CELLULAR ASCENSION

Throughout human history, certain archetypal themes have been deeply embedded in our collective experience. These universal patterns—such as the dark night of the soul, crucifixion and resurrection, rites of passage, the hero’s journey, and the cycle of death and rebirth—resonate through our spiritual traditions, mythologies, and stories. We see them reflected in our films and literature, and more importantly, we live them in our own lives. These timeless processes of transformation are what we often refer to as *alchemy*—the inner journey of growth, change, and renewal. Truly, we are nature, and in nature are divinely calculated seasons.

Out of darkness, light is born.
How i view my teenage years; getting lost in the worldly maze as a candle that doesn’t know its light, purpose or direction. As a youth, that crushing darkness wrapped itself around me, pulling me into the numbing ignorance of drugs, alcohol, and the false embrace of negative influences. I radically rejected the indoctrination of school and society. I knew something was off, but I didn’t know where to look for what was right. After many wrong turns, I looked for brotherhood and freedom in gang activity. In 2013, trapped and misguided, at 19 years old, that path of self destruction reached a breaking point— I was arrested for a carjacking that I was in proximity of. Truly, the vehicle that was hijacked was my own self. But this event was a catalyst that shattered the illusion I was under and broke its dark spell.

In that moment of figuratively hitting rock bottom, something activated within me. It woke me the F up. What followed was not despair, but a great spiritual awakening that cracked open my heart and revealed a new world. Clarity; with new eyes and new ears, beauty was suddenly everywhere. Life, once dim and distant, became sacred. I began to walk a new path of redemption guided by something real and pure, what may be called the Holy Spirit.

During that time, fortunately on bail, everything in my life began to shift. I let go of outside influences—media, people, and places that didn’t serve my highest good—and turned inward. I became sober. I spent time alone, in nature. My mind body and spirit began to change. I felt the ecstasy of divine love, and was vitalized by information of the quantum field, molecular science, and mystic spirituality (etc). I fasted, meditated, did yoga, and experienced my internal and external energy transform. My essence was rising to the surface. I experienced a cathartic rebirth.

I didn’t know that this new world was occupied by other people. But then I found music and art that was aligned with how I felt. And eventually I met Taino Chief Roman Redhawk Guaguaorix Perez and other amazing people in the Native/ Medicine community. In them, I found positive connection. I found my tribe so to speak, or they found me.

Through their guidance, I was introduced to the sacred ways of prayer and ceremony. Without these ways I don’t know where my life would be. I can say with certainty that only through this divine intervention am I alive and well today.

I believe in restorative justice. We don’t always need a distant court system of presumptuous strangers to control, judge, or punish. As human beings, we have the capacity to self correct. Through genuine repentance, shared understanding, and community-led efforts, we can find healing. We can resolve conflict not through punishment, but through restoration. Peace is possible—when we choose to meet with compassion rather than condemnation.

But the beast that is the injustice system is cold, blind, and power hungry. It feeds on control and has no interest in truth. My pleas of innocence meant nothing. The facts were ignored. My repentance was shunned. There is no longer sense once a shark smells blood.

This was the cross I had to bear.

I was sentenced to 10 years and served 7 years and 8 months of incarceration. In an instant, I was torn from a life of nature, wellness, and peace, and thrown into a dungeon of metal, poison, and brutality.

Most prisoners had some family, friends, gangs; a circle of familiarity in there with them. I had no one. I walked alone in a wilderness of concrete and jarring noise, and I had to learn to adapt. Working out became my sanctuary. Books were my way to connect to life outside. I built a small library—around 80 books—but when I was thrown into solitary, the books were taken.

In that silence, stripped of even my books, something new stirred. With nothing but time and my thoughts, I began to write. And from that darkness, the vision of Rey The Key was born.

I have many writings, songs, and artwork from this time away. My colored pencils were contraband, so it was a battle to even make art. They were often raided. But like a magnet, i would always find more. At one point in time, in a rare situation, i painted my cell. There was a geometric mandala on the floor, symbols on the walls, a sun disk and wings over the door, and more.. the guards were at a loss. But that is where i came up with the name (Cell)ular Ascension.

I utilized a mixed media pad, pen, colored pencils, toothpaste for glue and a nail clipper as a blade. With these, I gave form to the past visions of my soul. Crystallized talismans of that holy energy. I drew the echoes of blessed things I had once touched but now longed for with a broken heart heavy in absence. Each creation was an offering—a prayer in line and color. I would mail them home for a time yet to arrive. A time that is now.

I was released on Easter Day of 2023, at 28 years old. It has been a process of detoxifying, healing, and soul retrieving. Re-membering, re-Connecting, re-learning.. Resurrecting, my True Self. Through everything, art has always been my refuge. I share with you these pieces of my self.. created in the heart of that infernal crucible, where i was refined by fire, shaped by grace, and saved by creativity.

"Art is the alchemy of the soul, transmuting pain into beauty, confusion into clarity, and chaos into form."

“But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings.”
C. Jung

“I had to go down into the depths of myself to find the light I carried all along."
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.  When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.”
Joseph Campbell

“Alchemy is really the secret tradition of the redemption of spirit from matter."
Terence McKenna

“There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.
To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the “thorn in the flesh” is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.” C. Jung

“Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.” C. Jung

What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are..” C. Jung

“Nigredo is the dark state, and is considered the most difficult and negative operation of the alchemical process.  It is the shadow of the sun.. Putreficatio means rotting, and Mortificatio means killing. Figures like the dismembered Osiris/ Horus (;Christ, Dionysus, Tammuz, Ishtar, Attis, Mithras, Odin +) usher in a rebirth. In all religions associated with agricultural renewal, the rotting and death comes first.  The dead king may be buried in the fields to promote fertility.“

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek"
Joseph Campbell

"The alchemical operation is a living drama of the soul, a way of transforming the base into the noble.”
C. Jung

“Creativity is the alchemy of the spirit—taking the raw material of experience and turning it into something sacred."
Mystic proverb