We often think of growth as linear—a straight path from one version of ourselves to the next. But life doesn’t unfold that way. It moves in spirals, circling us back to the same lessons, but at different levels of consciousness. Each turn on the spiral offers a new chance to see ourselves clearly, to unlearn something false, to reclaim something sacred. The spiral is where identity lives and breathes. It’s fluid, dynamic, and deeply responsive to time, place, and soul memory.

At the core of this evolution is what I call the matrix of beliefs: the living network of thoughts, ideologies, assumptions, and energetic imprints—conscious and unconscious—that form the inner scaffolding of how we move through the world. Our personal matrix is shaped by family, culture, religion, race, gender, media, ancestry, past lives, trauma, and everything in between. But this matrix is not fixed. It can be rewritten. And in this time of global upheaval and political absurdity, we’re being asked to do exactly that. But it’s not easy. Especially when much of what we’ve been taught about who we are is rooted in illusion.

(DISTORED) MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY

Our current systems—social, political, economic, spiritual—are steeped in distorted masculinity. Not the true masculine, but a toxic performance of it: domination, suppression of emotion, gaslighting, projecting, detachment from the Earth and the body, and the illusion of control. These aren’t divine traits. They’re learned behaviors, born of trauma and perpetuated by systems that benefit from disconnection.

To decolonize ourselves from toxic masculinity is to begin the intentional work of remembering. Not just talking about feminine softness, but relearning what masculinity actually is in its pure form: presence, protection, clarity, stability and truth. True masculinity is steady enough to hold space for vulnerability, strong enough to protect without controlling, and clear enough to lead in all areas of life without dominating. True masculinity is the rooted tree.

Toxic femininity is warped by patriarchal or white supremacist conditioning, where traits like care, receptivity, and nurture are stripped of their power and used to reinforce the very systems that suppress them. But just as masculinity in its pure form is grounding, true femininity is intuitive, nurturing, creative, receptive, and life-giving—an energy that moves with flow and trusts the wisdom of cycles, weaving connection between self, others, and the greater whole. It’s fierce in its protection of life, unapologetic in its expression, and unwavering in its capacity to love without possession. True femininity is the river.

And when you go deep enough into the essence of the masculine and feminine, they converge. They become one pulse—an integrated dance of receptivity and direction, intuition and structure, creation and containment.

But most of what society calls masculine or feminine is surface-level, performance-based and masked. Masks can be comfortable, especially for those who’ve never been forced to question them, or who stopped questioning at signs of discomfort. When you begin to remove yours, the shift can feel unsettling not just to you, but to those around you.

There are people who won’t understand your spiral and may mistake your shedding for instability, your unraveling for chaos, or your becoming for a breakdown. They may still be clinging to roles and beliefs that feel safe, familiar, and rewarded, while evolution threatens what they’ve built their identities on. But that’s not your burden to carry.

Marginalized people, especially, have mastered the art of surviving systems not made for us. We’ve turned oppression into innovation, grief into celebration, limitation into style. But even brilliance can become a mask if it means we’re still creating from within paradigms that were built to erase our existence. We're being called now, not to perfect the performance—despite the continued pressure to contort our identities to survive—but to detox from the structures themselves. To stop asking which mask we should wear, and who can teach us how to wear it the best, and to ask instead: Why are we still trying to enter a house that was never built for us in the first place?

This detox asks us to trace the ways distorted masculinity and femininity have taken root in us—to see where they surface most, and to notice the moments, subtle or loud, when we use them against each other.

LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Self-reflection demands honesty—not performance nor spiritual bypassing, but a courageous willingness to see where you are, how you got there, and what you’re actively participating in and creating. The world, your relationships, your body, and your energy field are constantly offering mirrored opportunities—flashing red arrows that point directly at what must be healed or released within you. Situations and people don’t just happen to you; they reveal you. And this is critical work, especially for women right now.

For those who’ve already decentered men from the core of their self-worth, who have named and rejected the inherited templates of domination, suppression, and emotional unavailability of patriarchal distortion, a new mirror will appear to reveal those who haven’t done the work. It’s uncomfortable to witness and be a part of. But that discomfort is a powerful indicator of your own growth. You’ll recognize what and who’s unsafe faster. You’ll speak the truth sooner. You’ll adjust and hold your boundaries longer. And you’ll stand, steady and strong, in your knowing—no longer seeking validation from those still invested in the lie.

This is how the remembering begins. And how the new world builds itself.

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We’re here to replace the old codes with something more true, and rewriting the matrix begins within—in every belief we unlearn, limit we dissolve, and truth we reclaim. This inner work ripples outward, reshaping the collective, and when enough of us rewrite the pattern, the world and the systems we live in begin to change.