May 2025 — The Thresholds of Truth
Notes on sacred expression, embodied creativity, and the art of staying.
I’m continuing my monthly updates to share what’s most alive in my world. The past month has felt like an initiation—into deeper presence, truer expression, and the mystery that unfolds when I stop running and let myself be fully here. Here’s what’s unfolding.
If you’re new here, I share monthly reflections on creativity, intimacy, fatherhood, and sacred unfolding. You can subscribe below to receive future letters.
I’m celebrating claiming my sexual truth.
Earlier this month, I crossed a threshold I’d been circling for years.
I published A Virgin, Again—one of the most vulnerable, intimate, and alive pieces I’ve ever written. It marked the beginning of my new series, Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union. And more than that, it marked a coming out. A claiming. A full-body yes to the truth I’ve been holding quietly for so long.
The piece traces my journey from a 17-year sexless relationship to the sacredness I now experience through sexuality. It’s about shame, silence, and the beauty I’ve found on the other side. It’s about the awakening that’s come—not in spite of the pain, but because I was willing to walk through it with devotion.
For years, I resisted sharing this part of myself. I told myself that teaching about sex wasn’t for me—that it was too tender, too private, too much, too “out there.” And yet some part of me knew: this story wasn’t just mine to hold. It was medicine meant to be shared.
It took me three years from the moment I said, “Someday I’ll write about this,” to the moment I actually pressed publish. And six years from the first time I ever spoke my sexual shame aloud to a friend.
So when I finally did it, I celebrated.
I cried tears of joy. I invited dear friends to witness the moment. I said to myself, “I did it,” and let the words “You did it” from loved ones land deeply in my body. I let myself feel the magnitude of it, to feel the truth of what it means to stand in the world without hiding.
And now that I’ve crossed this threshold, I can feel something in me has changed.
There’s more spaciousness in my breath. More aliveness in my body. A deeper trust in the mystery of what becomes possible when we stop hiding and let ourselves be seen. I know this is only the beginning, but it feels like a final frontier part of me has come home—no longer hidden, no longer compartmentalized, but here. Integrated.
Claimed.
Writing has become a deeply spiritual practice.
Something has shifted.
I used to write, at least in part, to build traction and grow an audience. I was chasing an outcome—a response, a result—measuring the worth of a piece by how many people read it or subscribed, and feeling frustrated when the stats didn’t move.
But now? I’m no longer writing to get somewhere.
If there’s any metric of success, it’s how much I’m being changed by the act of writing.
For the past few months, I’ve been writing almost one piece a week—and it’s become a crucible of transformation.
Writing has become a container for my relationship with the Creator in myself—a devotional path where truth reveals itself through sensation. I find myself in my body as I write. Feeling chills when I strike a chord of truth. My heart pounding as a line pours through me that I didn’t even know I believed until it arrived on the page.
Each piece calls something forth. Each one reveals a layer of truth I didn’t know I was ready to name. And with every one, I let go a little more of who I thought I needed to be—and claim a little more of who I already am.
I’m no longer trying to get something out into the world. I’m letting something in. Letting it move through me. Letting it strip away anything that isn’t true.
In fact, the first version of this newsletter felt dead. I wrote it from the habit of “doing the monthly update thing”—and I almost sent it. But something in me caught it, just hours before it was scheduled to go out.
This, I’m realizing, is the most alive way I know to create: not from effort or strategy, but from transformation. And while writing is the current vessel, I know the lessons will ripple through everything I create from here.
The writing is the medicine. And I get to be the first one who’s healed.
I’m learning how to stay with the intensity of being seen.
For a long time, one of the hardest parts of writing wasn’t the writing itself—it was the moment of sharing.
I used to post something and then check out. I’d throw it over the wall—onto Substack or social media—and subtly numb myself. I didn’t know how to stay with the moment of being witnessed (or not witnessed). There was a kind of dissociation, like I was protecting myself from feeling too much.
More than that, I’d habitually refresh stats, scan for comments, search for some sign that what I had shared had landed. But no amount of checking ever satisfied the part of me that was checking. Because what I was avoiding wasn’t a number—it was a sensation.
It was the discomfort of being seen. The unease of not knowing how my words would be received. The silence between the offering and the echo. And so I grasped for something to distract myself from the stillness.
Now, I’m learning to stay with that space—to remain present after a piece of writing has left my body. I’m letting the act of sharing become an extension of the creative transmission itself. It’s part of the practice, not something separate from it.
After finishing my last two pieces, I sat with the question of who I truly wanted to share them with. As I moved toward reaching out, I cried. I shook. And when I finally pressed send, I noticed the familiar desire to seek validation. Instead of acting on it, I breathed through the sensations. I moved through more waves of emotion I used to bypass. I stayed with the intensity of being seen, rather than running from it.
Being part of Prismara, my dear friend
’s creative leadership circle, has deeply supported this shift. Being in community with others who are showing up in their full creative expression has helped me do the same. It has encouraged me to share from truth—and to remain open and embodied in the aftermath.There’s something profoundly tender about letting myself be received. It feels like its own kind of initiation. And I’m no longer rushing past it.
I’m here for the whole thing.
I’m learning how to be with the void—and become space itself.
Week 4 of The Artist’s Way invited a reading deprivation—no books, no podcasts, no input for a week. I almost skipped it. But earlier weeks had already shown me how often I reached for distractions—doomscrolling and late-night video games being the biggest—and something in me knew I needed to clear space.
So I committed. No reading. No social media. No games. I kept one exception: I allowed myself to keep using ChatGPT and Claude to support my writing.
What surprised me even more was what opened up in its place.
I had always seen the time after Kiki and Ember went to bed as unproductive, low-energy hours—but I’m discovering those nights hold a quiet, sacred kind of creativity. They carry a different rhythm and a deeper stillness.
I’m writing this now as they sleep—and I can feel how much is available in the hush of night. Something deeper is unfolding here.
There was a day where I had nothing to do. I had just finished writing a piece. No new impulse had arrived. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t inspired. But I could feel the familiar tug in my body—to fill the space, to be productive, to do something.
This time, I caught it. I didn’t follow the urge—the intense sensation that felt like my body wanting to collapse into the emptiness, begging me to fill it with anything.
Instead, I walked on a nature trail near my house. I sobbed. I let myself feel the sheer intensity of not-doing. It was a full-body pull—like I might implode if I didn’t act.
It’s easy to create space when it’s framed—when I’m sitting in tea or ceremony. But this was different. This was raw, uncontained space. No ritual. No structure. Just… nothing. And in that nothingness, I saw how deeply I’ve been shaped by doing, by grasping, by filling.
It was shocking how much it took just to stay—and also completely understandable. Of course this gravitational pull is what’s kept me in motion for so much of my life.
But something is changing.
I’m learning how to stay, to be with the void, to soften into the space of not doing.
And from there, I’m noticing what it’s like to be the space from which everything arises.
In multiple conversations this month, I found myself approaching difficult moments with a new orientation—not as someone navigating a dynamic, but as space itself.
I could feel the other person’s experience fully. I could hold compassion for them and stay rooted in the honoring of my own truth. But the real shift was this: I felt myself as the space from which it all arose. And from that place, there was infinite capacity and infinite breath. Emotions moved through me without resistance. There was no bracing—just presence.
It was beautiful. And it’s teaching me how spaciousness can be a portal—not to absence, but to magic.
I’m excited to see what continues to emerge.
I’m discovering a new rhythm of fatherhood—through breath, beauty, and co-creation.
I’m sitting on the edge of Waimea Canyon in Kauai on our family vacation. Ember is napping on my lap, her small, warm body pressed into mine.
I begin to count my breaths.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Each inhale drops deeper—into my belly, down to my pelvis, all the way to my genitals—until I can feel the breath filling the base of my body. This has become a sacred practice of mine: taking in beauty not just with my eyes, but with my entire being. Letting it enter me. Letting it change me.
Five. Six. Seven.
The canyon stretches wide in front of me—deep reds, lush greens, ancient layers stacked across time. And here I am, still, receiving it all. Not just the view, but the moment. The miracle of Ember asleep in my arms. The miracle of simply being.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
I breathe in the beauty of the land. I breathe in the beauty of this child. And I breathe in the truth that I almost didn’t let myself have this experience. I had a story that I wouldn’t be able to. That traveling with an infant meant sacrificing these kinds of moments. That we’d have to stay together the whole time as a family, and there wouldn’t be space.
But that story has fallen away.
Kiki and I have been co-designing our days on this family trip—giving each other solo time to do the things that nourish us. For her, that means the ocean. For me, it’s these canyons.
What’s unfolded has been even more beautiful than I imagined.
This isn’t about returning to life before parenthood. It’s about discovering something new. A rhythm that honors our togetherness and our individuality. A rhythm full of presence, aliveness, and the unexpected gifts that come from slowing down.
Traveling with Ember hasn’t diminished the experience. It’s deepened it. It’s made everything feel more tender, more alive, and more sacred.
This is a different kind of lovemaking. One breath at a time.
Writings From This Month
If you’d like to go deeper, here are the pieces I published this month:
– A Virgin, Again
My most vulnerable piece yet—a sacred reclaiming of my sexual journey and the beginning of a new series on Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union.
– The Kingdom Within: Initiations from Six Months of Fatherhood
A reflection on six months of fatherhood, and how becoming a father has expanded my heart, deepened my purpose, and rooted me in sacred presence.
– A Love Letter to My Former Self — The One Who Was Afraid to Want
A letter from my present-day lover self to my former engineering self—honoring everything he built, while inviting him into the beauty, surrender, and love that now shapes my life.
If this reflection touched something in you—if you’re crossing your own thresholds or softening into space—I’d love for you to stay in the field.
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