Falling Into Soul
McCall Erickson
Falling Into Soul is a podcast for people going through the deeper, more confusing processes of inner healing and soul awakening. In her signature direct, no bullsh*t, yet caring way, McCall Erickson explores unpopular spiritual truths and the finer nuances of soul processes through the lens of alchemy as she shares her lived experiences and intimate songs she has written along the way.
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Top 10 Falling Into Soul Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Falling Into Soul episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Falling Into Soul for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Falling Into Soul episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
10/15/21 • 20 min
An alchemist is one who takes everything as it comes, transforming the harmful into helpful, the ordinary into extraordinary, and the painful into beautiful. Not by way of bypass, but by way of engaging in deep and, at times, disruptive processes. Alchemists turn their back on nothing, knowing that every life circumstance, desired or not, is the critical base matter needed for making gold.
Alchemy can be an overwhelming esoteric topic with weird words, cryptic symbols and images, and various interpretations. But you don't have to be a scholar of any of that to transmute and transform your life situations.
In this episode, I pare alchemy down to three keys to remember if you want to work magic in your life.
- Start Where You Are and Let It Happen
- Know the Essence from the Form
- Unite the Opposites
With love,
McCall
Quick quotes from the show:
A magical life is no the absence of pain, disappointment, darkness, and heartache. It's living all of that so fully it becomes your beauty.
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” -Rilke
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin
“What we cannot hold we cannot process and what we cannot process we cannot transform. And what we cannot transform haunts us.” -Zen Proverb
Ep. 33 Letting Your Best Hopes Go
Falling Into Soul
11/10/22 • 21 min
"One of the hallmarks of maturity is to let some of what seemed like your best hopes go, especially if the tide of life is actually taking them from you and turning your face in another direction." -David Whyte, What to Remember When Waking, The Disciplines of Everyday LifeIn this episode, I explore:
- When hopes can be helpful and when they can get in the way
- Why following your heart might not be enough sometimes
- How to identify actual flow
- Learning to recognize the tides of life, the seasons that are ours to live
- The hopes and dreams of the ego vs. the wild will and dream of the soul
- What is the will of the soul?
- The alchemy that prepares us to partner with the unknown and the will of the soul
With love and gratitude for listening,
McCall
LINKS:
--> David Whyte's What to Remember When Waking
-->Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening
-->Click here for 20% off audiobook
-->Click here for episode transcripts
EPISODE QUOTES:
If you can withstand the disappointment of your ego, you can live the wild dream of your soul.
"Are you really going with the flow or are you pretending like you're going with the flow and secretly paddling underneath?" -my dear friend and Anam Cara
Ep. 26 Transmuting Fear and Insecurity to Confidence
Falling Into Soul
11/29/21 • 24 min
When we face and transmute fear, we gain confidence. Confidence that doesn’t depend on things happening in a way we are sure they must happen, but confidence that comes from being insecure, facing the unknown and allowing support and grace to find us in unimagined ways, letting go of certain hopes and trusting that what we can’t yet see or know is there to hold us if we take the frightening steps far enough into the dark for it to find us.
In this episode:
- How to transmute fear to confidence
- The difference between confidence and certainty
- What to do when your confidence is shaken
With love,
McCall
Download The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook here
Quotes from the show:
--Alchemy doesn’t save us from shit. Alchemy holds us to facing the shit, facing our deepest fears. The whole point of alchemy is to transmute the shit, transmute the fears, to face the things we feel we cannot face and realize the depths in us that are equipped to face them.
--Trusting things to work out in a certain way is not really trusting in life. Life is a manifestation of the mystery. Trusting in it means trusting things to work out in ways you can’t foresee or know. The willingness to move forward even though things aren’t going as planned allows us to be surprised by unknown helpers and graces along the way.
--This is the terror, but also the delight and the magic of the unknown: when we face the things we fear we cannot face, we come in touch with the deeper, wilder parts of us that are actually equipped to face them.
--“We can find what supports us when nothing supports us. By bearing the unbearable, we go through the desert to arrive at a nurturing oasis we did not know was there”. -James Hollis
--"We don't need to learn to let go. We just need to recognize what is already gone." -Zen master Suzuki Roshi
Download The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook here
Ep. 22 "The Messy Reality of Embodied Living"
Falling Into Soul
07/03/21 • 17 min
"Perfectionism is the attempted tyranny of a concept over the messy reality of embodied living." -Anthony LawlorIn this episode I explore the progression of perfectionism in my alchemical journey
- First as a way to survive and cope with trauma.
- Then as a way to buffer me from the raw experience of life and perhaps try to control how other people saw me so I could ensure their approval and love.
- Next as a tension to constantly transmute in order to keep me in creative flow with my soul.
I get real about how making this podcast has challenged me to face and transmute my perfectionism in ways I couldn't do ten years ago when I tried to record my music.
At the end, I announce some new projects that I'm currently working on.
With love from the deep end of messy and embodied living,
McCall
Quick quotes from the show:What is real, precious, and truly golden inside me does not give a shit about my perfectionism.
Thinking there’s a right way to do anything and someone other than you knows what that is and you should give all your time and energy to figure it out can really fuck over your soul. Trusting your own direct, non-conceptual experience, not as the right way, but as the way that’s flowing, as the way that's happening for now will save your soul.
"Perfectionism is the attempted tyranny of a concept over the messy reality of embodied living." -Anthony Lawlor"You lose your grip and then you slip into the masterpiece." Leonard Cohen , A Thousand Kisses Deep
Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening-->Click here for 20% off audiobook
Ep. 17 When Nothing Saves You
Falling Into Soul
03/27/21 • 15 min
One of the things that has been pried from the grips of my poor ego through the processes of alchemy and spiritual maturing is the idea that I could crack the code. That I could somehow figure out how to save myself from the perils of life. That somehow, my righteousness, my chosenness and my wisdom set me apart from the rest of humanity, and I wouldn’t have to suffer in the ways other humans suffer.
The idea that being “good” and doing the right things was somehow related to my level of suffering was deeply, deeply embedded in me. But honestly, what a fucked up idea.
Exploring in this episode:
- Deprogramming the idea that we can be saved from suffering if we do the right things
- The soul cannot be healed and discovered solely through healthy living
- The role that danger, the abyss, the edge, and the nothingness have in awakening the soul
- Coming to the place where nothing saves you and how important this place is to magical alignment and magical will
- How there is no Philosopher's Stone, no creating with magical will without giving up every notion of what we think it might mean to do so
At 10:46 I do a reading of my piece "When Nothing Saves You" with impromptu piano music in the background. It just felt right.
With love from one magical abyss to another,
McCall
Thank you for listening and supporting the show!
11/22/20 • 22 min
You may be undergoing the rigorous process of distillation if
- you keep going through intense death and rebirth cycles in quick succession
- the rug keeps getting pulled out from under you
- you can't get any traction with anything you try to manifest or create
- you feel like you can't quite break free of certain cycles
- you're finding yourself shutting most of the world out and stripping all excess noise from your sphere so you can focus on hearing your inner voice
- you're experiencing isolation and loneliness to the Nth degree
If this is you, you are far along the alchemial path and well on your way to living from the unbreakable core that is uniquely yours--the Philosopher's Stone.
Join me in this episode as I explore the rigors of the distillation process, why it has to be so hard and brutal sometimes, and where it leads us....through the narrow gate...to the great beyond...
Live performance of my original song "Closer" at 17:40
Thank you for listening. ♥
Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening-->Click here for 20% off audiobook
Ep. 39 What the Fire Leaves Behind
Falling Into Soul
04/30/24 • 19 min
Alchemy is a terrible but brilliant series of processes that burn, drown, rot pressurize, and distill every extraneous thing out of the way so you can see what is there. What the fire leaves behind is who you really are. What the fire leaves behind is all the things about you that cannot be left behind. What remains when all else fades is how we know what's ours to live in a new way.
In this episode:
- the threshold between being initiated to the true self and the pressing need to integrate the true self in all facets of life
- the spirit addiction or impulse to keep cleaning the slate, reinventing yourself or undergoing one more process of alchemy that could maybe possibly change who you are and what your life is about this time
- how alchemy is not a process of transformation so much as a revelation
- prompts and inquiries for intuiting where you are on your alchemical journey
With love,
M
Ep. 24 Space to Be (Song: A Better Me)
Falling Into Soul
09/18/21 • 21 min
Allow, allow, allow. Everything, every being, every process has its own wisdom and magic. I am learning to not interfere, to let it be, let it work its magic. I honestly think this is love: space to be. Love is when you let it be. Let it be, allow, receive.
I built this episode around a song I wrote when I left my music career in 2010--specifically the line "I just need some space to be who I am."
I call this The Song That Started It All because it set me on the final and brutal climb of my second half of the mountain journey where I had to go through the dark nights of the spirit and distillation to come to the gates of surrender and walk through.
Exploring the BEING space:
- What does it mean to actually BE our authentic selves in any given moment?
- Why is it so hard to give ourselves space to be?
- What gets in the way of us extending this love to ourselves and others?
- What can come from being in the space of surrender? What magic happens there?
With love for those in the far reaches,
McCall
www.McCallErickson.com
Click here to read or listen to my book The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening
Ep. 23 Separation Brings Us Closer (Song: How Some Stories Go)
Falling Into Soul
07/28/21 • 19 min
Space is hard space is good
you need it, but you don't want to be misunderstood
It's not easy to make it or take it
but something's nagging and you just can't shake it
You want to look but it's scary to see
everything's choking and you need to breathe
If you stop for a moment,
the image you've been trying so hard to hold together
might shatter and fall
Wouldn't it be better to keep it all in
and love through these pretenses and walls?
You know there's risk either way,
but you have to move when the heart calls.
Separation might take us further apart,
but it brings us closer, closer after all.
In this episode, we dive into separation, a necessary and vital alchemical phase that helps us know ourselves as individuals so we can be a clearer part of the whole.
- What is separation and how does it show up in our individual alchemy as well as our relationship alchemy?
- How can separation help us heal division in ourselves and relationships?
- Signs of separation: conflict with or needing space from loved ones, feeling the need for alone time, feeling the need to get real about your part and understand your truth in any situation, partnership, creative project etc.
- Symbols and images of separation: air, wind, space, gaps, divides, divorce, sharp tools like swords, knives, extractions tools
- Example of how I've applied separation in my life
- How to make it through a challenging separation phase
At 14:20 I share my original song "How Some Stories Go" written during a really difficult relational separation that taught me the importance of holding tension of not knowing in order to allow the deeper soul story to unfold in time
With love,
McCall
Ep. 12 The Codependent Triangle and Soul Growth
Falling Into Soul
01/09/21 • 24 min
The codependent triangle way of relating as abuser-victim-rescuer permeates our society and perpetuates trauma. In order to stop the trauma cycle and heal, we have to step out of all roles in the triangle and operate from a place of soul, seeing the luminous power in ourselves and all beings.
In this episode:
- What is codependency as it relates to soul work?
- The three roles in the codependent (drama) triangle and how to break free of them
- My personal journey and story with progressing out of the drama triangle
- How taking the second half of the mountain journey and forming the Philosopher's Stone within brings a new round of facing codependency
- Transmuting the Codependent Triangle to the Compassion Triangle
This one is for the cycle breakers.
With love,
M
Resources mentioned in the show:
https://www.karpmandramatriangle.com/
https://yourholisticpsychologist.com/
Codependent No More
Healing the Shame that Binds You
The Second Half of the Mountain
-->Click here for 20% off The Second Half of the Mountain audiobook
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FAQ
How many episodes does Falling Into Soul have?
Falling Into Soul currently has 42 episodes available.
What topics does Falling Into Soul cover?
The podcast is about Healing, Spirituality, Soul, Alchemy, Religion & Spirituality, Transformation, Podcasts, Self-Improvement, Education and Journey.
What is the most popular episode on Falling Into Soul?
The episode title 'Ep. 37 How to Recognize the Will of the Soul' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Falling Into Soul?
The average episode length on Falling Into Soul is 23 minutes.
How often are episodes of Falling Into Soul released?
Episodes of Falling Into Soul are typically released every 21 days, 1 hour.
When was the first episode of Falling Into Soul?
The first episode of Falling Into Soul was released on Jul 22, 2020.
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