Never forget all the souls that you are. That you have been. That you will one day be.

Every cell in your body is borrowed for the sake of your life. Your experiences and endeavors, your aspirations and your failures. Nearly everything you consume was recently alive, from the mighty bovine to the humble yeast. Its own borrowed cells lived a life, however long or brief. It knew what it was to feed, to respire, to grow. Its spirit kissed the flesh for at least a moment, and told stories back to the universe.

Don’t shy away from this reality. Embrace it. Revel in the unparalleled splendor that is life. Let it into you as you do the beasts and plants that have become you. Let it flow through you as your spirit does through this short, magnificent time on your bones. Before you, too, become food.

You are a gateway. Your flesh is passage into the manifest world for spirit. You, and only you, can say what is allowed through your door. The spirits you choose to dance with gain presence in this world. Those that have known the flesh often crave that feeling again.

Give thanks to the beasts, plants, and microbes that feed your flesh. Let them share their stories and memories with you. Climb down the double helix bone ladder into primal memory and have them by your side. They know the way. They remember the forgotten things. Their ancestors knew our ancestors, trading cells, nourishing one another: an endless tangle of paths throughout time.

Think often of your mortality. Embrace it with the same fervor you would embrace life. For like life, death is shared by all things. The great equalizer that makes us all one. Those lives that have crossed the river have committed a sacred act.

And when you open the doorway through which they cross once more, you sing an ancient song which has no words. You are a gift to each other of knowledge, mysteries, and secrets.

Allies. Friends. Companions. Tribe.

The old gods walk among us. And though their names have been lost to time, their drums beat steady. Thundering drums in your chest, in your neck, your gut. Gods of tooth and claw, fur and feather and scale. Gods with many legs and eyes. They all are in you.

The ancient work is in you. The book is your flesh. You are the sacred gateway of the dead and yet born.