Everyone begins life in The "Perfect" World. My story is no different.

The "Perfect" World

Born to a good, Evangelical Christian family. Church became my life - I had no understanding of the Real World or of who I was as a person. My identity was completely wrapped up in Christianity. Essentially, I had an External Ego - the Church and the religion told me who I was.

I basically never left this "Perfect" World. I never rebelled. I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, didn’t have sex. I never stepped outside the lines that were drawn for me. I trusted everyone involved in the religion. I believed we were better than everyone else. I believed that the adults in church knew what was best and that they wouldn’t lie to me.

*SIDENOTE* One important factor that contributed to my staying in The "Perfect" World, was the number of times my family moved. By the time I was 24 years old, I had lived in 15 different houses. This continued into my adult life - 22 different houses by age 39. Now, at age 50, I am finally gaining some stability and roots - 11 years in the same house.

Death of Innocence

The first crack in my Christian armour appeared on my wedding night at the age of 24. I had sex for the first time with my wife and afterwards I just lay there thinking, "That’s it? That’s what I was told to avoid? That’s what I was told was so special?"

I had believed that there would be this "magical" connection between God, my wife, and myself because I had waited for sex until marriage. I had been told my whole life in church that this is what would happen and it didn’t. They had lied to me!

I eventually told my wife this and she took it really personally. She was really hurt and I couldn’t understand why as I was just trying to explain how I felt. I wasn’t blaming her.

The World Weaver’s Journey

Denial of the Broken Glasses

Talk about having your rose-colored glasses broken! I was mad about the church lying to me , but I shoved it all down. I must have done something wrong.

I became chronically depressed. I hated living with my wife. Turns out that she was not a nice person having never dealt with her own traumas, thus she was mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive towards me.

I began to use pornography and have online affairs (my biggest regrets in life were all the potential sexual encounters I had avoided due to my religious beliefs) to cope with these issues, which just made all the issues worse.

I wanted to leave church, but just ended up diving into the religion harder whenever those feelings came up. There had to be something wrong with me.

Deal with the Fae

My wife was definitely one of the Fae. Another would be my first occupation at a sign-making shop. Another would be my boss at that shop - he claimed to be a Christian, but he wasn't a terribly nice nor self-aware person. Conversely, my co-worker at that shop was not a Christian and was the sweetest person you can imagine. I could never resolve that dichotomy.

Regardless, all of these people slowly pushed me into:

Leaving the Waters

...and...

The Brilliant City

(though I certainly couldn’t see its brilliance at the time)

...and...

Victim or Chosen One (loop)

And really, this Victim or Chosen One loop is where I stayed for a number of years. While I gained some understanding of the Real World, constant religious highs followed by depressive crashes, eventually caused an emotional shutdown and, thus, a mirror-hop to:

The Soul Diver’s Journey

The "Mundane" World

This was life for me. Work, eat, sleep. Abuse from my wife. Church. Pornography. Online affair. Wash, rinse, repeat. I was probably lucky some Cult leader didn’t get his/her claws into me. I was ripe for the picking.

The Call of the Sea

Leave my wife. Leave church. Leave religion. Go and discover who I really was.

The Noose of the Pretender

This was life for me. Work, eat, sleep. Abuse from my wife. Church. Pornography. Online affair.
This was life for me. Work, eat, sleep. Abuse from my wife. Church. Pornography. Online affair.
This was life for me. Work, eat, sleep. Abuse from my wife. Church. Pornography. Online affair.

The only outcome for a life like this is misery and Tragedy.

At age 32, disaster happened. I actually hurt someone physically - probably psychologically too. I realized how bad my life had gotten. How bad I had gotten. I hated myself so much. This had to end before I stuck a knife in my wife and then in myself (I was planning it - hey, in Evangelical churches murder is forgivable. Divorce is not.)

The Destroyer, The Healer

The old term for this step is "Supernatural Aid" and one thing that you have to understand about Supernatural Aid is the part that makes it "Supernatural": it is anything that is outside of your normal sphere of influence and understanding.

I went to a doctor. Blood tests revealed low testosterone. I was prescribed 3 months of boosters. Previous to this my belief had been that prayer could heal everything.

I went to a counsellor and we began to track my emotional behaviour. Previous to this my belief had been that Jesus would care for all of my mental and emotional needs.

The Dive into the Deep

10 days into hormone therapy I woke up and didn’t feel depressed. I felt great!

And then I got mad. Really, really, really, REALLY mad. Hulk level angry. 18 years of hard-core belief and prayer got me nothing while modern medicine "fixed" me in 10 fucking days!

A few months after that, I stopped believing in the Christian god. A month later I told my wife and she told me to get out and I was more than happy to leave.

*Sidenote* As the years have passed, as I’ve come through my Journeys and developed my models, I have come to understand that my ex-wife embodies the Devourer archetype. She is so fearful of the world. Our children, who are in their 30s, still live at home with her because she is so obsessed with keeping them "safe". Being introspective terrifies her, asking deep questions upsets her greatly. She was physically abused as a child, but that happened in her home. Why did she become so afraid of the world? Why did she break so badly?

The Witch’s Forge

I left her, I left church, I wrote my parents a "good-bye" letter - which they responded with "We just want you to be happy", so we didn’t part ways. A year later I left my job.

The Neverending War

I had my first beer at age 33. Took a few weeks to work up to "drunk", but I loved it. Loved the bars, loved my new friends, and loved my new life.

Standing in the Moonlight

This was having my Emotional Center reignited, but I had to learn that I had to feel more than just Anger. In the physical sense, dating a lot of other women and eventually meeting my current wife - who is the sweetest woman ever - fits this as well.

The Joker

The real temptation we have in life is to continually blame others and the outside world for our problems. At age 36 I was really into conspiracy theories and still angry at religion and was really blaming all of my, and the world’s, issues on external forces.

Acceptance of What Was and What Is

Around age 37 or 38 I began to understand that there is no "blame", there is simply "what happened". My life was my responsibility, but I wasn’t to blame for "what happened" and neither was anyone else. "What happened" when I was a child couldn’t be helped. However, "what happened" to me as an adult and what I did was my responsibility to deal with.

I had to Accept all that had happened and move on.

Death, Resurrection, and Treasure

Death and Resurrection is kind of happening to us all the time - kind of like The Death of Innocence is always happening as well. Old parts of us "die". Old beliefs "die". Previous versions of us "die" and we are reborn into new ways of living and being.

Acceptance of my past "killed" me and allowed a "new" version of Mark to move forward in life.

This Acceptance brought about a shift in my thinking and understanding of Life. Joseph Campbell and The Hero’s Journey had been a big influence on me after I stopped believing in Christianity, so…

Bliss Within the Castle

...and...

Abdicating the Throne

…I began to teach the Hero’s Journey on YouTube so I could understand it better.

Mantle of the Mentor

Well, actually, I started to teach about Consciousness, but I obviously Unconsciously wanted to teach the Hero’s Journey because that became the central theme to all my teaching and thinking. No matter what else I tried to teach, the Hero’s Journey always became the front-and-center theme.

The Time of Finding (and of Letting Go)

I also began to realize that there really is no Threshold between the Inner World and the Outer World. I was getting pretty good at living in both Worlds.

In October 2019, I had a psychedelic mushroom experience where I met the Dark Goddess in the form of a Naga (I took the mushrooms to prove they didn’t do anything…and I was wrong). She changed my perception of God and gave back something I’d lost when I left Christianity.

Goddess is mostly just a higher form of my own Inner Feminine, but She’s more than that too. She’s Consciousness itself and I feel I have a deep connection with Her. She doesn’t expect me to follow any rules or to follow a specific way or to be nice or to be loving and caring. I just have to be however my Soul wants to Be.

I trust Her.

In 2020 I was 45 years old and the worldwide Pandemic hit, so I spent most of that time meditating in the spiritual depths of my soul. I got to the point where I could have a psychedelic experience without the psychedelics.

And this - surprise, surprise - caused me to Mirror-Hop again. It was a "reset" back to the World Weaver’s Journey. A reset back to what I "would have been" had the Soul Diver’s Journey not become necessary.

The "Perfect" World

(a personal reset with Wisdom and Knowledge instead of Innocence)

I had already been working on a Heroine’s Journey model, but now, in 2020, I finally mapped it and the Hero’s Journey onto the Yin Yang (and these have now, obviously, morphed into the World Weaver's and Soul Diver's Journeys).

I knew that as soon as I started teaching it (the Heroine's Journey), I was going to have to live it. It was time for me to begin a new Journey.

The World Weaver’s Journey

Denial of the Broken Glasses

I didn’t think I would have to go through these stages, but what I didn't fully grasp is that the World Weaver’s Journey is literally out into the real world and at this time I kept trying to dive into the depths harder. I kept trying to go the spiritual route and kept trying to do more and better YouTube work, but the pay-off wasn’t coming.

I was breaking down spiritually and mentally and I was also physically broke in the financial department. I was actually getting pretty mad because I kept wondering how I could end up being in the exact same place as I had been years before. I didn’t yet understand that, yes, I was in a similar place, but I was about to be propelled in a completely different direction.

Deal with the Fae

The Fae was the Bank or our money-driven society this time around. I needed money. I needed to go out and get a job that I could stand doing.

Leaving the Waters

Previous to this, I had spent 24 years in graphic design and advertising and I hated it. At its core, advertising is manipulation and that manipulation went against everything in my core - in my soul. I hated the customers and their demands too. I’ll leave it to people who still enjoy doing it.

The Brilliant City

In 2022, I went out and got a job in a manufacturing plant. I’m still there to this day in 2025. I quite enjoy it. I don’t love it, it’s not who I am (I’m not getting stuck at Victim or Chosen One again!), but I'll keep doing it until I retire. It's a great job.

When I started in 2022, I really could have called the plant The Brilliant City. I was fascinated with it and some of that fascination still remains. Honestly, I’ve felt the presence of Goddess in some of the dirtiest parts of the building. This is what getting into the World Weaver mindset does: getting back to the child-like state of Wonder with the world.

Meeting the Beast

I’ve Met a lot of Beasts at the job. Keep in mind that Beasts in World Weaver’s terms aren’t always antagonists. Sometimes they’re friends in forms that you don’t expect, sometimes they’re Soul Diver’s on their own Journeys and crossing paths with you. Sometimes they’re teachers that don’t know they’re teaching you. Sometimes they are "Villains" that will challenge you.

I’ve Stood on the Shoreline and wanted to quit often.

I’ve had to Overcome a few Devourers (usually my own expectations of myself).

I’ve transformed some of those Beasts into Allies.

I’ve been pregnant with many new ideas.

When I first started writing this page, I felt I was at "Family Life or Hermit Life" of my World Weaver’s Journey. I think I’ve come further along than that over the last few months of processing some of these new discoveries.

I feel like I’m living in a pretty Balanced World right now. I feel like I’ve become a Master of Land and Sea and I’m really working on becoming a Joyful Guardian. I’ve definitely given myself Permission of Happiness, though I often forget to be happy since I’m often in existential crisis mode.

The job keeps happening. The new ideas keep coming. I have my ups and downs. I have my good days and bad.

But at the moment, writing all this and reading through it…

…I’m happy and super impressed with myself.

I’m a fucking legend.

-Mark Stratton

Goddess blessings.