Who's talking
Nobody ordained me.
I have a record.
Thirty years, four industries, every altar in America. Dot-com, then real estate. Then the law-of-attraction crowd. Then the medicine: I trained as a facilitator and I ran the ceremonies.
Thirty years outsourcing my own magic to a substance, to a story, to God, to money. All exhale, no inhale.
The thing that qualifies me is the thing that disqualified me. I "failed" at every attempt to outsource my magic: to a substance, to a story, to God, to money, to a title. I never failed at being a shaman. I failed at pretending the answer could live outside me. That's not the disclaimer. That's the resume.
You don't need a teacher who never fell. You need one who knows the way back because he crawled it.
For the ones who don't quite fit
You're not broken.
You're just tired of pretending.
You expanded. You came back. And there's nobody to tell. The ceremony had a host. The after has nobody. That's who I'm here for.
Tired of the shame around what you use to feel something. Tired of hiding the parts that woke you up. Tired of being the most aware person in the room and the loneliest.
Good. That's the beginning.
Abra / Cadabra
The story you tell yourself
is the story the world
tells back to you.
The legend says Abracadabra means: I create as I speak. Two syllables, one breath. Abra is the story inside. Cadabra is the story you speak out loud. The order is the teaching. Inside first. Then out.
I spent thirty years exhaling only. Waiting for the world to tell me who I was, then repeating whatever it said. That's the loop. Every addiction lives in it.
My job is to help you get back to the one telling the story.
The three
There are three of you.
The one who forgets. The one who remembers. And the one who watches them dance.
Not my invention. Every tradition that has a witness has this. The legend just calls it different names.
The created.
Here to live. Here to forget. That's not a bug — that's the whole point of coming.
The creator.
The one who remembers they are responsible. Picks the story up on purpose.
The observer.
Neither of the other two. The one you actually are. Watching both of them dance.
The witness is in every tradition that has one. Older than me, older than the map. That's exactly why it can lead.
The map I use
Four parts. Four stories.
Body. Mind. Heart. Spirit. One story about your power, one about yourself, one about other people, one about the mystery. Each one is either Cadabra only — all exhale — or Abra first: you say it inside, then the world says it back.
Body.
Recover Powerthe here-and-now story
- Cadabra only
- you hand your aliveness to substances, screens, the couch.
- Abra first
- you feel it in the body first. Then you move.
Mind.
Recover Storythe self story
- Cadabra only
- you live a story someone else wrote to help you fit in.
- Abra first
- you write it inside first. Then you speak it out.
Heart.
Recover Lovethe others story
- Cadabra only
- you wait for someone out there to rule on your worth.
- Abra first
- you say it to yourself first. Then you give it away.
Spirit.
Recover Faiththe mystery story
- Cadabra only
- you outsource the mystery to gurus, dogma, shortcuts.
- Abra first
- you meet it inside first. Then you play with it out here.
the fifth relationship
The Center. The breath.
Abra on the in-breath. Cadabra on the out-breath. The four stories play on the rim. The center is the one breathing them.
The arc
Four acts.
You forget. You go seeking. Life crashes the car. You slowly remember. That's the whole arc. You're not stuck. You're just somewhere on it.
Where the map came from
A decade of doing nothing.
I ran my last ceremony in 2017. The last real job I had after that was pulling hair out of drains at a yoga studio — a few years after nearly selling a company for millions. I did not know how to explain that to anyone, so I didn't.
The map didn't come from a book. It came from the ten years I spent quiet, watching what actually held and what didn't, and noticing the same shape underneath every collapse I'd lived and every one I'd witnessed.
For the last seventy days I've recorded and posted something every single day. Partly to build the muscle. Mostly to bury the part of me that still wants applause.
The framework is real because the failure was.
Blessings
One sentence.
Take whichever one is yours.
Not advice. Not a prediction. Just something true said out loud so you don't have to say it alone.
- You are not behind. You are early, and you are scared.
- The thing you keep almost saying is the thing.
- You did not lose those years. You were in them.
- You are not too much. You are unaccompanied.
- You are not failing. You are between two stories.
- You are not lost. You are unfinished, and that is different.
- The part of you that is tired is the part that was working.
- You are not the story. You are the one telling it.
The book · the series · the proof
Very High Priest.
Remembering Who I Am.
Very High Priest is the true story behind the map. A man who built a spiritual empire, burned it down, and had to remember who he was.
It's about what happens when devotion and addiction look the same — and what it costs to tell the truth about it.
"Breaking Bad meets Shtisel."
In development as a 12-episode series. Registered with the WGA. A new edition is being rewritten with readers; the original is offline while it takes shape.
Read the serialization for free before it hits the printer.
Flash reading · free
Start at the end.
Tell me the problem first.
"I'm stuck with…"
"I'm scared that…"
Send me a voice note. One or two minutes. Then anything else that helps, if you want. I answer within 48 hours. Free.
You don't need to know your act or your beat. You don't need to explain yourself to an oracle. Just say what hurts.
This is not crisis support. If you're in acute distress, please reach a person who can actually be with you — a trusted friend, your doctor, or a local crisis line. I'll be here after.
@oriya.live