The Whisper Knew

When I returned from my ayahuasca retreat in early 2024, I was full of light.

My heart had been blown open.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t searching for God in a book, a church, or another person’s teachings. I was beginning to remember that Spirit had been with me all along.

Like many people after a profound experience, I became hungry for understanding.

I attended integration circles.

I joined spiritual groups.

I sought community.

I wanted to understand what had happened to me and where the path was leading next.

During that search, I kept hearing about a local healing circle led by a large bald man.

The first time I saw a picture of him, something in me said no.

Not fear.

Not judgment.

Just a quiet knowing.

The kind of whisper intuition often speaks in.

I ignored it.

His name continued to come up through different people and different groups until I eventually convinced myself that perhaps I was meant to meet him.

So, I went.

When I arrived, he immediately seemed to know things about me. He referenced my recent ayahuasca experience and spoke as though he could see right through me.

I was impressed.

More importantly, I felt seen.

Looking back, I think that is what drew me in the most.

Not his teachings.

Not his healings.

The feeling of being seen.

I continued attending his monthly circles.

Over time, he began calling attention to me in front of the group.

He would tell me how open-hearted I had become.

How gifted I was.

How special I was.

How powerful I was.

He often used the phrase that I had transformed my “crown of thorns into a halo.”

At the time, it felt encouraging.

Today, I understand that encouragement can become intoxicating when it is constantly directed toward someone who is searching for answers.

As the months passed, he began inviting me to participate in healings. That experience was actually beautiful.

It was there that I discovered my love for simply holding people.

Not fixing them.

Not saving them.

Just creating enough safety for them to feel what needed to be felt.

For that lesson, I remain grateful.

But there were cracks beginning to appear.

Outside of the circles, I often asked questions about healing, spirits, and the practices he claimed to work with.

I wasn’t looking for perfection.

I was looking for understanding.

What surprised me was how often the answers never came.

On one occasion, I asked how someone develops a relationship with their spirit helpers. Despite frequently speaking about archangels and spiritual allies, he told me he didn’t know.

The answer caught me off guard.

Not because I expected him to know everything. But because I assumed that someone teaching these subjects would be able to explain the foundations of what they practiced. The more questions I asked, the more I noticed a gap between what was being presented and what could actually be explained.

At the time, I brushed it aside.

Today, I recognize it as another whisper I chose not to hear.

There were other whispers too.

Whenever I talked about seeking additional training, he discouraged it.

Whenever I mentioned learning from other teachers, he dismissed them.

Whenever I spoke about following a different path, there was always a reason I didn’t need to.

At the time, I interpreted this as wisdom.

Today, I see it differently.

Healthy teachers are not threatened by your growth.

Healthy teachers celebrate when you find your own voice.

Healthy teachers are not afraid of you learning from others.

Months later, after repeated invitations, he offered what he described as an energy massage.

I declined multiple times.

Yet the invitations continued.

Eventually I agreed. Before the session began, I said something I had been feeling for a while.

I told him that I sensed a sexual agenda beneath the invitation.

I knew he was attracted to me.

I knew there was an energy that was not being spoken out loud.

His response should have been enough for me to leave.

Instead, I stayed.

First, he said,

“Nobody has to know.”

Then he said,

“I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

Looking back, those were the most honest words spoken that day.

At the time, I pushed aside the feeling that rose inside me.

The feeling that something wasn’t right.

The feeling that I should leave.

The feeling that my intuition was trying one last time to get my attention.

Instead, I ignored it.

What happened afterward crossed boundaries I never intended to cross.

The details matter less than what happened inside me.

I felt my voice disappear.

I wanted to speak.

I wanted to stop what was happening.

I wanted to leave.

But no words came.

For a long time, I judged myself for that.

Why didn’t I walk out?

Why didn’t I say no?

Why didn’t I trust myself?

The answer took me a long time to understand.

Because by that point I had already been taught not to trust myself.

Not directly.

Not intentionally.

But gradually.

One small compromise at a time.

One ignored intuition at a time.

One surrendered piece of authority at a time.

One of the unexpected lessons from this experience was realizing how little we talk about sexual boundary violations involving men.

When I eventually shared my experience with a woman from the community, she looked surprised and said she had never really considered that something like this could happen to a man.

Neither had I.

Yet it can.

Confusion.

Manipulation.

Freezing.

Loss of voice.

Shame.

These experiences do not belong to one gender.

Many men carry stories they never tell because they fear they won’t be believed, won’t be understood, or will somehow be seen as less masculine.

Silence protects a lot of things.

It rarely protects healing.

The greatest lesson this experience taught me was not about sexuality.

It was not about healing.

It was not even about him.

It was about discernment.

It was about learning how easily we can hand our authority to people we believe can see more clearly than we can.

Ironically, the thing that helped me reclaim my power was doing the very thing I had repeatedly been told I didn’t need.

Training.

Education.

Experience outside of his circle.

I eventually attended a shamanic training program despite being encouraged not to.

The experience transformed my understanding of this work.

It gave me a foundation.

It gave me language.

It gave me confidence.

Most importantly, it returned me to myself.

Before attending the training, I had shared an idea with him.

I wanted to create an event where healers could come together and receive support themselves. A space where those who spend so much time holding others could also be held.

Months later, I learned that a similar event had been organized. At the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I simply let it go and continued following my own path.

When I returned from training, I attended one of those gatherings.

The moment I walked into the space, something felt different.

Not in him.

In me.

For months I had been seeking validation.

Seeking guidance.

Seeking permission.

Something had shifted.

I no longer needed another person to tell me who I was.

Throughout the day, I participated in healings and shared what I had learned.

At one point I felt called to guide the group through an exercise focused on helping people discover their own soul song.

Not a teaching I had borrowed.

Not a script I had memorized.

Something that came through me.

Something that was mine.

As I watched people connect with themselves and with one another, I realized something important.

The voice I thought I had lost had never actually disappeared.

It had simply been buried beneath doubt.

Buried beneath admiration.

Buried beneath the belief that someone else knew better than I did.

During that training, I had been introduced to concepts and practices that many experienced practitioners would consider foundational.

When I returned, I realized that some of the things I had assumed were common knowledge had never actually been discussed in the circles I had attended.

That realization was another whisper.

Another piece of a puzzle that had been sitting in front of me all along.

For the first time, I understood that my path was not meant to be walked in another person’s shadow.

It was meant to be walked in my own light.

That day did not change who I was.

It reminded me who I had been all along.

Not long afterward, I quietly stepped away from the circle.

There was no confrontation.

No dramatic ending.

Just distance.

The more I trusted my own voice, the less I felt called to return.

At one point, a photo from one of the gatherings was used publicly to promote future events. The image showed me facilitating a healing session with another participant.

Neither of us had given permission for the photograph to be used.

I requested that it be removed.

It was.

After that, communication became almost nonexistent.

People I had once connected with through the group often seemed hesitant to speak with me.

Perhaps I imagined it.

Perhaps I didn’t.

Either way, something had changed.

Around that same time, I finally began building what Spirit had been asking me to create for years.

A men’s circle.

Not because I wanted to teach.

Not because I wanted followers.

But because I had spent enough years hiding my own voice.

I wanted to create a space where men could remember theirs.

When I announced Wind + Fire, I shared it in the same community where I had once searched for guidance.

Within a short time, the post disappeared. Soon after, I found myself removed from the group entirely.

No conversation.

No explanation.

Just a closed door.

Years ago, that would have devastated me.

Years ago, I would have questioned myself.

Wondered what I had done wrong.

Wondered how to earn my way back in.

This time was different.

Because by then I understood something I hadn’t understood when this journey began.

Not every closed door is a loss.

Some doors close because you no longer belong behind them.

Sometimes a door closes because Spirit is inviting you to build your own.

For me, that door led to Wind + Fire.

Not because I wanted to become a teacher.

Not because I wanted to become a guru.

In many ways, this entire experience taught me the dangers of placing people on pedestals.

Wind + Fire was born from a different question:

What would have helped me trust myself sooner?

The answer wasn’t another authority.

It wasn’t another person telling me who I was.

It was a circle.

A place where men could be seen without being controlled.

A place where they could speak without being corrected.

A place where intuition mattered.

A place where grief, anger, confusion, purpose, and truth all had a seat by the fire.

A place where no one was asked to surrender their authority to another man.

Only to remember their own.

Because the truth is, the whisper that guided me is the same whisper that lives inside every one of us.

Most of us have simply forgotten how to hear it.

I do not share this story out of anger.

I do not share it for revenge.

I share it because spiritual communities are not immune to manipulation.

They are not immune to ego.

They are not immune to people who use admiration, praise, authority, or healing language to blur boundaries.

Many of us imagine predators as monsters hiding in dark alleys.

Sometimes they are standing in circles.

Sometimes they are holding drums.

Sometimes they are speaking the language of love and healing.

Sometimes they are sitting right in front of us while our intuition quietly whispers the truth.

And sometimes the greatest lesson they teach us is not who they are.

It is who we are.

The lesson I carry from this experience is simple.

Trust your intuition.

Trust the feeling that rises before the mind explains it.

Trust the knot in your stomach.

Trust the voice that says something is off.

Trust the whisper.

The whisper knows.

Mine knew from the very beginning.

I simply wasn’t ready to listen.