Worship Yourself First: The Alchemy of Grief, Dragons & Ascension

image by Nik Heartsong

There are moments in life that split you wide open. Moments that burn the blueprint of who you thought you were into ash.

For me, it was the death of my daughter, Arya Rose.

She was only two months old. A soft breath of angel light. Her loss shattered every veil I had between this world and the others. Suddenly, I wasn’t just grieving a baby—I was reliving the downfall of Atlantis. I was collapsing through timelines, drowning in multidimensional sorrow, dying again and again inside my own skin. I lost my health, my mind, my community… and in many ways, I lost myself.

And yet—something within me whispered:

Descend. Don’t run from the dark. Kneel at the altar of your grief. It is the womb of your rebirth.

The Serpent Path: Gene Key 54 & My Descent into Darkness

My Life’s Work is Gene Key 54: the shadow of Greed, the gift of Aspiration, and the siddhi of Ascension.

When I first read this Gene Key, it cracked me open. It didn’t speak of shiny awakenings or lightwashed affirmations. It spoke of raw hunger, of shadow, of the pressure to “make it,” to climb… and how that hunger can either destroy us or become the fire that propels us into divine purpose.

In its shadow form, Gene Key 54 is the drive to accumulate—money, love, attention, validation, achievement. It's the serpent coiled at the base of our spine, driven by survival and status. And for years, I too was consumed by this striving… until the universe, in one soul-shattering moment, took it all away.

My daughter’s death brought me to my knees. In my grief, I descended into a shadow so dark it mirrored the greed for answers, healing, meaning. I battled cancer in my liver and colon. I unraveled into psychosis. I lost lifelines of friendship and wandered in utter isolation.

But Gene Key 54 is not here to punish—it is here to pressurize transformation. The serpent path is sacred. When walked with awareness, it spirals upward, transmuting its hunger into holy aspiration.

Aspiration: The Inner Climb Back to Myself

The turning point didn’t come from a single miracle. It came from thousands of tiny choices to keep breathing.

One by one, I retrieved lost parts of myself. I followed synchronicities like breadcrumbs. I leaned into rituals, dragons, frequency work, deep stillness. Slowly, aspiration began to rise within me—not the kind that seeks success, but the kind that seeks soul.

Aspiration, in Gene Key 54, is the noble climb—not toward worldly success, but toward inner integrity. It is the spiritual fire that says, “I will not abandon myself in the underworld. I will rise, because my presence is medicine.”

And so I rose. Through fire. Through blood. Through songs sung to stars no one else could see. The dragons found me in my darkest hour and reminded me: Ascension is not upward, it is inward. Downward. Deep into the belly of your own becoming.

Ascension: Not a Stairway, but a Descent into Embodiment

The Siddhi of Gene Key 54 is Ascension, but not in the way most spiritual circles imagine it. This isn’t about escaping the body, floating into some golden light. True ascension is embodied divinity. It is becoming so deeply present in the now—so anchored in your soul’s truth—that you become a portal for heaven to walk the Earth.

Arya Rose, though she left this world too soon, became the dragon key that unlocked my sacred purpose. Through her, I remembered that we are here not to escape the human experience, but to transmute it. To turn our suffering into soul light. To rise like phoenixes from ash, not pretending we were never burned, but because we were.

Worship Yourself First: A Prayer for the Ones Who’ve Died and Lived Again

This is the core of my poem, Worship Yourself First.
It is not soft.
It is not always beautiful.
But it is holy.

It is for the ones who’ve crawled through shadow and emerged as alchemists.
It is for the mothers who’ve lost.
The daughters who’ve shattered.
The priestesses who forgot how to pray and found new prayers in their bones.

It is for you—if you’ve ever felt like your wounds were too much to be sacred.
Because they are.
They are sacred.
They are your gold.

————-

🜃 Worship Yourself First: From the Depths Within 

A Poem by Nik Heartsong

i once thought healing would lift me into light—

but instead, it buried me.

deep.

beneath earth.

beneath bone.

beneath breath.

they don’t tell you that resurrection

first tastes like ruin.

when she died—

my daughter, Arya Rose,

my heart’s first bloom—

a thousand lifetimes broke open in me.

Atlantis cracked through my skin.

my temples drowned.

my wings turned to ash.

and i, a priestess,

forgot how to pray.

i walked the underworld barefoot.

with blood in my mouth

and silence in my chest.

friends vanished.

sanity frayed.

my liver screamed with unprocessed rage.

my colon curled around grief like a serpent.

i died in every way a woman can die

without her body stopping.

they called it cancer.

i called it initiation.

psychosis?

or prophecy?

the veil between collapsed

and the dragons whispered me awake.

they said:

“descend, beloved.”

“dig your hands into the dark clay of your becoming.”

“you are not broken. you are buried treasure.”

step by trembling step

i gathered the shards.

not to glue myself back

but to mosaic a new myth.

one that sings of holy scars

and the erotic courage of survival.

because self-love

is not a lotus blooming on a mountaintop.

it’s a wild thing—

rooted in mud,

howling at the moon,

shaking with the memory of flames.

i learned to worship myself

not through mirrors or mantras

but by crawling through the catacombs of my own ruin

and saying:

you still belong.

i licked the bones of my past clean.

i cradled my own psychosis like a child.

i touched the tender places

where god had gone missing

and filled them with breath.

and now,

when i speak of love,

it is not sentimental.

it is sacred.

it is soaked in sweat,

salted with tears,

etched in the dragon’s fire that carried me home.

so if you ask me how to love yourself,

i will not give you steps.

i will give you a shovel.

go dig.

go die.

go rise.

and worship yourself first.

from the depths within.

🜃 

Final Invocation

So if you find yourself in the dark… remember:
This is the descent before the spiral.
This is the snake shedding its skin.
This is the Gene Key 54 inside you, burning down greed and illusion until only truth remains.

Climb if you must—but climb inward.
Toward your center.
Toward your own breath.
And worship yourself first.

From the depths within.

🜃
With you in the fire,
Nik Heartsong – Quantum Mirror & Frequency Weaver