Secrets and Mysteries

May 18, 2022

Hello beautiful people! I’m still working on the post that I originally planned to do, but this topic right here is one that has been on my mind. Rather than being pedantic and going in the order that I originally set up so long ago, I’m going to start addressing things as I’m inspired to.

The Setup

Have you ever heard of Secret Societies and Mystery Schools? Probably, but if I were to ask you what is the difference – could you answer? Succinctly? For this chat, I’m going to focus on the adjectives in those terms – Secret and Mystery. If the question were narrowed down to just these terms, what would your answer be?

Here is my answer: a secret is something that can be learned, but a mystery has to be experienced. In other words, a secret is head or mind understanding. A mystery refers to heart or soul understanding. When it comes to spirituality and personal growth, you can learn AAAAAALLLL the secrets … and still not understand. Why? Because some things have to be experienced to be truly known.

I’ve been binge watching NDEs (near death experiences) for a few months now. If you are not familiar with this concept, I recommend learning about it because it can be truly inspiring. There are a few podcasts I LOVE which feature a lot of these: The JeffMara Podcast, and Love Covered Life are my top 2 recommendations. Very different focuses but both are good interviewers and they have a wide variety of guests.

As you can well imagine, dying for some period of time and taking a trip into the afterlife is a pretty profound experience! What I love about what I’m hearing is that the experience is very unique to the individual, providing a glimpse into a larger truth. Once experienced, the individual is never the same. They will usual tell you this themselves! These people have been shown a powerful glimmer of the mystery of Creation, but no matter how many times they share it or what language they use to convey it – unless we the listeners have also been given an experience of that mystery, our understanding remains at the intellectual level. They, the experiencers themselves, are telling us the secrets, while they have experienced the mystery. Can you see the difference there?

Why am I talking about this? Because, for me anyway, when I work on something, I’ve learned that in order for a pattern to be broken I have to experience the mystery of it. I can intellectually understand my patterns of behavior and yet still have to fight tooth and nail to change them. In other words, I can completely understand the secret behind my patterns of behavior, but until I experience the mystery of them – guess what? They will not change, or at least they will not change easily. When I make the transition into being able to viscerally understand something, understanding it from my heart rather than my head, that is when the mystery is revealed and my ability to change is almost instant.

At this point in my path, I’m no longer interested in learning new secrets. They do me little good – but I’ll pursue a mystery like a bloodhound who’s caught the scent!

Story Time

Let me share with you some examples so you can understand the perspective. I’m sharing these for 2 reasons:

1. The first reason is so that you can start to discern for yourself the difference between head learning (secrets) and heart learning (mysteries).
2. The second reason is so that you can understand a little bit better about where I’m coming from in terms of this podcast.

That’s it. Take from this sharing what you will, but I’m hoping that you’ll be inspired and start to open yourself up to the mysteries that surround us. From all I’ve learned, being open to experience is very helpful when it comes to actually gaining traction on your particular path.

Both of these first 2 experiences happened in my very early 20s. I was in college and had the extreme fortune of being with 2 friends who were both as avidly into spiritual studies as I was. We experimented with all kinds of energy work, mediumship, automatic writing, etc. Because we worked together, it seemed to both ground us as well as give us the space to be open without fear. That’s a key concept here – without fear. More on that shortly, though.

I’ve long, long known that the body which we see with our eyeballs is not at all who we really are. I thought this was a heart knowing, but I was wrong. Working at a small party store on the weekends, there was a regular customer who came in to buy cake boxes for her mom. I have no idea what her name was, but I certainly recognized her every time she came in. One day, we had a line of customers and I was operating the cash register. Nothing unusual about any of this. I was putting the money in the till and shutting the drawer at the same time I looked up to see this gal putting the usual stack of cake boxes onto the counter. In that moment, with no warning or preparation, my perception shifted. I did not see her physical body – instead I saw this brilliant, impossibly beautiful twinkling light which literally took my breath away and had me collapsing onto my knees right there in awe. I almost breathed out a shocked and awed “You’re sooooo beautiful…” then I blinked and normal physical sight was restored. She was smiling at me with her usual good cheer, unaware that she had literally tilted my world on its axis for a moment. My co-workers, of course, also had no idea what had happened — just that I fell to my knees and was apparently struck dumb with my mouth hanging open.

I was so shaken, honored, stunned, excited, and reverent that I had to immediately step away. My hands were shaking too much to even consider operating a case register! While I had known with my head that we as physical beings are not really our bodies, it wasn’t until I saw it with my own eyes that I knew, KNEW without any doubt in the least, that we are so much more. Nowadays I find myself a bit baffled by people who over-identify with their body – whether that’s gender, race, capability level, intelligence, whatever – because I know from my soul that what I see in the mirror is an avatar that I’ve chosen for this episode of my soul’s journey. The body is marvelous and wonderful and to be cherished and honored, but it’s not who I am. The face and body you see in the mirror is not YOU. We are so much more! To get so wrapped up in identity issues that are so … surface doesn’t even make sense to me, not anymore, not for a very long time.

It was shortly after this rather expansive experience that I was working within the hypnogogic state. If you’re not familiar with that term, it refers to the state of mind in which you are asleep, dreaming, and still conscious all at the same time. It’s a half-way point between waking and sleeping, but there is no break in awareness – no falling asleep and then becoming aware of dreaming (that would be lucid dreaming). There is a counterpoint called hypnopompic, in which you rise to waking consciousness before your body wakes up — usually this is accompanied by dream paralysis. Same state of mind, just different points on the spectrum. These are states that some skilled mediation practitioners can get into, and it can be a profoundly powerful state of mind, but it can also be terrifying if you don’t understand what it is.

Anyway, I was in this state when I felt a presence sit on the foot of my bed. At first, I thought I knew who it was but then I realized I did not. The moment I realized this, fear bloomed in my heart and the figure became dark and menacing. I felt hands wrap around my ankles and I was pulled a few inches down the length of the bed (remember this was a dream, even though it felt 100% waking real, thanks to that hypnogogic state). My fear grew 10 fold and I scrambled up the bed and latched onto my pillow, as if this would somehow save me. Again, hands wrapped around my ankles, but stronger now, and I was pulled half way down the bed. Now terrified, I started to scramble back up and I remembered I had a Bible beside the bed (in waking life, I did not, but in this half-dream state it was there). I was reaching for it, absolutely SURE that if I can just touch it and ask for help, this would end. Hands again yanked me down the bed so far this time I about fell off the end. Terror is so pale a word at this point and I’m diving for the Bible. My hands are just about to touch it when this knowing descended over me and everything froze.

Now if I tell you a sentence that ‘this was the realization,’ that would be such a simplistic and inadequate way of conveying the true depth of this awareness, but basically one of the key concepts that was just downloaded was: “Nothing outside the self is as powerful as what is inside because God is already inside you.” That knowing did not come with words, but I can’t give you a knowing – I have to translate it. I can’t give you the mystery, but I try really really hard to give you the secret. And maybe you’ll understand some of it. But I have to translate that mystery and that phrase is relatively concise and yet completely inadequate. The profound truth of the knowing swept over me from head to food, goosebumps in its wake. I realized to the core of my being that fear in any form gives away my power. Why? Because it means I’ve forgotten that I have nothing to be afraid of! I also realized that all the power I would ever need is already inside me because that light that I saw in my customer that one time … that was the divine light – a tiny spark of the divine. It’s what’s inside me, inside you, inside everybody that you’ve ever run across, whether you hate them or love them, they are all part of that divine spark.

If you can imagine that the Divine – I don’t care what name you name you want to use: the Great Spirit, God, Allah, Jesus, Pacha Mama, whatever – splintered itself into an infinite number of teeny tiny sparks and all those sparks just shot out and are there to experience the universe, to experience the Creation, to experience Itself. That’s what is at the core of me, and is at the core of you, and that’s what I saw. In this moment, in this realization, as I’m frozen in this dream state with this shadow entity that was behind me that was terrifying, reaching for a Bible, and realizing “why am I reaching outside the self? Why am I giving my power away with fear? Giving my power away … asking somebody else to save me when I can safe myself? What the heck is wrong with me? What have I forgotten?”

(note to explore later — for those people who talk about what they have forgotten and remembering it now, compare those experiences)

To look outside for protection or guidance or authority is to give away the essence of myself. The flash of memory of seeing the actual soul of that customer came with this realization. That is who I am. And the light that is within me IS the spark of the Divine – whatever name you are most comfortable with. What’s important to know is that it’s not ‘out there’ somewhere. It’s already inside, it’s PART of me… It’s part of YOU. We are part of each other.

The moment that knowing, that heart understanding, swept over me, that’s the moment that the shadow figure vanished. Or rather, it didn’t vanish – the light of understanding transformed it and I realized it was a teacher. It was there to show me what my power was and it did it through fear. Because I had to transcend the fear and recognize “oh! What are you being afraid of?” And then once that fear went away, I saw it wasn’t a shadow being at all – it was a teacher and it took that form because that’s what I needed. So it had just shown me magnificent.

Suddenly I snapped awake and I’m actually completely awake now. I sit up, and I’m in college so I’m in a dorm room, and I wake up my roommate in the middle of the night. And I’m just babbling away, totally excited by this. Let’s just say, she was less than impressed about being woken up in the middle of the night to me babbling about our personal power.

I have tried repeatedly to convey this truth to people, but it falls short. Dramatically short. Both of these experiences are true soul Mysteries, and while you can know with your intellect the truth of them, know with your intellect the aspects of these stories because I have told them to you, the true power of these will be known only when the mystery is experienced for yourself. My goal is always to find ways to facilitate experiencing the mystery. This often means working with the mind until I can navigate my way into the heart. So there’s a place for first learn the secrets and then the mystery can be revealed. That’s also an option! And here’s the final example:

I was one of those kids who remembered a past life when I was little, though I had no idea it was a past life until many years later. I understood who the man was, what he lived, and how he died. Eventually, after a lot of working with that life, I began to understand with my mind where some of the issues I’ve had in this life came from – issues which were totally at odds with my experience now. Eventually, again completely surface level mind work, I saw the patterns from his life, where they came from, and how they influenced both his life and his death. It was when all of this mind knowing – this secret type of information – we revealed in its completeness, THEN I was ready to drop into the heart and experience it not only as it was but to help that life completely reframe the perspectives. I’m not really sure how to explain the difference, but it felt like a complete frequency shift which, for lack of a better description, enabled me to resonate with that life in such a way that we were able to connect and make that shift in awareness and heal that life. It felt like the mind has one frequency, and the heart another – where the mind frequency is a thin, tiny badly played flute while the heart is a competition brass and drum orchestra. When I shifted into the orchestra level, the power of that was able to connect that life with this life, forming a bridge, and that enabled the sharing of the perspective shift so it actually did the whole “healing of wounds in all directions of time” thing that I’ve heard some folks talk about. If I had not dropped into the mystery of this life reframing, which enabled me to experience the reframing for BOTH this life and that one, then I do not think I have been able to resolve the pattern which had plagued me for my entire life. I literally felt the shift of that healing in my entire body, and when that happened the change was instant. There was no more pattern to break because it was shattered. Within weeks of that pattern clearing, my life significantly changed for the better.

While I hold a special place for the mystery of things, I’ve learned that sometimes I first have to understand the secrets of it so that I can be ready to experience the mystery of it. I can still work with intellectual understanding, but my goal is always to turn that – eventually – into heart knowing.

I do want to bring up a few caveats that should be kept in mind. I need you to understand that – especially the first two experiences – I haven’t shared those with anyone probably in at least twenty years. Not in any real way. Because, I don’t know, it just didn’t feel like the right time. I’m don’t know if now is the right time, but I’m feeling more called to share it and so .. Ok. These are the reasons why I’ve learned not share them until somebody is ready for them, so keep that in mind.

1. Not everybody is ready for a mystery, or even a secret. There are lots of people that I would love to just into knowing. Oh so tempting sometimes! But I have to remember that we all have different roles, functions, and purposes. Mine is not yours is not hers or his or theirs. To shake someone else into my version of knowing will not do anyone any good. In fact, it might cause more harm. I think Matias de Stefano nailed it when he was talking to Aubrey Marcus in a recent podcast episode – don’t do it. Aubrey is the one who came up with the phrase ‘Be the invitation’, be the living model, and when or if whomever your audience is is ever ready, you can meet them where they are. And I love that concept!
2. When a mystery is actually experienced, change is immediate – especially when the experience is a healing such as the last example I shared. Change is immediate. There are tons of secrets that I know, but just knowing them changed nothing. As an example, how many people are still struggling to figure out this Law of Attraction stuff? The movie which shared this knowledge was called The Secret. We know the process with our head, but until that process drops down into the heart, we’ll continue struggle with it.
3. Sometimes, what’s revealed is not what you expected – or wanted! I know people whose entire foundation in life was kicked out from under them as a result of this. Their very identity shredded and left in ruins. The recovery from this can take years, might require professional help. For others, whatever mysteries they experienced were affirming to their identity. It’s a bit nicer when they affirm things, but there’s no guarantee. A friend of mine was rather contemptuous about my statement that sometimes what we learn is not what we wanted to learn – until she was confronted with something she wasn’t prepared for. This particularly warning points back to the 1st one — never attempt to force knowledge or awareness on those who are not ready for it! It’s not your purpose to shove people out of metaphorical airplanes.
4. Whatever is revealed, usually can’t be unrevealed. Once seen, it’s yours. If want to unsee it, then you have intentionally forget it and pretend – but some part of you will always know better.

The Point

So now you know my perception of the difference between secrets and mysteries, head and heart knowing, and the impacts that each can have. I’m one of these people that love to take classes and courses, but I think I’ve wasted enough money on classes that only give me head knowledge. I’m now looking for classes or courses which seek to invite the mystery, the experience of being where mind alone just doesn’t cut it. At least give this approach a consideration when you’re looking at all that is available. After all this this, I now ask you: what do you truly want — Secrets, or Mysteries?

TL:DR

Understanding with the head and understanding with the heart are very different things. In this episode I talk my experience of the differences, and share some examples to illustrate. Head understanding is a good handle, but heart understanding is where we can start cooking!

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Disclaimer

Always remember: I’m not a therapist of any form. This is a record of my journey and the things I’ve done. Some of these emotional awareness issues might possibly be too large for you to handle without some help. If you feel you need help, get it. There is zero wrong with finding the help you need when you need it!