🐍 Shedding the Illusion of Separation
“Separating ourselves from God is the most pain we will ever experience.”—Julian of Norwich
February 9th, 2026
📍Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico 🇲🇽
¡Saludos desde el desierto!
Earlier this year, I wrote about snakes and how they've been a metaphor for my growth. At the time, I didn't yet know how literal that image would become for me.
In the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Snake is a year of shedding—not in a dramatic, once-and-done way, but in the slow, inevitable way that happens when the body and soul know the truth before the mind can catch up.
Snakes don't ask permission to shed. They don't apologize for the skin they outgrow. They don't cling to what once protected them simply because it's familiar. When it's time, it's time.
This year, what I shed was not a habit, a belief, or a season. I shed the illusion of separation.
This year, I’ve come to understand that human beings have been living in a fog of darkness, believing we are separate from God, separate from one another, separate even from ourselves. We've been taught to see life in fragments—to believe we are alone in our suffering, our becoming.
This fog is a shared inheritance; the human condition, if you will. A collective agreement we enter into without realizing it has terms and conditions. We've been living in this darkness for so long that it feels normal.
Jesus called it blindness—not as condemnation, but as diagnosis. Eyes that do not see. Ears that do not hear. Not because the truth is hidden, but because we have learned how not to perceive it.
The illusion of separation—duality—builds an entire world on division: sacred versus secular, God versus world, self versus other. Individuality becomes isolation. Identity becomes armor. And what we mistake for sin is often nothing more than mis-seeing—living as though we are cut off from the very Source animating our breath.
The illusion of separation doesn’t collapse all at once. It dissolves the way fog does—quietly, gradually, almost imperceptibly—until one day you realize you can see farther than you used to.
Awakening is not about acquiring new beliefs. It is about losing false ones. It is about recovering sight.
Jesus spoke again and again of eyes and ears—of seeing and hearing—not because truth is distant or hidden, but because perception itself is the threshold. Blessed are your eyes, for they see. Blessed are your ears, for they hear. The implication is startling: the Kingdom is not withheld. It is perceived—or it is not.
Most of us were never taught how to see this way.
We learned to live inside a story shaped by division: God over there, humanity over here. Sacred moments set apart from ordinary life. Holiness confined to certain people, places, or experiences. And without realizing it, we internalized a way of seeing that fractured reality into parts.
I’m learning that awakening begins when that way of seeing starts to fail.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But subtly—when the old explanations no longer satisfy, when the language you once used feels thin, when something deeper begins asking for your attention.
This kind of awakening is not escape. It is intimacy.
It is the recognition that the same Presence you have been seeking is the Presence already animating your breath, your body, your awareness. The eye with which you see God is the same eye with which God sees you. One seeing. One knowing. One loving.
And once perception shifts, everything shifts with it.
As the Year of the Snake comes to a close, I feel the unmistakable lightness that follows a true shedding. The old skin no longer fits, and there is no desire to carry it forward.
The Lunar calendar does not rush these transitions. It honors thresholds. It understands that one season must complete its work before another can begin. And something new is already stirring.
Next comes the Fire Horse—movement, momentum, embodied power. Not the careful shedding of skin, but the courage to run once the shedding is complete. But that is for next week.
For now, I honor the wisdom of the snake—who taught me that awakening is not about becoming something new, but about letting go of what was never true.
The fog has thinned. My eyes have adjusted, and the path ahead is becoming clearer, and I’m ready for horse energy.
With Love, unconditionally—
Jennifer
P.S.—I’d love to hear from YOU! Rather than emailing me or dropping me a DM, please post a comment below 👇
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. If you click through a link and make a purchase, it may earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you! See our disclaimer for details.
Keep Reading…
Dig Deeper…
