Folk tales have been told for centuries about the Selkies. Beings who look like seals and who do what normal seals do. But who have the capacity to remove their seal skins and walk ashore in human form. They are first and foremost ocean creatures… To be an ocean creature and to live a life in the ocean is their essence. There is often a story told about a man who caught a glimpse of a Selkie who had shed her skin. He was so enamored with her that he could not handle the idea of losing her back to the sea. So he captured her seal skin, trapping her on the land. And he hid the seal skin where no one could find it. With no possibility of returning back to the sea, the Selkie resigned to living life on the land. The years went by and she married the man. They had children together. She adapted to that life she had on the land. And then one day, while she was finishing the housework, one of her children approached her with something strange he had found. What he was holding in his hands, was her seal skin. The Selkie felt the call of her essence. The essence she had hidden beneath all of her human adaptations for so many years. She loved her children, and even her husband. But the call of the sea was far too much to resist or deny. So, she slipped on her Selkie skin, and returned to the sea, never to come back to the land. But any time her children or husband was down by the shore, a curious seal could be seen bobbing just offshore.

When we are young, born into environments that are not conducive to our essence, like the Selkie, we adapt. We adapt by suppressing, denying, disowning and hiding our essence beneath a persona designed to protect it. Our essence represents our vulnerability. This persona we create, protects our essence by adapting in whatever way we feel is necessary to survive in the very specific situation we find ourselves in. But at a price. The price we pay, is that we are no longer living according to our essence. All the decisions we make and actions we take, are authentic only to our survival strategies. They are not authentic to who we really truly are and what we really truly want. Who we truly are and what we truly want and need has been hidden, even from our own awareness. But like the call of the sea for the Selkie, our essence never stops calling us to return.

In 2025, we will be working with a theme that is so dominating, it dwarfs all other things that will be happening. The theme for 2025 is: Refusing to live less than is what is possible to live. When the Selkie gave up her ocean nature for a life adapted to the land, the life she led was a painful form of settling. It was less than her soul calling. It was less than what she truly desired. When we are not in our essence, because we are living a life from our adaptive strategies, we are not living a life that matches our potential. We are not living the best life possible for us. We are not making the most of our time here on earth. Instead, we are settling for less. We are denying our true nature. We are living a life that is so much less than what is possible for us to live. At the end of our lives, we want to be able to say that we took the risks necessary to live up to the life that is possible for us. The life experience that we really want deep down. And we want to say that as a result of doing so, we fully, truly lived. 2025 will force people to get to the point of refusal. Refusal to keep living a life that is less than what is possible for us to live.  

But what does it mean to be forced to get to this point of refusal? It means the breakdown of your protector personas. In the previous years, people have been in a rut of some degree of suffering. Many people have been isolating themselves because of this. A rut implies that nothing is really working. They have been coping with that pain and trying to make everything work by using the strategies that belong to their most deeply engrained protector personas.        

In 2025, your protector personas will not work for you anymore. You will come to see how these adaptations to your culture, society, environment and early relationships caused you to go in the opposite direction of your true essence and of what you truly want. You will come to see how they enable and accommodate for the very things that you don’t want. Things that deeply harmed you. And you will see the ways you wrongly lived your life because of those adaptations, ending up in a life that is less than the life that is possible for you to be living.          

But this breakdown of your protector personas means a shedding process resulting in the exposure of the vulnerability hiding behind them… The exhuming of your essence. And with it, your true desires and needs. And this process is designed to make it impossible for you to live the way you have been living so far. It is designed to bring you back to who you really are and to the life that is truly right for you. But this process, will make you feel deeply vulnerable. When what you protected beneath the surface is being called to rise to the surface to be exposed, you will find yourself up against all of the beliefs, fears, traumas, patterns and programs that justified the hiding, denying, suppressing and disowning of it to begin with. This vulnerability will feel raw and new and right and promising and scary. It will make you feel like a new born.

So that you can understand what I mean, I’ll give you two examples. First, let’s say that a little girl is very sensitive, sweet and is a natural caretaker. But she is born in the projects to a single mother who is addicted. Every day, she is faced with the reality that her world is a dog-eat-dog world where she needs to toughen up, fend for herself and give off the impression “Don’t mess with me!”. She will develop a protector persona that makes sense in this environment. A persona that is unfriendly, scrappy, harsh, guarded and angry. For years she has lived like this. This persona has hidden her true essence. As well as what she really wants and needs. It has caused her to make the decision to work as a bartender because she has been like this for so long that she now identifies as someone who has super strong boundaries. It has caused her to attract people who like that she is so capable of fending for herself, because they don’t want to take responsibility for anyone else’s wellbeing. It has caused her to lose the opportunity to be a nurse, which is what she would really thrive at, because people find her bedside manner to be so arming rather than disarming. This woman finds herself in a scenario which causes the breakdown of this protector persona.

In her case, she is attacked after work in a parking garage. At the hospital, she realizes that the only person who she has to call, is a single girlfriend of hers. But when she calls this girlfriend, her girlfriend makes the excuse that she is out partying at a venue too far away to come to the hospital to be with her. Crying in the hospital bed, she realizes that she can’t do it anymore. She needs people. And she is afraid and alone. And she has a deep desire for people to be kind to each other and take care of each other. Seeing the nurses, fills her with longing. She sees that her defensive persona is not who she really is. And more than that, it has been inviting people to be defensive with her. It has been enabling people to abandon her. It has been inviting men who make her fend for herself. It has caused her to be in a permanent state of tension in her body. It is as if, sitting there on the hospital bed, that whole persona that protected her for so long, snapped. And what she is left with, is a feeling of through and through vulnerability. She remembers what she used to be like when she was really young. She remembers that she didn’t used to be like this. For the first time in a long time, what she usually feels under the surface of her defensive behavior, is on the surface. It is unable to be hidden. She is truly authentic. In the days that follow, she can’t muscle up like she used to. She realizes more and more how sensitive she is. She cries a lot. She starts spontaneously being sweet to strangers. And she makes the decision to apply to be a nurse again somewhere new. She starts dressing in a whole new, more feminine wardrobe. She moves to a different neighborhood where she has access to a nature park and forms a friendship with a woman who is super warm and affectionate and emotional. Someone who would have triggered her before, because it would have brought out her own sweet, warm and caring aspects. And these were the vulnerable things she kept hidden. She is now on the right path in life, living according to her essence. And in the life that she now has, she is no longer settling for less than what is true to her essence. It is a better life than she once thought was possible for her.

Second, let’s say that a little boy is naturally intense. He is drawn to different interests that evoke passion from him. He feels emotions deeply, thinks differently than everyone else and wants very close, deep, harmonious and intimate relationships. But he is raised in a family where emotions are not seen as ok in a little boy. He feels powerless to creating the kinds of intimate, deep relationships he wants. When he does things differently, because he thinks differently, his father flips out. His father wants things exactly the way that he wants them. And there is hell to pay if things are not done that way. This little boy is consistently berated and shamed by his father. He lives with a mother who simply watches the father do this, as if she cannot prevent it. Both his mother and father raise him to believe that the only way to be ok in life, is to please them and please all the other people around him. They raise him to believe that how he feels and what he wants doesn’t really matter. In order to stay safe and to get any positive feedback at all, and to avoid shame, this little boy creates a protector persona that has one priority: Answering to the needs of everyone else around him. For years he has lived like this. This persona has hidden his true essence. As well as what he really wants and needs. It has led him to prioritize starting and running businesses that he is not passionate about, but that get him the approval of others. It has led to him getting married to a woman he was very good friends with, but was not passionately in love with. And now, his marriage is falling apart and they are separated. It has led to him spending his life running from fire to fire. Answering to and prioritizing whatever problem any person in his life happens to have. It has led to him trying to caretake his aging parents on top of run businesses, on top of be the go to person for all of his friends, on top of have a successful marriage. He is now so overcommitted; he is falling apart. Several times, it has led to him making the decision to do things he doesn’t want to do, but feels is “right” to do or that he "should" do, because it is what a good person would do. And now, he feels numb and dead inside. He feels he doesn’t know who he really is and what he really wants. What’s worse, he feels that these considerations are simply selfish. He is constantly running from guilt. This man finds himself in a scenario which causes the breakdown of this protector persona.

In his case, he meets someone and it is love at first sight. Despite all of his attempts to resist, he engages in a passionate love affair. This relationship makes him feel alive again. He feels deeply again. In fact, he finds himself crying often. The affair happens near the ocean. There he has the realization that he put one of his biggest passions, surfing, aside to move to a city where his wife wanted to live. He feels the magic of the ocean again. And he feels a sense of rage that he moved away from the places where he could just go to the ocean every morning. He experiences what it is to be able to share his thoughts and how he feels. And as a result, feel deeply seen and heard and felt. As a result, he doesn’t feel alone anymore. He connects to how important it is for him to have deep, harmonious relationships. He is afraid that his life is going to fall apart. He is wracked with guilt about what this could mean for all the people who are depending on him. But he hates them at the same time because it feels like all the people in his life and what they need from him, are keeping him from what is truly going to make him happy. He realizes that the life he built is not right for him. That he has lived his life out of shoulds and that he can’t do it anymore. His people pleaser persona, the thing that kept him safe for so long, has ruined his life. And he sees it. Looking at what his life is and will be in the future if things stay the same, he realizes that he would not be really living. His life would be so much less than what is possible. And as a result, his protector persona snaps. He has a life crisis.  

As a result, his essence rises to the surface. He decides that he wants to be aware of his emotions and never suppress them. He commits to figuring out what he really wants and needs and as a result, hires a mentor and walks the path of shamanic healing. He sells his shares of all but one of his companies, the one he is really passionate about. He gets a divorce. He decides to move to the ocean where he surfs every day. He involves his siblings and also hires people to take care of his parents. He does things the way he wants to do them and learns to bring his wants and needs to the table. He learns how to prioritize according to his true values and say no to things he knows is not right for him. He decides that he cannot live without being deeply in love and in a secure relationship and so, he makes a commitment to mastering the art of relationships and to love. He is now on the right path in life, living according to his essence. And in the life that he now has, he is no longer settling for less than what is true to his essence. He got to the point where he refused to live a life that is less than what is possible. And as a result, he feels really, truly alive. He knows that on his death bed, he will feel like he got the most he could out of his life experience and made the very most of his time here. 

2025 is where free will must align with desire. It is about the reversal of the suppression of essence. This means, the “decision theme” from 2024 is going to carry over into 2025. Specifically, the need to make difficult choices with precision according to your essence and with your free will so that ALL of your energy is behind choosing what you want in life, rather than life happening to you. In 2025 you are being called to choose the precise experience you want – according to what you want. In other words, according to what has the most value, meaning and importance for you specifically. Many people will find themselves in a decision paralysis. Not knowing what is right. Feeling like they cannot deal with the suffering that may come from making the wrong choice. In this paralysis is the temptation for the decision to be made for you. But in 2025, you cannot live with that back seat option either. There is a go big or go home quality to 2025. A kind of F#*K it energy. Each person is being called to form a personal definition of an extraordinary life. 2025 is the year of: You can’t live less than what you were meant to live. You can’t live less than what is possible to live. This is a big risk year requiring balls to the wall level bravery. In 2025, there will be no settling for less. The more proactive you get about this and the more on board you are with the shedding process that must occur (no matter how scary or painful that shedding process may be) the better. So many people this year will undergo BIG life and lifestyle changes. So many others will find themselves in a full-on life crisis, if they aren't in one already. So many more people will enter into a life crisis in this coming year. And this life crisis, is calling people to overhaul their individual lives. Essentially, in 2025, your life will be under construction.      

People being caught up in their own big life changes (and for many life crises) will dwarf the importance of the more negative macrocosmic things happening in the world such as escalation of climate crisis and its associated problems; like serious fires, hurricanes, large scale flooding, economic impacts, displacement and food shortages. Geopolitical tensions and the misuse of artificial intelligence. It will also dwarf the more positive macrocosmic things happening in the world, such as advances in lab generated organs, a huge increase in ESG investing, increased demand for conscious and healthy food production, a genuine spectacle of northern lights, and breakthroughs regarding space exploration.  

The first three months of 2025 is a clash between the old and the new. Old systems with new systems. Old trends with new trends. Old ideas with new ideas. The old and the obsolete rarely surrender to the new without a fight. And Europe is currently the hottest hot spot for this clash. But division and social polarization will continue across the globe. This clash will center around people not seeing the need for change. To navigate these clashes between the old and new this year, the focus needs to be placed on helping individuals recognize the need for whatever change is in question.  

This year will shine a real spotlight on the worldwide crisis regarding the expression of masculinity. There has been and is a war against masculinity in the world today. Men are not allowed to be men anymore. And being disallowed from expressing all masculine qualities, they have become disempowered, insecure and weak. This is creating a real liability regarding society’s ability to be controlled. And it is really destroying the relationship between men and women. And there is no way for there to be a crisis regarding masculinity without there being a corresponding crisis regarding femininity. The way out of this mess, lies with the masculine polarity, which is the polarity that carries the vibration of initiation. In 2025 and beyond, men must re-own and express their masculinity. They must be advocates for each other in doing this and women must also advocate for them doing this.

We are in this time period on earth where humanity is in the pressure cooker and because of this, we are facing lots of challenge each year and the pressure isn’t letting up. In times like this, it is important to focus on those things that will act as a guiding light through the storm. And the main thing that will be that for you in 2025 is socialization. The need to be social is returning to humanity. Other people have the medicine you need to get you through your own personal process of shedding and changing. You need to be held and guided and accompanied by others. Stop trying to navigate through what you are facing alone. Build and lean into the web like network of people you can depend on in your life. Each one is a special resource and can be a specific source of support for your process. Just as you are a special resource and specific source of support for them.

News from 2025

- Severe flooding is hitting parts of the Pacific Northwest and the northern Rockies