Stung on the Tongue
The story of a sting and the sweetness it brings.
If you don’t want to read, you can watch me read this story…
Or, listen to the podcast version.
Stung on the Tongue
When entering an ecotone, life provides certain signs. Some are more obvious than others.
Indications can be cryptic, like an eerie dream, the fleeting memory of which lingers and looms just barely below the surface of waking awareness.
Some, as illustrated in this story, are so absurdly obvious that one can only giggle about nature’s blatant way of announcing an imminent shift.
It is Saturday, October 25, 2025, and I am taking rest after being on a tear all year.
After nearly 15 years, I’d uprooted myself from a comfortable home and beloved Colorado community to follow a subtle but undeniable call to adventure.
Over the summer, Rigby and I:
drove from Denver to Vancouver via Minneapolis and Banff then
drove back to Telluride for yoga work and bluegrass family before
over to Boulder for Phish and lots of logistics then
back to Bellingham and
after Burning Man down
to Napa to meet the newborn son of a dear old friend and
to bless the transition of his 17-year old dog (like a son to me) before
back to Denver to unpack and pack
for a flight to Yorkshire, UK
to produce and present at a week-long intensive only to
return to Colorado jet-lagged but just in time
to produce and host the semi-annual academic conference presented by the all-volunteer non-profit of which I am president.
Phew!
Meanwhile:
Naive enthusiasm rooted in recognition of a massive opportunity to meaningfully contribute to an inspiring online community (currently navigating a radical transformation of leadership, psycho-energetic orientation and technological delivery systems) had me working long un-contracted hours in a scramble to balance deadlines with diplomacy and generally make sense of a complex, multi-faceted ecosystem in order to integrate several unique-but-interrelated organizations.
This was a lot.
As it turns out, it was too much.
I took a week for panchakarma, followed by two weeks of refuge at my beloved roommate’s parents place on a lake near Loveland, which brings us back to the present tense part of the story.
It is Saturday, October 25, 2025.
My core group of Colorado comrades gather at the lake to celebrate a brother’s birthday. The day involves volleyball, delicious drinks and a chili cook-off competition.
In the background, I am anticipating an important phone call with my boss. In recent weeks, we’d exchanged urgent words as I struggled to keep up with all my commitments. These were short, sharp interactions, but I trusted our foundation of mutual respect, friendship and professionalism.
This afternoon is a wise time to catch up, drop in and discuss appropriate adjustments to my role in order to avoid any more of the overwhelm from which I am recovering.
For now, I am sitting on the edge of the deck, at ease in the cool breeze, relaxing in the Autumn sun, reveling in the presence of precious friends.
My Bloody morning beverage is almost empty. I reach for the final swig and slurp through the ice.
A quick, sharp, penetrating sensation, and my tongue is stung.
It seems bee (or wasp?) was understandably attracted to the sweet, tomatoey remains of my refreshment. This bee friend must have been shocked upon being devoured by my human mouth. Bee simply did what bees do in life-or-death encounters.
The very tip of my tongue burns red. The whole thing swells with blood, already rushing to repair that all-important organ.
I am surprised, though somewhat slow to recognize what has happened. I calmly inform my friends of the unfolding calamity. They respond with quiet uproar and the natural laughter of disbelief at such a ridiculous incident.
I am provided ice and antihistamines. We are relieved I am not allergic.
I am sitting on the edge of the deck, sucking on an ice cube and contemplating the synchronistic significance of my present circumstance.
What to make of a stung tongue?
What is the meaning of a bee in the mouth?
Let’s see.
Mythologically, we can associate the tongue with Hermes, the winged-foot messenger, the one who traverses every realm (upper, under and middle worlds) with unmatched swiftness.
Hermes is Mercury — both the planet and the metal. Mercury is perfect for thermometers because of its sensitivity to change. Even subtle shifts in temperature have it traversing between liquid to solid with unmatched swiftness.
Mercury is also known as quicksilver, as in, the one with the quicksilver tongue, famous for qualities such as:
cunning communication;
eloquence and persuasion;
speed and fluidity of speech;
rapid changes in direction or meaning;
trickery and salesmanship;
alchemy and transformation.
Hermes is the trickster that inspires Freudian slips — moving the tongue more quickly than the conscious mind can think or control.
The same rapidity of speech which can be so compelling can also swerve off course into apparently unrelated rabbit holes, verbose diversions driven by the desire to collect many data points to entertain their attention.
Alchemically, Mercury is known as the First Matter, the foundational substance from which all other metals arise. It symbolizes the androgynous principles, uniting spirit and form, masculine and feminine, the bridge between solid and liquid, the link between Father God and Holy Mother.
Mercury is made to be transmuted. Its unchanging nature is change. It is therefore a perennial symbol of transformation and transition — a catalyst for evolution.
Classical Ayurveda has an alchemical tradition as well, with detailed procedures for turning poisonous metals into powerful medicine. This is known as rasashastra — which literally translates as “the science of Mercury.”
It is a famous Ayurvedic aphorism that, depending on preparation, timing and dosage, “all substances are both medicine and poison.”
Some of you may wonder: was Mercury in retrograde on this fateful day?
Alas it was not, but it had changed signs from Libra to Scorpio two days prior. This is a less friendly placement, the difference between the friendly, relational, airy version of Venus and the fiery, emotional warrior manifestation of Mars.
Bees are associated with both sweetness and of course their sting.
They make honey and go about their pollination diligently, bumbling from flower to flower the way Hermes moves from one idea to the next, luxuriating in pure curiosity without any particular attachments to this or that nectar.
Sweetness and sting — the way a Mercurial mind might just as soon blurt out a complementary observation as ask a rude question, without necessarily noticing the qualitative distinction.
It is with this in mind (and my swollen tongue) that I await the call with my boss.
One: I’ve been on the move, visiting mountains, valleys, deserts, lakes and the great Pacific. That physical travel is accompanied, inevitably, by mental and emotional movement. I feel coherent but inconsistent as I explore a wide spectrum of inner and outer ecosystems.
Two: I am a tornado of major changes. I left home not knowing where I’ll land. I left a loving-but-complex relationship unsure if there’s any other way but ready to risk finding out. My career is taking off but is therefore perilous, as launch is the most dangerous part of being an astronaut.
Three: I have often spoken in haste, added excessive commentary to a conversation, revealed more information than necessary, shared my every thought to the detriment of my intended meaning. This has certainly happened with this boss, and many others in the past. Most often my tongue is sweet, but it is also known to sting.
Four: the outcomes of that sting are always transformative. Sharing all the information I have, without much regard for the implications, is reliably revealing. I struggle to hide what’s on my mind — a blessing and a curse, medicine and poison.
The timing of this sting, and its symbolic significance, is too obvious to miss. After this spontaneous bee-medicine ceremony, I resolve to honor my inner Hermes in this pivotal conversation about my career.
I want to be tactful, precise, sweet but not innocent. The stinger is a weapon, yes, but the wise warrior only carries a weapon so that he does not have to use it.
I get the call. We talk.
The end result is alchemical indeed. I receive a second sting, indicating that my role in this professional endeavor will wind down in the coming months, and I would be wise to begin thinking about other ways I may offer my work to the world.
The feedback I receive is both sweet and sharp. By a prominent public figure for whom I have great admiration, I am told that I have outgrown this role, that I have too much to share with the world to be confined to his world, that he sees me as similar to him.
This similarity also means he needs to cut me loose. I have overstepped my scope and instead of helping, it has become an obstacle to his desired outcomes.
What I thought was self-motivation and team leadership was received as a form of interference and insubordination.
I was moving too quickly and it was slowing us down. I was flying too far from my hive and holding too much pollen to carry back.
And so the omen of a bee was portentous indeed, providing advance notice of an imminent transformation of my self-image and future plans.
Medicine and poison.
Poison: I was and am sad, mad, wounded, regretful and disappointed about the way it all went down.
There are things I wish I’d said, and things I wish I hadn’t. I am super proud of all that I pollinated, and ashamed of the days I felt devoured and thought I had to deploy my stinger to survive.
Medicine: I am alchemized. The wound was a catalyst, accelerating the timeline of a needed evolutionary leap. The sting served as a cairn, indicating the next switchback on my sometimes-gentle, sometimes-steep path up the metaphorical mountain of authentic, ecocentric embodiment.
Soul, in the form of a bee, gave me the gift of insisting that I have more to say, although maybe in a new and different way. If there were subtle signals before, I missed them, requiring a more direct, undeniable intervention.
So it goes. Here we are.
If not for the stinger in my tongue, you would not be reading this now. If not for the alchemical qualities of Mercury, there would be no Ecotone Academy.
In this story, I pray you find some sweetness and I wonder:
Have you had any similar encounters? Is any of this familiar?
How has the more-than-human world communicated with you (in obvious or indirect ways) to guide and advise the next steps on your path?
What are your strategies for interpretation and pattern recognition to glean the meaning of these metaphorical messages?
In what way (if any) did you (or could you) take action (symbolic or practical) in response to this prompt? How can you continue the conversation with soul?
For me, mythology (which includes astrology) is the most reliable resource. The archetypes and their timeless stories provide universal reference points for my individual experience.
It is a source of great relief to know that I am not alone, that I am not the first to suffer, learn and accelerate my soul-level evolution in collaboration with the numinous mysteries of nature.
This is the foundational work of Ecotone Academy.
If it’s of interest, our inaugural offering begins January 19 with the study and practice of Time Craft — an invitation to redefine and reorient your relationship with the Time Being in order to befriend the flow of natural time instead of fighting upstream all the time.
Would love to meet you there. To make it easy, you can get 20% off when you use the code TIME20.
If you’d like to receive other updates, insights and invitations, you are very welcome to join the Ecotone Academy mailing list.
Take care. Talk soon.
Until then, I am with you.
