Sarah's Story - A Shamanic Journey Into Darkness

A woman we call Sarah survives abuse, loses her footing in the aftermath, and starts living inside a cycle of addiction, chaos, and despair so severe her family braces for the worst. When someone asks us to journey for her, we say yes, and then we discover just how strange and honest a shamanic journey can be when it’s centered on consent, protection, and one clear intention: find what’s still alive beneath the pain.

What unfolds is part spiritual encounter, part symbolic map of trauma recovery. A field of roses replaces familiar sunflowers, thorns hide beneath beauty, and lightning wakes a great tree that mirrors heaven and earth without casting a shadow. The stream turns to living light, the ground becomes crystal clear quartz, and we’re guided by presences we recognize by essence. Then comes the turning point: stepping into the water, feeling white fire, and descending into a tunnel where a guardian blocks the way and confusion tries to end the search.

The confrontation leads to a chamber with a thorn wrapped “box,” a voice that names itself Moloch, and an unsettling revelation that the prison isn’t just a place Sarah is stuck in, it’s an illusion built to convince her she can never reclaim what’s hers. We talk through how shame, guilt, grief, and fear can function like bars, why naming matters, and what it looks like when healing is both beautiful and messy. If you’re drawn to shamanic journeying, shadow work, spiritual healing, or the psychology of addiction and trauma, this story stays with you.

Subscribe for more, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review if the message lands. What “illusion” have you had to unlearn to find your light again?

Transcript

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Some stories are easy to tell. This isn't one of them. There are experiences I've had over the years that I've shared publicly without hesitation. Some have been profound. Others have been so strange that even after living them, I still find myself wondering, did that really happen? This story belongs in that last category. Whether you hear it as a spiritual experience, a symbolic journey into the subconscious, or something else entirely is up to you. I'm not here to convince anyone of anything. My only job is to tell you what I experienced as honestly as I know how. The woman in this story isn't using her real name. I'll call her Sarah. Journey took place in May of 2021. She had survived an abusive relationship that had left scars most people never saw. The man at the center of that relationship had been murdered, but his death didn't free her. If anything, it seemed to tighten the chains he'd wrapped around her while he was alive. Alcohol became normal, drugs became normal, chaos became normal. Night before I journeyed for her, Sarah did something that shook everyone who loved

Sarah’s Crisis And Why Journey

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her. She jumped from a moving car. She wanted the pain to stop. Her family had reached a heartbreaking place. They hadn't given up on her, but they'd begun preparing themselves for the possibility that addiction, despair, or another reckless moment would eventually take her life. Someone asked if I would journey for her, and of course I said yes. I had no idea what I was walking into. People often ask me what a shamanic journey feels like. And that's a difficult question to answer because no two journeys have ever been exactly alike. Imagine standing at the edge of a dream while remaining completely awake. Imagine entering a place that feels more real than reality itself. Imagine landscapes that speak, light that has intention, silence that somehow communicates. That's the closest description I can offer. Every journey begins before the drumming ever starts. Preparation matters. Not because I'm trying to impress unseen beings with ceremony, but because intention matters above all else. So that evening I spent more time than usual preparing myself. I cleared my space, gave thanks, gratitude, called in divine beings. I asked for protection, not only for myself and Sarah, but also for her family and mine. Something felt different, and I couldn't explain why. But looking back now, I think part of it was Sarah herself. She knew that I was journeying that evening. Part of it may simply have been the resistance that often surrounds people carrying tremendous pain, or perhaps something else already knew I was coming. Normally my sacred space reveals itself almost immediately when the journey begins. That night it didn't. It felt as though I was walking against a powerful current. Every step required effort, not physical effort, but something deeper, like trying to push through invisible water. Eventually, the resistance eased, and the familiar threshold appeared between my doorway and to my sacred space, and a single stone slab waited in front of me. It marked the place where one world

Intention Protection And Pushing Resistance

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ended and another began, and I stepped across it. The first thing I noticed wasn't what I saw, it was what I heard. Thunder, not close, but far away, rolling across distant mountains. It wasn't violent, it was ancient. The kind of thunder you don't simply hear with your ears, you feel it in your ribs. I stood quietly, allowing my surroundings to reveal themselves. Then I realized something was wrong, very, very wrong. To my left flowed the familiar stream that has always greeted me in countless journeys, running from the mountains in front of me between the tree and where I would stand. Beyond it stood the great tree, the tree that has always served as my passage into the other realms. Normally the field stretching toward that tree in the background had been filled with towering sunflowers, thousands of them, bright, warm, alive, but that night the sunflowers were gone, every single one, and in their place stretched an endless sea of roses. White roses, red roses, perfectly formed, perfectly still. They were breathtaking, and somehow that made them unsettling. As I stood looking across them, a quiet voice interrupted my thoughts. There are always hidden dangers concealed within beauty. The words weren't spoken aloud, they arrived at the way truth sometimes does, complete and undeniable. I immediately recognized the presence behind them, not by appearance, not by sound, by familiarity. It was the same warm, loving presence I'd come to know as Yeshua. I looked across the roses. Only then did I notice what had escaped me at first. The blossoms were magnificent, but beneath every bloom, hidden almost completely from view, were thorns. There was another roll of thunder that echoed across the valley in the background.

Roses Thorns And The Lightning Tree

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Lightning flashed behind the mountains. The entire field exploded in light, and then darkness returned again. Then another flash. This time I noticed something else. With every burst of lightning, the shadows cast by the roses stretched farther and farther across the field. Long, dark, almost reaching the great tree. Flash. Longer. Flash lightning. Longer still. It felt less like watching weather and more like witnessing a conversation between light and shadow. Then everything changed. One bolt no longer struck behind the mountain. It struck the tree itself. I instinctively expected splintering wood, fire, destruction, but none of it happened. Instead the tree awakened. The bolt struck with a force that should have shattered the tree. For the briefest moment I braced myself for the crack of splintering wood, for flames racing through its branches, for the kind of destruction nature is famous for. Instead, the impossible happened. The lightning didn't destroy the tree, it disappeared into it. Brilliant white light surged through the trunk as though the tree itself has been waiting for that single moment. Every limb ignited, every branch, every twig, every leaf. It wasn't burning, it was alive. The light continued downward through the trunk and into the earth beneath it. Then, just as the branches had illuminated above, the roots awakened below, thick roots, thin roots, roots so small I never would have known they existed until the light revealed them. It was as if the lightning had become a map. Everything that had always been hidden was suddenly impossible to miss. As I stood there watching, another realization settled over me. The lightning in the sky looked exactly like the branches of the tree. The roots beneath the earth looked exactly like the lightning. Heaven, earth, they mirrored one another. The tree had become a living bridge between the two, and something else caught my attention. When the lightning flashed across the sky, it created shadows, but when the light flowed within the tree, there were no shadows at all. Light that remained outside cast darkness. Light flowing from within revealed everything. That thought stayed with me, and it still does. The current continued spreading beneath the earth and moved away from the tree like ripples expanding across the surface of a pond. Except these ripples traveled underground. When the energy reached the stream, it behaved in a way I still struggle to describe. Rather than stopping, it accelerated. The instant the current touched the water, it shot upstream and downstream simultaneously. The entire stream erupted into shimmering brilliance. Millions of tiny flashes danced within the water, not chaotic and not random, but organized and alive. It reminded me of watching stars reflected on perfectly moving water, or maybe watching water remember that it was made of light. I stood there completely absorbed by what I was witnessing. If you've ever tried explaining one of these experiences to someone afterward, you'll understand the problem. Hards keep trying to turn it into a special effect. It wasn't. It felt natural, as though creation itself was quietly revealing how it actually works beneath the surface we normally perceive. The underground current kept moving, closer and closer towards me. Between the stream and where I stood was a small beach. Normally it would be covered with countless tiny fragments of crystal clear quartz. I'd

Quartz Ground And Light Body Awakens

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seen it many times. This time the quartz didn't stay on the beach. The light reached the shoreline and everything changed. The earth beneath my feet shimmered, the grass dissolved, the soil disappeared. The ground itself became crystal. From the edge of the stream all the way back to the stone threshold where I had entered this place, everything transformed into transparent quartz, not cloudy, not white, but perfectly clear. For a strange moment I thought of photographs I'd seen years earlier from the Nevada desert. During the first atomic bomb test, the unimaginable heat had fused ordinary sand into glass. This looked vaguely similar, except nothing had been destroyed. Everything had become more pure. I looked down, the light was still flowing beneath the crystal. Tiny flickers danced through it like miniature lightning storms. Every flicker fractured into countless prisms. I've seen rainbows. I've seen crystals catching sunlight. This wasn't either of those. The colors weren't merely brighter. There were colors there I have no language for, no words for. Every prism seemed unique. No two were identical. I realized I'd stopped breathing, not because I was afraid, because I was overwhelmed. Then I felt it, a gentle warmth. It began beneath the soles of my feet, not heat, but presence. The sensation slowly climbed upward through my legs, past my knees, into my hips, my abdomen, my chest. As it reached my heart, something inside me recognized what was happening before my mind did. The light beneath the quartz wasn't simply surrounding me, it was entering me. Not my physical body, but something deeper, what many traditions call the light body. Every moment the warmth increased, and with it came familiar presences, not faces, not voices, essences, each unmistakably unique. Raphael, Mikael, Gibrael, Jofel, Zadkil, and Yeshua. Each carried a quality impossible to mistake, Raphael's compassion, Mikhail's unwavering strength, Gibrael's certainty, Jofel's joy, Sadkil's quiet transformation, and Yeshua's indescribable love and warmth. Then another presence, one I had countered only once before, different from the others, ancient, still, difficult to describe, and I recognized it immediately. Vizalio. I wouldn't understand why that presence mattered until much later, but at that moment I simply accepted it. The warmth continued rising, and my entire light body filled with brilliance. Then something extraordinary happened. The energy didn't stop with me, it continued upwards. A silver column of light extended from the crown of my head into the sky above, connecting earth and heaven through me. Not because of me, but through me. There's an important difference. I've never believed these experiences are about me, because they're not. If anything, they constantly remind me of how small I really am. A flute doesn't create music, it allows music to pass through it. And that evening I felt like the flute. The thunder had become distant now, almost peaceful. The stream continued sparkling beside me, and then Raphael spoke, not with sound, with certainty. Step into the water. So I glanced towards the stream. It was still glowing with the same unimaginable energy that had raced through it moments before. Now, I don't know about you, but somewhere back in middle school I vaguely remember learning that electricity and water make a rather unfortunate combination. Generally speaking, if you have to choose between standing in electrified water or wrestling in angry porcupine, I'd suggest neither. I waited. Perhaps I'd misunderstood. Nothing. Only the quiet certainty remained. Go ahead. There's nothing to fear. I smiled despite myself. There are moments during these journeys when humor somehow survives, and this was one of them. Well, I remember thinking, if this goes badly, at least it'll be memorable. And I took my first step into the stream. Nothing. Second step, still nothing. Then everything changed. Heat, not ordinary warmth, and not burning, something beyond both. The sensation surged upward so suddenly it stole every other thought from my mind. It wasn't painful, but it was impossible to ignore.

Fire Stream And The Descent Below

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I looked down, white flames surrounded my body. Not orange, not yellow, but brilliant white, each flame tipped with crimson red. They moved as fire moves, yet I felt no pain, only immense stream. I stood motionless in the middle of the stream, waiting for an explanation. None came. Only silence, only distant thunder, only the strange realization that I was standing inside fire, and somehow I wasn't afraid. I decided to continue toward the great tree. I never took the next step. Without warning, the stream gave way beneath me, and I began to sink, not into water, but through it, down through the stream bed, down through solid earth, yet I could still breathe, still see, still think. The light surrounding me never dimmed. The world above disappeared. The descent had begun. There's a moment during every descent when you realize there is no turning back. This was that moment. The world above me had vanished. The stream, the tree, the thunder, all of it disappeared as I continued sinking through earth that somehow offered no resistance. I wasn't falling and I wasn't flying. It was more like being carried. The strange part was that nothing about it felt threatening. I could breathe normally, I could see clearly. The brilliant light that had filled my light body continued illuminating everything around me, even though I was now deep beneath the world I knew. Normally, when I journey into the lower realms, there are transitions, boundaries, if you will. They aren't always visible, but they're unmistakable. You know you've crossed from one level into another. This time I never saw them. If they were there, I passed through them so quickly that they dissolved into a blur. Only later did I wonder if I'd crossed several realms without ever slowing down. Wherever I was being taken, someone or something wanted me there. The descent stopped as abruptly as it had begun. My feet touched solid ground. Silence. Not the peaceful silence of a forest after rain. This silence felt heavy and dense, like a room where an argument had just ended. The air itself seemed reluctant to move. Ahead of me stretched a narrow tunnel carved through stone. At the far end, barely visible, was a faint opening where a weak light flickered. It wasn't inviting, it was simply there. I took one step toward it, something moved. It stepped into the tunnel between me and the opening, and then it stopped. People often ask me if these encounters frighten me, the honest answer. No, courage isn't the absence of fear. It's deciding fear doesn't get to make the next decision. What stood before me would have terrified me years earlier. Now I simply observed. It stood close to seven feet tall. Skin was a sickly brownish green, the color of stagnant water left forgotten in the bottom of a rusted barrel, you know? Its eyes were enormous, black, not simply dark, black in a way that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Its face was

The Tunnel Guardian And The Furba

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wrong. Not because it resembled an animal, not because it resembled a human, because it resembled neither. A long snout extended over the twisted mouth filled with yellow green teeth that looked as though they'd never stopped growing. Six impossibly thin arms hung from its body. Each one ended in elongated fingers covered in scales. Tiny creatures crawled constantly across his arms. Whether they were feeding on it or living with it, or were somehow part of it, I couldn't tell. Then the smell reached me, rot, not fresh decay, old decay, like something that should have returned to dust centuries ago, but somehow hadn't. Instinct tells you to recoil from a smell like that? I didn't. I simply stood where I was, watching and waiting. And so did it. For several long moments neither of us moved. Finally, it spoke. Its voice sounded as though stones had learned to speak. Why are you here? The emphasis wasn't subtle. You the word lingered in the air. I couldn't tell whether it was questioning me or questioning the presence I carried within me, and to this day I'm still not certain. I answered as calmly as I could. And I paused. I'm here at Sarah's request. The creature laughed. If you've ever heard someone laugh with genuine joy, you know how contagious it can be. This was the exact opposite. Its laughter sounded empty and corrupted. As it laughed, thick saliva had dripped from its mouth and splattered onto the stone floor. Where it landed, the ground hissed. It bubbled. The stone itself seemed to burn. Then it looked back at me. She isn't here. There was something unsettling about the certainty in its voice, not because I believed it, but because I sensed it wanted me to. Confusion can be one of the most effective weapons we face. If you can convince someone they're already lost, they often stop searching. Before I could respond, another thought entered my awareness, not mine, the Ashuas. Simple, direct, ask its name. In nearly every tradition, Names carry significance. To know a name is in some sense to see more clearly. I looked directly into those enormous black eyes. What is your name? And the creature hissed. He leaned forward and spat onto the ground between us. The acid hissed again. Silence. I asked once more, what is your name? And again, nothing. The silence stretched. Then something unexpected happened. I felt the firmness rise within me that wasn't entirely my own, not anger, but authority. I heard my own voice speak with a strength that surprised even me. Tell me your name. The words echoed through the tunnel, and for just an instant the creature hesitated. Not because of me, I knew that immediately. It recognized something greater standing with me. Slowly it bit down until its face was only inches from mine. Its breath carried the same unbearable stench of decay. Its black eyes never blinked. I it hissed and penned. Then another pause, a guardian in the service of the darkness. The moment it spoke those words, understanding settled over me. It wasn't boasting. It was identifying itself, almost like a soldier announcing which army he served. There are moments during these journeys when explanations simply aren't necessary. You know, not because someone tells you, because truth arrives complete. This was one of those moments. I knew exactly what pennant meant, not intellectually, but deeply. Whatever weighted beyond that tunnel, pennant existed to prevent anyone from reaching it. Raphael gently drew my attention beyond the guardian, toward the opening at the far end of the passage. There was something there, something partially hidden. I couldn't make it out clearly, only that it seemed to rest upon a pedestal. The faint light I'd noticed earlier wasn't coming from the cavern, it was coming from whatever rested there. Penan shifted slightly, blocking my view once again. The challenge was obvious. No words were necessary. I looked at it, then toward the tunnel, then back again. We're going down there. I deliberately said we. Not I, we. Something changed. For the first time, Pinan reacted. His posture stiffened. A low growl vibrated deep within its chest. The air seemed heavier. I had the distinct impression that it had suddenly become aware that I wasn't alone. Without thinking, my right hand reached for the Ferba that I carry. For those unfamiliar with it, a furba is a ritual dagger used in several Himalayan traditions. It isn't carried as a weapon in the ordinary sense. Symbolically it's associated with pinning, cutting through, or transforming obstacles. I carried two during this journey. Until that moment it had simply rested in my hand. Then everything changed. The instant I raised it, white fire erupted along all three edges of its blade, not ordinary flame, living flame, brilliant white, each edge tipped in deep indigo blue. I hadn't summoned it. I hadn't expected it. It simply was. An overwhelming certainty entered my awareness, not spoken, known. Mikhail. There are presen that comfort, there are presences that teach. Then there are presences that stand between light and darkness without the slightest hesitation. This felt like that. I took one step forward, Pinin took one step back. The Guardian suddenly lashed out. All six arms whipped through the air in a blur. There was no time to think, no strategy, only movement. The blade rose, then swept upward in a single motion. There the confrontation with Pinin reaches its conclusion. The mysterious fear appears, and the path opens towards the chamber where illusion imprisoning Sarah is finally revealed. There was no anger behind it, no hatred, no desire to destroy, only absolute certainty. The flaming furva passed through Penan from the base of its body to the top of its chest as effortlessly as a hand passing through mist. For one suspended heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the Guardian shrieked and screamed. I've replayed that sound in my mind many times over the years, and I still can't compare it to anything I've ever heard in this world. It wasn't simply pain, it wasn't rage. It was something deeper. It was the sound of something realizing it had lost. The tunnel itself seemed to tremble. Peenan staggered backwards, its six arms flailing widely as brilliant white light poured through the opening created by the blade. Not blood, but light, or perhaps the absence of darkness. Then something extraordinary happened. Above the guardian, a sphere slowly materialized. It hung silently in the air, perfectly round, neither glowing nor reflecting light, yet somehow unmistakably present. From the opening in Penin's body, wisps of dark smoke began rising toward it, not rushing, not being pulled violently, simply ascending. As the smoke entered the sphere it changed, the darkness softened, its sharp edges disappeared, the blackness became pale, then silver, then something like morning fog illuminated by the first rays of sunrise. The transformation was gentle, merciful. I stood there watching in complete silence. The guardian that moments earlier had stood as an obstacle simply ceased to be. I had the unmistakable sense that this wasn't destruction, it was transformation. If I had to put words to what I understood in that moment, they would be these. Darkness had not been annihilated, it had been stripped of what made it darkness. The tunnel was open. Whatever had stood between me and the chamber beyond no longer did. I lowered the firba. The white flames gradually disappeared from the blade until it looked exactly as it always had. The silence returned, only now it felt different, less oppressive, as though something had taken its foot off the chest of the entire place. I walked forward. The tunnel narrowed as I advanced. The ceiling lowered, the walls closed inward. At first thought the passage itself was changing. Then another thought occurred to me. Maybe it wasn't the tunnel becoming smaller. Perhaps my own light body was becoming larger. There are moments during journeys when explanations become less important than simply remaining present. And this was one of those moments. As I continued walking, each step echoed softly. The faint light ahead grew stronger, not brighter, just closer. Eventually I emerged into a circular chamber. It wasn't large, perhaps twenty feet across. Everything inside it shared the same unpleasant color, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Even the air itself seemed stained by that strange greenish brown hue I'd encountered before in the deepest regions of the lower realm. It felt old, it felt ancient, as though hope hadn't entered that place in an unimaginably long time. At the center stood a pedestal, or what appeared to be one, and resting upon it was a black box, except calling it a box doesn't really describe what I saw. It looked alive. Its surface slowly expanded and contracted as though it were breathing. Wrapped tightly around it were thick black thorns, not vines, not branches, but thorns, long and twisted, sharp enough that even looking at them made my hands ache. Every so often, a tiny sliver of light escaped between them, only a tiny flicker, but enough to illuminate chamber with the weak glow of a candle. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Something about it felt profoundly wrong, not frightening, but wrong, as though whatever was inside didn't belong there. Before I could move another step, everything vanished. The chamber disappeared. The lower realm dissolved around me. Without warning I found myself standing somewhere entirely different, the middle realm, the now. And standing before me was Sarah, or more accurately, something that represented Sarah. She wasn't standing on the ground, she hung suspended several feet above it, not floating peacefully, but held. Behind her loomed a vast darkness unlike anything I'd seen before. From within it extended enormous claw like shapes that wrapped around her torso, lifting her effortlessly from the earth. The moment I saw it something inside me broke, not from fear but from compassion. No human being should ever look so completely trapped. Her face was visible. Everything below her shoulders disappeared into the darkness holding her. Her eyes searched desperately. Her mouth opened as though she were trying to speak, but no sound came. Then I saw why. Dark tendrils emerged from the mass behind her. Whenever she attempted to cry out, one wrapped across her mouth, silencing her again and again and again. Watching it happen, I remembered another journey years earlier. I had seen her then as well, in almost exactly the same condition. At that time I had wanted to help. She hadn't given permission. Without permission, I couldn't intervene. This time she had asked. Everything was different, came on. The darkness didn't stop with Sarah. Dozens of long tendrils stretched outward from the mass behind her, reaching toward faint figures standing just beyond their grasp. Some I recognized immediately, family, loved ones, people desperately trying to reach her. Every so often a tendril brushed someone's shoulder or barely touched a foot. The figures recoiled instinctively, then cautiously stepped forward again,

Moloch The Living Prison Of Illusion

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only to repeat the same heartbreaking dance. It reminded me of what addiction often does, not only to the person trapped within it, but to everyone who loves them. Everyone keeps reaching, everyone keeps hoping, everyone keeps getting hurt. Raphael's presence gently entered my awareness. Look above her. I lifted my eyes. There was no opening, no light, nothing. Open the space. I instinctively reached upward, not with my hands, with intention, as though drawing curtains apart, and the instant I did, the darkness above Sarah separated. A brilliant column of white light poured downward from somewhere far beyond my sight. It entered through the crown of her head, and the effect was immediate. Darkness recoiled, not much, only slightly, but enough that I knew light still had access to her. No matter how deeply someone falls, light always remembers the way home. As suddenly as I'd arrived, I was gone again. The middle realm dissolved. The chamber returned. The thorn covered box waited exactly where I'd left it, only now I noticed something I hadn't seen before. The pedestal and the box weren't separate. They were the same thing. The pedestal rose directly from the floor. The floor blended seamlessly into the walls, the walls into the ceiling. Everything was connected. One living structure, one organism. I slowly walked around the side of the pedestal. From this angle the illusion began to fail. The side of the box wasn't solid. It was almost transparent. The light escaping through the thorns wasn't merely leaking out. Something inside was trying to get free. Before I could think, words came from my mouth firm, certain. This, I said quietly, is not allowed, and the chamber shook. A deep voice echoed from every direction at once, not loud, not angry, simply immense. Who are you to decide what is allowed? The sound seemed to vibrate through the stone itself. This exists within the domain of balance. The road became perfectly still. Again, the certainty rose within me, this time stronger. I answered without hesitation No, this is not allowed. Then came words I knew were not entirely my own. We are the light of the divine. We will not be intimidated or confused by your illusions. For several long moments nothing answered. Then the laughter began. It wasn't pennant laughter, this was deeper, older. The entire chamber vibrated with it. The walls vibrated with it. They seemed to breathe. The floor pulsed under my feet, and then finally the voice spoke a single word. My name is Moloch. And the chamber fell silent. And I understood the real confrontation had only just begun. The chamber fell silent, not the kind of silence that brings peace, the kind that settles over a battlefield just before the first arrow is released. A single word lingered in the air, Molok. There was no introduction, no explanation, no attempt to intimidate me beyond the weight of its presence. It didn't need to. Something deeply invested in keeping what lay before me exactly where it was. So I stood motionless. Not because I didn't know what to do, but because I had learned that reacting too quickly during a journey often means reacting to the wrong thing. Sometimes the greatest weapon of darkness isn't violence, it's distraction. So I waited. Raphael's presence gently drew my attention back toward the thorn covered object. Look deeper, he said. So I stepped closer. The closer I came, the more the illusion began to unravel. The black box wasn't really a box. It only appeared that way from a distance. The thorns, those were real, painfully real, but the shape they surrounded was something entirely different. The quote unquote walls of the box shimmered almost like smoke trying desperately to pretend it was solid. The illusion existed for only one purpose to convince whoever looked upon it that what was inside can never be reached. That realization struck me with surprising force. How many prisons in our own lives are built the same way? Not with iron or with locks, but with beliefs. You'll never change. You're too broken, you've gone too far. This is simply who you are, illusions, powerful ones, but illusions nonetheless. So as I stood before it, an overwhelming wave of emotion washed through me. None of it belonged to me. Guilt, it hit first, heavy, crushing. Then shame, anger, grief, hopelessness, confusion and regret, and each emotion layered upon the next until they became almost impossible to separate. For one brief moment I understood how someone could become trapped inside those feelings. Not because they wanted to stay there, because they eventually forgot there was anywhere else to go. Tanyes' quiet presence centered my awareness. These are hers. And I understood immediately. Not all of them had been created by the abuse Sarah had endured. Some had. Others had been born from the choices she made while trying to survive that abuse. Sometimes suffering creates more suffering. Sometimes victims carry guilt that never truly belong to them. Sometimes they begin believing they deserve the prison they've inherited. Sarah had accepted far more responsibility than was ever hers to carry, and the darkness had gladly accepted the invitation. Then another understanding arrived. It wasn't the memory of the abusive man that imprisoned her, it was the illusion surrounding him, the version of him that still lived inside her wounds. The manipulation, the fear, the guilt, the lies. Even though he was gone, the prison remained. It reminded me of an old house after the owners died. The owner may be gone, but the rooms still smell like them. The habits remain, the echoes remain. Sometimes the echoes become harder to leave than the person ever was. A low rumble rolled through the chamber, not thunder, a warning. I stepped closer anyway. Immediately the walls began to shift, the room narrowed, the ceiling lowered, the air itself felt heavier. The unmistakable message settled around me. Do not come any closer. Now fear would have been easy. Retreat would have been understandable, but instead my hand reached once again for the furba. This time nothing dramatic happened, no flames, no sudden burst of light. It remained exactly what it had always appeared to be, simple, still and waiting. I slowly turned behind me. Without consciously deciding to do so, I swept the blade across the wall, left to right. The blade never touched stone, yet the wall opened, not cracked, but opened. As though an invisible curtain had been pulled aside. Brilliant white light poured into the chamber. I turned, swept the blade again across the wall opposite me, right to left. That wall also opened. More light flooded the darkness. Chamber changed instantly. Things that had remained hidden only seconds before became unmistakably visible. The walls weren't empty, they were covered. Creatures clung to every surface. Some crouched, some hung upside down from the ceiling, others pressed themselves so tightly against the stone they had nearly disappeared into it. No two looked alike. Some resembled twisted gargoyles, others all looked almost insect like. A few possessed features I still can't adequately describe. Yet all shared the same lifeless greenish brown color I've seen throughout the lower realm. None attacked, but none fled. They simply held on, as though they feared losing something. Yeshua quietly revealed why. Look behind them, so I looked more carefully. Only then did I notice it. Each creature concealed light, tiny pockets of it. They weren't feeding on the light, they weren't destroying it, they were hiding it, covering it, preventing it from being seen. I found myself wondering how often that happens in our own lives, not because the light is gone, but because something has convinced us to stop looking for it. Without warning, the chamber disappeared again. The shift happened so suddenly I barely had time to register it. And I stood once more in the middle realm. Sarah was there. But everything had changed. She was no longer. Longer hung suspended by the great claw. She stood upright, barely. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was shallow. Then I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. Long openings stretched up across both her abdomen and her back. They weren't bleeding. Instead, maggots spilled from hundreds, perhaps thousands. They dropped silently to the ground around her feet. Had I seen this in ordinary waking life, I probably would have recoiled. But during the journey I understood instinctively that I wasn't witnessing physical decay, I was watching something else, old corruption leaving. The hidden consequences of years spent carrying wounds that never been allowed to heal. Raphael gently drew my attention back to the cuts. Only then did I recognize the openings matched the two slashes I'd made moments earlier through the walls of the chamber. The realization hit me like lightning. The walls weren't walls. The chamber wasn't a chamber. The pedestal wasn't a pedestal. The box wasn't a box. I had not entered a room, I'd entered something alive. I was standing inside the very thing that held Sarah captive. The prison had a body, and I was inside. The insight came all at once. Moloch wasn't standing beside the prison, he was the prison. Everything I'd seen, the walls, the pedestal, the illusion of the box was part of a single living presence wrapped around Sarah's wounded spirit. For a brief moment I simply stood there, absorbing the enormity of what had been revealed. Then just as suddenly I was back in the chamber. The thorn covered illusion waited before me exactly as before, only now I finally understood what I was looking at. It wasn't merely guarding something precious, it was convincing Sarah that what belonged to her could never again be reclaimed. And somewhere deep within me, I knew that illusion was about to be challenged. For a long moment I simply stood there. Not because I was uncertain, because I understood the weight of what was about to happen. The illusion had been exposed. The prison had revealed itself. Now there was only one question left. Could what had been taken be returned? The chamber pulsed beneath my feet. The thorn covered illusion seemed almost aware that it had been seen for what it truly was. There was something powerful about seeing clearly. Darkness often depends upon remaining misunderstood. The moment an illusion is recognized as an illusion, its grip begins to weaken. Not because it disappears, because it loses the power to define reality. So I stepped forward and the low growl returned. This time it came from everywhere. The floor vibrated, the wall shuddered, the air itself seemed to tighten around me. Again came the unmistakable warning No farther. No farther. I continued anyway. Without hesitation I lifted the Farba, and the instant I did, the white fire once again erupted along its three edges. This time the flames burned even brighter, brilliant white, each edge crowned with deep indigo blue. I didn't command them, I simply accepted them. There are moments during these journeys when I stopped feeling like the one acting. Instead, I become aware that I'm participating, a vessel, nothing more, nothing less. I raised the blade, then drove it directly into the center of the thorn covered illusion. The moment the blade entered, everything changed. There was resistance, not from the illusion itself, from the thorns. The box vanished almost instantly. It had never possessed substance, only appearance. The thorns remained alive and real, rooted in the living structures surrounding them. Then I understood. Prison had never been the illusion. The illusion merely concealed where the prison actually was. Yeshua's presence entered my awareness with unmistakable clarity. Reach inside. I looked at the thorns. Every instinct said the same thing. Don't do it. Those weren't symbolic thorns, they were real, sharp enough to tear through my light body. And so I hesitated, only for a heartbeat. Then I remembered Sarah. I remembered the woman who had jumped from a moving car, the woman her family feared they were going to lose. So I reached forward. The pain was immediate. The thorns tore through my hands, then my wrists, then my forearms, not flesh, light. It felt unlike physical pain, yet it was unmistakably real. I pushed deeper until both hands disappeared completely into the oak. The instant they did, I felt something weighty. Not an object, a presence. No, two presences. One radiated familiar brilliance, the other felt heavy, dense. Neither resisted me. Instead, they entered me. The light flowed effortlessly into the radiance already filling my own light body. The shadow followed as well, but it didn't remain within me. It was gently received by the ancient presence I had recognized earlier, Bazaliel. I still don't pretend to fully understand Bazaliel's role, only that the shadow wasn't destroyed. It was contained, held, without judgment, without fear, without allowing it to spread. Meanwhile, the light was embraced by a Yeshua. The contrast was breathtaking. Neither rejected what had been recovered, both accepted it exactly as it was. Light, shadow, both returned to where they belonged. I slowly withdrew my hands, the thorns tore through them again, only this time they felt different, not weaker, finished, as though they had already accomplished the only purpose they ever possessed. I looked at the Ferba. Once again, without planning it, my arm began moving, not in a strike, not toward an enemy. The blade traced a pattern through the air, one continuous motion, elegant, precise, a symbol, a sigil. I'd never seen it before, yet somehow I knew it. The movement felt unmistakably connected to Mikhail. Every line completed itself without thought. When the final stroke ended the chamber erupted, the scream echoed through every part of the realm, far louder than peen's, far deeper. It wasn't merely the cry of something wounded, it sounded like an entire prison collapsing. The walls shook violently. Cracks of brilliant white light raced through every surface. The greenish brown darkness fractured. The chamber began dissolving around me. Then everything disappeared. And I found myself once again standing in the middle realm, but now. Sarah stood before me, this time her feet rested firmly upon the earth. The immense claw that had held her suspended was gone. The oppressive darkness had vanished. Only the openings in her abdomen and back remained. The maggots still spilled quietly onto the ground, and then movement. Several birds landed beside her. One, then another, then another, until seven or eight stood calmly around their feet. Magpies. They were magpies, beautiful and fearless. Without hesitation, they began consuming every maggot that fell. Some listeners may find that image unsettling, and I understand I did too. But standing there I didn't experience disgust, I experienced relief. Nature was completing something. Decay was being carried away, not hidden and not ignored, but removed. There are moments when healing is beautiful. There are other moments when healing is messy, and this was both. Then I saw it, something I had been hoping for since the beginning of the journey. Behind Sarah, another presence began rising, faint at first, then brighter, graceful, peaceful her higher self, not returning from somewhere far away, but emerging. As though it'd been waiting patiently beneath years of pain. The brilliant column of light continued pouring into the crown of her head. Only now it no longer encountered resistance. The connection had been restored. Watching that unfold remains one of the most beautiful moments I've ever witnessed during any journey. Not because something dramatic happened, because something true happened. Hope returned. Raphael's

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familiar presence surrounded me once more, gentle and compassionate, without words at first, and then this is where we part. And I nodded. There was nothing left to ask, nothing left to understand, only gratitude, one by one. The divine presence as I felt throughout the journey, gently stepped outward from my own light body. The closest comparison I can make is an old pair of red and blue three D glasses. For a brief instant it was though two images separated, then became distinct. Raphael, Miguel, Gibril, Jofel, Zadkil, Yeshua, Bazal, and others whose names I still do not know. Each returned to the brilliant stream of light flowing into Sarah, and I quietly thanked every one of them. Then the drumm changed. The callback began, and it was time to go home. The return always feels different. This time it was gentle. I found myself once more standing within my sacred space. The storm had passed, the sky had become brilliantly clear, a thin mist drifted across the field, the roses glistened with fresh rain, the stream flowed peacefully, and everything smelt clean and renewed, as though the land itself had exhaled. For a long moment I simply stood there, taking it all in, then I opened my eyes. I began writing. Names, images, conversations, symbols, everything I can remember. I wrote the names of the beings exactly as they had sounded to me before I ever attempted researching them. There was simply too much to trust the memory alone. Even then it took months to begin making sense of what I had experienced. Truthfully, I'm still making sense of it. But there's one final part of this story. And unlike everything else you've heard, this part didn't happen in a journey, it happened here in ordinary life. Sarah didn't transform overnight. Healing rarely works that way. There wasn't some magical morning where every wound disappeared. Instead, she began making different choices, one after another. She slowly stepped away from the addictions that once controlled her. She rebuilt relationships. She rediscovered parts of herself she thought were gone forever. And little by little, the woman whose family feared they would soon bury began living again. Today she's thriving. I'm so proud of her. Am I telling you the journey caused that? No. I can't honestly say that. Healing is rarely one moment. It's a thousand moments. A thousand choices, a thousand quiet acts of courage. Perhaps the journey was one thread among many. Perhaps it marked a turning point. Maybe it simply reminded me that no matter how deeply someone appears trapped, there's often more light within them than they can see. So I'll let you decide what this story means. There's one last thing I'd like to leave you with. Every one of us carries prisons. Some were built by other people, some were built by our own choices. Most are held together by stories we've believed for so long that they begin to feel like truth. But stories can change. Prisons built by illusion don't disappear because someone breaks down the wall. They disappear because someone finally recognizes they were never the walls. If you're listening today and life has convinced you that you're beyond hope, that you're too damaged, too ashamed, too far gone, I want you to remember Sarah, a woman who believed the darkness had written the final chapter of her life. It hadn't. The final chapter was still waiting to be written. Maybe yours is too. Thank you for walking this journey with me. Until next time, be kind to one another and be curious, and never stop looking for the light because sometimes it's been looking for you all along.