Revised Introduction!

I'm confident it will change many times yet before publication... but here we are.

Let me know how you think it compares from the earlier draft!

Love and blessings, Kaelan

Introduction to the Path of Ecstaticism

O, my brother!

Do you remember what we have lost?

Can you recall how our souls once soared high as our crystal towers? Those that shattered sunbeams into quintillions of sunfire embers?

O, my sister!

Do you remember when we danced naked beneath the full-bodied moon, our voices rising in a collective song that charmed the fields into bearing fruit?

O, my siblings!

Do you dream of those days of peace and harmony, when our thoughts shaped reality like a sculptor forms clay on his wheel? When reality and dreaming entwined together?

Let us summon these lost times and resurrect them anew.

Let us step off these poured-concrete streets and wander barefoot back to softer, moss-lined paths.

Let us again breathe starlight through our skin and drink mist into our root-shaped lungs.

Let us travel back, past the crumbling farmhouses of decades prior…

Past the medieval cathedrals whose spires clawed for heaven…

Past the fallen ramparts of forgotten armies, kings whose names have been lost to the sands…

And let us slip sideways into those ancient places where light shines at odd angles. Let this disremembered awareness come again.

Let us return to the eras before the floods came and washed away our citadels. Let us call to the lands of Atholeé and their temples that distilled moonbeams. To the bays of Quentha, where the whales serenaded the dock masters. To the antediluvian cities and their causeways of gold, glimmering arteries. Though their stones have crumbled and their names are all-but-forgotten, their memory still thrums in our bones, whispering: we have walked this way before.

Let us remember those ancient days when our thoughts could weave matter like a loomist’s fingers and our soul-force could carve stone. Let us revisit the ages when our human voices were secondary, for we spoke heart to heart, mind to mind. Let us return to times when our consciousness could summon storms, steer winds, and liquefy mountains. Where our intentions could open portals between worlds and travel took no time at all.

Let us reclaim the times when we shed our inhibitions and galloped wildly into the trees, capering madly, frenzied, in ecstasy. Let us become again those who loved fiercely, moaned primally, and screamed rapturously, unabashedly, into the night.

Ecstaticism is an ancient path that our souls walked many millennia ago. It is a return to ways of peace, joy, love, and presence. A recovery of knowledge from the far-greater civilizations that have risen before and will come again. There have been many communities rooted in truth, balance, and reciprocity with the natural world. Ages ago, humans lived with such presence that spirit became tactile. These memories still live in our bones. We are making the return to this awareness, and those with intentionality can access these higher-vibratory ways of being now.

Ecstaticism is not a religion—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 awareness and self-discovery. It asks you to discern and choose for yourself. It encourages you to explore, to uncover, and to remember truth through direct witnessing.

It asks you to return to the ancestral forests and kneel before sentient stones and hear their whispers. It invites you to converse with the spirits in roaring waterfalls and ask them to wash away the sediment weighing your soul down. It invites you to embrace millennia-old trees and harmonize your energy. To see that nothing exists that isn’t you—for you are all things, and all things are God. To take nothing of faith simply because some text or someone in robes told you, but because the knowing blossomed in your own heart.

The Ecstatic Path is a broadening of wherever trails you already walk; it does not ask you to convert or forsake what brought you to this point. It does not ask you to jump from one path to another. Instead, it is additive. It invites you to expand your horizons wherever you are, whomever you are. All are welcomed. It is a meandering road with places to rest and soak in the tangerine skies. It loops around rosebushes and rises between huckleberry patches, savoring the sanctity of the magnificent world around us. It dwells in awe and mysticism.

It is different from many other spiritual paths that demand so much, that ask you to forsake what makes you radiantly human. Those may be paths of lightning that shock the waker into higher awareness, but demand they abandon their earthly selves.. They may be paths of fire that burn away flesh until only truth remains, demanding rigorous discipline, ascetic sacrifice, renunciation of joy. They are paths of severity, stripping everything tender. They seek transcendence through renouncing our humanity. But Ecstaticism seeks remembrance through embodied joy.

This path is like falling water. Flowing. No rushing, no hurry. It accepts that one day a droplet will reach the waters below and remember itself as something so much vaster. One isolated self merging into a cosmic Oneness. It is a path that does not ask you to leave your humanness behind, but to embrace it more fully.

Many paths encourage aspirants to forsake worldly life in pursuit of the world beyond—whereas, this path encourages walkers to savor each moment of this precious life. Humanity is not something to be transcended, it is to be relished. This life you lead is perfectly sacred in its entirety.

Many spiritual traditions separate human from heaven. They often describe a designation between the sinner and the saint, the enlightened and the sleeping. They encourage a sense of relentless aspiration, accumulation, achievement. You work for empowerments, siddhis, liberation, or reprieve after death. Spirit is something beyond one’s self for which we must always reach.

This path, in contrast, says God is in this moment, in this body. You don’t need to achieve the divine, for everything already is Divine. Every aspect of reality is God incarnate delighting in itself. So there’s nothing to achieve because you already are. Yes, we can open further to reveal our luminescence…but it is growth through surrender. All there is to do is to remember and let go.

Many spiritual paths encourage seekers to achieve liberation so that suffering can end—that we break the wheel of reincarnation or the shackles of sin. They blind themselves from seeing this life as a precious gift. Ecstaticism invites us to remember that we purposefully chose to incarnate in these fleshy bodies, to lead these cacophonous lives. It is a sacrilege to view these elegant human machines as something to transcend or discard. Our bodies should be a daily source of immense gratitude. We should leap with joy each day that we have been given the opportunity for a precious human life.

Ecstaticism encourages us to question the ultimate goal of spiritual work; for, when you reach liberation one day, what then? Many traditions assert that you will merge with the Cosmic 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 Consciousness is ever pulsing, ever expanding. Source is always spinning out new universes, new realities, and we will eventually again re-enter the cycle of death and rebirth. We will again begin the journey as a “new soul” on the adventure of forgetting and eventually remembering its cosmic origins. There is no escape; there is no end point.

From this vantage, there should then be no rushing. Instead, we should cultivate exquisite gratitude for the here and now, savor it, and delight in it. We should celebrate these bodies, these challenges, these blessings. 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 one moment. And then the next moment. On and on. An eternity of being.

A raindrop doesn’t hurry. It doesn’t rush toward reunification with the oceans below. Instead, it falls at the pace gravity pulls it. While it falls, it thinks itself separate from all the other raindrops, but it is merely its temporary state that makes it seem such. Eventually, it will fall onto rocks, sand, soil, or a myriad of other surfaces. It will eventually make its way to the rivers, the oceans, or the deep underground aquifers, where it will remember: I am the water. I am something more vast than I could have ever imagined. I am everywhere. It doesn’t matter how long it takes; it will eventually reunite with its larger self.

But even then, its story is not done, for it will evaporate, become ephemeral clouds, and eventually fall as an isolated raindrop yet again, separate from all other raindrops. There are no beginnings or endings to this cycle. So the water must enjoy the process, unhurriedly. Wherever it is, whatever its form, to simply surrender to the flow and accept. To celebrate its current circumstances. And know that this, too, is Divine, whatever its temporary form.

Savor itself as the dewdrop dangling off a curving blade of grass. Relish being the mist in the forest glen, heavy like a blanket hugging the earth. It is the waterfall’s rush, the fountain in the topiary garden, the drip from the stalactites in deep, geodic caves. It is the sexual excretions that flow down the leg. It is the spittle that flies from the mouth with belly laughter. It is the tears of grief and passion. It is the sacred pool of the temple oracles. It is all things and in all things. For we are all made of flowing water.

This Ecstatic Path was here before the first cornerstone was placed for the towering cathedrals and their prayer books. It existed before the pyramids or the sutras, before enlightenment became something to be earned. It was seldom written down, for it was danced before temple fires, whispered between cowled mystics, and moaned into the night by sacred courtesans. And though empires rose and attempted to pave it over, the path remains for those who remember the ways to the barefoot trails. Those who dare to find the knowing carried on the fog, sung from the moss, sensed in the breath.

It is recovered when we stomp our feet on the rain-drenched leaves and throw our arms wide, inviting the lightning to strike. When we ask the primordial storm Gods to come and blow away our falsehoods and reveal our innate Divinity. Soak our skins, and let us glisten under the feral moon. There is no one and nothing that is not Blessed. There is nothing that is not temporary—and also eternal. It is the fragility paired with timelessness that makes this journey so heartbreakingly beautiful.

So let us remember who we are and from whence we came. Let us return to a previous turning of the Great Wheel. Let us remember the days before the floods and frosts. 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 each other home. Let us break crusty bread still warm from the fire. Let us sip sweet wine, juice fermented into laughter. Let us crack pomegranates open with our naked hands, their red interiors glistening like jewels. Let us pass olives slick with oil, honey dripping from combs, cheese fragrant with age. And see this all as blessed beyond measure.

Let us tell bright stories between mouthfuls, our words mingling with the crackle of the hearth, our bodies leaning closer, full of warmth. This too is prayer. This too is remembrance. Let us let the raindrops and mist gather in beads on our bare skin. Let us let the sweat pour from our bodies as we undulate to the rhythm of our fevered breathing.

Ecstaticism is a meandering path back to source. It is not a straight shot to divine reunification, but a beautifully serpentine, undulating and rutted beside the holy springs. It begins wherever you are and takes the time it takes. Wander and sense the contours of the earth beneath your bare soles. Realize that you are God caressing the Divine with every footfall. Let the earth discover you anew. Share with it your flaws, your radiance, your confusion, your longing. Bring all of it. The road is waiting to know all of you.

O, my brother! My sister! My siblings!

Step on, step on. The path calls for you to remember once more.

It’s time to unveil your glimmering, gold-sapphire heart. It’s time to recall your innate Divine nature..

Let us journey hand-in-hand, beating drums and chanting the names of God. We travel together, bright seekers of forgotten light.

Let your bones guide the way. Let the stones sing you home.

You have never forgotten, beloved. You never could.

Permit the waves to welcome you back.

You have always known this way of return.

For the path has always been within.