From a distance, they look real enough. Glimmering scales, wings that stretch wider than your hope, teeth sharp with warning. Your paper dragons loom, convincing you they have substance and are the real you. But one step closer and the truth reveals itself—it’s only a careful construction of scraps.
Where did those scraps come from? From voices that told you who you must be. From the raw sting of shame, folded again and again until it became a habit. From comparisons that left invisible scars. From conditional love that whispered: fit this shape and you will be safe. Each fragment on its own seemed small, but together they became something towering. And because you recited its lines for so long, you mistook its voice for your own.
This is how the False I is built: brittle, trembling, loud enough to drown out silence. A shadow in costume. A paper dragon rattling in the wind.
But paper is weak against fire.
When you finally stand before it, steady enough to see, you notice the thinness of its skin. One spark of presence. One match of truth. The wings curl, the body shrivels, the grandeur collapses into ash.
And then, silence. Space.
But fire never leaves only ash. In shamanic traditions, fire is the fast element. It consumes what is false, returns it to smoke and ash, and releases the light bound within. Out of that burning, another dragon begins to stir—not made of scraps this time, but of silk.
Silk is supple. Silk flows. Where paper was rigid, silk bends to the rhythm of the dance. In the great festivals of Asia, the silk dragon is not carried by one, but by many hands. It moves in waves, bright with color, alive with laughter, a symbol of rain, wisdom, renewal. The False I collapses; the Divine I begins to move. You see that you were never meant to rattle stiffly in the wind—you were meant to flow, luminous, celebrated.
But the story doesn’t end with silk.
Because on the wind comes something older still: Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, the dragon of the Toltec dream. Serpent of earth, bird of sky, breath of knowledge. Precious wisdom carried on the wind. Quetzalcoatl reminds you that once the paper is burned and the silk has begun to dance, there is yet another transformation: becoming the vessel through which wisdom moves. Not a dragon made of fear, not even one made of silk and color, but a dragon that is wind itself—knowledge arriving, leaving, returning, never truly yours, always flowing through.
The paradox is clear: what once seemed invincible was never real. The paper dragon shrinks in flame. The silk dragon emerges radiant, fluid, a celebration of your true presence. And when the wind stirs those silk threads, when breath carries precious knowledge, you become more than performer or survivor. You become the union of earth and sky, human as divine, silence and song.
So the next time the False I roars in your path, don’t armor up. Don’t argue with its paper teeth. Step close. Breathe steady. Watch carefully. Then light the match.
The dragon was only paper.
The silk and feathered dragon was waiting on the wind, waiting for you to remember.
And on the wind, Quetzalcoatl arrives—reminding you that you are not here just to burn but to dance, and to let sacred truth, itself move through you. Vulnerability and authenticity are the frequencies for this unfolding, the true wealth that turns ash into silk, and radiance into remembering. The silk and feathered dragon was waiting on the wind, waiting for you to remember.
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