A case for being fucked up
You’re not here to be “well” or fixed or healed.
𓁹 Inside this edition: A love letter, tarot card of the week, recommendations, an invitation. Apologies for my recent quietness; chronic pain is the best, I love it so much. 𓁹
The longer I’m alive, the more I’m reminded that I’m not here to be “well” or fixed or definitively healed. I’m here to be alive and bear witness to life, in all its multiplicities of expression. Including the inevitably fucked up ones.
As a creative who coaches others, I need to talk about this. Because often, people come to me in order to help them turn into someone that only feels great. Great about their creative expression (often they’re waiting to feel great before they allow themselves one), about their relationships, about their bodies, their confidence, and so on.
They want to buy into transcendence. Despite me never claiming to sell it. I understand the impulse and I do believe integrating our current stories of self and behaviours is entirely possible through committed practice. I’ve seen it. But that doesn’t come from transcending the difficult or denying it. It requires the immanent, the immediate. And all the horrifying, inconvenient, uncomfortable, confronting shit that comes with a clear look at the tangible reality of here and now. Personally and collectively.
As a nondualist, I can’t abide by the Protestant American-informed sterilisation of spirituality and self-development. To check out the “new age” section of any bookstore is to see a million prosperity gospels of self-abnegation that read a little like queer conversion therapy textbooks.
This isn’t to say that the individual seekers those books target are at fault. Or that there is a right way to seek personal growth and spiritual knowledge. It’s the nondualist’s belief that every path, when walked sincerely, leads to the same destination. Swami Vivekananda once said that all spiritual practices, “from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association.” To each their own.
If we try to force a square peg in a round hole, we damage it. If we try to become somewhere we’re not, we hurt ourselves. We invite shame, comparison, and misery. This is true for our creative practices, and for our whole approach to our life and how we expect it to be. And how we expect it to be, is usually pure and perfect.
We expect our work to be immediately excellent. We expect ourselves to be instantly happy, brave, and self-assured. As if expecting—demanding—it harder can scrub away our impurities and we’ll emerge squeaky clean. Not a bad or sad thought in sight ever again.
But just like in spirituality, the “lowest” and the “highest” experience, thought, or behaviour in our creative work are not antithetical to each other. They’re more than equals too; they’re inseparable. There’s a certain sorrow in joy. There’s also joy—a kind of jouissance—in sorrow. Haven’t you felt that?
Haven’t you felt that, as a creative being, your moments of bliss have been subtly pervaded by a sense of “this too shall pass”; a desire to capture what’s fleeting of beauty? Haven’t you felt the bliss of catharsis; a state of aliveness that only expressing an awful or disgusting feeling offers? Our gift as artists (whether you call yourself that or not, I will!) is that we know how inextricably entangled our pain is with our love.
Why would you want to forget that? If you could click your fingers and transform into a version of yourself who only knew how to be perfect, you wouldn’t be you. And you wouldn’t want to stay long in that Paradise™️, trust me. Your very soul would scream for something fucked up to happen, just so you can feel human again.
Just like there is no “low” and “high” distinction in our paths to realising God (or whatever you call her), there is no distinction between the shitty version of yourself you wish to be rid of, and the fully realised version of yourself you’re attempting to become. They’re the same person. Already perfect. Already beautifully, perfectly fucked up. Already present in the here and now, and reading this email.
Xo Jerico
Tarot card of the week: The Wheel of Fortune
You can’t control the world. You can’t control other people. All you can control is your own actions. The Wheel of Fortune says that when struggle ceases, life ceases. That good things and bad things are two sides of the same coin. Getting attached to one while rejecting another is repudiating the very nature of life.
Instead of fighting fate and blaming forces external to yourself, it’s time to walk your talk. The Serenity Prayer in recovery goes “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This is a lot like how to experience the Wheel of Fortune.
Instead of riding its edge like a wave—sometimes catching a lucky one and sometimes getting completely wiped out—how can you exist in the sturdy centre? Remaining grounded and unattached to external outcomes while working diligently and sustainably to serve your communities, which serves the world at large.
I grew up hearing phrases like inshallah and mashallah about thirty times a day and I know most cultures have similar expressions. They express something ineffable about the Wheel of Fortune and the nature of our universe. Thy will be done. As in, there is a divine drive we don’t understand. A glorious game being played that’s beyond our comprehension, beyond the field of right and wrong. We don’t need to know why, we just need to accept it—and join in the fun.
Recommendations
Some things I’ve enjoyed recently, from my various studies and online loitering, that I thought you might like <3
♡ Why be creative in a burning world? Aka just me doing silly reels again.
♡ Good luck, babe! I dislike The Tonight Show but no notes, as usual.
♡ Co-sensing with radical tenderness. Scroll to play the sensuous recorded version.
♡ The way Contrapoints can keep my attention for 3 hours should be studied in a lab.
An invitation…
I have room for two or three new clients within my signature one-on-one coaching series, Come Alive!! This is a three-month creativity coaching program where I’m your personal guide and mentor, helping you get back in touch with your creative consciousness. Whether you want to release something major into the world, or you just want to access your creativity as a therapeutic or spiritual tool, Come Alive is a profound opportunity for unlearning perfectionism, divesting from shame, and grow in radical self-acceptance and expression.
And I offer sliding scale pricing now! <3 Learn more on my website and if you feel the pull, book a complimentary “clarity call” so you can suss out the vibe between us. Can’t wait to meet you.
P.S. I’ve been overwhelmed with means-based coaching scholarship applications since, well, forever. It’s been a tricky thing to figure out, but I’ve finally done it! From now on, scholarship applications will be open only for a specific window, twice per year. I’ll share here and on social media when applications are open again later this year. This means moving forward, I’ll award them based on suitability, looking only at the pool of applicants who applied for that specific round. If you’ve applied in the past, I highly, highly encourage you to do it again when the time comes.
How to work with me
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“There’s also joy—a kind of jouissance—in sorrow. Haven’t you felt that?” >> so true! My nearly 4 y/o will cry while looking in the mirror. Although he’s okay with me sitting next to him, he does not want to be “lifted” out of the feeling until it passes or is replaced by the desire for a hug. I remember doing the same when I was little. Wanting to witness my own sadness because there was something beautiful to it.
This is the kind of humanistic transparency I want to see more of in the world, and that the world needs to hear and reflect on. Thanks for putting it out there!