What Is Real?
When your kid says she chose you in the "Baby Room": Navigating consciousness rabbit holes responsibly
My daughters danced around me like fairies in the living room, my eldest pretending to be on pointe.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Real was Real. Not Real was Not Real.
Enter: Motherhood.
It launched me into a psychedelic exploration of time and space, catapulting all my tidy definitions into silly little heaps.
She walked in a circle, her hands in front of her as if cupping a bowl.
"I remember being in the Baby Room and getting to choose what I wanted to be.”
Her eyes off in the distance as if remembering a dream.
“Fire. Water. Earth. Wind. A tree. A flower. An animal. A bug. A rock. Or a person. I chose human because I wanted to have all the senses, and I wanted to move and talk.”
She does an elegant twirl, her hands above her head.
“And then I got to choose a mother. I looked in a book and found you. I saw your good and your bad and I picked you.
The next day, I was in a little bean, and then I grew and grew inside you. Me and my sister were always together, we decided to come together."
Breaking her own trance, she tumbled down off her tip toes in a gigantic smile.
My little one chimed in, “Yeah, because we love being sisters!”
Awestruck and bewildered, I ask, "Why did you choose me out of all the Mommies?"
No answer.
It's not the first instance she's told me about the before-times, about choosing to be my daughter.
Real? Not Real?
Motherhood has unpeeled more questions than I can possibly answer. It’s opened up portals that have been both incredibly painful to enter, like the moment you know you need to scrub out a gravel laden wound.
But equally, it's been wildly levitating and magical—truly, there is no other way to describe it. Unexplainable. Beautiful beyond words.
In new age circles there is a concept of soul contracts, that people come the “earth-school” with an agreement in advance to be with one another, to help each other along the way. These soul contracts are with all the people in our lives, even the people who do us irreparable harm.
I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s sweet to think about my children choosing me, and that we have some cosmic destiny. But what about the people who harmed me and who I still have trouble forgiving? Are they actually on my team?
The weird thing is, when I view it through this soul contract lens, I suddenly have space. Breathing room. Unlike any other therapeutic technique applied (believe me, I’ve tried).
When I see my perpetrators as collaborators, I feel an expansion into a wider mystery that holds a basin much more complex than just the pain and confusion of the so-called facts of what happened. Somehow, now it also contains everything that I learned and became because of it.
If I take that person out of the past, out of the holding pattern, fly them to what my daughter called the Baby Room, and imagine us having a meeting in advance — “Ok, now will you agree to be this person in my life? The one who hurts me in this way?”
And imagine them nodding in agreement: Yes. Yes, I agree.
Barely, I can grasp my fingers on the frayed edges of forgiveness, softening, even love. Gratitude.
I love who I’ve become. I love all my lessons. Please don’t take a single one away.
This might simply be a mental somersault, an exercise in reframing that helps one to develop more compassion and acceptance and have zilch to do with how reality actually functions, but it’s fascinating to ponder, and while I pondered it, something alchemized in my heart, didn’t it?
Miracles like this have happened in my life over and over while digging through my curiosities in consciousness, they feel pulled straight out of a magical surrealist book or a Dadaist painting.
Songwriting likewise has plunged me deeper into these questions, making the impossible possible. Like composing temporal spells, where melodies become medicine—healing radiates backward and forward through time, collapsing every dimension into pure sound. Here, there, everywhere.
I have rejoiced in leaving the binary — Real, Not Real — behind, primarily because life is just bucketloads more fun on this side. Though this deviation is tentative and tender because it’s also meant leaving constructs that used to hold me “safe” and evolving my relationship with people who will never understand this aspect of who I am becoming. Or not disclosing it as it spirals upwards, segmenting myself into a new unknowable configuration.
Yet, it seems the whole world is also being forced to contend with this question: What is Real, and who gets to decide?
Maybe it’s no longer making sense to tuck this aspect of myself away, like a secret hidden gem, since we are all being forced to grapple with the nature of reality, ready or not.
The bedrock assumptions of our culture and the paradigms that held it in place are proving to be more fluid than we imagined.
What is Real? How we answer this question will determine the outcome of our planet and species.
Everyone's Going Woo
A couple days ago, I read an article posted by
about something he admitted was a bit woo—the idea that earth timelines are splitting and we're choosing which reality to inhabit, he mentions Dolores Cannon by name. I have my special spaces where I go to learn about metaphysical concepts, but to see it pop up in such a mainstream location made me do a double take. "Wait, we're talking about this here?"Then I was watching an interview with Miley Cyrus about her latest album and suddenly she was talking about EMDR therapy saving her life, about how she went back in time to her mother's mother's womb, felt generational trauma that wasn't even hers, and once she cleared it, never had stage fright again. “Trippy, but medical,” she says.
I've been exploring these themes myself in my own therapy and energetic work, but it’s felt illicit to talk about. But here she is, Miley Cyrus just talking about it out in the open. Bless the matter of fact-ness of this esoteric bombshell she drops mid interview like, “oh this little thing?”
It made me grateful for what artists do as second-nature — they just can’t help it — they are energy workers, even ones that masquerade as mainstream (Dude, I have things to say about Miley…stay tuned for that).
It made me think maybe we're all secretly into this consciousness stuff, and maybe artist types are just more willing to admit it. Honestly take a look at the content you’re consuming post pandemic: how much of it has a self-help flavor? Or goes a touch further and edges into the mystical? Or is that just my algorithm?
Some of this stuff, like astrology, tarot, psychic healing, mediumship, and channeling have been around for a long time but used to be super underground. You had to go to a special section of the bookstore, a tiny shelf labeled “Occult” to catch a couple titles. Now there are apps and industry built to share the knowledge these systems have to offer.
Then there are newer mash up tools like Human Design and Gene Keys that bring together multiple technologies into one system.
Some of it is ancient indigenous wisdom repackaged in new formations and reconfigurations — everything from yoga to breath-work methods to plant medicine to sound medicine might fall into this category. Even martial arts and meditation, which used to be considered alternative, are accepted parts our mainstream culture.
Basics we take for grated like bodywork and massage — human touch and the healing properties it holds. Ever get a massage that unlocked unexpected tears?
And music my friend! This is the whole crux of my obsession, music might be the most accessible portal to altered mind states and reality building opportunities we have. That’s why I’m here, dude.
All potential portals.
The point: the zeitgeist is shifting. What used to be woo-fringe is becoming soccer mom sideline chit chat.
The question is: how do we navigate this expansion without losing our minds?
Planting Consciousness Seeds Responsibly
This summer solstice feels like a moment to be intentional about who I actually am, who I want to be — including the mystical, quantum, metaphysical aspects I've been reluctant to share. It plays a primary role in my music-making, my art, my writing, my parenting, how I live my life — but I also feel a deep responsibility about what I share because my core beliefs revolve around free thinking and liberation.
I do not want to share woo material that has no context and could be potentially harmful. Or downright wrong or dumb.
I also know empirical science has its limitations, especially when it comes to the fundamental mechanics of how reality actually operates — we're only beginning to glimpse things like non-local healing, epigenetics, morphic fields, the observer effect, how intention shapes matter, how healing ripples across time, how collective consciousness might literally reshape our world at quantum levels. Some of these consciousness expanding techniques might hold the keys to our freedom as a planet, as a collective.
There are phenomena at the intersection of consciousness and matter worth exploring—meditation literally rewiring neural networks, how plant medicines seem to access collective intelligence, sound frequencies that restructure cellular memory, prayer and intention influencing physical systems at a distance, energy healing creating measurable physiological changes. These unexplained technologies may be essential for consciously co-creating our reality.
Yet, I've been down internet rabbit holes learning about consciousness, studied in numerous contexts, and I've seen how new age thinking can become dangerous when it lacks critical thinking. The far left can loop around and touch the far right when "anything goes" pseudo-science has only faith as a threshold to hop over.
New ageism can be just as dangerous as extremism on the other side. People can be easily taken advantage of in these spaces, especially when the audience tends to be vulnerable people who are desperately seeking a solution for their suffering. Colonizers can easily cosplay as liberators and perpetuate systems of oppression. Abusers can swiftly locate prey. There is lots of money to be had, and had it is.
Throw a little AI into the mix, and we have a combustable powder-keg waiting to go off.
The challenge is holding both: staying open to mystery while keeping our critical thinking sharp. How do you explore mystery without falling into cult thinking?
And ultimately, who do you want to be?
Discerning, free thinking people with wild imaginations dreaming up a gorgeous future that might extend past the limits and bounds of reality that were previously defined for you?
Or numbed out, over stimulated people too exhausted to think anything through, offloading most of your higher order thinking tasks to apps and tech and defaulting to a future being sold to you as inevitable?
I know who I want to be.
And your answer to this question is really fucking important.
This may sound like a false choice, but I don’t think it is. Technology is forcing this decision on us whether we want to make it or not. The middle ground is disappearing—the days of being able to auto-pilot our tech use are coming to a close.
We either step up as conscious co-creators of reality, or we become sleepwalking consumers managed by systems designed to extract value from our attention. If we opt for that later, they get to design not just the apps and platforms, they get to design reality itself.
If you believe in the Law of Attraction at all (I mean, are you even on your “That Girl” morning routine if you don’t have a manifestation practice??) then you know that how you utilize your attention and form your energy is everything.
Not just for the things and events you want in your life.
But for the collective. Think bigger, babes. What is the dream you are calling in for planet earth? The Universe?
We need enough people pulling in and magnetizing a decadent, delicious, sexier, more daring dream that transcends all our current paradigms, not just recalibrates them into less brutal configurations.
How good are you willing to have it?
The tech oligarchs are going to tell us in subtle, covert and overt ways in the coming years to hand over our thinking processes to them, and we must consider this the most dangerous proposition of any they suggest. The default position means annihilation for us all.
So if we're going to navigate this consciousness expansion as a species—and I believe we must—we can't afford to be sloppy about it. Your safety line when you spelunk into mystical terrain is to bring your best thinking brain along with you, right along with your open heart. To hold mystery and critical thinking in the same hand. To dream boldly while staying grounded in the wisdom of your lived experience.
When my daughter tells me about choosing me from the Baby Room, I don't need to know if it's “Real” in the way we used to define Real. What matters is that it expands my heart, opens portals to forgiveness, and reminds me that love might be the organizing principle behind what she’s sharing with me.
When Michael Ian Black posts about timeline splitting and Miley talks about generational healing, I see it as evidence that we're all hungry for bigger explanations, deeper connections, more meaningful stories about why we're here, how to heal, how to move forward.
The old binary—Real or Not Real—is crumbling. The question isn't whether these experiences fit into our previous definitions of reality. The question is: do they serve liberation? Do they make us more loving, more conscious, more free?
Because while we're having these conversations about consciousness, the Data Barons are positioning themselves to think for us. While we're debating what's Real, and what’s Fake, algorithms and AI are deciding what we see, feel, and even what we believe before we believe it.
If we're going to explore expanded consciousness, we can't be passive consumers of reality curated by corporate interests. We need to be actively choosing our own perceptual filters— how, where, and who you get your information from matters.
The irony is that just as we're opening to expanded reality, we're simultaneously handing over our reality-creation powers to machines designed to profit from our attention, and we would be mistaken to put trust in their hands. As Maya Angelou wisely warned, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
This is why conscious discernment matters. This is why we need frameworks for exploring mystery without losing our minds. We need to be the ones dreaming the future, not defaulting to the one being sold to us.
My daughter chose to be human because she wanted all the senses. She wanted to move and talk and feel everything. That's what I'm choosing too. To stay sensitive. To keep questioning. To plant seeds of wonder while keeping my feet on the ground.
What reality are you choosing to inhabit? Because whether you believe in soul contracts or not, we're all collaborating on this thing together.
I've been thinking about creating “A Field Guide to Responsible Woo” — how to explore expanded reality without losing your mind or your ethics. Would you dig that?
Real and Not Real- a paradigm waiting to be exploded. As per usual, love the way you pioneer forward and lead us into bigger ways of thinking. How exciting to choose to build a more beautiful world to live in with every song we write.
I dig... Yes. I absolutely DIG.
Here's a little hiccup for me though, and I'm wondering your thoughts. The word 'woo' drives me a little (okay, a lot) bananas. Maybe even doubly so when x2. Outdated, derivative, silly. But, are you feeling like, ownership? Proudly the butt of the joke?? Dunno. There's everything here, and I feel it too, that suggests a new movement well into a growth spurt.