Secret Teachings

Very often, the seeker of spirituality is lured in by promises of secret knowledge, secret power.  Seekers come from all walks of life, but there are commonalities.  The empty, hollow feeling; the need for connection and meaning; the desire to know that there is more to life; the need for everlasting peace; the desire to control the direction of their lives; and upon the cold, wine-dark sea, they will grasp at whatever driftwood seems to promise those things to them.

Some seekers believe they have found what they were seeking after.  They gather knowledge.  They gather rituals.  They gather secret names, motions, and symbols.  Some begin to feel a bit special for all of this; Indeed, not many wouldn't.  As special beings, is it not up to them, therefore, to make sure the "lineage stays pure"?  Is it not up to them to make sure that those to whom they pass on this hard-won knowledge (i.e. usually the price of a few books of new age and/or acedemic provenance) are worthy of such?  So, make sure you stroke their egos.  Make sure you pay your dues, or your seminar fees, or your initiation fees, or your church tithes.  If you don't...maybe you'll find that you by chance aren't worthy of the secrets, of the rituals, the initiations, names and symbols.  You poor, spiritually undeveloped soul, you.  Maybe by next incarnation you'll have learned enough to be ready for the SECRETS....

It should be apparent from what I've written above that I most certainly believe that the knowledge should be available to all, and certainly not suppressed and yet, I suppose I'm in the camp that some would call "exclusionary" or even "elitist", but by observation, not by choice, decision, or mere opinion.  If everyone were meant to do it, it would work for everyone, but it doesn't.  How many people pick up some aspect of the occult, any aspect, and stick with it?  How many does it work for?  Those factors are just as much a part of the mechanism that keeps these things "secret" as them being deliberately kept secret, if not more so. In China, businesses have never *stopped* consulting a feng shui expert.  That doesn't mean everyone *practices* feng shui any more than taking communion makes every Catholic a priest.  Is the occult more accepted in the West today?  Sure.

But we don't have to keep secrets.  The secrets keep themselves.

The only real secrets aren't secrets at all, because they can be neither withheld nor doled out by any human. They are, and have always been, spirit-taught. The first shaman knew this, and so does anyone else with *actual* spiritual attainment.  Knowledge, power, peace and all the rest don't come from a book, or a seminar, or a teacher, or a church, or a secret society or mystery cult.  Anything else purported to be a "secret" is nothing more than culturally developed window dressing.  A good teacher can give you methods to get to the door leading to the experience.  A great teacher then gets out of your way so you can walk through the door.

But will you walk through it?  And once through it, will you stay on the path?  Or will you keep yourself from the secret?...