Melissa Reddick

Robin Hood did not live an honorable life.

If he did, he wouldn’t have stolen from anyone. He would have respected the hustle and done what it took to become richer than those he stole from – without cheating. He would have developed the way within himself to become bigger than the obstacle, not stayed so small.

Gangsters do not live honorable lives, even when they tell themselves “I’m doing this so my family can have a better way”. It’s never an honorable thing to use other people, especially those you care about, as scapegoats for your bad behavior. Never.

You should be working hard to do BETTER for your family, not worse because of them.

“Well the man is alway trying to keep me down.” Excuse. Reason to do the wrong thing because it’s easier. Lazy. Lame. Not honorable in any way.

How do you know if something is honorable. This has got to be the most interesting thing I’ve ever contemplated.

I don’t know why, but I am obsessed with honor. It fascinates me. It’s the reason I pour so much into my work at the Modern Mystery School as a student in hopes to one day teach others who are seeking the same things as me.

Up until today, I always thought the most valid truth was objective reality. Something you can point to and not have a single thing to argue about because it’s objective. It’s clear. It’s plain. There’s no discussion to be had. It simply is.

But Honor…Honor is a subjective experience. Everyone has to decide for themselves how they identify “this is the honorable thing to do”. And you have to be able to explain it. Defend it. Share your rationale. Even when nobody’s asking, even when no one cares, even when people actively want to sabotage you or stop you from explaining your side of things because they don’t want to hear it. They don’t want their worldviews to be challenged, they don’t want their minds to be changed. THEY want to be the arbiter of that which is honorable.

It doesn’t really work that way. That excites me. Because then, if there’s not one single person on this whole Earth who can look at every single human being, point to everything He or She has ever done and say “honorable” “dishonorable” “neutral” “stupid” “unnecessary” “who cares?” “irrelevant”, then why do we care what anyone has to say about what we do ever?

Well, we care because we all have some kind of agenda. Some kind of North Star, guiding Light, inner compass, a map to where we are going even if we’re not quite sure where we’re headed just yet. If we didn’t, we’d just be a useless blob. We wouldn’t even be a jellyfish because even jellyfish move in some direction.

But it is every person’s prerogative and responsibility to identify what honor means to them. What it feels like, what it looks like, it’s place in their life, and why it is important or not important. And then you have to examine what stops you from living honorably and what encourages it.

Do you let fear or guilt stop you from doing the honorable thing? If you have to stand up for yourself to a “loved one” who doesn’t respect you, are you going to hold yourself back by thinking “if she dies tomorrow, I’ll hate myself if these are the last words I ever say to her”?

I don’t think honor and happiness can coexist. Happiness is basically inner appeasement. It’s not substantial. It’s not worth anything more than a fleeting experience.

Honorable choices come with something deeper. A sense of inner pride. Integrity. Greater wholeness with every honorable decision, whether you say “yes”, “no”, or “I don’t know”.

The best Teachers teach you how to make honorable decisions. They drive the point home that Honor follows the law of cause and effect. Learning how to live honorably generates exponential expansion of inner beauty and power, authority, cohesion, and confidence in yourself to make good decisions. Not just with honorable intentions, but honorable applications. Even if those decisions lead to ruin temporally.

Building a life on a foundation of honor is arguably the only kind of life worth living. Everything else will fall apart, and what will you be left with except the weight of every decision you made before that?

This is why presence is such a gift. Presence is the only way to make one honorable decision after another without getting lost in the sauce of momentum.

Honor and rest. Honor your need for stillness and rest.

When you’re exercising, do you get stronger by swinging weights around, or by making measured movements with a pause in between each change in direction, and a slowness to your pace?

In all honesty, both momentum and control have a place in the growth of the human connection with spirit. But taking advantage of momentum can also lead to reckless results. That’s how I ended up in a really bad skiing accident many years ago. On a day when I didn’t even want to go up on the mountain to begin with, but I did it anyway out of guilt, obligation, and tradition. That’ll teach you to ignore yourself.

If you are walking a path of progression in order to understand the most honorable way, I want you to know the amount of contradictions you will navigate might be infinite if you never give up. The longer you study, the more opportunities you’ll have for your brain to go a little wonky trying to figure out which way is sideways.

That’s okay. That’s part of the process. Teachers who truly walk The Way will be understanding and able to help you navigate the confusion with clarity, even if that clarity in and of itself seems like it’s coming from a terrible place.

Time to switch gears a bit so we can get to the heart of this article…

Something I have been reflecting upon lately is the tragedy that we see the Gorilla as a racist correlation to make. Gorilla, monkey, elephant. Anything African, really, seems to have a bad place in American society today.

And something I’ve noticed about the Black community. Especially Black women, they walk around with these t-shirts that say “Black Magic” or “Black Girl Magic” and yet…they seem to have largely forgotten the magic that they actually carry in their DNA. So they wear these t-shirts as advertisements that they need the external validation for something they’re not really sure even exists today.

We all have magic within us. White skin, Black, and every shade in between. But if I go around wearing a t-shirt that says “White Girl Magic” or “Peach Girl Magic”, I’d look stupid. Really, really dumb. White magick is the most fascinating and powerful magic there is on the planet that I am aware of, but it has less than nothing to do with the skin, eye, haircolor, or nationality of the person who is weilding it.

Anyway…back to the matter at hand.

The Gorilla is a hugely powerful totem to work with. I mean…this is obvious because the Gorilla itself is a hugely powerful and intelligent animal. That’s not really an insult, even compared to humans. Gorillas can crush us like bugs and outsmart most of us. Plus, they don’t limit themselves the way humans do.

I am not going to get into the specifics of what the Gorilla as a spirit animal represents today – or ever, maybe, as it may never be my place to do such a thing. I do want to say though, that I have been contemplating this animal as a spiritual guide or totem lately, and an unfortunate thing that keeps happening is that I cannot mention this without the awareness that it will come across a certain way.

That’s too bad, really. Because if we were living in any other time, it would likely be considered a great honor to know that the Gorilla was present in someone’s energy field or energetic structure. Cougars, jaguars, monkeys, lizards, the lion/lionness too, and many, many more have been coming to mind lately.

These spirit animals don’t choose us based on the color of our skin. They choose us based on the content of our character and who we truly are beyond the layers of our personality. We choose them the same way, from the essence of who we are too and so we may learn more about ourselves.

But today, in 2026, these equivocations can be seemingly taboo. That’s too bad, really.

This is why in today’s journal prompt I mentioned being ready to break free from a cage that you’ve been taught it is better to be locked into. Maybe not in those exact words, but that is the essence of what I was saying.

For the Gorilla, and any other animal that chooses to work with you in this lifetime, it is only meant to help you develop greater self-awareness, understanding, power, and expression of your true, inner, and higher self.

The animals that choose us may do so because of where we come from. They could be sent by our ancestors to give us strength, wisdom, quick wit, agility, or anything else that the totem can gift us.

If you are righteous in rejecting God’s gifts of understanding due to a very human and temporal way of thinking about things, you’re going to miss out on a lot of greatness.

At the end of your lifetime, will it matter if “gorilla” has been used as an insult against you or someone you know? Is that the gorilla’s fault? Is it your burden to carry forever? Or is there something there for you to overcome and accept in order to reach your full potential?

Are you willing to reject the emotions that restrict you from accessing deeper wisdom regarding yourself?

Are you willing to deconstruct the cage that you have been locked in?

Every human, no matter our skin color or the way we behave, we have to ask ourselves this same question eventually.

No matter how much wealth you were born into, or how much you amass over the course of your life to date, are you willing to look beyond the bars of your prison cell and grab a key that might set you free?

The world needs you walking fully in your power. This means in 2026 rejecting the dogma and fear that the Gorilla totem has amassed.

What is on the other side of that fear? Deep, deep, unyielding respect.

Gorillas are scary to most people. As they rightfully should be. Gorillas can crush us. All of us. Even you.

What do people do when they’re afraid?

Anything and everything they can think of to subdue the source of the threat. Think of what trainers do to circus animals. Through chains over them, whip them into submission. They do that because they’re afraid of what will happen if those animals step fully into their power and take advantage of the opportunity they have in front of them to subdue a threat of their won.

If people don’t have any training to identify where their fears are coming from or how to handle themselves when they identify a threat, they panic. They don’t have any rules to follow except for the ones that govern their physical existence. And the Gorilla can crush pretty much everything and everyone in it’s path. As can the Elephant. The Dragon. The Mammoth. And a few more too, if I’m not mistaken. The Horse can trample us into oblivion if it so desires.

But the Gorilla also commands primal fear and respect due to their sheer size and power.

Whenever I get a sense that the Gorilla is present, wherever I am I feel honored, blessed, grateful, and a deep sense of respect for what the people around me are working on, have done in their lives, and how usually how deeply they care about the people around them. Like a mama cradling her young ones, no matter how old they both are.

This is one of the great gifts of being present with life beyond the veil. Awareness of that which cannot be perceived solely with the eyes or ears alone.

Don’t let dogma and stupidity – other people’s or your own – ruin your ability to know yourself deeply, and well too.