Aug 04, 2025

The Cartographer of Alchemy: A Newsletter

Mapping the soul work, surrender, and the art of transmutation. Witnessing life’s rawness into meaning through light, shadow, and the unknown.

Photo by Joshua Bartell / Unsplash

July 2025✨ Just when you thought it was bad, it spiraled down to worse.

🌿From the Inner Shore

A quiet note from where I’ve been, and what’s been stirring.

Hello Soul Traveler friends,

June was not kind, but July came with sharper teeth.

It bit me in places I haven't yet healed. The month didn't pass—it scraped. In this combat with the unknown, my flesh was torn off, my blood shed, and there were lots of tears.

It was the most challenging month so far in every way, and hopefully it's behind us for this year. I'm done stretching my Soul thin.

How was yours? Did you notice any significant shift in some way (or ways) in your life?

As I was nursing what I thought was grief for the stray dogs of Bali — sick, limping, discarded — I began to realize I was mourning something else entirely. Not just them, but the loss of a version of myself: a self built on belief, image— the Ego. The false self, the one we mistake for the truth. And that truth is, the true Self as our whole, integrated Self.

Death, it feels, is a significant part of this grief. Transformation means the end of the tired old habits, beliefs, and thought patterns.

Out with the old, and in with the new.

In order to be reborn, one must die. Goodbye inflicts pain, and pain makes us grieve. Sorrow and melancholy are part of this process. Embrace it, don't resist. This will serve as a regulator that keeps the heart beating, and the body feeling.

Release all that doesn't serve our growth, be grateful, and say goodbye with a smile on the face.

This time, I allowed myself to feel all of it. Bursting in tears from hearing songs that spoke to me in that moment, a thought, a sight of dogs, a forest, anything that touched my heart in that special moment.

Weeping had become my new thing. A sacred compass of sensitivity, not weakness.

Every sigh, every cry, is a cleansing. 💖

It felt like I had reached the end of another cycle, another Hero’s Journey. And like all endings, this departure of something we used to identify ourselves with—is not sudden but it seeps slowly and invisibly, like the deadly internal bleeding that could kill the body.

The ego doesn’t go quietly. Old habits, old stories, old scaffolding collapse, and in their place: nothing yet. The re-emerging in the liminal space unfolds at its own pace, and it could be a long and terrifying journey until we emerge and are reborn on the other end.

Now I’m left with scabs, a testament to the nature of healing.

They tell me to trust the process.

That I am protected—

by this delicate covering of old memory and dead self, stitched to the new tissue of the one I am becoming.

Thank you for being here—still, or again, or maybe for the first time.

With loving kindness,

Kwan.

✨What’s Unfolding

A truth this particular season is revealing to me. A reflection, affirmation, or statement that rose above the noise and asked to be heard.

Letting go of what no longer serves my growth and hinders my peace was the focus of this month's practice. Setting a healthy boundary to preserve my energy and peace of mind is an act of self-love and a form of spiritual practice at its highest. And for me the hardest one I let go during this process of ego death was attachment.

Mostly, they are old beliefs, thought patterns, self-worth definition, anything that is associated with, and defines me.

Like, the guilt of not being able to save ALL the sick and wounded street dogs. The inability to continue daily street-feeding after having rescued one wounded dog already (and the emotional aftermath that came with conflicts with my husband).

I was lucky to reframe the experience and eventually emerged on the other side.

⏳ This is about divine timing. Not everything needs to be pushed. Some things must be blended, integrated slowly, soulfully. Let your inner feminine and masculine energies dance in unity. You're learning the art of energetic pacing and multidimensional healing.

🪶 What I let go of:

The belief that you must rush to "build it all" at once, to be good enough
Attachment to bonding
Forcing outcomes before their divine ripening
Control over circumstances

💧 What I embraced:

Stillness. Stay put, and test the water before jumping right into the deep end
Listening to my intuition that guides balance over ambition
Outburst of emotional release (not rage, but sorrow and joy)
Unity within—my emotional body. Remain calm, and breathe. Feel the feeling

🌈 “Your becoming is not a race. Let your essence blend with the divine stream.”

🕊️Echoes & Offerings

My gentle gifts to you: links, quotes, tiny rituals. Sacred internet finds of what’s been echoing in my world—hopefully, it will speak to yours too.

When you are detached, you gain a higher vantage point from which to view the events in your life instead of being trapped inside them. You become like an astronaut who sees the planet Earth surrounded by the vastness of space and realizes a paradoxical truth: The Earth is precious and at the same time insignificant. The recognition that this, too, will pass brings detachment, and with detachment, another dimension comes into your life– inner space. Through detachment, as will as nonjudgment and inner nonresistance, you gain access to that dimension.– A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle

Retreat to the forest and allow nature to show you 🌳

🌒In the Quiet Hours

An update, transitions, tech shifts, and what I am working on. A little note on the background rhythm of things.

As I mourned the suffering of street dogs I saw, and fed on the streets, on one cloudy, chilly, Saturday morning, I was faced with the worst scene I had been trying to avoid.

A severely wounded dog. Not just any dog, but the one I had bonded with over the past months since we moved here.

Many dogs, cats, and scruffy people here in Bali (the true Bali, not the Bali within the sanctuary of a resort), I still find it never easy when I see them, and I have to process the feelings that are bottled up inside.

It's easier to let go of the grief when you swiftly pass it by on the streets while driving. But when you establish the bond, you call them by name, take a walk together along with your dog, give them food, hugs, and lots of love: The attachment dictates the depth of that grief.

And it's deep.

Seeing how much pain a human can inflict on another being (a helpless animal) broke my heart and stirred the pieces with unthinkable rage.

Read the full rescue story, the lesson, and the swift progress rescuing this dog has already taught me about letting go of the attachment here

I still can feel the vibration of the shifting landscape. There will be further changes in the next month and throughout the rest of the year. But I'm not afraid of the uncertainty or the unknown; we have become good friends in recent years. I know that I will approach the volatility that life will bring with curiosity, excitement, open arms, and a wide-open heart that trusts—I'll hit the jackpot.