By Madison White, Modern Mystery School Guide, Healer, and Teacher
There are a lot of stereotypes that come with being a "Spiritual Person". A lot of people think that you have to be vegan, listen only to meditation music, burn incense, and always have a positive attitude, etc. These, like all stereotypes, are limiting because they not only pigeonhole us, they also lock us out of a wider definition of life. If we don't “fit in”, then we aren't “spiritual” and a whole swath of life experiences are therefore unavailable to us.
Let me take this opportunity to burst your bubble...
If you've ever wondered whether or not there's a higher intelligence...you're spiritual.
If you've ever wondered why we're here, why the Universe, why ANY of this exists...you're spiritual.
If you've ever wondered what happens after we die...you're spiritual.
If you've ever wondered where your thoughts come from...you're spiritual.
“A spiritual person is someone who is investigating what is beyond the physical.” -Sovereign Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon
What if being spiritual simply means that you were interested in the investigation of what is, and what goes on, beyond the physical? What if it means exploring beyond what we can see, touch, taste and feel and asking about the HOW and the WHY?. I know this seems Philosophical.Philosophy plays a huge role in it.
You could say that Spirituality has two branches: Religion and Philosophy
Religion is the practice, the “how” to worship, or how to interact with the Divine. When we're investigating something,we want to understand, see, be closer to, and experience more of it. So, religion is the particular practice of coming closer to the Divine, or what is beyond this world. Religion is the practice in which we become closer to God, whatever you want to call God in whichever religion you choose.
Philosophy, then, is the exploration of the “why”. Why does the universe operate in the way that it does? Why do men and women behave in the way that we do? Why are we so interested in what's beyond the physical? Why do we feel this universal pull towards deeper thinking, beyond the obvious and mundane...what is there? What are we looking for?
Together, religion and philosophy create a spiritual practice. These cannot exist without one another, for one informs the other. We use religion to bring us closer to the philosophical questions we ask, and in turn our philosophical quest is what invigorates our religious practice.
What is a Spiritual path?
There are many, perhaps thousands, of paths for exploring the phenomena and mysteries of life. A path, by definition, is a way that has been made by others before you. We follow a laid out trail because the evidence of footsteps or beaten down earth leads us to believe that this path will bring us somewhere. The more worn down the path, the better chance that it’s a good path, meaning that the trek is manageable and leads to a desirable destination (even if it's only back to yourself *wink*).
As an Adept Initiate in the Lineage of King Salomon, you have taken that first step along an ancient path—and many of you have taken more when you received your second Initiation at Healer’s Academy and further initiations by becoming a Ritual Master.
To do this, you followed a Certified Spiritual Guide in the Lineage along what was hitherto an unknown path. A Guide exists to make walking the spiritual path easier and more predictable. Note: I said easIER and not easY.
Any worthy path is not easy, because while the path is laid out for you, the path will also lead you inward, and THAT terrain is anything but tame.
What is the purpose of a Guide?
What we're looking for in any religious, spiritual, or philosophical quest is a deeper connection to ourselves. They are intimately intertwined. One cannot begin to dive into the deeper mysteries of the Universe without learning the deeper mysteries held within. And one cannot reveal the deeper mysteries within without gaining a grander understanding of the world around us.
Your Guide is there to hold the Light for you, and reflect the inner essences of life back at you. Your Guide has already trodden the path laid before you. They may not even be that much further ahead of you, but they are further enough along that they can look back at you and say "I know, I've been there, there is more, and you will get through." And really mean what they say.
The Guide in the Lineage of King Salomon stands at the doorway of Initiation onto the path. The Guide chose to do this work; to step forward and hold, protect, and shine the light for others to find their way home.
What is Lineage?
Lineage is a line that is traceable through generations. Any charlatan can say they can do and provide anything. What are their credentials? From whom did they learn? Where did their teacher study? As we talked about before, the ones who have walked the path before us are to whom we look for guidance, and the more people who have walked that path, the more likely that the results are good.
The Lineage of King Salomon has a traceable lineage going back over 3,000 years directly to King Salomon. The core system of teaching known as Hermetics within the lineage actually traces back to Hermes Trismegistus, a quasi-mythical figure whom we in the Mystery School claim lived approximately 8,000 years ago. The initiations themselves, along with the Kabbalah, are said to have been handed to the first Humans to live on our planet by the Angels, as a pathway home to God while still alive in physical bodies. We use the title “Lineage of King Salomon” to honor the work that Salomon did to upgrade and bring our lineage into a coherent system, and that he established it in such a way that we have a written record of physical lineage from teacher to student since his time.
Why does Lineage work?
Imagine you inherit your great, great, great, great, great grandmother’s cookbook with recipes that have been unchanged for generations. Would you go in and immediately change the recipes? No! You know the best results are going to come from doing it exactly the way it is written because that’s the way that dozens of members of your family have done it and have had good results. If you respect and honor and love those family members, you have reason to believe their recipes were part of their lives well lived. Perhaps, when you use that cookbook, you can even feel their presence in the pages and the flavors, connecting you with those foundations and enhancing or enriching your life.
Lineage is like that cookbook, it works because it has been time tested with proven results— more than any recipe you could find from a stranger on the internet or intuit and create on your own. For some people there exists a desire for expedient, efficacious, powerful results. That is what lineage gives us: access to a framework to effectively accelerate progression and evolution as a spiritual being.