Ep. 42 Staying Close to the Gift (Letting This Podcast Rest and What's Next)

This is not the episode I thought I would make. This is the episode it was time to make. And so goes the soul. Tracking where it leads is an ongoing commitment. But I know of no better way to keep the magic alive. 

In this episode

• Seeing and dreaming with the soul
• A heartfelt thank you as I share why I'm moving away from making episodes here for now and where I'm going next

How to stay connected

• Subscribe to receive my occasional (but oh so soulful) writings to your inbox via The Terrible, Beautiful Truth
• Get on my Super Top Secret Email List to be the first to know when I make new things (a few times a year to your inbox)

Thank you so much for being in this space with me. All of these episodes will remain posted. Feel free to revisit and listen any time. 

In soul,

McCall

Transcript

Hello, dear listeners. I have been working on this episode for weeks. Months, actually. I've been in a sort of a creative cocoon for the past six months since finishing my second book and recording the audiobook and getting it all out there into the world. When I did that, the ground, the path kind of disappeared beneath me. I felt very purposeless and didn't know what I was going to do next. And so I took those cues from soul to wrap myself in the womb and grow from my own darkness, which is the very thing of alchemy. And I just have been kind of waiting and feeling around and seeing what would be next for me creatively. And I knew I wanted to get back into the space.So I started working on some episodes and making a few outlines. And last week, I finally sat down to record. I recorded the whole episode. And that night, I was sitting in bed journaling and I said, something just doesn't feel right about it. Why doesn't it feel right? Why can't I just post that episode?So I went back to the drawing board and felt around and made a whole other outline and started recording another episode and it just never felt right. And to me, this is exactly what I would call the will of the soul. Because that is the intangible. It's the thing, that magical it factor that cannot be forced. It's the alignment that you cannot force into a thing, no matter how beautiful the thing is. And vice versa. If something doesn't look so beautiful on the outside, but your soul is saying this is where alignment is, then that's where alignment is.So there I was sitting there with my beautiful outlines that on paper, they looked good. They were saying what I wanted them to say. This is exactly what I wanted to talk about. But why wasn't my heart in it? Why wasn't the intangible there? Where was the will of my soul? I have gotten used to this over the years. I am probably the poster child, self -proclaimed, for the will of the soul, for tracking that down and finding out where it is and following where it goes. It is not always easy for the ego. It is not always easy for our immediate self who has plans. And it's not always easy when what we want on the surface is so beautiful and so good, but the soul says, no, I'm not really there. And this is the work of the alchemist, the ongoing tracking of the soul, the ongoing listening to the subtle pulse, to the clues, to the signs. I made a whole episode about this a few episodes back, how to recognize the will of the soul.So I won't go into it a ton here, but this is the work of the alchemist, to get the outer and the inner to align through our perception, through practicing. And we don't get to determine when that alignment happens. We can only continually adjust our vision, adjust our outer vision and our inner vision. This is why we learn to see in the dark. Seeing in the darkness of the soul is really just seeing with the soul sight, seeing with the second eyes, seeing in the dark, seeing with the subtle perceptors. And those clues and the direction of the soul is so subtle sometimes. I personally need a lot of space and a lot of quiet to hear them, to know where they are, to follow them and to take heed.So these past few weeks, as I'm inching out of my creative soul cocoon of the past six months, and the first thing I wanted to do was make a new episode because I've loved this space. I've so loved this space with you. And every time I go to do it, the soul isn't there. That's my clue. And my next question is, okay, what am I not seeing? Where is the soul? Where is alignment? Where do I need to look? These processes used to be a lot more painful for me than they are, because my ego was so attached to things I wanted. My ego was so attached to the way I wanted things to be. But alchemy has taught me how to release that ego attachment every single time. I don't think the point is to never be attached. That just doesn't work for me and it doesn't sit right. I don't want to be detached all the time from life. But to attach and unattach is necessary. The ego serves the soul alignment. But when the soul alignment shifts and changes, the ego needs to be able to detach from where that alignment was and look in a new direction.So that's what I'm talking about here. Really just kind of digging into my soul site and my soul darkness, my soul dreaming space, as I call it, these past few weeks and saying, where is the alignment? Why aren't these podcast episodes working? And finally, last night, during a deep dive journaling session, I realized that this podcast feels a bit played out for me right now, that I've said what I need to say and that I need to let it rest. That Falling Into Soul has been a podcast of the past five years, where I've poured so much love and soul medicine into exploring the themes and topics from my first book and writing my second book. And now that those two books are out in the world, and I kind of have said what I need to say, my soul is off in another direction, working toward what's next, scouting out the new territory.So I went on a long, cold walk on the beach this morning and really felt into this and realized it's okay, it's time to let this go and let it be. And to thank you for being in this space and listening with me. And to let you know that my creative energy is going elsewhere now. But I will leave these episodes up as they are so you can revisit them anytime I feel like they are so some of them are just so meaty and really get into the nuances of the topics of alchemy and the topics of Falling Into Soul. I'll leave them up. I put so much love into making them I never once just turned on the microphone and spoke off the cuff. I always took so much time just making sure that I was saying what I wanted to say and saying what meant to be said, distilling my thoughts and feeling deeply and delivering that to you.So they will be here along with my books whenever you want to crack them, read them, revisit them. I always kind of feel like I am leaving breadcrumbs behind or probably more like just leaving a mission report behind. That's what my books feel like I go on these big soul journeys and then write about it. And that's what I've been doing the past 20 years, going on the second half of the mountain journey and the down from the mountain journey and then writing about it. And for the past 20 years, that took all of my effort. That took everything. And now that that's done, I am tenderly living into what's next. And one of the things that has come up for me in the past few weeks as well is I just want to write. I'm a writer. I do best with writing.So I've been slowly backing away from social media and spending more time writing. And it's been lighting me up so very much.So I started a sub Slack. It's called the terrible beautiful truth. And it feels like a culmination of my lifelong commitment to inner healing, to coming home to the true self, and to learning how to live in the face of life's terrible brilliance, the brilliant mysteries, uncertainties, and griefs and wonders of life. And I am sharing those writings which feel very much me very much honed in my own voice. When I finished down from the mountain, over a it's been over a year now, it was the fall of 2023 when I finished my second book, down from the mountain, and I felt like I had unleashed my true voice. Because I didn't have anyone backing me up. I had no publishing company. I had no one writing a foreword, or any kind of endorsements or anything. This was just me writing with my voice, no editor, nothing. I finally just was like, I'm just gonna claim my full voice. And I did and it felt good. I'd never felt better in my life. Because I was just speaking with my voice. I don't care if it's right or wrong. I'm not claiming to be right. I just need to be me. And right now, nothing feels as good as writing, speaking with my full true voice. And so that's what I'm doing on that sub Slack, the terrible, beautiful truth. You can join me there if you feel called, that's where I'm going to be. And I feel like I'll be exploring themes of life after the journey home to the true self. Life after going through all the alchemical stages that I talk about in this podcast, what happens when we just return home and stay home to the true self. To me, there's a lot of relational work going on a lot of close in relational cleanup work, and building in a very tender, mycelial way. Building threads of connection where they've been severed, nurturing, nourishing deep connection with myself with others in my direct space. And so those are some of the themes that I'm working on and writing about too. I will leave a link in the show notes for you if you want to join me at the terrible, beautiful truth. And I want to read my very first post that I made there called close to the bone. And I feel like it says what I mean to say in this episode and what I mean to say about soul, tracking the soul in general, and how we stay close to that how we stay close to what the actual gift is, when there's so much in the world around us, that is pulling us away from the gift, conditioning us away from the gift, confusing us away from the gift, and how desperately I need to stay close to it. This piece is called close to the bone. 

The gift cuts close to the bone. If I name it, I lose it. Make a thing of it, I lose it. Scheme to get more of it, lose lose lose lose. But if I remember the tiny blue flower we saw growing from cow dung, when we were hiking Pu 'u Hua, and the hillside was so green it hurt to look at, and you kept stopping to touch every tree your reverence for leafed beings, I'm close. If I remember how often I've knelt before heaps of broken dreams, sorting through pieces, wondering how I could have gotten it so wrong, how easy it is to misunderstand my own soul, how treacherous the high of false hope, I'm close. If I remember emptiness and sunsets and death and laughter, that life owes me nothing and endings are inevitable, and I wake in the morning and there is light streaming through the window onto your beautiful fucking face, and you reach for my hand as I'm reaching for yours, and there's a feeling so big it doesn't need words, I'm as close to the gift as I'll ever be. 

All right, my friends, I think that's all in this space for now. I'm not saying I won't ever be back here. I'm not saying I won't pick up episodes at another time. But what I'm getting from my soul is that it is really important right now for me to honor this great pause, to honor the past 20 years of falling into soul journey, to honor that it is documented, and that I've expended so much of my creative soul energy documenting it here and in my books, and that it's time to just let it pause for a moment. Let it be. Let it work its magic. Let it meld. And in the meantime, you can join me if you feel called at the terrible beautiful truth, where I will be writing about being alive in this terrible beautiful world. You can subscribe to receive those writings and read ad free at your leisure in your inbox. Or if that doesn't appeal to you, I will leave a link in the show notes to join my email list. I send out emails a few times a year to keep in touch. In the meantime, please know that it has meant so much to me to know that there have been listening ears on the other side of this microphone. Thank you for being that part of the magic for me. Be well in soul.