on eggs & kings

Religious Trauma + Rebirth 

author: R.R. Shakti, PhD ​

the power of myth
I’m a Mythologist.

​Which, depending on the day, means I spend my time wandering through old stories, mind-blown by how they still shape the human experience.

My work grows out of Depth Psychology, where world mythology is understood as a treasury of archetypes and symbols; all composing the human psyche. When you begin to read this language, a hidden vault opens, shimmering with insight and inspiration.

There, you find soul stories.
These are your stories. The ones that remind you who you are, what you value, and why you are here. You begin to recognize your shadows and your superpowers. A pathway dawns. It leads—again and again—toward creative freedom.

The study of mythology does something else, too. Not just for you, but for all of us.
It reveals the shared shadows and common grace of the human experience. As we come to know ourselves more deeply, we begin to see that everyone is living a soul story—the hero, the exile, the lover, the trickster… sometimes all before lunch.
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Curiosity grows. Courage is contagious. We experience a profound compassion—not just as an idea, but as a felt wisdom that moves between us and ultimately leads to unconditioned peace. Soul stories gently disrupts the illusion that we are separate. They narrow the distance. They unite us. 

the power of Love
I don’t often write about politics or religion, because both have been rigged to divide us.
But I live in the same world as you. 

Despite what algorithms or news cycles might suggest, we are all here together; in one shared, breathing field of reality. And in this world, there have always been kings who divide in order to conquer. Political and religious power has often sought to control through fear and rule by greed. It’s an old story. 

But there is also the story of one called the “king of kings.” And whatever has been built around him since, Christ’s message is clear. He came to unite. He did not stand for the power of politics or religion. He stood as the power of Love. 


death & rebirth—a soul story
My first soul stories came from the Bible.

I remember attending Sunday School in the church basement on Easter. Folding chairs and coloring crayons. Silk flowers, crosses and craft projects. It was a celebration of the risen king. But it was also something else. On the flip-side of that story was the crucifixion. A brutal, bewildering image of torture and death. The weight of it was excruciating, horrifying for a child. And then—an existential moment of relief: He lives!

The minister leads a chorus of “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” The grown-ups take communion. Meanwhile, outside, children run through the grass searching for eggs filled with candy—bright, hidden treasures waiting to be found. Archetypes and symbols. I didn’t yet fully understand the language of myth, but I was already living inside a soul story. I recognized the pattern. Death and rebirth.
 
As I grew into my soul stories, curiosity led the way. Then courage and compassion, making room for more than one way of seeing. I began to hear the song of death and rebirth—not only in the story of Jesus, but in the womb and tomb of the Goddess, in the turning of the seasons, in the sacred brilliance of the natural world. In the stories of Shiva/Shakti and Quetzalcoatl—Inanna descending, Persephone returning, Osiris reassembled, the Phoenix rising, the awakening of the Buddha…
Life letting go. Life returning. Again and again.

Through the lens of Depth Psychology and Applied Mythology, these are not competing stories. They are expressions of the same underlying truth, spoken in different symbolic languages. The egg. The cross. The empty tomb. The fertile earth. The bodhi tree. Each one pointing toward the same mystery: that life renews itself through surrender, that something essential in us cannot be extinguished, that Love moves through every ending, shaping what comes next.
And for me, this understanding became deeply personal.

to build a bridge
My mom was a Christian believer. She was also the best friend I have ever had. She lived with terminal cancer for six years, then left this world in December, 2018. I miss her every single day. 

A few months after she passed, I had a thought that stopped me in my tracks. I realized that so much of what I had studied—my years of exploring religions, mystic traditions, mythology, psychology, spiritual inquiry—was, in some unspoken and devoted way, actually for her.
Her faith included something painful—the doctrine of hell. It placed a distance between us. By not sharing that belief, I might be condemned to eternal damnation.

She loved me far too much for that to be easy. And I loved her far too much to cause her such pain. 
So I kept studying. Not to argue or to prove that I was right; but to find a language that could hold us both. 

My mama was a natural scholar. She was my homeschooling teacher—a woman with a brilliant, curious mind. And now I see that I was trying to meet her there. To build a bridge. To learn how to speak in a way that unites rather than divides.


to be like Jesus
Recently, I was introduced to “former” pastor Brian Recker and his book Hell Bent. And something opened. I found myself revisiting Christianity—not as a system of fear or exclusion, but as a soul story I could step back into with integrity. Not to save myself from hell. Not to walk on streets of gold when I die. But because I want to live like Jesus. The “king of kings,” who did not rule through fear, but through unconditioned love. A love beyond opposites. Not divided between belief systems. Not fractured by doctrine. Not deadened by dogma. But alive.

I am drawn to the one who included the marginalized, who disrupted rigid systems, who embodied compassion in a way that still moves through us. A compassion that makes space for more than one way of seeing—and opens, again and again, into peace.
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Today this old story feels new again—whole again—as I think about eggs and kings. And a simple chorus rings through my heart, like a cosmic refrain: We are all living inside this story of rebirth. In our collective grief. In our healing. In the persistent ways we learn to build bridges; to narrow the distance and love each other across difference.
Again and again.