The Boy and Alduin: The World-Eater

Lately I've been going through something very deep — a passageway of shadow work, inner-child work, and trauma release. It's anchoring me in ways I can't ignore.

I'm learning to surrender to it. To trust the process. It feels as if there is a black hole inside my solar plexus and it feels like it's trying to devour everything within me. It pulls relentlessly, as if it wants to consume my very being. My body clings on, resisting with everything it has — shaking, straining, doing whatever it can. My survival depends upon it. And somehow, despite the exhaustion, I still stand. I still breathe.

I'm blessed to have had the self-awareness, the willingness, the courage, and the initiative to do a lot of inner work over the years — Ayahuasca, men's retreats, shadow work, boarding school survivors retreats. I'm learning the map of how I can relate to the emotional turmoil that once plagued me — and still, at times, consumes me. I'm learning to reparent my inner child, to give him everything he was deprived of as a boy. I'm learning to be that which I used to outsource so desperately from the world — as a child through gaming and through anything that helped me to feel held, even if just for a moment.

And yet the storm continues. The darkness, the trauma, the pain — it's still unfolding. I'm still in the battlefield.

I'm doing what I can to hold myself together, to remain upright in a storm that most people don't even know is there, and to remind myself that the threat is no more.

People don't understand that the "privileged child" who went to boarding school was trained, inhumanely, to adopt a mask to cover his pain. Historically, through gaslighting the child's perception of the abuse they received from the country's institution, he's coerced into compliance — to keep the traditions of the powers-that-be alive. Hence the saying, beating tradition into the child.

This is why I write — to honour the boy who survived, and to keep choosing life on his behalf. But to also honour all survivors of adversity and childhood trauma.

I'm a man working through very real trauma in my physical body — a pain that feels ancient, cellular, ancestral, and sometimes excruciating. Because right now, though the kingdom within me is prosperous and full of potential, a part of it still trembles in exile. My first duty now is to the inner realm — to the little boy inside me who was abused and neglected as a child, who was cast into exile.

I've been playing Skyrim on my new PS5, listening to Skyrim-music-influenced YouTube playlists, and letting this process guide me back to wonder.

What was the child seeking on Skyrim when gazing into the eyes of the dragon — Alduin, the World-Eater? The one fated to devour time itself, whose return signals the end of an age. In that world, I was Dragonborn — the mortal who carried the voice of the gods, destined to face the shadow that would end creation. But perhaps it was never about slaying the dragon, but remembering the power of voice — the Thu'um — within myself. The throat chakra, the roar that shakes mountains, the breath that restores worlds.

What was the child's mission when I played as John Marston in Red Dead Redemption, fighting not for glory but for his family, trying to save them from the forces of his past that once enslaved him — only to be gunned down by government soldiers after he managed to send his wife and son to safety, dying so that they might live?

What was the child longing for when I played as a nameless wanderer in Shadow of the Colossus, moved by love and desperation in the vast forbidden Shadowlands — bringing down Colossi, beings who were as much temples as they were creatures, in the sacred hope of reviving Mono, the woman he loved — only to be consumed by the very power he invoked, reborn as an infant beneath her awakening gaze?

What was the boy in me searching for in it all? How would I have steered the fate of my life? How would I have written the story of my own becoming? Would I have gone searching for love — for the woman whose eyes reminded me of home? Would I have fought to save my family, my people, my world, as if the fate of it all rested on my shoulders? Would I have faced the dragon at the end of time — not in the frozen peaks of Skyrim, but here, in the heart of my own being?

For this life is the true game — the great initiation. The monsters are shadows, and the treasures are the virtues reclaimed along the way. The NPCs are sentient beings, also incarnated into Saṃsāra — the great field of becoming, the Matrix of spirit and matter intertwined — each on their own path of remembrance. On the pursuit of awakening, of union with the divine, of rediscovering the hidden light within themselves and bringing it into form through love, courage, and creation. All are the same medicine — the remembering of wholeness through the trials of separation.

I first played the game before Skyrim, called Oblivion, as a child — around the time I went to boarding school, during the dark days. And in its mythic realm I can now see the same teachings reflected — the echo of Saṃsāra woven through fantasy. A hero awakening to destiny, navigating shadowed lands, confronting corruption within and without — all metaphors for the soul's own passage through forgetting and remembering. That world became my wilderness, a mirror for the spiritual exile I was already living. And though I did not know it then, I was training for the inner quest that would one day call me into this very life — the same pilgrimage, but in this living world.

Sometimes inner work involves pilgrimaging to the Amazon rainforest to drink the exotic Peruvian medicine, Ayahuasca, and to purge into a bucket. Sometimes it is to nourish myself — sitting quietly with a PlayStation controller in hand, remembering the joy of being a child before the world crushed him, and bringing home the elixir from the cave most souls fear to tread, for himself and the wider tribe to relish in. During my 2020 Ayahuasca dieta in the Amazon, Don Gino told us — deep in the realms — that everybody comes into this life with a gift. It is up to us to find it and share it with the world.

This is why gaming is a part of my spiritual practice.

In this life — in my own game lore, in the unfolding plot-line of my incarnation — something in me still longs to die. And sometimes it takes hold of me, and I find myself wanting to take my own life and return to Source. But I know deep down what it really is, is that it wants to no longer suffer. It longs for its liberation — to be returned to peace and unified back into the wholeness with the rest of my soul.

Alduin, the World-Eater, resides and breathes fire in the trauma held captive within my body — in the solar plexus, the seat of personal power, will, and transformation. It is the sun of the human avatar, the furnace where vitality becomes purpose, where creative fire meets self-belief. When blocked, that fire turns inward, devouring from within; when freed, it radiates courage, direction, and life force.

So I'm tending to that. Nourishing. Listening. Trusting.

When this force takes hold of me, I find it very hard to stay equanimous. Even small stresses can feel unbearable. In those moments, I just need to be in my own space — to breathe, to be left alone, so that I can move through the experience safely.

And when I'm pushed beyond that threshold, I can lose my centre completely. I can react — I've hurled words I wish I hadn't, said things out of pain rather than clarity, and I'm sorry. It doesn't justify my behaviour. I just want to be understood. Because when I'm in that state I'm in deep pain. Although sometimes, not always, but more often than not, they arise in response to other people's very harmful behaviour, which I'm then gaslit for calling out, told I'm being toxic to cover their own accountability. I've now learnt to cut ties with these people, to help raise my frequency and capacity to remain equanimous. I'm doing what I can to hold myself together, to keep from being pulled under by the storm that most people don't even know is there.

I've been creating a life for myself here in Glastonbury over the past five years since returning from Ayahuasca in 2020 in the Amazon. People often smile, wave, speak highly of me, express respect and appreciation. And I'm grateful. I'm moved. And I'm honoured. I'm grateful to have been on this journey — bridging from a shattered childhood into becoming a member of the Glastonbury community.

I never thought I'd make it past eighteen. I remember being certain as a child that my fate was suicide. This is why I write — to honour the boy who survived, and to keep choosing life on his behalf. This is why I identify as a boarding-school survivor, because it ignites — indeed — grief, yet also hope, strength, and courage in other survivors who are still learning to reclaim their voice.

People don't see what I carry in my solar plexus. They can't. They miss that piece of the puzzle — the mystery that is me. And into that unknown, it's easy to project: to paint me as a victim, or worse, a perpetrator of harm. I've always owned and apologised my actions and my mistakes, and I encourage others to do the same — especially when their actions break my trust and demonstrate liability. Otherwise, I cannot journey by their side as closely, if at all.

But the truth is simpler: I'm a man working through a very real repercussion of very real abuse, held in my physical body — a pain that feels ancient, cellular, ancestral, and sometimes excruciating.

And I'm doing what I can to heal it — as any king would when tending to his kingdom. Because right now, the kingdom is prosperous and full of potential — yet a part of it still trembles in exile. I'm doing my best to survive the war within.

And every day I choose to keep showing up to that battlefield — as the Warrior, meeting the dragon within through courage, discipline, and the defence of what is sacred; as the Magician, walking between worlds, illuminating the Underworld and restoring the Sacred Order; as the Lover, surrendering to devotion, beauty, and union without possession; and as the King, ruling not with power but with service — dying to the old self so that others, and life itself, may live on in freedom.

Closing Reflection

If you're walking through your own darkness — if there's a weight inside you that feels like it might swallow everything — know that you're not alone. What looks like destruction can also be a passageway. What feels like death can be the beginning of rebirth. Keep breathing. Keep tending to what's within.

Somehow, the body remembers how to stand. Somehow, the light finds its way back in.