Rahu, the North Node of Liberation, and the dangerous question underneath the freedom story
Before any of it — before the street kid, the seeker, the teacher, the Father — there was a boy in a canyon.
He built forts. He explored storm drains and abandoned houses. He wasn’t trying to become anything. He wasn’t proving anything. He wasn’t holding anyone.
He was just alive.
That boy came before the armor.
And I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out what happened to him.
July is the month of the Wild Man. And this week’s piece traces the arc from that canyon boy forward — through the street kid, the punk, Burning Man 1994, the seeker, the teacher, the Father who has been holding everything — to the question I could not have asked ten years ago:
Who am I when I am no longer organizing my life around proving that I am not my father?
That is where this month begins. Not with another reinvention. Not with another horizon to disappear toward.
With the boy who was there before any of the armor existed — and the work of finally meeting him without making him responsible for saving me.
Rahu — the North Node in Vedic astrology, the shadow planet of liberation and primal hunger — is the planetary teacher for this month. His question is always the same: who are you when you stop being who everyone needs you to be?
I am still answering it. This month we answer it together.
Read the full piece → Breaking free in a new direction,
Shiva J