love is when you let it be. Let it be, allow, receive. I built this episode around a song I wrote when I left my music career in 2010--specifically the line "I just need some space to be who I am." I call this The Song That Started It All because it set me on the final and brutal climb of my second half of the mountain journey where I had to go through the dark nights of the spirit and distillation to come to the gates of surrender and walk through. Exploring the BEING space: With love for those in the far reaches, McCall www.McCallErickson.com Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

Space is hard space is good you need it, but you don't want to be misunderstood It's not easy to make it or take it but something's nagging and you just can't shake it You want to look but it's scary to see everything's choking and you need to breathe If you stop for a moment, the image you've been trying so hard to hold together might shatter and fall Wouldn't it be better to keep it all in and love through these pretenses and walls? You know there's risk either way, but you have to move when the heart calls. Separation might take us further apart, but it brings us closer, closer after all. In this episode, we dive into separation, a necessary and vital alchemical phase that helps us know ourselves as individuals so we can be a clearer part of the whole. At 14:20 I share my original song "How Some Stories Go" written during a really difficult relational separation that taught me the importance of holding tension of not knowing in order to allow the deeper soul story to unfold in time With love, McCall -->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

"Perfectionism is the attempted tyranny of a concept over the messy reality of embodied living." -Anthony Lawlor In this episode I explore the progression of perfectionism in my alchemical journey I get real about how making this podcast has challenged me to face and transmute my perfectionism in ways I couldn't do ten years ago when I tried to record my music. At the end, I announce some new projects that I'm currently working on. With love from the deep end of messy and embodied living, McCall Quick quotes from the show: What is real, precious, and truly golden inside me does not give a shit about my perfectionism. Thinking there’s a right way to do anything and someone other than you knows what that is and you should give all your time and energy to figure it out can really fuck over your soul. Trusting your own direct, non-conceptual experience, not as the right way, but as the way that’s flowing, as the way that's happening for now will save your soul. "Perfectionism is the attempted tyranny of a concept over the messy reality of embodied living." -Anthony Lawlor "You lose your grip and then you slip into the masterpiece." Leonard Cohen , A Thousand Kisses Deep Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening

The same things keep happening, and we have to figure out a way to do them differently. Doing the same things differently. That’s how we grow. In the spirals. Sacred geometry of the soul. In this episode I discuss I share my original song "Once Upon a Time Again" at 15:45 With love on the path of spiral unfolding, McCall Quotes from the show: "There is another world, but it is inside this one." -William Butler Yeats “We shall never cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” T.S. Eliot Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening -->Click here for 20% off audiobook Support the Show. --> Get a copy of my NEW BOOK Down from the Mountain directly from me --> Get Down from the Mountain on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) --> Read or Listen to The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening