Year 2 Review: Landing Into Myself
Reflections on one year of transmuting trauma and increasing embodiment.
“In Mother Nature, For Father Future… By Your Grace and with Your Blessings, I am a spiritual being having a physical experience…”
This is the opening line of my daily prayer.
I believe that we are spiritual beings meant to “land” into our physical bodies. This process of “landing” is called embodiment or incarnation.
But if our body is traumatized — if our physical vessel is in a state of fight, flight, or freeze — then we cannot land. That is why trauma leaves us feeling de-spirited or “soulless”.
In May 2021, I started Year 2 of Project 52 with the intention to transmute my trauma (digest the distress that I feel) and increase incarnation (become more embodied). What follows is a reflection on my journey over these last 52 weeks.
The Art & Science of Turning Shit Into Sugar
In my manifesto for Year 2 of Project 52, I wrote about my desire to explore spiritual alchemy — the art and science of turning shit into sugar, transmuting scarcity and fear into the spirit of love and abundance:
Spiritual alchemy involves living as if life is happening for you and not to you. It looks like pronoia — a state of mind that is the opposite of paranoia. A paranoid person feels that the world is conspiring against them, but a person experiencing pronoia feels that the universe is conspiring in their favour!
To practise this spiritual alchemy requires the creation of transmutation reactions — think of them as the spiritual equivalent of chemical reactions. In a chemical reaction, you have two or more substances — under certain conditions and with the possible presence of catalysts — being changed into different substance(s).
In the same way, a “spiritual reaction” involves taking situations, emotions or feelings that don’t serve you and transmuting them into situations, emotions or feelings that do. Once you’re clear about the qualities that you want to embody or the spirits that you want to incarnate as, it’s simply a matter of how you are going to transmute everything you encounter in life into more of those qualities and spirits.
These last 52 weeks have given me plenty of opportunities to practice spiritual alchemy and hone my skills in transmuting trauma into love, light, and life.
I have crafted several “spiritual reactions” or incantations that I use in my daily prayer. I will share some of these incantations as I tell you the story of these past 52 weeks.
A Quest for Safety & Sovereignty
“By Your Grace, I am safe in my skin and secure in the palm of Your hand.”
“I am a sovereign individual with the freedom to express myself as I am.”
Looking back, I see that this year was mainly about safety.
I wanted to feel a visceral sense of safety at the core of my being.
I had lost this sense of safety first as a result of childhood sexual abuse and then as a result of questioning my faith in my late teens.
I was trapped in a timeline of fear and scarcity and the governing thoughts in my mind were: “There’s something wrong with me”, “I am not enough,” and “I am alone.”
Without safety, there is no sovereignty. I had given away my personal power to other people and to the circumstances of my life. I was not in charge of myself. I was not the captain of my fate and the master of my soul.
So on 14th October 2021, I killed myself. I destroyed the person who was trapped in fear and scarcity. I killed “Deepak” and was reborn as “Frank”.
The death-rebirth process I experienced was total. I felt like I had inherited everything from the “me” that I had killed — everything including his hopes and dreams, fears and anxieties, relationships and material possessions.
I had the option to choose what to keep and what to discard. So in the 6 months since my rebirth, I’ve been finding my feet in the world again. I have been letting go of everything I inherited from the old me that I don’t identify with — releasing and purging everything that doesn’t serve my highest possibility.
“By Your Grace, I transmute trauma and increase embodiment. I trust the triggers to teach.”
Today, I feel increasingly embodied. I feel safe in my skin and sense that I have landed into myself.
I also feel increasingly in charge of myself. I feel like I can be who I really am and express myself freely.
There is always more trauma to transmute — life is a traumatic event, after all. But I have transmuted the core traumas that I was trapped in. And, I have developed the ability to transmute shit into sugar.
I can see that life is happening for me. I can feel it! The “spiritual reactions” or incantations I’ve crafted over the last year are the best thing I could have ever given myself. I’m glad that I took the time to create them.
When I pray every morning, I feel instantly centred and grounded, in alignment with my highest possibility. I feel grateful for this life and for the path I have chosen. And I start my day anchored in love and abundance!
When Fear Goes Out, Love Comes In
“By Your Grace, I love myself and treat myself as someone I love - truly & deeply.”
It was clear to me when I started Year 2 that love had a key role to play in my healing. Here’s what I’d written in my manifesto:
The path towards healing — the road to becoming whole again — is only possible through love. To restore our sense of safety and to ground ourselves in reality, we need to be able to experience and express love.
Learning to love myself — to accept and embrace myself as I am — has been a deeply fulfilling experience. I used to be super judgmental towards myself. But I have transmuted that into kindness and encouragement now.
I’ve been blessed in finding my life partner this year. Her love for me has helped me accept and embrace myself even more deeply. Being in a relationship has helped me feel more embodied than anything else I’ve done. It’s almost like an evolutionary switch has flipped and my whole nervous system has calmed down.
But I do believe that the only reason I found her is that I had learned to love myself. I don’t think I would have found her if I didn’t love myself.
The old me was trapped in fear. But now, I let fear pass through me. I experience it fully and let it stay in my body for as long (or short) as necessary. And then when fear goes out, love comes in to fill the void.
I have discovered that my body has the innate ability to transmute trauma — to transform shit into sugar and fear into love. So I just need to let my body do what it’s good at. I just need to get out of my own way!
The Body Keeps the Score
There is a Chinese proverb that goes — tension is who you think you should be, and relaxation is who you are. We need both tension and relaxation — such is the dance of life. But the wrong kind of tension or just too much tension or the inability to deal with tension can have a negative effect on the body.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma — a book by Bessel van der Kolk has been hugely influential in my journey of healing. All our life experiences are etched in our bodies. The imprint of trauma can leave us feeling like a shell of a person. Therefore it is necessary to regularly release the built-up tensions from our bodies and relax into our true nature.
“By Your Grace, I build up and release the tensions in my body with grace and ease.”
Releasing the tension in my body through dance, movement, yoga, breathwork, and plant medicine has helped me decrease unnecessary stress and feel more at home in my body. Living more in my body, I see how it takes care of everything. My heart beats by itself and circulates life-giving blood throughout. My stomach and gut digest food without my intervention. Almost everything in my body is happening without my involvement.
“By Your Grace, I trust in the innate wisdom of my body - an instrument tuned into track awareness.”
So there’s no need for me to try. I can shed the energy of “trying” and learn to trust instead. Trust in my body — that it knows how to function; and trust myself — that I will be involved exactly when and where I need to be involved.
In Year 1, I set out to establish the foundation for my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Breathing is at the intersection of body, mind, and spirit. And I had been breathing poorly for the longest time. Making regular habits of nasal irrigation and breathwork, along with increasing my Vitamin C intake and sunlight exposure, helped me resolve this issue.
Year 2 has really been about my emotional well-being. And the biggest roadblock affecting my emotional well-being was digestive issues from eating poorly over the years I’d spent in Bangalore, coupled with chronic stress.
My death-rebirth experience helped heal my digestive system in a big way. Apart from that, I had to do the bare minimum — a simple probiotic to ingest every morning, mindful eating without any screens, chewing my food properly, and eating in moderation. Today, my digestion is back to normal.
I still fall back to old patterns occasionally and fall off track with the above habits. That’s when the digestive and respiratory issues creep back in. But getting back on track is easy and I am no longer as trapped as I was before.
“By Your Grace, I accept and embrace my body as it is. I hold space and make time for my body to rest and heal, bloom and grow. I take care of my body — I treat my body with love, patience, kindness, and respect.”
The human body is both marvellous and miserable. The phlegm, pus, piss, poop, and pain that are part of the human experience can be difficult to square with the beauty and grace that our God-selves are anchored in. But we must embrace our worm-selves if we are committed to creating paradise. As Carl Jung said, no tree can grow to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell. We cannot become our God-selves unless we wholeheartedly embrace our worm-selves.
While we’re on the topic of the body, there’s one last thing to talk about — ancestral or generational trauma. History has been horrifying. Your ancestors and mine have gone through unspeakable trauma that has left an imprint on their DNA. This trauma has been passed on from one generation to the next.
Today, with the tools and information available to us, we have the great opportunity to reset our nervous systems, heal our DNA, and prevent the generational trauma from being passed on to our descendants.
Whether the trauma you want to release is personal or ancestral or collective, the pattern is the same — you have to die to the old and be born in the new. Death-rebirth is not just a one-off, it needs to become a way of life.
Death-Rebirth as a Way of Life
The ultimate pattern behind all patterns — the greatest of all mythic themes — is death and resurrection. Things fall apart so that they can come back together in new ways. Breakdowns happen so that we can find new breakthroughs. When things collapse, it’s really an opportunity to build back better. The death drive of Thanatos exists in tandem with the life drive of Eros.
When we get into the right relationship with trauma, it becomes fuel for increasing embodiment. The process of transmuting trauma is a death-rebirth experience — you have to release and die to disempowering patterns and be reborn by embodying new empowering patterns.
Death-rebirth is the essence of spiritual alchemy — the process of turning shit into sugar, transmuting scarcity and fear into the spirit of love and abundance.
As spiritual beings, we are called to incarnate in this material plane — to fully inhabit our physical bodies. The intention behind spiritual alchemy is to transform your body into a vessel worthy enough for your spirit to inhabit.
This is not an easy mission. Our society is not currently geared to make this happen. As a result, most people are trapped in and are tripping over their own shadows — the anger, envy, fear, and desire that we are not willing to acknowledge, that we keep out of sight and out of mind.
But the chickens are coming home to roost. As Jesus said — everything that is hidden will be made known. And that’s happening now.
We need to willingly face our shit and integrate it. We need to willingly shine a light in the dark and look at the aspects of ourselves that we have not dared to look at. We need to release all that doesn’t serve us.
When we do this, we will gain true freedom and spaciousness. But beyond that, we will find our greatest treasures buried there! So along with releasing shit, we need to invite the sugar in — all the love and abundance that’s our birthright, that we have not dared to claim so far.
Purging and releasing our shit is not easy. Over time, we have grown attached to the shit. So we need to commit to letting go, trusting that we deserve better. We need to give ourselves the time to grieve and collapse so that we can come back together in a new way.
This is not a process that we can rush through. And it’s not a process that looks “productive” when seen through the lens of modern society. But I promise you — it’s the best thing you can do for yourself. I know that not everyone has the luxury to do this. So if your karma is good and if you have the privilege to reflect on and integrate your shadow in this lifetime — then do it. Your future self will thank you for it.
Stepping Off the Wheel of Samsara
When you make death-rebirth a way of life and get good at it, you will liberate yourself. Then, your very presence and existence will help liberate those around you. You will be the unmoved mover — not doing anything, but not leaving anything undone.
There will be nothing for you to do. But everything that you need to do will seamlessly flow through you. You will simply be — the witness holding space and making time for the unfolding of the spirit of love and abundance.
You will be a safe space for others simply because of your willingness to repeatedly dive into the darkest depths of your being and come through on the other side, radiating light and pulsing with life!
And then when all the karmic loops are closed, we can collectively step off the wheel of samsara — ending the cycle of death-rebirth. We can enter the paradise that is our birthright — manifesting it on this earthly plane, creating heaven on earth!
“By your grace, I’m at the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, at all times. I surrender to and meander through life. And all that needs to be done, is done.”