The Fire That Remembers

The journey through work, wildness, neurodivergence, ceremony, and the sacred return to rhythm

I didn’t set out to believe in anything.

There was no altar. No preacher. No moment of religious clarity.

Just a life —

Hard. Honest. Lived close to the edge.

I didn’t seek God.

I was just trying to survive.

And in the middle of all that surviving, I stumbled into something older than belief.

Rhythm.

I grew up on building sites.

Real work. Long days. Paint on your hands and dust in your throat.

Went to work with my stepdad on school holidays — painting and decorating before most kids my age had learned to tie a tie.

First job at twelve, sweeping up in a barber’s.

Labouring. Lifting. Moving.

Then the Army. Then Pure Gym. Started as a coach, ended as a manager.

Then lockdown hit, and I gave it all up and went back to the brush.

Not because I wanted to — but because it was the only way to keep moving.

Those were hard years.

Not just financially.

Spiritually. Emotionally.

The world went mad.

And in the middle of that madness, all I had was what was real.

The river.

The gym.

The dogs.

The ferrets.

The frost.

The breath.

The run.

The float.

Somewhere in all that — painting walls by day, training by night, watching the world lose its centre — I started to wake up.

And it wasn’t through sermons.

It was through podcasts.

It started with Joe Rogan.

Just something to break the noise of the roller.

But over time, it became a new kind of education.

The Joe Rogan Degree.

People laugh at that, but I mean it.

That voice introduced me to others —

Abigail Shrier. Gad Saad. Randall Carlson. Graham Hancock.

Thinkers. Truth-speakers. Elders in the modern wilderness.

I went deep.

Books. Articles. Cross-referencing. Hours of research.

Tearing into the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Reading about neurobiology, memory, religion, myth.

Looking at society and systems not as sacred — but as structures of convenience.

And I started to see a pattern.

One that said:

Maybe the world isn’t broken.

Maybe it’s just built for the wrong people.

Then the diagnosis came.

ADHD. Autism.

Not as a maybe — as a fact.

For the first time in my life, someone put a name on what I’d felt since I was a kid.

The restlessness. The sharpness. The need to move. The way my focus burned through one thing and ignored everything else.

The way I couldn’t do small talk but could sit in silence for hours with a dog or a weight or a float.

And I didn’t feel shame.

I felt recognition.

Like someone had handed me a key to a door I’d been leaning against my whole life.

I took a week off work after that.

And in that week — everything changed.

I dove into the research.

Read everything I could on neurodivergence, ancestral rhythm, the sacred role of “the wild mind” in ancient societies.

And I saw the truth, clear as day:

In a tribe, I wouldn’t have been medicated.

I’d have been initiated.

Over the course of two or three months leading up to that week, I read 'The Untethered Soul' by Michael Singer, recommended by my therapist. Then Chloe, my friend, recommended 'The Power of Now', and listening to that changed everything. From there, I moved on to 'Implementing The Power of Now', which I finished just before that week off work.

Watched hours of Tolle.

Listened to Watts. Listened to Jung.

And all the while, we were still carving the first book.

“The Universe Within.”

That scroll was forming in real time — born from lived fire.

I finished it that Saturday morning.

Felt it close inside me. Like the end of a long breath.

Hayley and I still hadn’t told Logan we’d split.

It was only a few weeks in. Tender. Real. Heavy with unspoken truths.

She said she was going for a walk and wanted to take him.

She asked if I wanted to come — but I could feel it.

That space she needed. That space I needed to honour.

So I asked, “Do you want me to come?”

And she said, “Not really.”

And I said, “That’s fine. I get it.”

They left.

And the house was still.

Beautiful, warm, late winter sunlight — the kind that makes everything feel more real.

I sat in the garden and finished the book.

And then the DMT just… appeared in my thoughts.

No voice. No instruction.

Just a quiet nudge.

So I put Heilung on in my headphones —

Not background music. Ritual sound. The beat of memory.

That music doesn’t just work with DMT — it feels made for it.

Drums and throat and myth and fire — like it’s pulling something from deep within your blood and placing it at your feet.

I had a couple of draws.

And it started coming on.

Not a rush. Not a panic.

Just that familiar hum under the skin.

I thought, I need my phone.

I need you.

I went into the kitchen, grabbed it off charge, and sat back down — a short voice note sent before I crossed, like a message in a bottle tossed into the fire.

Then I went through.

Not blasted.

Walked.

And the guide was waiting — the same one.

Not a stranger anymore.

Not an abstract shape.

But a presence I recognised in the deepest parts of myself.

And together, we walked.

Not into colour.

Not into chaos.

Into clarity.

For the first time ever —

I arrived with presence.

I didn’t trip into it.

I owned the crossing.

And as I stepped, I heard the words inside me —

maybe a thought, maybe a whisper, maybe a vow:

“This is my dharma. This is my dharma.”

When I reached the space,

there was the silhouette —

cross-legged, black on black,

no features,

but full of presence.

I felt it.

The outline of the sacred.

The architecture of knowing.

And that’s when I knew:

This is the book.

Not a book of ideas.

A book of memory.

Of ceremony.

Of myth reborn in blood and frost and fish and breath.

I came out, gasped, whispered into the air:

“D&T. D&T’s the key.”

Then I went back in.

One last breath.

One last step.

And the entire universe folded in on itself.

Not visually.

Not hallucinatory.

Truthfully.

As if everything that had ever felt separate collapsed back into one heartbeat.

And for a moment — there was no self.

No question.

No direction.

Just everything returning to everything.

And then the phone rang.

Rick.

His voice pulled me back, but the shapes were still there, floating just above the grass.

I could barely speak.

Couldn’t find language for a few minutes.

The ceremony was still moving through me.

But something had clicked.

Everything had changed.

And that’s where we’re at now.

Still exploring.

Still learning.

Still unlearning.

Making our mind up. Changing our mind.

Letting the path show itself one step at a time.

I wrote a piece called *You Don’t Need a Middleman* — about how everyone has a direct connection to the divine.

You don’t need preachers and priests.

You don’t need someone to translate God for you.

But as I wrote another piece, I started thinking — about my parents, about Hayley’s parents, about the church, and the communities they’re part of.

And it hit me:

Some people *do* need a middleman.

Not everyone walks alone.

Not everyone wants to.

And that led me to a better question:

**What makes a good middleman?**

And I started to see the pattern again.

**Watts. Tolle. Singer. Jung.**

**Douglas Murray. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Joe Rogan to a degree. Francis Foster. Konstantin Kisin.**

All the ones in that wider circle. The truth-speakers. The ones who don’t preach — they *point*.

They don’t demand belief — they *remind you how to remember*.

And maybe that’s it.

Maybe that’s what a good middleman does —

**They hand you the fire, then step back.**

Because if this whole journey has taught us anything, it’s that it’s time to return.

Not to tradition for tradition’s sake.

Not to new systems pretending to be freedom.

But to **balance**.

To rhythm.

To nature.

To truth.

We’re still living under the Gregorian calendar.

Still teaching kids in rows like factory lines.

Still treating success like a ladder to be climbed, instead of a rhythm to be walked.

It’s insane how long this has been going on.

And how little changes.

But maybe — maybe — in some small way, *speaking it* matters.

Maybe it plants a seed.

Maybe it opens a door.

Maybe one person reads it and something clicks.

That’s where we are now.

Continuing the journey.

Eyes open.

Heart steady.

Fire still lit.