Secrets and Mastery: The #1 Secret Behind All Secrets

Why are some people so successful, while most are not? Why do some have all the money, while the rest go without? Why do some people have great health and others get sick? What makes someone lucky all the time, while others seem to live under a dark cloud of disaster and chaos?

How’d you like to discover that one thing, the big secret which will sort out all your problems and make everything okay at last and forever?

If you’re like me you’re probably wondering: “What is it I’m doing wrong” “What is the thing I don’t know” “What is this one thing I need to know or learn to make my whole life right and get out of this mess” “There must be a secret I don’t know, what am I missing and who can tell me…?”

And then with this in mind, we go chasing after one golden dear after another, never really getting any wiser, always sinking deeper into the quicksand looking for the juicy secrets. Oh, the endless quest for that magical elixir of immortality!

I’m guessing you’re no stranger to that quest, although maybe you’ve never put it to yourself in those terms before. I’m guessing that your reading this because you thought you we’re missing something.

You also know quite well the feeling that comes with learning something new or buying a new book or arriving at the start of a workshop or ceremony with some amazing Shaman or Yogi or Wisdom Keeper, or before ingesting some sacred plant medicine for the first time – you know, the feeling that maybe this time this will be IT: the philosopher’s stone, the holy grail, the final answer, the ultimate SECRET will be mine at last, at last!

Mmmmmwwwwwwahahahahahahahahahahah…!

Essentially it’s the quest for a quick-fix solution to the seemingly impossible challenges and complexities involved in becoming a loving, mature, wise and joyful human being on planet earth!

Unfortunately, however, that particular quest is doomed, since there isn’t a quick-fix for the situation we find ourselves in.  There simply isn’t a magic pill that will solve all your problems and make your life easy just like that. However much you tell yourself that if you just keep looking for it for long enough one day you’ll find it, it doesn’t exist.

This may be a bit of a let down – sorry about that! – but it’s something that you need to know and accept, because if you take it seriously it will save you a lot of time and energy and fruitless searching. The sooner you can accept this unpleasant fact the sooner you’ll find a new resolve born inside yourself to embark upon the huge adventure of true growth and lasting transformation, the hero’s journey, that will eventually lead you through the labyrinth to where you need to be.

Of course there are wisdoms to be discovered along the way and integrated into your life. There are wondrous deep things you can and should learn about your life, and the learning of these things will help you along. But these are fairly few in number, so few that you could probably count them on both hands and still have fingers spare. In fact, you could say that the biggest secret of all secrets is simply this:

This might sound strange, but it’s true. It’s all much simpler than anyone usually admits.

There are some secrets to life. Despite being very few in number, there are some things that most people don’t know and are essential to be happy and successful in this game. And, in case you’re wondering, yes, I’ll be sharing most of them with you in this book, although, to be honest, you probably know most of them already – you just don’t realize it. But the main secrets is this: There are not many secrets and its much simpler than you thought.

By the time you’ve absorbed this unexpected secret you’ll probably come to realize that you’ve been running all over the world only to discover the pot of gold buried in your own back yard.  And at this point the question might arise: So who put us on this futile search? Why do we think there are all these things we don’t know and need to find out? Why is life so complex?

Seems to me that the answer to this question is bound up with another, much bigger, disturbing question:

Why do we, as individuals and as a culture at large, feel the need to continually chase after more, more, more, more, more? Where does this motivation for endless consumption arise?

Well, from a very young age we’re sold the habit of accumulation and the belief that if we can only acquire enough stuff then, finally we’ll be happy.

We’re trained to want more of everything: more money, more stuff, more experiences, more information, more relationships, more sex, more technology, more time, more secrets…

More, more, more, more. More! You see it almost everywhere, always more to be had, more to buy, more things you need and more reasons you’re not good enough until you get more stuff.

This is the great myth of our times, put forward by those whose fortunes are bound up with the economic model of continuous industrial growth. However, despite having more of everything, basic discontentment, superficiality and addiction have risen to epic proportions. ‘Mo money Mo problems’!

Most people in the western world have all their basic needs met and really don’t need tons of new things. I’m quite sure that right now you have all your basic human needs met too. In fact, if you’ve got a roof over your head, food in the fridge and clothes on your back you are richer than 75% of the world. And if you’ve got money in the bank, can read and have freedom to create companies and create your destiny, you’re in the top 2%.

But for many years now we’ve been told that there are literally thousands of things we don’t know and endlessly more things we need to have, and that if only we knew what they were and bought that extra stuff our lives would be better. This message reaches us through the media countless times as we grow up and become absorbed into the culture. We also live surrounded by literally millions of fellow brainwashed humans who have all internalized this message and who reinforce it daily to each other.

But it’s a cruel lie, told by a small group of clever people who aim to profit financially (and probably in other ways too) at the expense of the wellbeing of others and society as a whole.

As Vance Packard points out in his best-selling exposé of the advertising world, The Hidden Persuaders, “as much as 40 per cent of what is produced isn’t actually needed or wanted but if consumers decide not to buy a large share of what is produced a great economic depression is bound to follow.” His interviews with marketing and advertising executives exposes the industry that has been created to persuade consumers who have their basic needs met and are under no immediate pressure to buy more stuff to do exactly that. ‘What makes this country great is the creation of wants and desires, the creation of dissatisfaction with the old and outmoded,’ remarked one executive. A more accurate statement would have replaced the word ‘great’ with ‘profitable’.

Vance’s book was published in the1950’s, and since then the production of pointless stuff has only increased, advertisers have only got better at creating dissatisfaction, and we believe ever more deeply that we will always need more and more and more and more in order to be happy.

How do you think all this advertising is making you feel? How many of your desires are really your desires? How much of your pain is really your pain – not just a feeling that you’re not good enough because some clever advertisers have convinced you that you suck? Where do your decisions, big and small ones, really come from?

We’re now living in a sea of marketing and manipulation so thick and dense that its almost impossible to know what are your own ideas and needs vs the lethal injection of what I call ‘Social Opium’ that’s made us feel we’re never good enough and always need more.

Our basic nature is to be happy and in a state of awe and wonder at life, at the simple miracle of being. But our culture does absolutely nothing to nurture this beautiful natural state. Instead, it expends a huge amount of energy to cultivate and sustain the exact opposite – the feeling of dissatisfaction – and then tells us in so many ways that the remedy for this dissatisfaction is more, more more of everything!

Psychologist Oliver James describes it as like being hypnotised or obsessed: “Someone who has been hypnotised may have their eyes open, and speak and move about, but they are merely the vessel of the hypnotist’s volition, not their own. Likewise, a person with a compulsive obsession to touch the floor one hundred times in a strict ritual before leaving the house is a busy bee, but they are not expressing their will by these actions. In Having mode, people are as much in the grip of external forces as the hypnotised or the compulsively obsessed.”

You probably already know it anyway, that having more stuff won’t make you happy. But what I’m interested to point out is the depth of the brainwashing we receive that puts us into the dissatisfied state of always wanting more; and the connection between this deep conditioning and the relentless quest for ‘spiritual secrets’.

Often people think that by turning their back on the hypnotized consumer mindset and adopting a more conscious mode of living they automatically drop all their previous conditioning. In reality, the conditioning remains but simply gets a change of clothes. The dissatisfaction and associated thirst for accumulation is simply transferred from the material onto the spiritual path – from ‘things’ to ‘secrets’.

The thing is, you probably already know all that you need to know in order to become perfectly happy and live a wonderful life on this magical planet.

There really aren’t very many secrets. But the problem is most people are addicted to the chase for more.  We somehow believe that there must be a special teaching out there, some new or hidden knowledge that if we could only know it would be like a magic pill that sorts our life out instantly once and for all.

Obviously, this is exactly the way of thinking that belongs to the machine of consumerism! It’s in us all very deep, this habit of endless accumulation and the thrill of novelty.

It takes quite a lot of work to begin to unlearn this deep conditioning, to release it from your subconscious mind’s patternings. It’s not at all an easy job. But it is a hell of a lot easier than you jumping from one thing to the next for the rest of your life chasing secrets in the wind – an endless game of Chinese whispers that leaves you questioning your own sanity.

The real thing most of us are missing is not information, its DEEPLY understanding a few essential things and then practicing these on higher and higher levels until we’ve achieved mastery. This is the most ignored piece of common sense advice ever, while we waste our lives chasing after more rather than going deep and mastering the art of living.

If you want your life to change: Practice the basics!

Apply what you know. Master the essential things. Dig Deep Inside over and over and over and over. Become an expert.

The real thing most of us are missing is not more information. Its DEEPLY understanding a few simple, essential things, and then consistently applying those things over a period of time until we’ve achieved mastery.

For example, I heard about a lovely lady from New Zealand whose message is simply that if we made a practice of always breathing deeply from our diaphrams we’d swiftly and completely dissolve many of our emotional blocks and feel really relaxed the whole time. She’s probably right. We all know that breathing deeply and with our diaphram is very good for us, but how many people consistently breathe in this way? Faced with something so simple and effective as deep breathing, how many of us have actually taken the time to go deep and master the art? Very few. Instead we’re more interested in watching the next cutting-edge documentary about the meeting of quantum theory and spiritual alchemy, or traveling half-way across the world to visit the Great Pyramids or some famous Guru! And then there’s that new book to read, and some very special superfoods to blend up…

Deep and simple, deep and simple, deep and simple. If you want a mantra, that’s a good one. Go deep. Keep it Simple. This is perhaps the most powerful antidote to the madness of modernity.

So what I’m trying to say is that the real issue isn’t what you don’t have or don’t know. That’s just a myth you’ve been bombarded with all your life. In the realm of things the challenge is simply to enjoy and appreciate what you already have; and likewise in the realm of knowledge, where the challenge is APPLYING WHAT YOU KNOW UNTIL YOU MASTER IT.

If we want our lives to become remarkable and magical we need to transform at deep levels and truly evolve, and that happens only through persistent efforts to free ourselves from the falsehoods we’ve been sold and then taking consistent steps in the direction of our highest potential.

If you’re ready to find your path with a heart, embrace your dharma and awaken to the wonder of life that is always already there – you’re in the right place.

If you’re ready to systematically re-align every single thing you do and every moment of your day to your highest vision of what you’d love your life to be, I can’t think of a better place for you to be right now.

If you’re ready to stop digging shallow holes all over your lawn, making a mess and falling into your own pits, and instead to go down DEEP in one place to find gold, then this is the book for you.

But if you want to chase empty whispers through the forest of secrets for the rest of your life, always skimming the surface of your true potential, always on the edge of that big discovery which will magically sort everything out for you – sorry, you might as well stop reading now and wait for something more sparkly to come along…

This book is based on the idea that happiness is our basic, intrinsic nature. It’s not something one has to acquire. Nor it it very far away, at the end 23 lifetimes of esoteric training. It is within you now, and in the following pages and chapters I’m going to share with you some simple ways of unlearning your conditioning and finding your way into the happiness that is already yours.

I’ve created a 3 part video series to Discover Your Dharma. If you’re ready to break free from living a life that doesn’t serve you –then you’ll love this powerful free training. Click here to get it for free.

Have fun, Question Everything, Be Humble and Enjoy!

Related reading

• The Two Mindsets: Why Some People Change Their Lives, and Most Don't
• Spiritual Practices for Development and Growth: The Complete Guide
• The Plastic Spiritual Path: When Spiritual Ego Becomes a Half-Way House