Seeing Beyond the Veil

A few days before New Years Eve 2025 in front of el Ángel de la Independencia in Mexico City.

Hi beautiful being,

Well, damn. How do I even begin to start this post?

For starters, I am sending you a big hug.

I encourage you to take a deep inhale and visualize expelling stagnancy, fear, pain, confusion, and panic during your exhale.

Despite outward appearances, you, and I, are not as powerless as we’re being told we are.

I feel like a bit of a phony as I write that because…look at the world around us. Look at what they’re doing. They’re murdering our neighbors, they’re burning down the Patagonia, they’re kidnapping leaders, and they’re brazenly letting us know that they plan on pushing all of the limits; which also includes trying to push each of us to the edges of our own perceived limitations.

I can’t write this post with tangible proof that everything will be okay, because quite frankly, everything is not okay, but more than ever I have faith that we are going to figure things out.

Throughout the past four years of my life I have undergone a transformation that could’ve only transpired in solitude—away from everything and everyone that I knew. I wanted so badly to run away from what felt like I was being plagued by, but deep down there was an inner knowing that I just needed some space to really fall apart. Nothing about the way my life was unfolding felt like part of “the” plan and I didn’t know how to cope with that. I’d been so methodical throughout my 20s.

I was responsible.

I played by the rules.

I tried to keep myself safe.

But, in the end, I had to scrap it all. It was the only way to discover the real me. The me that had been pinned down beneath the heaviness of traumas that at some point I thought I couldn’t face. So, in the darkness of my cocoon I chose to excavate the junk that kept me trapped, and what came out during this time forever changed me.

Over the many months, that turned into years, it became apparent why so much had been tucked away in the chambers of my mind. In my earlier years I had to compartmentalize in order to keep on going because I wasn’t yet equipped with how to self-regulate, however, that framework could no longer persist if I was serious about liberating the real me.

It was in the midst of this embarkation that I began to see beyond the veil.

From a card pull during the final days of 2025

Little by little I realized that there were layers of film glossing over my life, and they were getting in the way of me seeing things clearly. I have no idea when or how this began, but I wanted it gone. The challenge is that once I was able to access the HD picture of my life it wasn’t clear what I was meant to do next. The compartmentalization I worked my way out had kept me ‘safe’, but now that there were no psychological guardrails, I had to confront every aspect of my life and the world with a rawness I didn’t know how to manage.

It was during this time that I began to learn the role of faith and perseverance.

Through the many stories I’ve heard from family members who have survived abject poverty, migration, violence, and tremendous suffering, I thought I understood the role of faith and resilience in their lives. I thought I understood resilience based on my own mental fortitude and my ability to avoid fully succumbing the childhood traumas that created the inner demons I battled for so long, but I was wrong.

It wasn’t until life brought to my knees and that I had to humbly surrender to God/Allah/the universe over and over and over again that I understood the role of faith.

For over 18 months it felt like every single time I mapped out a plan life went in the opposite direction. The cycle began to eat away at my spirit and it terrified me because I was frozen.

I had run out of ideas and my for some reason my savviness could no longer save me.

Throughout the many ups and downs of my life, I was always able to count on the confidence that I sourced from knowing I was competent, intelligent, and nimble but that confidence was slipping away from me, and without that confidence it seemed like I had nothing.

Not even myself.

During all of this I knew that if I just held onto faith and my belief that I could withstand the moment I would make it to the other side. I wasn’t sure when or how the relief would present itself, but I knew I really wanted to live.

Not just exist, but live.

Now, here I am writing this post in Miami, having formally exited the multi-year cocoon of Mexico City; still without all of the answers (which I now realize is actually impossible) but feeling less lost and lonely.

Seeing beyond the veil exposed how much work is required to avoid allowing the true essence of my being to be muddied by the limitations put onto me by others.

It also showed me how sturdy my spirit is and can remain to be when I latch onto faith.

In the midst of the chaos and inhumane events taking place across the world right now, I have found myself wavering within the haze again. Worrying that things will only get worse. That humanity is doomed. That everything is leaning towards the worst of the worst, but then I remember the role of faith. I remember the tears flowing down my cheeks when I was on my knees begging to any and all omnipresent spirits that would listen to make life make more sense.To show me proof that things would get better.

I remember doubting that anything would change at all, but holding onto that sliver of hope that my human brain was no match for the beautiful divine plan that was unfolding before me.

And, now here I am.

Alive.

On the other side of a spiritual reckoning I'm not sure I’ll ever actually be able to articulate to you with words because it was a storm of without language, but mired with a ferocity unlike anything I’ve ever confronted.

Weathering the storm within my own body and personal world has proven to me that I have what it takes to remain in this, and it has also given me a newfound hope in our resilience.

On the days when I feel like doom and gloom is upon us all, I remember that we are weathering a collective storm unlike anything any of us have ever lived through in our lifetimes. I don’t allow my cynicism to take me out too far, because now I have the kind of faith in others that is anchored in my own proof of life.

I realize that there is a spiritual undercurrent in all of this. One that isn’t tangible but is at the center of our future.

As long as we have faith in us we’ll outmaneuver this cyclone.