We are taught that spirituality is the dominion of a few select individuals who have a unique connection through which to dispense wisdom and knowledge, to acquire and teach mystical arts, and through which they and only they can truly hear the voices of the gods.
Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth.
We're also taught that we need to master phrases and gestures in order to wield mystical energies. That through meditation, fasting and prayer we can reach levels of reality that we would be unable to unlock through any other method. We find ourselves believing that the secrets exist in ancient arcane texts, in traditions passed down through the generations and hidden away from the eyes of men. By devoting ourselves to teachers, through a path wrought with dedication, sacrifice and perseverance, we believe that we can prove ourselves worthy to receive a gift from the gods and finally embrace the power or peace or love that we seek.
The process is infinitely easier than all of that.
The big secret is that you already have access to all of the things that you seek. You are extraordinarily powerful, infinitely wise, and tremendously adept. There is absolutely nothing that you cannot do, no height that you cannot reach, no secret whose answer is not already at your fingertips. We are spiritual beings, an expression of the divine with all of the power of a god inherently in our possession. The problem, in its entirety, is that we've chosen to experience reality from a mundane and physical perspective. In order to do that, we agreed to accept a certain amount of lies as truth; we've chosen to believe in an illusion rather than the reality it hides.
What we have to realize is that the journey before us isn't one where we reach for some unattainable goal, forever tempering our spirit in a mystical fire, honing skills to reach ever higher levels of reality. The journey is a simple process of discovering why we have chosen to live this lifetime and removing the illusions that prevent us from doing just that. The more illusions we remove, the more truth we see. The more truth that's available to us, the more power we wield. The secret is that this is not a process of gathering insight and wisdom, but simply letting go of the things we have chosen to separate us from who we truly are - powerful, spiritual beings who have agreed to experience reality from a physical perspective.
There's a very simple spiritual law that I was taught by one of my teachers. "To find the truth, you must dig deep. To dig deep, you must remove that which stands between you and what you seek to reach. The more that you remove, the closer you will be to the truth."
If we focus this law on the very nature of our existence, it would encourage us to rewind time as we perceive it. We cannot look at our lives as adults and understand the source we emanated from. Our only choice is to remove that which stands between us and our goal - the understanding of who we are in the bigger perspective of reality, a perspective framed by the knowledge of our origin.
At first glance, we would assume that we would find the answers in our first breath, in the moment when we initially entered this lifetime. After all, from our current perspective it's at that point that we were closest to the spirit world, unburdened by the memories, predjudices and fears we have gathered over the decades. So we remove our career, our family, our personal history that has woven the story of who we have become. In doing so, we strip away the years until we're once more an infant. But even in a newly born state, we are simply a mortal child in a sea of mortal children. That's only one level of who we are. It's not the core of our existence. There was something before, something that created the first spark of life in our mother's womb, a place where even that spark originated. Where did we come from? What process led to the emergence of our soul in the identity we now wear as a physical form?
Employing our first tool in our spiritual journey, we realize that if the answer is that we are but one of many mortals born into this life, then we haven't reached the source of our truth. To do so, we must remove what stands between us and our goal. We must dig deeper. We must go to a level that exists before we were a child, before we began to build the identity we hold in our current incarnation. So we go back farther, rewinding time until we peer into the generations before our birth. We see ancestors stretching back to the beginning of recorded time, the spark of our existence being kindled in an era reflected not so much by history as it is by scientific theory and theology. Even at this point in our understanding of who we are, our identity is obscured by the countless people existing all over our planet. Another level beckons to be removed and we realize that we must dig even deeper.
So we go back first to the beginning of mankind and then, back even before the beginning of the human race. We begin to see ourselves, not as a single member of a single species, but as one thread in an infinite tapestry of life that began on a small blue-green planet that will eventually be called Earth. As we begin to embrace this perspective, we gain the understanding that our planet is but one of many planets in our solar system, and our solar system is one of many solar systems in our galaxy. Another level to be removed. We need to dig deeper still.
In this manner we rewind existence to the time before our solar system was formed, before our galaxy came into existence, even before our universe was born. We dig ever deeper until we reach a moment where there is nothing in all of existence but a single divine energy. There is no time, no matter, nothing but the energy from which all existence will be created. Call it God, Spirit, the Goddess, the divine - call it what you will, but at last we have reached the level where there is nothing more to be removed, where we find out who we are.
And we are divine.
It is not from a box of odds and ends that the universe will be created. It isn't from a pile of cosmic dust or a handful of amino acids that our planet and the life it contains will be formed. At this point in the game, none of that exists. The only thing that can be found in all of existence is the infinite, timeless energy we understand as God.
One of the great secrets of this reality is that not only are we never separated from this source, not only are we created from this source, but that we are this source. All of existence is. For all intents and purposes, we are God. Not just us, but every living thing on this planet, even the stones, wind, and the planet itself.
The key is that this is a pretty big concept for any of us to comprehend. So we consciously limit what God can be. We place the divine in comfortable little boxes that say, "God is this, but not that." We like the idea that there is a cosmic Big Brother or Big Sister out there, watching over us and taking care of us, that life and all of its infinite varieties of expression aren't our responsibility, but that they belong in the hands of Someone Else.
Ironically, that's a completely valid perspective - even if it's ultimately flawed. In order to perceive reality from a physical perspective, we've had to accept the illusion that there are certain limitations to our existence. One of these is that we're separated from God, that we aren't divine but through our own flaws - whether its the Christian concept of sin, a shaman's quest to return to a state of balance and oneness with the divine, or a magickal practitioner's belief that they can only reach the source of sacred power through study and the mastery of certain skills - that there is something that stands between us and God, that cuts us off from the divine and makes us something less than sacred. This illusion provides us with the framework to live life as a unique expression of the divine with a limited perspective and unique experience that is as individual as we are as human beings. If the divine is truly all-encompassing, then it must exist in every expression of reality. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, for the divine to embrace every life, every moment of reality, it must also manifest as an expression of life that sees itself as being separate from the sacred, living a flawed, limited, finite lifetime.
That limited perspective would be us.
The key is in understanding the process inherent in the type of existence that we've chosen to live. As human beings there are two critical stages to our physical existence, an existence that, for most of us, will span multiple incarnations or lifetimes. The first stage is learning to find our reason for existing and by honoring that reason, actively engaging in a process of learning to live a life where we are at peace and filled with love - and typically manifest a great deal of joy. The second stage is deciding to reach beyond that first stage and consciously begin the process of spiritual evolution, a cycle of growth that will enable us to reclaim the perspective that we are divine and leave the need to incarnate into this physical realm behind us.
Gaining that perspective isn't a process of gathering new insight, but letting go of old illusions. In doing so, we gain the understanding of our own divinity. Think about that for just a moment. If we are truly divine but have convinced ourselves that we are not, then we have chosen to limit our own power. If we truly are divine, with all that it infers, what happens when we not only begin to understand that perspective, but begin to believe and live it?
Much of Western occultism focuses on creating states of existence (usually through ritual and ceremony) where we transition beyond the mundane to interact with the spiritual. In that space, the practitioner, shaman, or adept interacts with spiritual energies in order to bend them to their will. The path that I was taught moves the person, not the sacred space, away from the mundane and into the spiritual. Eventually a place is reached where ceremony, tools, ritual implements and techniques are completely unnecessary to achieve a level that was challenging (at best) to reach without them. Magick, for lack of a better definition, becomes an extension of the person's daily life, rather than something they seek through ceremonial means.
One of my teachers explained the concept like this. "There's a magickal Tradition that uses hallucinogenic herbs to reach a certain shamanic state. What most people don't realize is that the herbs are only a crutch, that the shaman is expected to learn to reach that state alone, without the assistance of the herb. The first time they journey, the new shaman will be given a full dose of the herb in order to see the place that they are intended to reach. With each subsequent journey, the dose will be lessened and the shaman will have to develop and rely on their own abilities to reach that state of consciousness. Eventually, the shaman can reach the same level without the herb and use of the herb at that point would actually limit their own abilities." If we look at our meditations, our ceremonies, our incantations and ritual elements as what they are - tools - then it's a simple step to understand that they should fall away as we develop our own abilities. The training wheels eventually came off our bicycles when we learned to ride, just as we eventually left our water wings at the side of the swimming pool. The Tradition in which I was taught follows the same template, but the concept can be extended to any spiritual practice as well as a wide-range of physical endeavors.
It's important to realize that the illusions that we've chosen to use to limit our perspective aren't like a pair of glasses that can simply be lifted off of our eyes and set aside. Imagine that your body is encased in a sheath of opaque threads like a mummy's wrappings. While the threads can be seen through when present in small numbers, en mass they are capable of blocking out all light. The threads must be cut away strand-by-strand. Occasionally we'll make breakthroughs in our path that will enable us to cut through several threads at a time, but each must be systematically removed, just as they were systematically put in place. As we begin to lose our illusions, effectively cutting the threads, two things will begin to happen. First of all, we'll begin to see life and reality with more clarity. Light will begin to seep through the shroud we wear. Second, as the threads begin to fall away, we'll rediscover the movement we possess as spiritual beings, this movement manifesting as a wide range of abilities such as spiritual dreaming, precognition, shamanic journeying and the like.
There is nothing otherworldly or fantastic about any of this. It's our birthright as the spiritual beings we truly are.
The role of a spiritual teacher should simply be to provide assistance in removing the threads that blind and bind us. Lessons, techniques, philosophy and theory should give the student either the understanding of a thread and what awaits beyond its limiting nature, or the tools to successfully remove that thread and be forever free of its influence.
While there are limitless paths that lead to a place of power and freedom, I am only qualified to present the path that I was taught and to which I added my own discoveries and insight. What you hold before you is that path. The lessons that it holds do not come from a secretive Tradition, through a series of oath bound mystical practitioners that have never let the words see the light of day until this moment in time. I made no promises to anyone to keep this material hidden. What I learned was taught to me directly by the spirit world and through a handful of wonderful human teachers. As my own studies progressed, the instruction I received was clear - the material was intended to be shared.
The path that is reflected in this three year series of lessons will take you places you never imagined you could reach and will open your eyes to things that you never dreamed existed. I have taught this material since the early 1990's and, in my experience, it's useful to go through the lessons that are presented here slowly and steadily, one lesson a month, a process that should take three full years to complete. This isn't a quick study in the magickal arts or a crash course in mysticism or spirituality. What you see before you is a thorough training guide that will establish you on your own path and give you the tools, understanding, insight and resources with which to continue to grow on your own.
I was taught that spiritual growth is a cyclical process and that each lesson builds not only on the one before, but upon the part of the spiraling path that was previously established by all of the earlier material. We will build our understanding, knowledge and skills in this manner. We'll start with the basics, covering a great deal of theory and practice. You'll be given concrete tools and specific, exacting methods through which to apply them. As you grow in your path, those boundaries will be lowered with the addition of more advanced materials and you will be encouraged to find your own application to the lessons while keeping certain principles and guidelines in mind. Entering the third year, you will be encouraged to establish your own guidelines, to reinterpret the principles to reflect your own unique spiritual path.
As part of this journey, you will be taught a wide range of skills. How to appropriately and properly interact with energy. How to change your reality. How to let go of the things that keep you from manifesting real joy, love and inner peace in your life. You will not only learn how to interact with the spirit world, but through the concept of shamanic journeying, you will gather a first hand perspective of your own existence and role in the broader scheme of reality. Both your past and your future will be revealed to you as you learn to transcend the illusion of time. You will learn to honor the relationships in your world, both with the people you interact and with and the spirits you call upon, and you will discover the joyful richness of living a life full of value, where each milestone is celebrated, where transitions are honored, and where you are honored simply for who you are – a unique expression of the divine.