No One Is Coming To Save You

A Damsel In Distress

We've all heard fairytales of a princess being locked in a tower whose only hope at a life of freedom and abundance is a knight in shining armor showing up to rescue her. On the surface, it sounds really romantic, and maybe that's why so many people—men and women alike—grow up secretly hoping someone will come along and rescue them too. But if we dig a little deeper, I think there's a lot to the "princess" archetype that makes this position a lot less desirable than it seems.

The central plot of one of the most famous video games of all time, Super Mario, is that Princess Peach has been kidnapped by a dragon named Bowser, and it's Mario's job to track down the princess, rescue her, and return her to her rightful place in the kingdom. Unfortunately for Mario, Peach does a really poor job of not getting kidnapped, which is why Mario has had to rescue her at least 17 times over the years. And I think this highlights the first issue with the princess archetype, and that is: it teaches us to be helpless. It makes us lazy in both thought and action because we know that, ultimately, we are not responsible for our own lives. And this laziness makes it incredibly easy for us to fall into traps.

Of course, this isn't too much of a problem when you live in a fantasy world where you can pretty much guarantee that some being with superpowers will come to your rescue eventually. But in this reality that we all share, being helpless is essentially an invisible disability—one that leaves us unable to act on our own accord, instead leaving our lives to be shaped by whoever’s willing to take responsibility for us—and leaving our fate to their desires.

Princess Peach is an NPC, or non-playable character. That's video game speak for a character who plays an important role in the main character's story but doesn't really have a story of her own to explore. She exists in the game, but she's not playing it. She doesn’t make moves—she gets moved. She doesn’t have her own quest or destiny; she only exists to help define someone else’s.

A princess's identity is wholly defined by her relationship to others. She's the King's daughter. The Prince's betrothed. The Villain's leverage. The Knight's purpose. She's just a pawn in a game she has no control over. And the only consolation prizes she receives are wealth (which she also has no control over) and a status that is meaningless without agency.

What appear to be acts of love and care toward her are really just tools of manipulation—designed to disempower her and ensure she never leaves her position. To the uninitiated, a life full of comfort seems like a dream come true, but in reality, nothing drives us to decay quite like comfort does. And when we're not careful, comfort quickly becomes a prison—one that feels too big, too risky, and too scary to even think about walking away from.

Jesus isn't coming back, but Christ just might

For a long time, Christianity was a comfort in my life that felt too scary to walk away from. In this wild, unpredictable world, Christianity—and the idea that if I believed a certain thing, I would be saved—was an anchor I could depend on to keep me somewhat grounded. But Christianity was also a crutch. Ironically, it became an enabler of my bad behavior, because I had been taught, and came to believe, that no matter what I did, as long as I said "sorry," I’d be forgiven and given a reward at the end of my life.

As you might imagine, this gave me no real incentive to work on myself, grow, or evolve. Instead, it made me a stagnant hypocrite—someone who cast stones quickly and confidently, because my perceived royalty as one of "God's children" gave me a sense of righteousness that made me feel superior to others. But one day, when I needed Jesus the most—when I begged and pleaded for him to show up and relieve me from the incessant suffering I was experiencing—I was surprised and dismayed to find that he never came.

At first, this was not only frustrating, but heartbreaking. I felt abandoned in this dark world by my royal family and my knight in shining armor. But what I learned was that realizing how truly alone I was became the first step toward stepping into a kind of power I didn’t know existed. Not the power of a prince or princess, not the power of a king or queen, and not even the power of a god or goddess—but the power of a non-believer. Not a non-believer in a higher power, but a non-believer in the idea that all I had to do was say some special words to guarantee my liberation.

Please don't get me wrong—I've never been an atheist. Even in my darkest hours of anger with what I knew to be God, I never truly felt that God didn't exist—only that what I thought God to be must not exist. The power of a non-believer is not in faithlessness, but in fearlessness. And what releasing my belief gave me was a moment of fearlessness—the freedom to question what I’d been taught about God and about the idea that I needed another being to save me.

And although it was wildly uncomfortable at first, it soon became incredibly empowering—and even exciting—because I no longer had to wait around for my knight in shining armor to appear. Instead, I put on my own armor and began to devise a plan to liberate myself from the prison that my inherited belief system had placed me in.

Of course, there's a chance that I'm wrong and that, any moment now, Jesus is going to descend from the sky and lift all the true believers up to their heavenly abode. But I honestly don't think Christ has any intention of coming back to Earth—because it never left. In my opinion, Christ is not a person but, rather, a frequency—an energy that we all have the potential to realize and embody.

To me, this is what's truly meant by the "second coming of Christ": not that Jesus will return one day to save us all from this wretched world, but that we will each awaken to the Christ within—and, in doing so, save ourselves.

And that is a much more beautiful story. A story where each of us gets to be the main character in our own magical world. Where we all boldly embark on the hero's journey and earn the greatest reward there is—self-realization—by bravely slaying the dragons of our lower selves and egos. A story where love is valued more than life, so even if we died in our attempt to complete the quest, there would be nothing lost, because the quest itself was the reward.

Because to live a life of love, truth, and freedom is to have already won.
And maybe that’s what salvation really is—not a rescue mission, but a return.
A return to the Self.
A return to the Christ within.
A return home—not upward, but inward—where Jesus himself is quoted as saying the Kingdom of God truly is.

“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said,
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there!
for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” — Luke 17:20-21

Judgment Day is not someday—it's every day. And every day, we have the opportunity to be born again and to ascend into the highest, most beautiful, most joyful, most powerful, and most free versions of ourselves. Every day, we have the opportunity to drop the victim "princess" mindset and rise to our true positions as Emperors and Empresses in the empire of Self.

The bad news is: no one is coming to save you.
The good news is: you never needed saving in the first place.

You only needed reminding that you’ve always had the power to save yourself.

What's Going On With Me

I've been in the trenches with my ego. Not due to an overstated or understated sense of self but due to the realization that in this phase of my journey, I truly have no control. I understand logically that I've never really been in control but up to this point in my life, I at least had some sort of idea of the future that laid before me and would be actively taking steps to manifest that future. But where I am now, it's like the Universe has blindfolded me and is forcing me to continue to walk forward even though I can't see where I'm headed.

It is unsettling and uncomfortable and my ego has been kicking and screaming and pleading for some sort of concrete path, but none is really being presented to me. And I know this is intentional because it's meant to train me to live a more emergent life that flows from the soul as opposed to a planned life that appeases the ego. So I'm going to just keep walking because I honestly don't feel like I have a choice, lol. And I trust that through this journey of blind-faith, my ego will finally fully surrender to the fact that it was never in control in the first place.

I'm super grateful that it is finally Spring in more than just name, in Pittsburgh, because this has been one of the longest and most brutal Winters of my life. The flowers are blooming which means that I'll be taking lots of breaks on my walks and bike rides to take pictures of them. To be honest, I'm ready to leave Pittsburgh. I feel satisfied on a soul level that I've gotten what I came here to get. But I'm also going to do my best to not squander the time I have remaining here.

Happy Easter and/or 420 to all who observe either or both. And whether you're high off Christ or other substances, I hope that today will be a high vibing day nonetheless. I certainly needed and enjoyed the two week break I took from the newsletter but it feels really good to be back—and I've got some really interesting topics planned for the weeks to come so stay tuned!

With love,

Micheal Sinclair 💜