October 8, 2025
In your Heart exists a quality of consciousness that is always available. It doesn’t need to be practiced. It just needs to be noticed. It’s already present, right now.
This quality of consciousness was foundational to the great spiritual insights and achievements of past ages and cultures. It was part of the substrate of shared human experience—taken for granted as both critical and obvious, as sunlight and water are.
Deep orientation to this quality of the Heart has long been understood by the wisdom traditions to be essential to spiritual maturation, for it acts as both soil and seed. Indeed, it is the secret catalyst for moving from knowledge to wisdom.
It already shines, jewel-like, in your Heart.
This quality is:
Reverence.
And it is almost totally absent from the modern collective consciousness we live in.
The Trap of Modern Collective Belief
The cultural field we live in has quietly trained us to believe that the mysteries of creation have been solved, or soon will be. This is present not only in our scientific and educational institutions, but also in our modern religious and spiritual ones. Our culture offers theories, identifies patterns, conducts experiments, and tells compelling stories about the birth of the universe, while implying that this is what it is to be in direct, reverent, profound contact with reality itself.
From inside this cultural field, these beliefs feel natural. Yet from a distant future, we might see that we were living in an age of dishonest certainty: an atmosphere of hubris so pervasive, it became invisible to its inhabitants.
In part, this is because “it’s a mystery” can feel unsatisfying when we’re seeking help in a confusing world. We often conflate certainty with safety. But reverence is far safer than certainty. Certainty requires us to hold tight, when reverence simply invites us to let go.
When we are fortunate enough to glimpse collective consciousness’s dishonesty, it cannot be unseen. The Great Mystery does not cower in tiny uninvestigated corners of the cosmos, waiting for humanity’s inevitable conquest. When you simply look, you see: it is all a mystery.
Consciousness. Life. God. Love. Existence: all mysteries.
The Great Mystery is everywhere and unsolvable. It is the world around you, and the world within you. It is you.
What Happens When We ‘Awaken’ Without Reverence?
As fish swim in water without noticing it, we swim in modern collective consciousness without recognizing the powerful energy field our shared beliefs create. And yet we are being affected by this matrix, constantly and profoundly.
It is a time of crisis and opportunity for humanity. As collective suffering intensifies, we are discovering more about ourselves and listening more deeply to the wisdom traditions that carry insights for developing human consciousness and potential. Meditation, energy healing, and advanced esoteric sciences — along with priceless wisdom from unbroken lineages — are being practiced by communities around the world.
Now consider: we have taken these spiritual technologies, originally cognized and formed in environments of great reverence and humility, and transported them into a worldview of certainty and hubris — one selling answers rather than truthfulness.
This is not merely a matter of ethics or appropriation. The deeper danger is this: without a solid ground of reverence, these powerful technologies of spiritual development may not function as they were designed to. In many wisdom traditions, the most advanced spiritual knowledge was reserved for ‘mystery schools’—for those who were ready. And the mark of readiness was not intellectual prowess or external achievement. It was reverence, humility and discernment.
For these technologies to truly transform us as we need to be transformed, we must first re-root ourselves in something the modern world has nearly forgotten:
A core orientation to reverence.
The Power Of Reverence
Reverence is feeling awe toward life. It is the profound acknowledgement of not knowing.
Reverence is the antidote to certainty and hubris. It restores inner sovereignty in the midst of human collective consciousness. It opens us to a more direct relationship with reality.
Fortunately, reverence is never far away. It is a natural expression of your own Heart’s consciousness.
Here is the paradox: deep acknowledgment of the Mystery is the gateway to true knowing. By letting go of the illusion that mental understanding is the deepest form of relationship, we are able to learn much more effectively.
Reverence is the end of pretending. When we pretend to know what we do not, we close ourselves to the humility required for direct relationship with the Divine. Reverence reopens that doorway.
It teaches us to discern what the thinking mind can be rightly certain of, and what can only be received inwardly, as grace, through the direct experience of the Heart.
Reverence is the inner state where communion with the Divine becomes possible. Without awe and wonder, you may be speaking to the Divine, but it likely means you are not in communion with the Divine.
Reverence opens us to reality itself, a reality more beautiful than any story we could tell about it.
Reverence births humility. Humility births wisdom.
Place Your Hand On Your Heart
Reverence changes you because it is a result of seeing reality clearly, nakedly, without your stories superimposed on it. Reverence is not a mood. It is the opposite of a mood.
Bring your attention to your heart; gently place a hand there.
Ask your Heart:
“Is some reverence present?”
“Some awe?”
“Some acknowledgement of the Mystery?”
You will find the answer is yes, even if subtle—like a candle in a cave, or a star in a dark sky.
Stay with your Heart. Breathe slowly for a few minutes.
Notice that reverence leads directly to humility.
Your Heart Is What You Are Seeking
This is the nature and power of your Heart. Within it are seven essential and completely innate qualities that lead spontaneously and effortlessly to maturation. These qualities have been obscured and hidden by modern collective consciousness. Reverence is one of these seven.
You don’t need to force the feeling of reverence. Just turn to your Heart, and discover that it is already reverent.
As your Heart reshapes your experience—identity, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions—you will discover that your Heart is who you actually are, and have always been.
With love,
Matthew