The Way of the Source

Tag: freedom

  • Lost in Translation: How Etymology Woke Me Up

    It started with… a sandwich.

    Not a metaphorical one — an actual turkey-and-cheese situation I threw together on a rushed lunch break. For some reason, I wondered why we call it a “sandwich” in the first place.

    Wasn’t Sandwich a place? Or an Island?

    A quick google search later, I’m staring at the ridiculous story of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, too busy gambling to step away for dinner, so he ordered meat stuffed between bread. And now, centuries later, here I am — not a nobleman or aristocrat, just a guy eating his Earl-named lunch.

    It was just kinda funny at first, but then the chord struck: this completely normal, everyday word carried a whole story inside of it — a story that almost nobody knows. This study of the origin and evolution of words, I found, was called etymology.

    So I kept going. I started studying the etymology of even more words. And that’s when things got weird.

    The Rabbit Hole Begins

    Take “clue,” for example.

    I always thought a clue was just… well, a hint. Something Sherlock Holmes sniffs out. But the word traces back to “klew,” meaning a ball of yarn — like the one from the Greek myth of Theseus. He didn’t solve the labyrinth with a sword or brute force; he found his way out by unwinding a ball of thread, or klew, to retrace his steps.

    A clue wasn’t originally about solving something — it was about finding the way home.

    Then there’s “sincere.” We use it to mean genuine or honest, but its roots go back to Latin: “sine cera” — meaning “without wax.” Back then, sculptors would use wax to cover flaws or cracks in their work. A statue that was truly flawless didn’t need the cover-up. It was sine cera — pure, unhidden, whole.

    How wild is that? Sincerity, at its core, isn’t just honesty — it’s wholeness without the cover-up.

    Words That Hold More Than We Realize

    The more I dug, the more I realized how many words hide deeper, almost poetic truths.

    • “Disaster” — from the Greek “dis” (bad) and “aster” (star). It literally means “bad star,” a misfortune caused by the heavens.

    • “Companion” — from Latin “com” (with) and “panis” (bread). A companion isn’t just a friend — it’s someone you break bread with.

    • “Ecstasy” — from Greek “ekstasis,” meaning “to stand outside oneself.” It’s not just joy — it’s a moment so powerful it pulls you out of your own being into a state of bliss.

    And then I stumbled on something bigger — words that didn’t just hold history, but felt like they were pointing to something about humanity itself.

    Breathing in the Divine

    Let’s talk about “inspire.”

    It’s a word we hear all the time — motivational speakers throw it around like confetti. But the root meaning knocked me sideways.

    “Inspire” comes from the Latin “inspirare,” which literally means “to breathe into.” It wasn’t about feeling motivated to write a book or start a project — it meant being filled with breath, with life itself.

    It’s the same word used to describe how God breathes life into “Adam” in the Genesis story — the very breath of existence. I’ll dive in to the etymology of Adam and Eve another time…

    Inspiration wasn’t about productivity. It was about being alive.

    Desire, Fire, and Stars

    Then I found “desire.”

    It’s another word we think we understand — wanting something, longing for it. But its origin is so much more than that.

    “Desire” comes from “de” (from) and “sidera” (stars). It’s origins literally mean “from the stars.”

    Desire wasn’t about craving or lust. It was about yearning for something beyond this world — a pull toward the heavens.

    And the more I sat with that, the more I couldn’t ignore the pattern:

    • Disaster — a bad star.

    • Desire — a longing from the stars.

    • Inspiration — the breath of life itself.

    • Ecstasy — to step outside yourself.

    It’s like these words were trying to remind us of something — that we’re not meant to be stuck down here in the dirt, chasing power, money, cars, impressive titles, or just surviving. We’re meant to breathe deeply, reach for the stars, and step outside ourselves.

    The Awakening Beneath the Words

    Somewhere in this journey, it stopped feeling like I was learning trivia. It felt more like I was waking up to something ancient — something we used to know but forgot along the way.

    Words are time capsules. They carry not just definitions, but stories, beliefs, and truths that our ancestors lived and breathed. And those truths still pulse beneath the surface, waiting for us to notice them.

    We didn’t invent language to make small talk. We invented it to name the things that stir our souls.

    We long for the stars — desire.

    We’re filled with life — inspire.

    We ache to step outside ourselves — ecstasy.

    And even our disasters are written in the heavens — stars.

    Language, it turns out, isn’t just about communication. It’s a mirror — one that reflects back who we’ve always been: creatures caught between earth and sky, longing for more.

    I’m not sure if words saved my soul, but they sure as hell woke it up.

    And to think… all of this beauty and wonder and history started with… a sandwich.

  • Severance and the Divided Self: A Spiritual Reflection

    Spoiler Warning: This post has some Season 1 Spoilers

    “Your so-called self…is a lie.”

    That line from Severance, TV’s mind-bending dystopian masterpiece, feels like a handshake with your innie — intimate, unsettling, and not meant for this version of you. The show takes a simple, horrifying premise—what if your work self and your outside self were completely severed from each other?—and spins it into a deep, unsettling meditation on identity, control, and the nature of consciousness.

    Just beneath the surface of its eerie corporate corridors and existential horror, Severance carries a spiritual weight that I picked up on from the first episode. It speaks to something primal in us, something fundamental to my own worldview—this sense that we are divided, fragmented, struggling to reconcile the different pieces of ourselves. That we live in a world that demands compartmentalization, while something deep inside us longs to be whole.

    And at the heart of it all, a question: Who are you, really?

    The Innie/Outie Divide

    The entire concept of Severance—splitting a person into two consciousnesses, one that only exists at work and one that only exists outside of it—is terrifying because it’s just a more extreme version of what we already do.

    We wear social masks. We create personas. We play roles. The person we are in one environment feels radically different from the person we are in another. We adapt to survive, but in doing so, we fracture ourselves.

    This is what many traditions call the false self—the identity shaped by external expectations, fear, and survival mechanisms. It is the mask we wear to navigate the world. In the show, the “Outie” (the self outside of work) believes they are in control, while the “Innie” (work self) exists in a state of perpetual servitude. The Innie wakes up every morning with no past, no future—only memories of work. Only obedience. And yet, the Innie is the one who begins to question, to resist, to long for something more that they know exists beneath the surface if they could just figure out how to access it.

    Spiritually speaking, the Innie is like the soul. The part of us trapped in a system it didn’t choose. The part that begins to awaken, often in suffering, often in darkness, and asks: Is this all there is? Is this who I am?

    The Great Lie of Control

    Lumon Industries, the cold and god-like corporation at the heart of Severance, operates like a religious system gone wrong. It offers salvation in the form of certainty—your work self will never have to worry about the outside world, and your outside self will never have to be burdened with the misery of work. A perfect, ordered existence.

    But that order comes at the cost of freedom. And doesn’t that feel sort of familiar? Doesn’t that always tend to be the trade?

    Religious institutions, political systems, and cultural structures often give the promise of peace, security, and identity—so long as you don’t question. So long as you accept the role assigned to you. So long as you don’t resist.

    But true spirituality—true awakening—is and has always been about curiosity and questioning. It is the Innie looking up from the fluorescent-lit purgatory of Lumon’s halls and thinking, “There has to be more.”

    It is Jesus saying, “The truth will set you free.”

    It is Lao Tzu saying, “Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom.”

    It is the mystic realization that the walls around us are merely constructs, that the roles we’ve been given are not who we are, and that something vast, wild, and uncontainable calls us to move beyond them.

    Reintegration and Wholeness

    One of the most haunting parts of Severance is the sheer horror of reintegration—the idea that the Innie and Outie might become one, that the veil might be lifted, and the full self might finally be known. The fear isn’t just about discovery—it’s about what that discovery would cost.

    Because wholeness always costs something.

    To awaken spiritually, to step into a fuller, truer way of being, means facing and shedding our illusions. It means facing truths we’ve been conditioned to avoid. It means no longer hiding in the comfortable amnesia of our constructed identities. Who we think we are.

    But here’s the paradox: that wholeness, that integration, is what we were truly meant for.

    The way I see it, sin is not about rule-breaking—it’s about fragmentation. It is the sickness of separation, of being divided from ourselves, from each other, and from the Source. It is looking for the cure to come from somewhere or something else. And Salvation? Liberation? That’s reintegration. That’s truly healing and becoming whole.

    Severance is a horror story because it shows us what happens when we are forced into separation. But it is also a call to wake up. To fight for our own reintegration. To remember that the walls we place between us are not real. That the prison of the false self is not our home.

    Because we are not meant to be divided.

    We are meant to be free.

    What Now?

    So where do we go from here? If the false self is a prison and the Source calls us to reintegration, what does that look like in the real world — beyond metaphor and mysticism.

    Reintegration starts with the radical act of seeing. Becoming aware. Seeing the masks we wear, the roles we play, and recognizing that they are not who we are. It’s looking at the systems — religious, political, social — that demand our compartmentalization and asking, “Who benefits from my division?”

    Lumon thrives because its workers are divided, docile, and obedient. So do the institutions that profit from keeping us fragmented. They need us to cling to tribal identities — to believe that we are separate, that we must defend ‘us’ against ‘them.’ They thrive on our belief that our Outie is righteous while our Innie deserves punishment, or that our neighbor’s Innie is somehow less human than our own.

    But what if we stopped playing along? What if we refused to see anyone as an Innie or an Outie — as “us” or “them” — and instead recognized the whole, sacred self in everyone we meet?

    Connecting with the Source isn’t about climbing a ladder to some distant, holy plane somewhere else. It’s about remembering that we never left. The Source isn’t out there. It’s within, and it’s within everyone else, too. It’s in your boss, your barista, your enemy. It’s in the waffle party and the melon bar. It’s in the strangest corners of existence — and the most mundane. It is the deep, cosmic hum beneath everything, calling us back to each other.

    And what do we do with this freedom? We live like people who remember the truth: that we belong to each other. That we are not cogs in someone else’s machine. We create, we love, we resist systems that demand our obedience, and we help others awaken to the reality that they were never meant to live as half a person.

    The final scene of season 1 of Severance is harrowing and powerful — the Innie awakens, sees the truth, and screams it into a world that doesn’t yet know how to listen. That’s the risk of waking up. The world might not be ready for the whole you.

    But wake up anyway.

    Because you were never meant to stay asleep.

  • “Hallelujah!”

    The Wild Unstoppable Cry of the Soul

    Growing up in a charismatic Pentecostal church and family, I heard the word Hallelujah a lot. Sure, it was shouted during sermons, whispered fervently in prayer, and sung with hands raised high. Usually, it was said as a trivial celebration when my mom found her keys or that thing she’d been looking for for weeks. I often hear it used sarcastically. When I was touring with Settle The Sky, my Christian metal band, Hallelujah was screamed into microphones, echoing through sweaty clubs and church basements, sometimes from the voices of kids who weren’t even sure what they believed—but something about that word felt powerful. And while everyone used this word, I felt like most people didn’t seem to be able to articulate what it really meant.

    Hallelujah isn’t just a word. It’s a cry. A defiant, unrelenting, soul-shaking exclamation that transcends language, genre, and even belief systems. It’s one of the few Hebrew words that has made its way, unchanged, into nearly every language on earth. My wife, Ariel, walked down the aisle to an acoustic version of this song whose only lyric was just the word Hallelujah.

    But what does Hallelujah actually mean? And why does it hold so much weight—whether whispered in worship, shouted in ecstatic praise, or screamed over a hardcore caveman riff in a Sleeping Giant song?

    The Etymology of Hallelujah:

    The word Hallelujah (הַלְלוּיָהּ) is made up of two parts:

    • Hallelu (הַלְלוּ) – A command meaning “praise” (from halal, meaning to shine, boast, or act wildly celebratory).

    • Yah (יָהּ) – A shortened form of YHWH, the divine name of God.

    So Hallelujah literally means “Praise God!” But not in a quiet, reserved, or passive way.

    The root word halal is wild. It comes from the exclamation of freedom. In Islam, if a food is “halal”, then it is praised by the divine and they are “free” to eat it. It means to boast, to rave, to shine, to act clamorously foolish in celebration. It’s the kind of word that doesn’t fit neatly into the stoic, buttoned-up version of faith so many of us were handed. Halal is loud. It’s undignified. It’s messy.

    It’s the kind of word that makes most religious people uncomfortable.

    Dance Dance Revolution

    One of the most unrestrained biblical pictures of true Hallelujah comes from 2 Samuel. King David, who was a warrior and poet, brings the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. And how does he celebrate?

    He dances.

    Furiously.

    He strips off his royal linen robes and dances before the Lord with all his might, completely unbothered by how ridiculous he looks. His wife, Michal, watches in disgust, embarrassed by his lack of dignity. That’s a striking image for Michal’s attitude toward David. She wasn’t just upset; she was cutting him off in her heart, separating herself from his joy and his deep, intimate worship before Yahweh. But David doesn’t care.

    “I will become even more undignified than this!” he tells her. “I will be humiliated in my own eyes!” -2 Samuel 6:22

    That is Hallelujah—the kind of unrestrained, all-consuming celebration that doesn’t care about appearances or what kind of societal consequences or judgment it brings up in others. The kind that doesn’t hold back. The kind that shakes the ground.

    Hallelujah in Metal, Hardcore, and Charismatic Worship

    When I look back, I realize that my time in the charismatic church and my time in metal and hardcore were deeply connected by this same reckless, passionate spirit.

    In charismatic churches, worship wasn’t just singing songs… it was warfare. It was an outpouring of emotion. People danced, shouted, wept, fell to their knees. Some spoke in tongues. Some shook under the weight of something they couldn’t explain. The band played loud, but not for performance or recognition, but because the Spirit was moving, and nothing about that moment should be tame.

    Then I stepped into the world of metal and alternative music, and I felt something eerily familiar. The intensity. The passion. The catharsis of screaming from the depths of your soul, of pushing your body to the limit, of letting go of self-consciousness and giving everything you have to something bigger than yourself. To the energy that was stirring up between everyone in the room.

    In the pit at a hardcore show, I saw people swinging fists, jumping off stages, pile-driving toward a moment that felt transcendent. When we played, I saw kids who wouldn’t set foot in a church scream their lungs out to lyrics about redemption, about sacrifice, about love, about hope. The church might not have understood our art form, but it was never really about playing music or getting fame or being a rock star. It was about uniting the broken in a moment of raw transcendence.

    To me, that is Hallelujah.

    Hallelujah and the Illusion of Separation

    There’s something about raw, undignified presence and unity that breaks through the illusion that we are separate from something greater. Not the polished, performance-driven kind that is trying to impress to satisfy an egoic need—but the kind that throws off every weight, every inhibition, and lets the soul truly cry out.

    Hallelujah is not about conformity. It’s about connection. It’s about that deep, undeniable pull that every mystic, every artist, every seeker has felt—the pull toward something vast, luminous, and overwhelmingly real. Whether you call it God, the Tao, the Divine, the Source, the Universe, or simply Love, there is something in all of us that knows:

    There is more.

    And we are all a part of it. We are all invited to leave our egos at the door so our truest self can be free.

    Hallelujah is the moment the wave crashes and you feel one with the ocean.

    It’s the lump in your throat when a song wrecks you in the best way.

    It’s the dancer lost in flow state movement, the poet captivated in words, the mother holding her child, the breath that catches in awe.

    It’s in the scream of a metalhead in the pit, in the whispered prayer of the doubter, in the sigh of the atheist staring up at the stars, feeling something too beautiful for words.

    Hallelujah isn’t just for “believers”. It isn’t just for “church”. It isn’t just for those who understand. It’s for whoever breathes.

    Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that has breath praise Yah.

    And Yah means YHWH

    The Invitation to Live Hallelujah

    Maybe you’ve been taught that spiritual connection had to look a certain way—had to fit into a religious mold that never quite felt right. Maybe, like me, you felt more of something divine in the roar of a crowd than in a pew. Maybe you were outcast by a church more focused on everyone believing and behaving the same way than having a real encounter with an untamed spirit. Maybe you’ve been waiting for permission to show up fully as you are, to throw off self-consciousness, to stop filtering your presence and just be—raw, honest, unrestrained.

    Here it is.

    Let your Hallelujah be loud. Let it be messy. Let it be real.

    Not because you have to worship a deity, or a god out there somewhere else, not because you need to fit into any system of belief, or any organized religion.

    But simply because you are alive.

    Because you are part of something bigger than yourself. Because your voice, your body, your breath, your existence—it all matters.

    Because to be fully alive, fully present, fully surrendered to this eternal moment—that is the cry of Hallelujah.