Between Dreaming and Doing
Ritual, Resistance, and Rebirth: Do Not Go Gentle
I considered writing this piece without the mythopoetic language, without the references to archetypes and philosophers, to make it a more straightforward read. But that comes at a real cost—the cost of depth, richness, and the way these ideas truly live within me. And that, I’ve come to realize, would be a disservice to everyone.
At the end of the day, I have to remember that I am writing for myself—not for validation, not for mass readability, but because these words carry meaning for me. And if they hold meaning, then they will find their place.
As Rick Rubin put it: “Make art for yourself. Not the audience.”
This is me doing exactly that.
Throughout this piece, I weave together archetypal forces that shape both our inner world and our collective journey. These energies are not rigid categories but living dynamics that we all move through at different times:
• Hypnos – The dream state, where we linger in passive receptivity, floating in intuition without clear action.
• Eros – The pulse of passion, creativity, and connection, pulling us toward deeper engagement with life.
• Motos – The force of structure, clarity, and deliberate movement—the discipline that turns vision into reality.
• Moros – The weight of inertia, existential resistance, or shadow—where stagnation and transformation collide.
These forces play out in all areas of life—our relationships, our creative work, our personal growth. The key is not to suppress or escape any of them, but to learn to move consciously within their dance.
Dylan Thomas’ words, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” have been echoing in my mind lately. At first, they seemed like a simple defiance against death, a battle cry against resignation. But the more I sat with them, the more I saw something deeper—a call to consciousness, to engage fully with life rather than drifting passively through it.
I’ve been feeling this tension acutely, both in the men’s group I’ve been facilitating and in my own life. There’s a pulse, a rhythm, that moves between different forces—intuitive flow, structured clarity, and the resistance that tries to pull us back into old patterns.
The Early Days
When our group first came together, there was something beautifully Dionysian about it—a space of raw emotion, deep intuition, and poetic wisdom. We weren’t following a rigid framework; we were flowing, sensing, allowing the conversation to take us where it needed to go. It was deeply Gebserian, in the sense that Jean Gebser speaks of consciousness as multidimensional, best understood not through rigid logic but through an intuitive grasp of reality.
For a while, this state felt right. We were in Eros, the energy of connection, creation, and passion. There was vulnerability, depth, and a sense of magic. But over time, something became clear: we were circling the same conversations, treading the same emotional terrain without moving forward. It was poignant, poetic, and raw—but something felt stuck.
That’s when I realized Moros was at play.
The Gravity of Stagnation
Moros is subtle. It doesn’t announce itself loudly. It whispers—telling you to stay comfortable, to avoid discomfort, to resist change even when you sense it’s necessary. In our men’s group, Moros was keeping us in an endless dream state, where emotions flowed but transformation remained just out of reach.
I felt it in myself too. I had been holding onto the comfort of deep connection, of unstructured exploration, without fully acknowledging the need for deliberate movement forward.
That was the moment I made a decision.
We needed Motos—the Apollonian force of clarity, structure, and direction. Not to impose control, but to ensure that our intuitive depths were balanced by intentional action. That day, we started to make a shift, shaping it into something that could evolve, rather than simply repeat.
This dance—between Eros, Motos, and Moros—isn’t just something I’ve seen in the group. It’s something I’ve been living.
From Miami to Bacalar
A Personal Journey Through the Archetypes
As the men’s group evolved, so too did my own journey—a journey that took me across continents, mirroring the inner shifts I was experiencing. Looking back, I can see how each place I traveled embodied a different archetypal energy.
• Miami: A Hypnos/Moros loop—comfortable but stagnant, familiar yet subtly resisting change. Something inside me knew I needed to break free.
• Rio de Janeiro: Pure Eros. A city pulsing with life, movement, passion. It jolted me awake, shaking me out of the liminal dream-state of Miami and throwing me into the raw intensity of feeling and experience.
• Amsterdam: Motos calling. A structured return to clarity and purpose, where I immersed myself in client work, bringing intentionality back into my life.
• Santa Teresa, Costa Rica: A blending of Eros and Hypnos—a breathtakingly beautiful, sleepy surf town. Fun, easy, flowing…but also a place where it was tempting to sink too deeply into the dream.
• Bacalar and the Sundance: A dance with all three forces at once.
The Sundance, my third one, was a rite of passage. This year, I offered to the East West—the color black, the direction of ego dissolution and transformation. And just as I had set intentions to step more fully into conscious movement, I felt something shift. There was an energy in the air—unpredictable, unsettling. As if the Sundance itself was conspiring to shake something loose in me. Nothing would unfold the way I expected.
Moros wasn’t just the force of stagnation anymore. Here, I saw a different aspect of it—the necessary death of old identities, the dissolution required before true renewal. It was not something to fear, but something to surrender to, consciously.
Synchronistically, the signs appeared. One of the dancers, Jan, discovered a snake’s shedded skin—a silent emblem of renewal, of stepping forward unburdened by the past. And then, as if the forest itself had sent a messenger, a wolf spider fell into my tent.
The wolf is a psychopomp, a guide through the threshold of transformation, leading souls deeper into the unknown. And here it was, appearing not as a lone predator, but in the form of a spider—the weaver of worlds, the architect of fate. A creature that does not rush, but spins its web with patience and precision, crafting the next chapter with intention.
In the heart of the forest, under the weight of the Sundance, the message was clear: To shed, to weave, to walk forward into the unseen—guided not by fear, but by the instincts of those who have walked this path before.
The Art of Conscious Integration
Standing at the edge of the ceremonial grounds in Bacalar, drenched in sweat, my body alive from the long days of dancing and fasting, I felt something crack open.
My offering to the East West—the direction of ego dissolution—wasn’t just symbolic. It was real, something I could feel tearing through me. It wasn’t a comfortable kind of transformation. It was raw. Visceral. The kind that strips away everything unnecessary and leaves you standing in the fire of yourself.
And then, Heyoka appeared.
The Trickster. The sacred clown. The force that upends everything you think you know, pulling the rug out from under your carefully constructed identity. One moment, you’re sure of your path—your growth, your direction—and the next, you’re upside down, laughing at yourself, realizing that transformation isn’t something you control.
You can only surrender to it.
This was the final lesson of Moros—not just as stagnation, but as ego death, the chaos before renewal. I had spent months moving between the forces of Eros and Motos, between intuitive flow and structured clarity, trying to find balance. But true integration isn’t about balance—it’s about dancing with all three forces at once.
The Trickster, in his own way, was showing me this. There is no static equilibrium. No final resolution. There is only the ongoing dance.
The False Choice Between Eros and Motos
Looking back, I can see how much of my journey—both with the men’s group and within myself—was shaped by a false dichotomy.
We tend to think in either/or terms:
• We either flow intuitively (Eros), or we structure things deliberately (Motos).
• We either follow the heart, or we discipline ourselves into action.
• We either surrender to the dream, or we force ourselves to wake up and move forward.
But that’s not how transformation actually works.
Nietzsche understood this well. His philosophy wasn’t about passive acceptance, but about amor fati—the radical embrace of life in all its complexity. To love one’s fate is not to choose one side over the other, but to affirm it all: the passion and the discipline, the chaos and the order, the rise and the fall.
Dylan Thomas’ famous verse, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” isn’t about fighting against endings. It’s about meeting them fully. Consciously. With everything we have.
Where Are You in the Dance?
This isn’t just my story. It’s a pattern we all experience in different ways.
• Sometimes, we find ourselves lingering in the dream, circling the same emotions, ideas, or relationships without moving forward. This is Hypnos and Moros at play.
• Sometimes, we become so structured, so goal-oriented, that we lose touch with the deeper currents of intuition and presence. This is Motos unbalanced.
• And sometimes, we feel the pull of deep resistance—the fear of change, the subtle inertia that keeps us from stepping into what we know we’re called to do. This is Moros as existential gravity.
But when we become conscious of these forces, something shifts.
Suddenly, we can choose how we move through them.
So the question is: Where are you in this dance?
Are you flowing in the dream, sensing something deeper but struggling to ground it?
Are you moving forward with structure, but feeling disconnected from your deeper why?
Are you resisting a change you know is calling you?
Moros, if faced with awareness, doesn’t have to be the enemy. It can be the threshold—the final resistance before a breakthrough.
The task isn’t to escape these forces, but to learn to move with them.
To meet life fully.
To integrate passion and purpose.
To rage, not in blind defiance, but in conscious, creative participation.
That is the real dance.
That is the fire we’re called to step into.
Resisting change that is calling. I love your writing, the authenticity. You are writing in a way that I feel.