The Chimney & the Flame: Exploring the Essential Elements of a Spiritual Path

The spiritual path must include both connecting to the true self, and transforming and releasing that which is not…

The spiritual path is ultimately one of connecting to and remembering who we truly are.

This involves two primary actions: connecting to your true self, and clearing away all that is not true.

As an analogy, think of an oil lamp, with its glass chimney covered in layers and layers of dust, and its full flame dimmed from lack of oil. The spiritual path needs to involve both cleaning the dust off the glass chimney, as well as adding oil to the lamp so the flame can burn brighter and brighter.

Shadow work and trauma releasing are important but a spiritual path must also connect you to your spirit...

The current spiritual and personal growth paths are full of ways to clean the glass. These include clearing techniques, shadow work, trauma releasing, and the like. Where most of these techniques fall short is in the ability to add oil to the flame. In other words, to boost the signal of the true self. Thus people end up in endless clearing cycles, with only little and often unsustainable tastes of the true self that they long to connect with.

While the clearing work is essential to a mature and integrated spirituality, igniting the flame is the true heart of a spiritual practice.

Traditionally, spiritual paths were passed down in a lineage, this involved a direct in-person transmission from teacher to student. Thus the teacher or guru with the brightened inner lamp, could ignite the lamp of the student while also illuminating any darkness. There were formal trainings and teachings, tests, and initiations. The lineage ensured the time-tested purity of the teachings.

These days spirituality is more of a mix-and-match potluck affair. People go to workshops, share techniques that someone invented, take a little from this teaching a little from that technique, create their own, etc. It is a mash-up buffet.

What is wonderful about this is that many people are engaging in the search for truth, greater meaning and fulfillment, and questioning the status quo. They are ultimately seeking spirituality to ignite that inner flame. What isn’t so optimal about this is that teachings and techniques tend to get watered down and commodified. Or, the teachings are colored by the biases and level of consciousness of the person who either created the technique or re-purposed it, and those biases get passed along.

In my more than 20 years of thoroughly sampling the spiritual and personal growth buffets, I have found few paths that know how to truly add oil to the lamp to boost its flame.

The primary reason for this is that the Light of the inner flame is beyond this world. Spiritual traditions and lineages understand this, and carried and protected this knowledge in Mystery Schools so as to not have it corrupted by the “minds of men”, i.e. the world.

Most of the teachings at the “spiritual buffet” are of this world, and while they may serve wonderfully to clean the glass, they usually fall short in boosting the flame.

There is a way to increase our inner Light...

When I discovered the Modern Mystery School, what I recognized is they had something that I had not personally come across before: an undeniably powerful way to boost the signal of the true self, to bring in more of the Light that is beyond this world, and to therefore accelerate the spiritual journey. To continue with my analogy, the Modern Mystery School has tools that actually add oil to the lamp which allows it to burn brighter and brighter.

As the inner flame burns brighter, it illuminates the dust on the glass, which allows that to be cleared much more effectively. However, the inverse is not necessarily true. While clean glass allows what Light is there to shine more effectively, it does not actually make the Light burn brighter.

In a world that desperately needs more Light, and ideally for the flame to burn brightly in the hearts of everyone, it is important to attend to these two crucial elements of the spiritual path.

My hope is that you are inspired to find ways to both clean your glass and ignite the flame of who you truly are. The world needs YOU burning brightly.