My Journey from Identity to Essence

Seeing through the false reality and embodying the Authentic Self

Journey from Identity to Essence - Embodying the Authentic Self

For most of my life, I believed I was a flawed, weak, neurotic self who had to work hard, be spiritual, and overcome my defects. Why? So that one day I would finally be good enough to have my dreams come true.

Then one day, in the process of reluctantly – yet again! – going into my body to clear some painful, stuck energy, I experienced a profound insight.

I actually saw my life from the point of view of my consciousness sitting inside my “flawed self.” From that perspective “my ideal Self” seemed like another person, somewhere off in the future.

DK Brainard - Feeling the feels. Photo by Julie Jaycox.

Feeling the feels. Photo by Julie Jaycox.

For so long I had searched for the the right spiritual formula. If I could just find the best form of meditation, overcome my addictions, harness my desires (or make enough money or have enough success?), I could finally become that self.

In an instant, I felt  the truth: my ideal Self is who I really am, who I always have been. The suffering, “not quite good enough” self? That’s just my identity.

I saw that my identity is an illusion, a shell I created in childhood to try to win love and approval and avoid pain and suffering. All my life, I had accepted my identity, my personality, as the real me.

When the Shell Starts to Crack Open

You probably already know that for many years I wrote weekly and monthly horoscope columns. They were read by thousands of people around the world. I had astrology and coaching clients on every continent but Antarctica.

I became far more successful as an astrologer than I ever could have imagined when I started out. But one day I woke up and realized I wasn’t happy. I was starting to fake it – I just didn’t feel the juice, the enthusiasm I used to any more. At the same time, my income was steadily shrinking. I drove myself to work harder, to try harder. But nothing seemed to work.

Finally, I admitted the frightening truth to myself: Continue reading

The Real You, Hiding in the Shadows

Who you think you are is probably not who you really are…

by Safiya

I’ve been crocheting a lot lately. It’s like a meditation, the repetitive back and forth, seemingly never ending rows growing and forming, something taking shape from nothing. It’s a miracle to turn a ball of string into a piece of fabric, a fabric that is basically holes held together with knots of yarn.

I just made a curtain. I’m in love with it! I fall in love with everything I make. I can’t believe I’m able to do it and I fall in love so often that I’m overrun with stuff I’ve made.   This is the making of a great modern fairy tale:  the girl who fell in love with everything she makes and ends up surrounded by her handiwork and unable to leave her home, only to be rescued by a handsome prince who arrives on a white horse clutching  a pair of scissors to cut her out of her predicament.

Continue reading

Aries Full Moon: The Clampdown

What Are We Gonna Do Now?

The collective grief and angst have felt crushing. Las Vegas. Puerto Rico. Venezuela. Plus all the ongoing crap. We empaths have been feeling it, big-time. (Get inspired with my Aries Full Moon playlist and mashup poem.)

Life feels really dangerous these days. So many people are walking around in a zombie trance, ready to lash out at the slightest provocation. They’re so cut off from their feelings, they can’t (won’t) allow themselves to stop and feel what’s happening inside. The only way they know how to deal is by hurting someone, anyone, to make themselves feel a little less pain.

So what are we gonna do now? Well, we have to feel the grief. That’s the only way to allow grief to move out of the body. You’ve got to stop and feel it. That sucks. No fun. But necessary.

But there’s feeling the grief. And then there’s allowing the Parasites to use the collective grief to control you, to keep you small and weak and manageable. And that’s exactly the favored strategy of these non-human entities that are orchestrating the pathetic string of tragedies crowding the world stage.

This is the time, people. The world is cracking open. We knew this was going to happen. In fact, this moment is the reason we chose to incarnate again. This is the time we’ve been waiting for our whole lives.

So, please. Feel what you need to feel. But realize that – unless you personally know someone who was killed or injured in Las Vegas, in the Caribbean, in Houston, in Venezuela – you are only responsible for feeling your own grief.

Know that you are not grieving on behalf of the victims of whichever tragic event you’ve been tuned in to. You don’t know those people.

You are grieving for yourself. And that is a very good, and long overdue, thing to do.

What Grief Is Good For

In her enlightening book The Language of Emotions, Karla McLaren writes:

Grief will come forward in response to death, the end of a love relationship, the irretrievable loss of your health or well-being….Grief will also arise in response to never having had something we’re all supposed to take for granted, such as health, strength, security, or a happy childhood. Grief enables you to survive losses by immersing you in the deep river that flows underneath all life.

So please. Be aware that what you are mourning is your own suffering, all of the needless pain and abuse and struggle and self-harm and betrayal and broken promises you’ve had to endure to show up for this moment. Until we grieve those losses, we can never be fully empowered.

We tend to find it very difficult to allow ourselves to be immersed by grief in McLaren’s “river of the soul.” Paradoxically, once we’re there it can be a strangely comforting and comfortable place to be. When we’re grief-stricken, nothing is expected of us. We don’t have to pick ourselves up off the deck and find the courage to fight for a better world.

This is where the Parasitic entities are applying much of their strength at the moment. They want to seduce us into over-identification with ‘victims’ we’ve never met until we ourselves become the victims. Inert passengers on the river of grief, we “stare straight into nothing and we call it all the same.”


Ready to clear out the mind parasite and reconnect with your soul power? I’m offering 30- and 60-minute personal evolution astrology readings in October at throwback prices. This is an astoundingly valuable resource – for new and returning clients alike.


How To Change the World = You Be You

As today’s Aries Full Moon energizes Pluto in Capricorn (the death and rebirth of global society), it also asks us to notice what we are passionate about. As opposed to what we think we should do in order to keep things nice and in balance (mental sign Libra, where the Sun, Mercury and Jupiter are currently in transit).

Aries Full Moon October 5 2017

Aries is the sign in search of an authentic identity – which can only be found by trial and error. Aries says, “I may not be right, but this is what I have to do.”  In taking risks and following its own personal inspiration, Aries eventually learns the truth of the old cliche that “it’s about the journey, not the destination.”

It’s perfectly OK to fail, as long as you’re failing authentically. And if you keep on being you and acting on those soul impulses that make you the unique, once-in-lifetime expression of the Life Force that you are, you’ll eventually find that you’ve succeeded. The Full Moon is also energizing last week’s Jupiter-Uranus opposition in Libra-Aries, a powerful aspect that has been trying to liberate us since last December.

Perhaps more importantly, in light of what’s happening in the world right now, you’ll be a vital part of the solution. Because the old power and control systems depend completely on you not waking up and realizing that the world wants nothing more than for you to be you. And for me to be me.

The illusion of the old world is cracking and peeling away before our very eyes. Now is the time to gather our forces, unite in our common cause, and create the world we want to live in.

And just to be super-clear: We don’t change the world by engaging in battle with the oppressors and their minions.

We change the world by reclaiming our own power and agency and stepping into more of what fuels – and shares – our joy.

P.S. I’m not saying we should ignore people who need our help. What I am saying is that energetically-drained martyrs are extremely limited in the amount of good they can offer.