I am a Gnostic priestess today, meaning I live a of life of growth, play and reverent connection to the pulsing presence and holy heart of our Divine Mother. There are many names for Her; The 10 000 faces, the Holy Spirit, Kundalini, the Breath of God who births, animates and sustains all of life. She speaks to each one of us, Her Beloveds, through all of Creation and the gentle whispers in our heart.

What a relief it was to start seeing myself through Her loving eyes. She is all of our Nature, the dark, the light and everything in between. I came to know Her when I came to know myself and to see my imperfections as perfection, my anger as a holy call to action, my emotions as mirrors and signs of shadows to love and integrate. She is the middle way of witnessing all of life and all of ourselves, the dark and the light as necessary, holy and good. To know Her is to stop moralising gnarly parts of ourselves and see it all as part of this Divine Play.

I didn’t always live in this spacious place of total self-acceptance.

I grew up in South Africa as part of the Lebanese diaspora, and my family line is from Mt. Lebanon on my Dad’s side, and I am mostly of Irish decent on my Mom’s side. I come from a long line of fundamentalist priests, mostly Catholic, but then my Father, out of his own hurt by the church, broke away and became a Charismatic Christian. This collective amnesia we’ve all gone though, my family line went through it too. All but forgot the deeper, indigenous mysteries and the truth of who we are. Finding an uncomfortable solace in dogma and religion.

Although I discovered many beautiful things in the church community, by the time I reached adulthood, I found myself in a highly fractured, anxious, compulsive and unwell space. This was because ‘God’ was framed as a Being outside of me. Jesus was perfect, but I was a bag of sin and all I could do was pray to him to save me. I didn’t realise at the time, but this is a very spiritually damaging ideology, because it takes the agency of ‘wellness’ away from the individual. There’s a diagnosis for this problem and it’s called ‘religious abuse’ or ‘religious trauma’.

When one’s so called ‘darkness’ is framed as bad or sinful it creates a fracture in the psyche. I was unable to accept my difficult emotions and gnarly aspects because subconsciously I didn’t want to offend ‘God’ by being ‘sinful’. So fundamentalism kept me from my own evolution. I have since come to understand that the dark or difficult parts of myself is the basis or entry point for healing and integrating a certain shadow aspect. Just like Nature must decay into compost in order to sprout new life, so too, must we face our own ‘shadowy decay’ in order to find the key to our rebirth.

Years of avoiding my shadow by bending the knee and praying to ‘God’ to save me from my suffering was obviously not working. My unacknowledged shadow acted out in many self-destructive ways and eventually I was cornered into taking back my agency and self responsibility. I left the church and spirituality entirely and focused only on tools and techniques that gave me actual experiences of ‘getting better’ and feeling good again. I was tired of blind faith, and I devoted myself to a path of efficiency and recovery.

I started an invaluable somatic therapy called Trauma Release Exercises. (Developed by Dr. David Berceli) We hold trauma deep in our nervous system and when I surrendered to the wisdom of my body’s biological mechanisms, the level of energetic release and healing was unsurpassed.

I started practicing Meditation, Kundalini, Pranayama, Yin and Ashtanga. All these Yoga forms showed me I have the power to shift and move energy in my own body. Through these ancient spirit sciences, I rediscovered the control panel to my own wellness.

I also engaged in a Gestalt therapy process called QEC. This 1-1 therapy was the most pivotal healing technique for me because it helped unlock my self awareness. I learnt how to question the source of my feelings and perceptions and not just agree with the ‘wounded patterns’ within. When I became aware of unhealthy patterns in myself,  I learnt how to take this awareness into physical change through this practice called QEC (Quantum Energy Coaching, developed by Dr. Melanie Salmon). A simple neurological process that helped me rewire false core beliefs into positive ones, viscerally shifting my personality, and by effect my reality.

Over six years of intensive recovery I mended the great rift of Abrahamic dogma within myself. My body and Her Nature was no longer a carnal, deceptive adversary who was not to be trusted. She was in fact the source of my liberation. My recovery was a process of coming home into my body, her instincts, intuition, authenticity of emotion, radical self-acceptance and trusting her voice above any other noise. Year after year, with her loving guidance, I took on the hard task of releasing attachment after attachment, unhealthy pattern after pattern… A devoted pursuit to the expansion of my own peace and wellness. Until…

One day in August 2019, completely unexpectedly, I had a massive and inexplicable Kundalini or (Spiritual) Awakening. After many years of avoiding all things spiritual, I had no idea that my efficient path of self-regulation and recovery tools was going to lead me straight back into the arms of the Creator. I had no idea that the path of self-recovery was actually the path of ‘enlightenment’. But this ‘God’ is nothing like the one I knew in religious dogma. That one is a false god but this One, is as true as truth itself. This time it is a Divinity I know personally, within me. A love that permeates beyond dogma and institutions.

My Kundalini awakening led to an escalation in integration of the self. I opened into my Shamanic capabilities, and the spiritual experiences that I had and I continue to have are deeply real and personal. It’s a visceral, experiential and undeniable connection to the Supreme Creator who dwells and speaks from my heart.

Beatific? For sure, but it was also a hallway of inner mirrors. An increased face-off with my inner demons or ego illusions. A carnival of my own pathologies. The Kundalini energy is no walk in the park. One can easily get stuck in their own sense of power. The fire of the creative, sexual energy and one’s own burning desires can easily be mistaken for true North. When in fact, it’s the climax of the movie of your life and a face-off with your deepest, ego desires. What you believe is North, is usually South, and the thing you want the most is not the thing the Creator wants to give you.

It was a heightened journey of continuous surrendering. She asked me to give Her every, single ego identification. At first I thought She was taking them from me, but then I came to realise that I couldn’t take my eyes off Her. The path was so purifying. Each time I threw a false identification on to Her ego pyre, I was liberated into a higher state of being. Less of me and more of She…More emptiness.

Until I found myself in the mountains of Kashmir in October 2021 as I lay enveloped in a thick, deep, red blanket. Cocooned in the womb of my transformation. In the dark I thumbed through the beads of my rosary, whispering my mantra as tears sailed down my face. Each bead as round as the Earth Herself. In the pitch black of my room all I could feel was the sensation of Her smooth roundness between my fingertips. Like seeing Earth as a small dot from far away in space. Floating in the Great Cosmic Abyss with only a rosary to hold on to.

This bead. This prayer. This undoing.

I’m not afraid of the Nothing anymore.

I’d rather have nothing than something.

To find solace in the abyss,

This is the well-spring of life

I am married to my Beloved
And my Beloved to me.

I had an Alchemical Wedding. Up in the mountains of Kashmir, alone in the warmth of my room. The most difficult thing I have ever gone through. A death of my deepest, egoic, illusionary desires.

Only as I write this in retrospect can I speak of the honey I now taste. To live inside the softness of a smile. To be in the feeling of a loving cocoon.

This life of growth is no easy task but my faith in this true Creator is what sustains me in my dark hours. Continuously dying to illusion and unhealthy patterns is a grieving, but through those nights, the knowledge and continuous experience of Her expansion keep me on the course. She never lies. Only my ego lies. Trying to hold on to attachments, afraid of the great abyss and expanse beyond.

Choosing to let go of wounded patterns and fall into the black void takes courage, but one can only experience the elixir of integration on the other side of this ‘loss’.

Dying to an ego aspect hurts for a moment and then we are rewarded with the buzz of deeper wellbeing and healing. Like a subtle, electric bliss that vibrates in the heart when Lovers lock eyes across the room. It is like that feeling. The more I am in it, the more it stays. At One, seeing my Beloved’s face in all of creation. The curious eyes and arched brows of a dog, the chattering of dusk time birds roosting in the Neem tree, the cool kiss of water on my body. The cup of my heart overflows with this Love. The fountain of truth hiding in plain sight.

There is nothing puritanical about this path. I gave myself over to every desire in order to get ‘here’. Whatever ‘here’ means. The journey never ends and I keep growing because I allow my dark, my mess and my imperfections to be a loved and accepted part of me. The very key to my expansion.  In Tantra sometimes we need to engage with a ‘little dark’ in order to integrate a ‘greater dark’.

I smoked hash like it was going out of fashion because it helped me cope, and I swore like a trooper whenever She led me back to the ego pyre. 
I had stopped judging myself and my ‘imperfections’ a long time ago. This is a basic requirement for the Kundalini fire to awaken in anybody. The process is so messy that one cannot have an iota of self-judgment or imposed rules of behaviour. Fck that. That’s not what the true Creator cares about.

Asceticism must come from a place of one’s true desire. I slowly stopped smoking and other things, because I wanted to. The path of self-denial is tragically dogmatic. I don’t put a show on for anyone, and neither does our true Creator. Be you, exactly who you are in this moment. Fck obligations, rules, reputation, and expectations.

The Holy Mother is the other half of God. The feminine aspect who lives in matter. She is the Earth and everything on it. The part of God embedded in the material of our own bodies. She is the shadow aspect of divinity, and She will throw the fck down to live her most authentic life. She is your raw, real, wild self. She is liberated, free, sovereign. She is emotionally authentic, expressive and sensual. She is creative and like a child running through the bottom of the garden, she is living her best and most magical life.

Becoming that again and letting one’s inner child shine is far from a puritanical and ‘controlled’ process. Enlightenment requires Divine Anarchy. You have to rebel against everything you know and follow the truth of your heart. No matter how many people raise their eyebrows and call you crazy.

Do you want to be free? Truly free?

Well then, you’ll need to be willing to surrender your ‘story’ for your life. The one you inherited based on cultural and familial conditioning. You’ll also need to come back into your body and start the process of continuous death and rebirth. Your own private Hero/ine’s journey with the most loving support and guidance from the Creator in your heart. No mediators, no dogma. Just the greatest quest of your life. Full of magic, synchronicity and co-creative expansion.

Each time you release a pattern you are born again, into something higher, newer. More of your authentic self. 
Once you engage with your inner wisdom and experience this, you will know for yourself. ‘Gnosis’ means ‘to know’. Not just any knowing, but the knowing that you know for sure, because you’ve experienced it in your heart. I am a ‘knower’, and I invite you to become one too.

You are the Guru and your heart is the key,

With Love
Genevieve Akal