Taking the Left Hand Path

What is the left-hand path? I hear many different definitions.

I am incredibly excited that this potent spiritual current is working itself back into the worldwide mainstream.

Yet, as is always the case when this happens, sometimes I see conflation and an unnecessary narrowing of ideas.

So…. what is the left-hand path? How do you walk it?

Some explanations are quite tame. To some, the left hand path means giving convention the finger and becoming an internet entrepreneur ;)

Sure, if you find that relatable! Why not?

Others are a bit zestier. To others, the left hand path is rejecting the notion of currency and drinking menstrual blood by the light of the moon in communion with the dark mother…..

Also, sure. If that’s your aesthetic….go on with your bad self!

The left hand path is chimerical in nature, and accommodates a very wide spectrum of practices. Every time I come across this question, it seems my own definition has shifted.

The term comes from India, and is another way of describing Tantric tradition.

Interestingly, the Tantric (read: left-hand) path also seems to have a lot in common with the Gnostic teachings of Western crowd pleaser, Jesus…..who has a massive Tantric cult-following in India, and also looks and speaks a lot like Greco-Roman Tantric wine-drinking bad boy Dionysus/Bacchus and….hmmm.

I will leave that pungently heretical jambalaya to simmer for another blog ;)

My point being, the left-hand path is accessible to all who are open and willing to thoughtfully examine their current perspective of truth.

It is a bit trickier for the easily offended, or those who feel they must defend their beliefs from the horrors of unique methods and perspectives.

It is accessible to people who do unspeakable things by the light of the moon, warping the sheer mesh of reality for fun and profit……

…..and people who are content to stick with coffee, aiming for personal growth and career success.

Just don’t be surprised if you notice a movement from one polarity to the other! ;)

Put simply, the left-hand path is a choice to fearlessly and honestly shift focus within…..and intentionally work to transform what we find there.

To work with ALL this wild world throws our way, incorporating it into our creative process. Shunning nothing…..working with all that arises.

The left-hand path means to me, in this very moment:

Shifting from relying upon conventional definitions and accepted realities……

……To trusting in ever-changing, felt, embodied, experiential truths.

Whereas the right-hand path is an abidance of existing structures, such as scripture and tradition….. The left-hand path is observation and transmutation of ever-shifting inner truths.

An ecstatic dance of mutability.

As soon have we defined, identified, and classified something……it seems to change faces once again! On the left hand path, this is deeply anticipated. And celebrated.

The ‘truth’ of the left-hand path (which is, paradoxically, a path of experiential examination of the nature of truth) …..is that all that we define as bad and unpleasant holds a seed of the highest light and creative potential.

All that is wrong in our lives holds the most precious key to unlocking our true desires.

The poison that we most want to spit out…..contains the key ingredients for our highest medicine, if we could only learn to sit with and alchemize it.

What lessons might your poison have to teach you?

The left hand path teaches us to skillfully entertain and play with the notion that all we see as oh so wrong in our lives, our world…..is, on some freaky level, oh so right.

From this vantage point, we work powerful change from a space of fathomless acceptance, rather than the cultural default of dull dis-empowerment.

Please note, this is very different from the idea of positivism, which involves simply ‘looking on the bright side’. How?

Another name for the left-hand path is the Poison Path. This is a path that the very un-humble peacock knows well. It eats poison on purpose, consuming snakes and plants that no other animal will touch (with great relish, I might add. So cute.)

However, instead of dying…..it dazzles more brightly than the poison-avoidant animals in the forest. On the left-hand path, we mindfully cultivate this magic.

With time and practice, we become powerful alchemists, learning to turn even the most vile poisons in our experience to our advantage.

A great blessing, in the face of life’s vicissitudes.

Navigating the path to our dreams and desires through solve et coagula…..the left hand path teaches us to honor our capacity for destruction as deeply as our creative potential. In doing so, we teach our opposites to dance shamelessly together as one..

Dancing in the dark storms our repressed unconscious creates in our lives…..We gather the tools, insight, and power to fully integrate them.

To me, this scratches the surface of all the left-hand path has to offer.

It is my deepest pleasure and honor to offer up the tools of the left-hand path through my coaching and classes, weaving together and structuring these practices as fuel for your transmutation.

It is my deepest wish that, like the peacock, we totally forget who we think we need to be……and remember to tap into the immense power available to us all.

XO, Natalia Sova

PS: Want to dive into this transformational work?

Schedule a free coaching call with me.