Preface

In early March 2019, while I was out on a walk, seemingly out of nowhere words came to mind accompanied by a nearly irresistible urge to act on them. I stopped, took note of the words, and then continued walking. It happened again shortly after, then again, and again.

When I got home, I felt strongly compelled to write the words down. It was a poem. And with it came the nearly irresistible urge to read and reread it, refining it as I did so. That poem is the second one in A Chapter—the first having come from a vision years earlier. The same thing occurred the next day and the following days.

The poems were intuitively known to be messages from the beginning, and the name “the Message Stream”—or simply “the Stream”—arose right away.

As the days went on, inspiration came more frequently, and capturing it became more about taking good notes and less about capturing fully formed poems. For over four years, the messages largely just poured in. In the years since, the frequency has decreased, while the insight has increased.

As of June 2026, there are well over 14,000 entries, many of which are repetitive, personal, or obscure because I didn’t capture the inspiration with enough detail. Over 4,700 messages were extracted from the larger set as potential candidates for books; of those, 1,198 made it into the final collection. And while the messages have been refined over time, they’re still in chronological order from when the inspiration was captured.

The messages themselves often speak of the hidden past or the future, so even though it’s a story, time seems disjointed. It’s not so much like that, but has to be known through experience—Gnosis—so I won’t belabor the point.

As a true story, the beings and events within are reflections of the experience of this time. The Heart of the book is still with me; it wouldn’t have happened without her. I’m endlessly grateful.

As I sorted through the messages, I thought there would be three books: one, a traditional spiritual text that felt mysterious, dark, and dangerous; one, a Love story of Heart and Spirit; a third covering the rest. However, just as with the individual messages, I was compelled in a direction I never thought possible, and the entire final collection became this single book. Consequently, many of the messages included are atypical of established tradition, leaving material that would otherwise be considered inappropriate for a spiritual text. Put simply, it includes the life lived during realization.

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Music has been integral to the messaging. And while there have been plenty of bands and songs that were pivotal at particular times, four bands have completely saturated everything. I’d like to acknowledge them and share why:

Radiohead and The Smile, featuring the words of Thom Yorke, for being Heart and Spirit’s absolute favorite music to melt and merge, twist and twirl, bounce and float, groove and move, spin and grin, lay and play, and fully immerse in the Magick Bubble with.

The following two are particular to me. They’ve been like the best of friends who are swordsmen that have traveled with me, fully aware of the difficulties of disengaging from something that’s actively trying to devour your soul:

The Mars Volta, featuring the words of Cedric Bixler-Zavala, for songs about what happens when one realizes what the spiritual path is, and slashes and burns their Self out of it. The depth of the words is unsurpassed in any writings, as they speak clearly to the smoldering remains.

Anekdoten, primarily featuring the words of Jan Erik Liljeström, for songs on the trials and tribulations of releasing the world: the stumbles and tumbles, trips and falls, cuts and bruises, temptation and guilt, and the will to get back up.