Walking the Spiral: An Animist Reframe of the Four Levels of Consciousness

The Forgotten Kinship, The Path of the Weaver, The Hollow Bone and The Returning

I’ve long resisted anything that smells like a hierarchy of the soul or the spiritual path. If you have studied with me, you know that deeply.

You know the kind, the ones that sort humans into neat little boxes of awakened versus unawakened, high vibe versus low vibe, “healed” versus “still doing the work.” Systems that speak the language of spiritual growth but quietly carry the same toxic code as the systems we claim to be healing from. Like school grades disguised as enlightenment. Like capitalism with mala beads on. Like the old empire dynamics reborn in new robes: measuring each other’s worth, value, or depth through an invisible yardstick of "consciousness levels" or how many lifetimes someone claims to have “cleared.”

I’ve seen how easily these maps, however well-intended, become tools of separation. I’ve witnessed students, and myself, spiral into shame, pity, superiority, or comparison the moment a framework implies that one place on the map is inherently “better” than another.

It reflects the same wound we all carry from growing up in a world obsessed with categorization. A world where the child who thinks with their hands is labeled slow. Where the artist is compared to the athlete. Where success is a number, and value is conditional on output. We’ve absorbed these hierarchies so profoundly that even in sacred spaces, we begin to ask where we stand on the invisible scale. We forget we are circles trying to measure ourselves by straight lines. We forget that Spirit does not grade, it grows, it tends, it breathes through us all in different rhythms.

And yet, I have found that maps, when offered with reverence, rooted in Earth wisdom, can become mirrors instead of prisons. That when we approach them not as systems of status, but as invitations into deeper self-awareness, they can guide us gently home. The model I’m about to share, sometimes known as the “Four Levels of Consciousness”, is one I’ve reworked through the lens of animism, not abstraction or comparison. It’s a living spiral I’ve walked myself, again and again.

And it’s something I now teach intimately with my students in the first year of EarthWalker, our foundational shamanic school. Not as dogma. Not as a destination. But as a compass. A way to orient, without judgment, where we are in the ever-turning ceremony of life.

Because I’ve seen how powerful it is when a student, sitting in a circle with Earth under their feet and candlelight flickering on their cheeks, recognizes that they are not broken, they are simply in the “To Me” season. Or when someone realizes they’ve been gripping life too tightly in the “By Me” phase, and can now finally soften into “Through Me.” These aren’t boxes. They’re thresholds. Each with their own wisdom. Each with their own medicine.

What follows, then, isn’t a Western grading system. It’s a rewilding of a modern model into something more ancient, more cyclical, more soul-rooted. You may see yourself in one of these states. You may recognize someone you love. You may feel yourself dancing between all four. That’s okay. That’s the nature of the spiral.

Let’s walk it together, not to climb higher but to come closer. Closer to ourselves, to the Earth, to each other, and to the mystery that pulses beneath it all.

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Common Framework, Reframed

You may have come across these “four levels” before. In spiritual development books, coaching circles, or leadership trainings, they’re often framed like this:

• To Me: Life happens to me. I’m at the mercy of the world.

• By Me: Life happens by me. I create my reality.

• Through Me: Life flows through me. I surrender to Spirit.

• As Me: Life happens as me. I am one with All.

Useful? Yes. Clear? Often. But something vital is lost in that simplification.

What’s lost is the soul of it. The seasons. The breath. The mystery. The Earth.

What’s missing is the truth that these are not achievement levels in a spiritual video game, but rather states of relational consciousness, states profoundly shaped by our relationships to nature, to grief, to our ancestors, to the Spirit of place and time. These stages aren’t steps to master; they’re movements in the symphony of being human. In the animist view, they aren’t linear levels but living landscapes we pass through again and again, in cycles, in ceremony, in crisis, and grace.

A person grieving may find themselves deep in “To Me,” not because they’ve regressed, but because something holy has cracked open and their soul is listening for the call. Another may be living “By Me,” but beneath the surface, there is a quiet exhaustion from trying to control everything, and a longing to let go.

And some of the most spiritually tuned-in elders I know no longer mention where they are. They simply live in rhythm. They move between these layers like deer through forest paths, not tracking progress, but following the wind of Spirit.

So before we explore each one, let’s remember this: the purpose is not to climb, but to listen. Not to perform, but to participate. And perhaps most importantly, not to judge, but to become more honest with ourselves and our relationships.

When seen through animist eyes, these “levels” become invitations. Each one is a doorway into a deeper kind of knowing. Each one has a chance to remember how deeply we are woven into the fabric of the world.

Let’s step into them now, with our bare feet on the soil, our ears open to the unseen, and our hearts ready to remember.

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1. To Me — The Forgotten Kinship

This is the place most people don’t want to admit they’ve been. Or worse, still are. In most frameworks, To Me is cast as the low rung. The bottom of the ladder. The place of victimhood and disempowerment that you should “elevate” out of as quickly as possible. However, in the animist view, as the Earth teaches and the ancestors remind us, this is not a failure. It is a holy place. A threshold. A necessary descent.

To Me is the state where life feels like it is happening to us, not with us. It is where suffering arises, and we don’t yet know how to name it sacred. It is the grief before it becomes prayer. It is the dark night of the soul, the rupture of illness, betrayal, abandonment, or just the daily overwhelm of a world too fast, too hard, too removed from the soil. It is the moment we feel tossed by the storm, unable to find the center.

And so we ask: Why is this happening to me?

It is easy and dangerous to judge this state. But judgment reveals how much we’ve internalized the capitalist myth of constant progress. The colonial myth of power as control. The schoolroom myth that some experiences are “failures” rather than initiations.

In truth, To Me is sacred ground.

In my work with students, especially in the first year of EarthWalker, our shamanic apprenticeship, we spend real time here. Not bypassing it. Not sugarcoating it. But honoring its place in the cycle. Because the first wound we tend to carry when we arrive on this path is the feeling of exile. Of being pushed out of belonging from nature, from Spirit, from our own sense of worth. And To Me is that wound coming to the surface.

From the animist lens, this is the moment we’ve forgotten our kinship. Forgotten the language of tree and stone. Forgotten the reciprocity of life. Forgotten that the world is not doing something to us, but is whispering something through the fabric of our experience. And yet, the forgetting is also a necessary part of the remembering. The rupture is the way Spirit invites us into deeper relationship.

The danger is not in being here. The danger is in refusing to listen while here. In getting stuck in blame without ritual. In spiraling in grief without a hand to hold it sacred.

So when someone tells me they’re stuck, that everything feels against them, that they can’t see the meaning, I do not rush them toward transcendence. I ask: What if the Earth is still holding you? What if this pain is a threshold? What if the wind that seems to batter you is trying to carry a message?

To begin the movement out of To Me is not about mindset shifts. It’s about remembering the web. It’s about lighting a candle in the dark, not to chase away the shadow, but to speak to it. To make an offering. To sit on the ground and begin to listen, again, for the pulse beneath all things.

In this way, To Me becomes not the lowest level, but the initiation gate. And when we honor it, when we walk it with reverence instead of shame, something begins to shift.

The prayer begins.
The story starts to retell itself.
And the spiral moves us forward.

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✦ Stepping Deeper into the Spiral ✦

This next part of the journey is for paid subscribers.

Why the gate here?

Because this work, this remembering, this reweaving of ancient maps through animist breath and living wisdom, takes time, tending, and presence. Your support enables me to continue sharing teachings that don’t reduce the soul to sound bites. It helps me sit longer by the fire, listen more deeply, and write more slowly. It’s an act of sacred reciprocity, a way to keep the village fed.

And because some teachings are meant to be taken into a quiet space. Not skimmed, but sipped.

In the rest of this essay, I’ll guide you through:

• By Me – Reclaiming sacred agency as a weaver in the great web

• Through Me – Becoming a hollow bone and channel for Spirit

• As Me – Dissolving into unity without disappearing your soul

• How to recognize the state you’re currently in, without judgment

• Animist and ceremonial practices to move between states with grace

• Real guidance from my work in EarthWalker and private mentorship

• A closing meditation and inquiry prompts to deepen your integration

This isn’t about spiritual self-improvement.
It’s about a soul-rooted relationship.
And about learning to walk with the Earth, not above her.

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If you feel called to continue, I welcome you to the inner fire:

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Thank you for being here. The spiral continues...