The Gift Of Descent

Falling doesn’t always mean failing, sometimes it’s the first honest step towards stability. We welcome you into Voice Within, then step back so Chris James (CJ) Melchizedek can narrate his own powerful piece from edition three, “The Gift of Descent”, a lyrical blend of memoir, mysticism, and hard-won psychological truth.

CJ writes from the “autumn” of life, looking at what it means to achieve goals that no one else can see, and why those wins only matter when we can actually live them. He revisits youthful hope, artistic community, and the hunger to uplift others, then tracks the shadow side: corruption, scapegoating, illness, insomnia, and the exhausting temptation to retreat into regret. Along the way, he reframes the journey as learning to soften and stay centred, letting the body and instincts guide what the mind can’t solve.

A turning point arrives through grief. The death of his cat, Kitty, lands like an elemental shockwave that unravels identity, purpose, and the habits we use to stay afloat. “Little Fang” becomes a moving tribute to companionship and unconditional presence, and the final reflection returns to the central idea: descent is not a victory march, but a humble sinking into life’s reality, where light and dark belong together.

If this narration leaves you thinking about your own turning points, subscribe for more Voice Within readings, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more listeners can find these stories. What does “stability” mean to you right now?

Transcript

Welcome To Voice Within

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Voice Within, a collection of short stories, letters, and poems narrated to you. Get cozy, warm cup of tea in hand. Take your ears and imagination to places. A number of authors aspire to take you with their tales.

Meet CJ And The Piece

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Today we have Chris James McKaisedeck narrating his own piece from edition three, The Gift of Descent. He would say that that I would say, or he would say as well, according to the interview questions that he um responded to in relation to this piece is that it's about transformation and an affirmation. And it actually was quite beautiful to hear him narrate his own piece because I could feel like it was an invitation to his inner monologue of transformation. So a reflective piece. But in this form, because most of it's been short stories, uh letters and poems, and uh Chris CJ, we we know him as CJ, but Chris James um also has written a letter for edition two, which was very much uh a letter to humankind and how the world has evolved uh in from nature to industrial, so to speak. But uh it's just really beautiful to hear this narration of this uh gift of descent. It brings it to a different level of uh understanding and uh narrative uh as well as kind of an insight into his own journey, his own personal journey. And that's what we're very much interested in here. So I hope you enjoy. Uh and to those people who have been given have supported CJ by purchasing the book uh or uh have got one of the books of edition three in your hand, congratulations, because this is for you. Uh particularly as CJ wanted to support his readership uh by narrating this story for you. So enjoy.

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A

Midlife Review And Descent

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gift of descent by Chris James Mel Kaiserek. Introduction. I'm in the autumn of my life. At 43, my hair beginning to grey and balden. I hit a wall of contradiction. Provoking a deep life review, I came to understand that I'd achieved many things I wanted to, in development, awareness, and my closest relationships. These goals had been with me for around 25 years, and I'd achieved them. But this success was invisible to all but me, and only substantial if I, moment by moment, had the courage, fortitude, and willpower to make it so. In other words, these successes would only bear weight if I carried their gifts, and embraced the deep pain of being me, and on a more universal level, of being human and alive. I must stop being so mental and step forward onto my path. I must soften on the one hand, and yet on the other, firm myself to stay centered, adult and aware, as life passed through me in all its pain, pleasure, and mystery. I must become more instinctual in my approach than ever. I feel like I'm falling through the layers of the mystery at this time in life. It's strange, but the inspiration for writing this piece on so many levels is death. Its force and very real manifestations in my sphere of experience. Yet part of this was the initial shock of entering this phase, and feeling like I hadn't crossed the threshold yet, or I hadn't earned the right to be here. Feeling I hadn't accomplished what I needed to, and been satisfied in the younger part of my life. Writing was such a huge thing for me. It was literally the phenomenon that awakened, shaped, and transformed me into the adult self I became, inspiring in me a profound sense of purpose. I went from being a country town boy going through the motions, to a vaster human being who wanted to uplift and serve humanity by following my bliss. Earlier this year, all that ended and I felt like I might never write again. The very long thread of my writing career, ages 14 to 43, which bore an unwavering commitment I'd always been able to return to, no matter how unwell or despondent I was, simply vanished. This piece is the end of that phase and the beginning of something new. I've been a mystic at heart for so long, yet only now am I experiencing the sacred ground of my being at the required level to have a chance at embodying this path in the modern world. And strangely the sense is not of finally climbing a mountain, or succeeded in something I've always yearned to be real, but rather falling through a profound gravity well, to find oneself in a shocking new place. It is the gift of descent, the arrival of simply being in this world of light and shadow. This and being shaken up enough by the shocking force of death and decay. The dark side has finally ruthlessly, paradoxically, made me know that I need to take all the blessings I've been given, and make of them my own temple to worship the ongoing present moment that is life. This piece is an affirmation to engaging that commitment, and I hope, also something pleasant to read. Recently I recalled my youth, the good parts of it, and the journey it took me on. What surprised me was the feeling of boundless hope, joy, and energy it contained, provoking an awakening to a collective purpose. It was something I had utterly forgotten, recalling only where the journey led, as this had shaped my life journey ever since. Below is this recounting in poetic form.

Youthful Fire Meets Corruption

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Chapter 1. Finding Sacred Ground I used to believe in false hope, light it like a torch and offer it flaming crimson to the stars. I danced naked amidst my brothers and sisters, gladdened at the coming dawn of humanity's new wave, drinking nectar from my feminine mirrors, awakened to tears by beauty and starlight. I ran across flower-studded fields, felt myself awash with nature and beauty and life, so happy that the swirling center of all things filled me with joy. I miracled through my days of frailty, partied until dawn with peers who painted a swirling artistic rainbow, sat by fires and dreamed of a love which connected all. I tried to find my Venus. Consulted books, training courses, and older men's wisdom. We tangoed at double step on missing out, yet still sang songs of love across nature's finest rivers. I held her close this Venus, the lover, this goddess, intangible, a dream, a hope, a star. But she wept at my naivety and fled back beyond the skies. I used to think I trusted life. Threaded intent into broken cells with a willful burning. Coaxed from hiding by a master player, my cowering inner child arose and found himself crowned king. A flaming wisdom conduit of lifetimes past, a spiral-threaded being plucking crystal looms from cosmic pathways. Laughing at this little lifetime, I could not help but smile at the gift I'd been given. I ran rings around my peers, found a reel to their cartoon carbon copies. With belonging beyond hope, we danced as children of the second coming. Not a messiah but a cosmic wheel of time returning to its senet. The chosen, the message bearers of the cosmic fire. Straddling massage tables in shabby rooms, we found treasure in wounded body pathways. At festivals where the pounding feet of humankind found rhythm in the earth again. We plucked souls back from jagged drug-in-juice journeys to the astral plane, making them whole once again. In hushed tones we discussed the future of humankind, our will to ever uplift towards its rightful place in the stars. But belonging at its price, corruption came and threaded itself through us. Yet still I laboured on as a bearer of the cosmic fire, resolving that each new wave of depth would lead us closer. But those at the top spread darkness down through the ranks like a disease. Was I then a soldier? Not a bearer of the fire, a radiant spirit shining purpose through a mundane humanity? Nought but a common commodity lost to a power-hungried master, another pawn on the chessboard of human drama? In the distance a new goddess overlighted a field, campfires glowing with the sounds of camaraderie. But I couldn't leave my sacred ground. It had taken a lifetime to find. Until the master player picked me as a scapegoat, and I fled with fear in my heart. Defeat became the pathway, the unmasking of the game, and although I felt ashamed, I was welcomed to the campfires in the field, and given a new name. I used to find a flow in what must be. Threaded through the moment, pulled on by destiny. I sat shining at riding desks, while words poured forth from flooded golden gateways, galactic sun pulsing through frantic typing fingers. I met masters dreaming awake, felt the shuddering pulls of goddess forms and gods, and the journeyman who took me to the lake. I'd never known such love and majesty, and though social life moved into the shadows, psychic reality illumined even the darkest nights. Finally, life had taken flight. With accomplishment equal to self-sense, I'd arrived at a place which had seemed ever distant. I merged with antiquity, pledged sacred vows to the wisdom makers and lords of time and karma, to be evermore and never corrupt, shaking with healing waves as life and time took me in their arms. Parental love took the shape of spirit love, and I was whole again. But ups had their downs. Each time I sailed forward with the bubbling love of destiny, another shock wave of dark reared at me from behind. I learned of descent and maddening pain, assailed by illness before its time, made a shuddering victim of the psyche and the mind. What was I then but ruin and despair? What neglect had delivered me here and what care? Too weak to work, yet too impoverished to give up the fight. The special gift and path I walked crumbled away, and I found myself in a place of dismay, worse perhaps than when this all began. Yet in the echoes of what could be, aging and time carried me forth. To center waiting, madness too, and the promise of the inversion into something new. I used to feel I'd lost it all. Taken down the garden path by a force called God. I sat slumped on couches, hiding from wind and cold. Often I felt a thousand years old. Yet never giving in, I drove myself beyond the edge into psychic storms and madness, falling through the abyss like a crashing meteor. Hidden by dreams of comfort, better times and a dying youth, I couldn't face the truth. I fell for a year, one, two, three, maybe more. Yet somehow instinct crafted mind, and loss took the shape of a willingness to learn. The flame of seeking arose once more, and with it, a recognition it had never gone out. Surrounded by dreamers and youth, I'd never found orientation in my circumstances, an anchor into truth. Walking on I was wrapped in humble care, listened to knowledge so stable it lived underground, found the sound of nature and what the body, as a eye, craved. I sat on burning sacred ground, electrified by rock and soil and its wild charge, to live again and breathe the open ocean air. Stability swaddled me like a babe, a nourishing safety which I could not help but crave. And so I'd sacrifice anything for its touch. The loss of freedom, choice, following of craving, or even saving others was not too much. And so this is my story: the hope, trust, flow, and eventual awakening to stability. This is the journey of my awakening in youth, the rising, falling, twisting, turning, and eventual falling into truth.

Suffering Turns Into Stability

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Interlude. Falling, descent, the ongoing theme of this piece. The ending of this time in my life was indeed a falling into truth. A prior gift of descent to my current one. A real challenge. I still wanted the same things, to believe, have faith, to be adolescently heroic in my approach to life, as I saw others around me be. But around fifteen years of intense suffering, which at times had me close to death, had simply worn me down. Truth was a humbling thing, and to admit how unwell I still was, despite all my desperate striving through all this time to be well, felt like a breakdown, until it became a breakthrough. Truth became an arrow, but I was not the archer. I was too weak and fragmented and broken to hold anything at all. Something both cosmic and earthly held the bow, composed perhaps of parental love, or ancestral love, some mythological divinity, or maybe the deeper love being held for simply being. Yet whatever composed the archer, it had its arrow aimed squarely at the target. Stability. A three-syllable word. Yet stability was not something you were simply given, especially not to a particularly unstable character like myself. Born to a world which provoked instability in our nervous systems at almost every turn. It was now the goal of my life, yet the catch was that in order to stabilize, I must first transform, repeatedly, ruthlessly, and deeply. My goal was to move from point A to B, which was not the work of a month, a season, or even a year, but perhaps a decade or more. Maybe it was even a lifelong pursuit which would never end. But I threw myself into it wholeheartedly for most of my 30s. And then 40 came along and with it a relief. What kind of person am I? I sometimes wondered, where aging brought greater strength and peace. But aging still has its price. And so did success. Chapter

Becoming The Watcher

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2. Becoming the Watcher. When I hit 40, I thought I'd fallen as far as I could go. But the Watcher watched me, in so doing, its gaze, carrying with it a relentless pulsing evolutionary desire to be evermore, kept me falling. The darkness deepened, so thick I couldn't see. But an unexpected pulsing wave carried something fresh. I realized the watcher's eyes were my own. With eyes came sight, and light. I could see a wilderness I'd never known, in fact, a landscape which almost echoed my deepest inner yearnings. The wild abandon of my new vantage brought a closeness to innocence which childhood, like most of us, had torn from me. This and an instinctual sense of confidence in the will to love and bring the light of my essence to all things. All the burning torches of my history, the passion, the books I'd written, the songs I'd composed, the healing and solace I'd brought to others came down to a candle flame, the tending of a garden, nothing but this whittling away now, at truth and love. Yet here I stood doubting, a wave with an ocean storm of magnitude, had me shivering with anticipation of the shock. How couldn't I take this step? I'd known death was close since fourteen years old. I thought this made me numb. But its younger brother dissolution had tried and hung me more than a thousand times. I'd bashed my own head and lacerated myself with the violent will for an end to all this, so many times. I'd laid down on the earth face down in surrender, begging, then screaming for death. Sometimes in my better moments, I thought myself transcendent of time's wheel and better than my age, wiser. After all, death came knocking young. But only now, as the autumn of my life dawned and one of the closest beings to me rose up the final crystal stairway, to a plain sun called heaven, was I actually finding capacity to match depth with sight? Although I shivered, my hands shaking, I could still marvel at the balance of an equation whose solution my cells, deep below every conscious thought, had been moving ever toward. How could this be? What language had I not yet learned? What opportunity had I missed? What dance had I sat in the shadows, frowning and watching as couples smiling moved? What was wrong with me? The desire to be swept away with this narrative was strong. Regret and bitterness wanted their place again in my house. Had I not hosted their parties a thousand times and more? So I readied my rooms, purchased the wine and tuned my mottled instrument, poised to practice a lament, but paused and placed it down. Never again could I ready my house for these visitors, not again, not with my eyes this open. Then the price came. I felt so vulnerable, a naked child lost to his mother's embrace, waiting for the world to bash and crash, shock, tear, and rend as it had always done, so fragile I thought the gentle touch of a lifelong friend might end me, open like a flower to the winter. Ghosts arose out of my mind and I could see demons in my vision and violent spirits waiting in the shadows. Sleep, which achieving had always been something between circus acrobatics and a roulette wheel of failure and success, became the demon of insomnia's feeding frenzy, taking every failure which had ever been and throwing them all together, but even then I couldn't stop. The space between the watcher's sight and my instinct's vulnerability carried me on. I checked myself and knew that I breathed the earth's love, even if it felt like the end of all things. I got hit once, twice, by a demon sledgehammer and felt myself sailing consciousness's wild ocean towards the abyss of psychosis. Childhood terrors of nightmarish shadow beings becoming a living. Brieving reality. But I trained myself well. I had to have faith and try something new. In less than two days, the demon's ring was illumined as the deeper layer to my motion toward the flaming sun of my destiny. And although I could sense them still around me, waiting to field my terror, I walked on. The adventure and mystery took on a greater gravity than the ring. Somehow my eyes rose up from the ground, and I saw what I could not before. The winding path toward what we called health and fulfillment, move through an open verdant valley, the goal a homestead which watched kindly back from the distance. I read it and steadied myself with words of encouragement. Struggle not, even if it takes 1000 years, and so I welcomed the living, breathing moment of life's mystery and adventure, allowing the old ways, built on fear, to crumble like a sandcastle into the vast, eastern ocean.

Grief As The Trigger

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Interlude 2. The trigger. I knew I'd be sad when my cat died. What I didn't expect was the tangible, almost elemental shockwave of it. It wasn't just the loss of another heart very close to mine. But a force of death inexorably reaching out to touch every aspect of my existence. Although I'd spent all my adult life quite unwell and unable to work much, I'd had three hobby jobs which I pursued whenever I could. Healing others in various forms, music and writing. I gave up on all three of these things shortly after Kitty's passing. Although I'd gone up and down in the past, I'd always had the attitude that I'd pick up a purpose whenever I had the energy again. It was a flame to the engine of my purpose, and what my identity centered around. And then more loss came. My connection to a place of ongoing ritual and communal purpose, fire its landowner having to sell the property ended, and somebody my own age in the community passed in a very sudden way. I found myself in no man's land, struggling through the mud of loss and very human suffering. For the ignition to the engine of my purpose was also my values, my skills, and in a deeper way, my sense of worth. With it gone, it felt, so was I. Yet it was a pre-beginning to this journey I am sharing with you, and in breath before the gift of descent would truly begin.

Little Fang And Loving Memory

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Chapter 3. Little Fang. In loving memory of Kitty. I love the way you moved back and forward in announcing each of your leaps through the air with a noise my partner and I called the Brook. I love the myriad of vocalizations which emerged from your tiny form, expressing an intelligence which eclipsed most felines. I love the feel of your fur and your trusting gaze that knew I'd treat you gently, even though I was large and male and sometimes angry. Sometimes you seemed a burden, despite your almost weightless form. It was only when walking demanded too much strength from me, you were never demanding, and were the best behaved of little girls. Many thought you were kitten, and small you were, but I never knew how large your presence was. So vast you blanketed both the sky above and earth below with that ermine fur of yours. I even felt it the weeks after your passing, yet the more you rose into the sky, the less you were there. How could I have taken it for granted? How could I not know the unconditional presence of your companionship, until it like you passed away? How could I have missed that you were a light shining through the house? Like the kiss of noontime sun in the deepest of winter months. Some of your ways toward the end humbled me, raising the bar of respect equal to my affectionate love. There were no fits of rage towards the sky at the injustice of life, nor a trembling fear at what approached. As you were beckoned to that final doorway, the strength of your spirit shifted to an overarching presence in the sky. Sometimes a light being who pulsed messages to me through clear telepathy. I even became aware at times, that as you moved away from life, you did everything in your power to take our pain and disease with you, lessening our burdens with the dying strength of your every cell. I was humbled by this, I was humbled by you, and the kinship of our love. How I treasured the memory of your warmth against my legs at night, as I helped safeguard you from the nightmares that I knew sometimes plagued you. I treasure every moment of your happiness, and still recall your bravery as you move slowly through the grass, stopping every second heartbeat to watch for predators, yet still moving on as we hunted sticks, leaves, and shadows. And of course I treasure the memory of your gentle purr as you welcomed my caresses, in those rare times when pats happened on your own terms. The last time I saw you that happy was when I came home from a road trip, just weeks before the end. You purred and smiled, and to my amazement, I felt more right about that moment than anything else in months. And your almost mythological cuteness. Even so close, age and death taking you, your fur still bore a supernatural softness. You're about the cutest creature I'd ever seen. In your final hours, when you told me with your heart, which pulsed almost discernible rays of light through the dying day, to always trust myself and go on living with your love, I could not believe the spirit behind your voice. Your bravery and calm acceptance of death was one of the most inspiring things I've seen in my life. How could I know you'd give everything at the end, and that this love would be toward me, toward us. We are kin. But as you moved away, I knew we'd never meet again in these forms. The reality of your passing finally brought tears from me. You were so still, it broke me open. Kitty, Francesca, Whoopentz, Little Fang, you were the best and bravest of companions. My love for you will never die.

Closing Reflection On Descent

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Conclusion. The gift of descent is the falling into the gravity of the cells, a welcoming into the waters of life, the majesty of the moment unfolding. It is an embrace into the unity of what our minds see as opposites, pleasure and pain, light and dark, day and night, the life and death essence of life. Descent's gift is the opposite of everything we have been taught to seek in this world. To climb to the top of the mountain, conquer the obstacle, experience higher gains and look down from the great heights of success. Descent is not a victory march or the winning of Olympic gold, but a sinking into the mud and waters of life. The sinking is not a victory cry, but an opportunity to be able to rise back up with the chance of humility and facing life on its own terms. Let us move at nature's pace and grow through the humility of the moment. Thank you for listening.