
On the way back from my recent trip to Sedona, I had a layover in LAX this past Monday. As I looked down from the plane on our approach, I couldn’t help but feel the pull of those gorgeous Southern California mountains there in the land of my birth. They have always seemed to sing to me, a poignant song of yearning and not quite belonging. Little did I know vast swathes would go up in flames the next day. It hit me like a gut punch, these searing images of a dark orange sky dominating skyscrapers and LA sprawl. A smoke plume so vast and menacing, it looked like a nuclear mushroom cloud.
My first twenty years on this earth were hard-going for me. Though born and raised Angeleno, I only felt comfortable once I left. I used to say it was like I was a plant meant for a different climate. They call it Mediterranean. But even back then it just felt like a concrete desert to me, growing up in Echo Park. So I’ve had a fraught relationship with my hometown. When I was younger and more brash, I used to say things like, “I hope it all just falls into the ocean.” I used to pray whenever I touched back down into the city that I would never have to live there again. I used to mutter, “Good riddance,” under my breath whenever I left.
The funny thing is, hate isn’t really the opposite of love. They’re more like two sides of the same coin—both an invested relationship. Apathy would be more the opposite here. Still, I hadn’t known I would feel so much overwhelm and sadness. That my heart would cry out at this crisis.
Some others I know here in the Bay Area seemed too excited, almost prurient in their gleeful taking in of the news. That disturbed me almost as much as the images themselves. Meanwhile, my friends down there have noted the weirdness as well. My best friend, who has had to evacuate, said that she felt compelled to ignore a lot of the messages sent to her, ostensibly efforts to show caring which came off as self-centered or somehow missing the mark. She says other locals have made similar complaints. Like people aren’t getting it, are making it political, or saying other bizarre insensitive things when folks are just hoping their home doesn’t burn down and their kids don’t breathe in too many toxins. I feel like collectively, we are starting to lose the thread. That more and more, people are confusing fantasy and reality. That the streams and loops of media have turned real life into an endless smear of entertainment fodder. [On that note, what with the likely prospect of TikTok being banned in the U.S., I finally decided to have a go with the app this past weekend. I will just say that the level of addictiveness on these newer platforms is extremely drug-like. Have you ever seen that video where someone puts an iPad with a swirling spiral down by a flock of pigeons? One bird gets stuck just hypnotically staring at the screen, its little head bobbling to the rhythm of the spiral. That’s what those apps seem to do to us. Regardless of the politics of banning any one platform, we have got to seriously consider just how much we have painted ourselves into a compulsive, attention-deficit-inducing corner here.]
At the same time, events like this can wake us up. My bestie has spoken of the deepening sense of connection she is feeling with other Angelenos she encounters during this time. I remember that feeling right after 9/11. These world-shaking events that sometimes seem the only thing that stops us in our mindless tracks. The pandemic was like that too. I would love for us to find a way to access that without mass tragedy.
I have felt on a deep level that we are entering a new level of accelerating change that, on the surface, will appear more chaotic than not. Beyond mere technological change, but also sociopolitical and the ecosystem itself. It’s one thing to anticipate this cognitively, and quite another to directly experience it. The intensity of events lately has definitely been impacting my equilibrium, and likely doing so for other highly sensitive folks. At times, it has felt uncomfortably like being keyed up on too much caffeine. I have had to consciously reground by visualizing letting that excess energy flow out of me, to be taken and recycled by the earth. I imagine that I’m going to need to be even more mindful about checking in with myself in that way moving forward. It seems clear that the bill for climate change is past due. Some things are bigger than any one of us. What we cannot reverse, we will simply have to be witness to.
I believe on a spiritual level that we have all chosen to be incarnated at this time, to do our part and also just be present. Another part of that edgy feeling for me is how high the stakes are right now across the various fronts: environmental, sociopolitical. No matter what, I know that we need to continue to transcend polarity. We cannot keep fighting ourselves. My sense is the next twenty years are going to be incredibly significant in terms of what direction we ultimately take across all these vital aspects of our planetary existence. My hope is that the high stakes of our current moment will translate into a growing wake-up call within collective consciousness.
Last time I was in LA for an extended period was over Thanksgiving, when I stayed with friends in Topanga Canyon. One night we spontaneously went to the Fish Reel on PCH, a homey, old school restaurant that seemed like it should have “shack” in its name. I remember stopping to admire the lovely salt water aquarium they had in the front, with bright corals and tropical fish. All gone now.
It’s hard to explain what it feels like to be surrounded by fire and smoke. We’ve had that up here in the Bay Area on and off now for a number of years. There’s this heaviness to everything, this dampener on your vitality, this sloggy feeling in the body. There is nowhere to go to escape, it is literally the air you are breathing.
Everything can change in an instant. That’s what immigrant parents talk about—those who. have been through wars, who have watched their countries turn upside down, who have lost loved ones and had to pull up roots and flee all that they know. We always think it won’t happen here, to us. I am reminded of that film, The Last Emperor, a biopic about the last monarch of China before communism. From exalted leader to, in the end, caretaker of the royal gardens. And all the lives he lived in between. This dream of a life is essentially groundless. All the more reason to learn to fly.

Emergent Goddess
After my spiritual awakening circa 2012, when I shifted back into a relationship with the ineffable (after a brief sojourn through secular rationalistic nihilism), I found myself connecting more and more with the feminine divine. I hadn’t had that opportunity during my Presbyterian childhood, where Mother Mary was absent from the picture except for her presence at the altars of my Filipina aunties. And unlike the Hebrew tradition which feminizes the Holy Spirit, I was left with a thoroughly masculine—and passionless—idea of the holy trinity. I know each tradition serves its purpose. Yet for me, there was a certain barrenness to the Protestant equation.
Goddess kept tugging at me, finding ways to reveal herself to me. Reading Sue Monk Kidd’s The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine was one of my first forays into the idea of woman-centered spirituality. That memoir caught me at the right time, as a former Christian still searching for a new template for my transpersonal perspective.
Later on during psych grad school, I experienced a vision of being a part of this towering golden goddess—one of those dreams that feels too vivid, too real to just be a dream. At the time, I was very much in the midst of wrestling with my relationship to patriarchy, as evident in a follow-up vision. In that second vision, the goddess wore Egyptian garb and sat on her golden throne flanked by two Roman centurions, gloriously toned and shirtless in their pteruges and military accoutrements. They proceeded to strap her wrists to the armrests. The goddess leaned her head back and opened her mouth as they unsheathed their swords for her to swallow. I told this to a classmate at the time and she was like, “That’s so hot!” But it wasn’t like that for me. It felt like a symbol of the dangerous interplay powerful beautiful women must negotiate—between pleasure and pain, empowerment and victimhood—within this man’s world.
I had other strange occurrences in the following years, particularly the affinity of metallic green figeater beetles towards me. On two separate trips to LA, I found myself studying at the same outdoor cafe in Echo Park. Both times, one of these iridescent beetles landed on me and hung out for some time. Another patron exclaimed during the second occurrence, “Again?!” The same species of beetle claimed me during outside group meditations at Stephen Gilligan’s Trance Camp retreat. Indeed, when I looked it up I found that the figeater is of the scarab family. Scarabs being one symbol of Goddess Isis, considered the All Mother in pre-Christian times—and that resonated with me. I found magical interactions with others Isis symbols, including several close encounters with raptors. I allowed myself to suspend any disbelief and just go with it. I had to push against my own counterprogramming that wanted to call such revelation silly feminine woo or even insanity. At the end of the day, believing in my patron goddess Isis has truly only been of benefit to me. I doubt I would have published any books without assistance from Her.
Interestingly, towards the end of last year, I began to resonate with Goddess Kali. The Hindu goddess of time, death and destruction. I did not expect to be drawn to her energy. To someone outside South Asian culture such as me, I found her imagery more than a bit daunting. Yet I sense now that this attunement is helping me prepare for the coming shifts. Death and destruction are simply part of the natural cycle of rebirth and renewal.
As recent events have shown me, it’s one thing to conceptually embrace dramatic transformation. And quite another to live it within our acutely tuned, mammalian nervous system! Now more than ever, grounding, presence and fuller contact with our multidimensional self will be vital to balance and wellness. If that includes “far out” connections with metaphysical aspects of reality, more power to you.