Very High Priest: Remembering Who I am: a Micro-Memoir

By Oriya Pollak

Are you carrying wounds that feel too shameful to share? Do you struggle with patterns of addiction, seeking validation, or keeping painful secrets? VERY HIGH PRIEST reveals how our deepest wounds contain the very medicine we're meant to share with the world.

In this raw and transformative micro-memoir, Oriya Pollak takes us on an extraordinary journey from the ultra-orthodox streets of Jerusalem to the underground medicine circles of New York. Born into a religious Jewish community and carrying the weight of childhood trauma, Oriya spent decades running from his past through addiction, external validation, and spiritual bypassing. As an underground medicine guide, he helped others heal while avoiding his own shadows - until everything crashed down.

Through his unique 12-beat framework for transformation, Oriya demonstrates how our most painful experiences can become our greatest teachers. With vulnerability and wisdom earned through intense personal struggle, he shows how breaking the cycles of shame and silence can lead to profound healing not just for ourselves, but for our entire community.
VERY HIGH PRIEST isn't just another spiritual memoir - it's a sacred invitation to remember who you truly are. Through Oriya's vulnerable storytelling and practical framework, you'll find the courage to face your own shadows and share your medicine with the world.

Pick up VERY HIGH PRIEST today and begin your journey from shame to sacred purpose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Feb 8, 2025
• ISBN: 9798895710876

Book preview

Dedication

To Being Community,

Who showed me that we heal together,

That our wounds become bridges

When we dare to share them

And to every soul brave enough

To turn their wounds into wisdom,

Their stories into medicine,

Their drama into dharma

May these words serve as confirmation

That you are not alone

That your patterns are perfect

That your truth itself is healing

Love, Oriya

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome Home: A Framework for Remembering

Chapter One: Opening Image | sacred setup

Chapter Two: The Original Lie | soul drama

Chapter Three: Journey Out | escape home

Chapter Four: The Debate | questioning and doubt

Chapter Five: Honeymoon | success and triumphs

Chapter Six: False Victory | truth breaking through

Chapter Seven: Shadow Rising | diving warning

Chapter Eight: Autocorrect | life’s intervention

Chapter Nine: Journey In | dark night home

Chapter Ten: The Faceoff | rejecting the lie

Chapter Eleven: Remembering | you are

Chapter Twelve: The Word | integration

Please Help Me Serve: a sacred invitation

The 12 Beats: You Are The Storyteller

WELCOME HOME

A Framework for Remembering

For most of my life, I carried these stories like burning coals in my chest - waiting to be healed enough or successful enough to share them. Shame kept me silent, fear told me my truth was dangerous.

Now I understand - our medicine isn't in our perfection but in our willingness to be seen exactly as we are. In breaking this silence, I share these stories not to expose or sensationalize, but to transform personal drama into dharma — and reveal how grace works through everything, especially our most guarded truths.

My silence over the years wasn't born just from shame and fear, but also from a deep commitment to protecting sacred spaces, medicines and individuals.

This Micro-Memoir is based on true events. The emotional truth and my inner journey are 100% authentic, while external details have been altered to protect the work, community and sacred substances.

The Framework's Origins:

This framework emerged from three streams of wisdom:

Hollywood Beat Sheets and the Traditional Hero's Journey revealed how every human story follows sacred design - our patterns of forgetting and remembering aren't random but precisely orchestrated.

Sacred Medicine work cracked my heart open to profound truth - real storytelling happens inside us first. Every external narrative reflects the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we deserve.

My Seven-Year Dark Night of the Soul stripped away all sophisticated strategies of escape, forcing me to face stories I'd carried since childhood. Through losing everything I thought defined me, I discovered what my soul always knew - our deepest wounds carry exactly the medicine others need to receive.

Navigating This Micro-Memoir:

Through three interwoven timelines, I share my journey from forgetting to remembering:

THE HIGH PRIEST (2010-2017) Walking the edge between sacred and shadow as an underground medicine guide

THE CHILD SEEKER (1980-2010) From ultra-orthodox Jerusalem to American dreamer leading to the HIGH PRIEST timeline

THE GUIDE (2025) The 12-day journey of creating this manuscript happening in real integration and present day remembering

My intention with this project:

Demonstrate how this framework reveals medicine in any story

Release my stories so I don't repeat them

Inspire you to liberate yourself from yours

This is a Micro-Memoir - the scenes might feel condensed - this is intentional.

My goal isn't to tell the complete story. Rather, this framework serves as both map and mirror - revealing how every human story, no matter how unique, follows sacred patterns of forgetting and remembering. By sharing just enough of my journey, I hope to illuminate these patterns in ways that help you recognize them in your own life.

May these words confirm you're not alone. Your struggles aren't random but precisely crafted curriculum. Every wound you carry contains exactly the medicine others need to receive.

Love, Oriya

Saturday, February 8, 2025

CHAPTER ONE

OPENING IMAGE

sacred setup

Danny's head hits the wall as his eyes roll back. My first ceremony as facilitator, and I'm watching someone collapse. The medicine I just placed under eighteen people's tongues - the same medicine still dissolving under my own - suddenly feels like judgment itself.

In the moment before dawn When masks fall away And truth catches us unprepared We find ourselves standing At the edge of who we thought we were Watching everything change

Opening Image - every healing journey begins with a moment of perfect orchestration - when life arranges circumstances so precisely that we finally see what we've been avoiding.

We're born into forgetting, not as punishment but as perfect design - to experience separation so completely that the journey back to wholeness becomes our most sacred adventure. Every human life is a meticulously crafted journey of remembering who we've always been beneath our patterns of protection.

Every healing journey begins with a moment of perfect orchestration - when life arranges circumstances so precisely that we finally see what we've been avoiding. These moments rarely feel like grace when they arrive. They often come dressed as crisis, as breakdown, as our carefully constructed worlds falling apart. Yet beneath the apparent chaos lies a divine intelligence, guiding us home to ourselves through the very experiences we've tried hardest to avoid

THE HIGH PRIEST

Summer 2010 · Malibu Hills · Age 30

The bathroom mirror reflects a version of myself I'm still learning to recognize. My first ceremony as a facilitator, and every doubt crowds the small space with me. Eighteen people wait in the living room, their trust suspended beneath their tongues in the tiny medicine drops I've just administered.

I wasn't supposed to take the medicine. Wasn't supposed to cross that line between guide and participant. But here I am, wrestling with myself, with the promise I made to stay clean, to be precise. As an engineer, I crave control. As a guide, I'm terrified of what happens when control dissolves.

One drop of heart-in. One drop of heart-out.

The cool liquid dissolves, and something inside me both resists and surrenders. I tell myself I need