About the Modern Mystery School: Questions and Answers with Dave Lanyon

Aleks Ceho Featured, MMS International

What is the Modern Mystery School? The Modern Mystery School is an international community of Lightworkers initiated in an ancient tradition of service, compassion and empowerment.

In the Mystery School we believe that all beings are of divine origin — that we all come from God — therefore we ourselves have this Godly divinity within each of us. We believe that all people are, in essence, Gods and Goddesses themselves.

Above the gateway to the ancient Mystery Schools and temples, inscribed are the words, “Know Thyself.” Through the teachings and tools of the Mystery School tradition, we believe that we may come to know ourselves as the divine Gods and Goddesses within. To Know Thyself as divine. To Know Thyself as God. Know Thyself. Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon, one of the lineage holders, answers some of the commonly asked questions about the Modern Mystery School.

These questions and answers come from a video interview of Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon. You can watch that interview here.

 

How does someone join the Modern Mystery School?

Dave Lanyon: Well, join is an interesting word because it is all about the perspective on what you mean by join. How does someone take a class with us? If it is a front-end class, it is open to the public. In other words, you don’t require any sort of prerequisite knowledge, it’s just a front end, maybe a foundational subject matter. What you do is simply look on an international calendar, or one of our teachers’ calendars, and simply register for a class, which is nothing more than literally making a phone call to register, maybe sending an email saying “I’d like to attend the class.” If you wanted to join, that’s a little different. That means that you want to go into some higher aspects of the work, you want to go into deeper knowledge. And that would require you to become something we call an adept through the program called “Empower Thyself.” Empower Thyself is a two-day program, you need someone who’s a certified Guide with the Mystery School to run that class and those Guides work pretty much all over the world. I think we have guides in 49 countries. You would become an adept initiate, which would open the door to many further teachings. But you could take several hundred classes which are day classes, workshops, evening classes, and never do anything else with the Mystery School. If you call that joining, I guess that’s where you’d be joined. If you call joining going further, then it would be further down the road.

 

Why do people join the Modern Mystery School?

Dave Lanyon: Personally, why did I come to the Modern Mystery School? It’s because I wanted to do more spiritual work. At the time, I ran a martial arts club, and I was doing a lot of personal coaching of martial arts. I then branched off into some mental health support and I was finding that the spiritual aspects of life were not being addressed in any useful capacity. So I came to learn more about the spiritual aspects of life. I wasn’t a big fan of religion; it wasn’t going far enough or explaining enough to me to be what I found useful. Others did and that’s great. For me, it didn’t. I think people come to the Mystery School for a lot of different reasons, and each one has its purpose. I know some people come because they really can’t find any sort of healing in traditional methodologies. They’re not getting what they want out of traditional modalities, and that’s okay, to each their own. I know other people come for the excitement. Some people come purely for the drama of learning about things that don’t fit into the normal three-dimensional world, and that’s just an exciting thing, which is more or less a form of entertainment for them; people come for all different reasons. Each person has a reason. But each person has to come with their own free will, show up when they want to, and how they want to. Our doors are open to everyone; we turn no one away. If you’re interested, we’re here for you, and when you’ve had your fill, you move along and do something else. It’s your call.

What will someone experience when they come to the classes at the MMS?

Dave Lanyon: I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, it’s dependent on the person. The thing about the Mystery School is you are getting the opportunity to experience things that don’t make a lot of sense to the rest of the world. Things that are weird and wacky and unusual and wonderful and in many cases challenging; each person will experience that through their lens of what life is about. If you like being challenged, you might find that this is the greatest experience. For some of you, you might say I just want to be told everything’s better or everything’s okay, and that might be your experience too. It depends on the person and what their direct individual experience is going to be. My best advice to anyone is to try it for yourself. I would start with some front-end classes, a workshop, or an evening. Experiment with it; each person will go through that process.

I want to add something to this – in a lot of new age teachings, everything is about your shared experience with other people. In other words, what you experienced, and then sharing that experience with other people. To be quite honest with you, in the Mystery School, we’re not concerned with that. Whatever you experience is your experience, that is yours to have, and not everyone in that room or space will have that exact experience. That’s really on you, and although we love to hear about these wonderful fantastical experiences you may have had, it’s not in reference to anything else for anyone else. So the experience is yours ultimately, and for what it is. Now obviously, being a lineage holder and knowing that we’ve had about 50,000 people come through the doors of the Mystery School over all these years, we know that a lot of people have experienced a lot of good things. But I would never try to find someone’s experience for them that’s yours. You’re supposed to do that. That is part of what empowerment is – defining that experience and understanding what it means to what it does for your life.

 

How might someone’s life transform from their experiences at the Modern Mystery School?

Dave Lanyon: There are thousands and thousands of people who in their personal life have experienced tremendous healing and tremendous growth. And some may say well, how do you validate anything in the Mystery School? It’s really simple, guys. You validate it. You, yourself, the results are you. If there’s no result, I would have no clue why you would go to any class or why to continue from one class to another. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, just go live your life or do something else.

But for thousands of people, it’s helping them. It’s improving their life, it’s bringing them stability, better things, growth, all of that stuff. A person came to the Mystery School, maybe they took some classes, they broke up in their relationship and you sit there and you say “Okay, is that because of the Mystery School? Is that because the person wanted to change? Or is that because the person figured out something about themselves that gave them the power to make the change they want in their life.”

Many things happen when one grows. One thing I can tell you for sure is you cannot expect growth in life, whatever it might be, and for your entire life, sit in the same size box that you just came out of. So people come to the Mystery School and say “Well, I came here to grow, I came here to experience or to potentially know more” and you have to look at it and say “Okay, that’s great.” But if you’re going to grow and make all of that growth, all of that new understanding fit in your current life and just make that life the same size, have the same belief system, live life the same way, then you’re asking not to grow. Growth infers changes, so something has to change.

Often when someone walks the path, the relationships to all of their life changes, in terms of a job, in terms of relationships with other people, their children, their mothers, fathers, everybody. If that didn’t happen then you haven’t grown because a direct reflection of growth is a change in relationships to everything in life; not only people but to things. You might look at a table and a chair differently, a flower in a different way, the sky in a different way. And if that “different way” were not to serve you, then you wouldn’t do it. For example, you wouldn’t keep eating food at a restaurant for years in a row if you didn’t like the food there. That would be a kind of foolish and unintelligent decision. You wouldn’t keep doing things that you want to change. It doesn’t cause change. So, the one thing that a person always has to be careful of when they’re seeking this kind of change through the Mystery School in a spiritual way, is to come seeking the magic wand.

Oftentimes, it seems to say “I’ll pick up this teaching, this class, or this thing, and as soon as I use it, my whole life will change.” It’s not really how it works. Everything you learn in the Mystery School is an accumulation of experiences and the expression of that energy and knowledge. It ultimately results in a tool, a “something” you can use,  a tool inside your mind, inside your heart, it’s a way of doing something. If you choose not to apply that way, then please do not expect a shift, it just doesn’t happen. You have to employ the tool. So, if we point out to you that doing something this way, and approaching it in this way, might benefit you, and then you don’t do it, don’t expect change.

When change comes, we go back to that “I’m uncomfortable” feeling because there’s always that uncomfortableness. So inevitably, when someone comes through that process, the first thing that happens is you shed all the stuff that’s easy to get rid of, the stuff you don’t like that was easy. And you do change, you let go of the things that were easy to let go of. But when you get further and you’re peeling that onion back, going deeper, that’s the hard stuff. That’s the stuff that wasn’t so easy to let go of and it’s the stuff that inevitably, you probably can’t do on your own, or you would have done it. I mean, that would have been a choice you made right, you would have chosen to do it on your own but you didn’t.

So it’s those deeper things that you’re trying to adjust in the aspects of who you are, that you have to spend some time to figure out a methodology to get to them. It’s almost always going to require a tool and a way of employing that tool. In other words, that system you employ to be able to get through it. Often people come into the Mystery School, they’ve tried all the regular ways to change, and it hasn’t worked for them. So, they come to us, and they experience a class or two or three, and they feel significantly different. And when you feel different, you start acting differently. So they begin to shift, things get better for them, they begin to open up, and power and clarity come through them. They get more power for themselves to make better decisions.

Sometimes, the students of the Mystery School, some of whom you might just call customers, they love what we do so much, they get a little fanatical, and when people love something, they can get a little bit over the top. We sometimes have to tell them, you know, it’s great to pull it back a little bit; I know you love what you do, and you want to share, but keep it in perspective. But that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing that people feel that way. You see that sometimes with sports teams where people get a little bit fanatical about a sports team. Here in Toronto, people go crazy about the Maple Leafs and they go into depression when they lose and adulation when they win. Maybe if you put that much energy as a fan into your well-being, you might find that you gain a lot more from life. If there’s any drawback to that, it’s that that enthusiasm sometimes boils over and you have to turn it down to simmer. But in the end, I think it’s all ultimately leading the right way that a person loves that much of their life that they’re willing to be that involved in it.

 

What does progression mean within the Modern Mystery School

Dave Lanyon: The real question is what are you progressing to. When someone says “I’m progressing” well, what are you progressing to? Progression in terms of the Modern Mystery School is about growing to know yourself as a God. We believe and firmly support this in our hermetic traditions that each person is a God. I’m God, you’re God, we’re all Gods. Together we are a being known as God, as individuals we are beings known as God. Progression is about you getting in touch and working towards that divine essence of yourself as God. So when one comes to the Mystery School, they start with certain understandings, teachings, and some foundational stuff so we can all have the same conversation and not be all over the map with different understandings.

That progression is you peeling back the layers of the onion of who you are, to begin to move towards understanding yourself as God. There’s a really big important piece to this and that is the separation between you as an individual, as your divine spiritual essence, and your personality. A personality is something that you’ve learned primarily from other people. It’s also where you filter your emotions through, and you have a lot of emotions. As humans, we have a lot of reactions. Today, people are always reacting to things – I get triggered, angered, pro, con, all of that, that’s personality. And that personality almost always moves you away from inner peace, a divine understanding, a greater perspective, the personality draws you into the micro of something, which doesn’t help you with the macro.

So the progression is, in essence, understanding the macro of who you are, the big picture, the totality, which means you have a much better focus on the micro, of all the little things in life, such as that bugs me and that doesn’t bug me. If we get affected by little things, then the big things get dramatically affected. So, the progression is about moving towards understanding the macro, better of yourself, than the micro and we do that in the Mystery School through a process of learning different classes, obtaining certain understandings, and most especially what we call service. Service is the authentic promotion of yourself and others as God. So, turning to another person to say ‘you are God, I am God, we are God.’ And every decision you make, in terms of the Mystery School needs to come from the aspect of understanding that you are God. Because God wouldn’t harm you, yourself, or any other human being. So you need to start every day by understanding ‘I’m God.’

Progression in our lineage is about you getting closer to that understanding and growing in that understanding and when you embrace it, even in smaller aspects, not in every aspect of your life since we all struggle with our moments. But as you embrace it more and more, you’ll find more inner peace, more enlightenment, more love, more kindness, less vitriol, less hate. So, progression for us is about moving towards understanding yourself as a divine being. Should you come to a higher level class like Ritual Mastery, part of what we’re doing is challenging that progression, challenging all the things that you resist internally and externally and even consciously and subconsciously, to accepting that you are your creator God, that it is about you first and foremost, that the whole universe, your whole life is about you, you have all authority, it is your life that matters over anyone else’s life, it is your authority, and you need to own all of those decisions and you need to have clarity and all of those decisions. Why are you making this decision? I don’t mean guessing at why you’re making the decision, I mean, actually understanding and choosing, thinking and processes, and ways of being that lead you to have a more fulfilled, more joyful life that led you to the place that is the ultimate abundance of life which is personal joy.

Sometimes people say “well, can’t you get that out of the Mystery School?” Absolutely! I was able to obtain it, other people were able to obtain it but my first thought would be if you can do that if you have true inner joy, then you really should be sharing that with as many people as possible because other people out there are suffering, this entire world is suffering, people are suffering, so you need to share that aspect of that inner joy to other people and help them. So, when we go back to that progression, and we talk about service, that service is sharing that. There is a very strong hermetic tradition that people just seem to ignore all the time which is you cannot share what you do not have. So in integrity, if I were to give you some advice, I would say, only learn from those who have something that you want and be willing to exchange for that. Don’t be a person of greed, who says ‘give me I don’t want to exchange this, give me what it is.’ Always be willing to ask the question, how did you get it? How can I obtain that? What did you do? And of course, the ultimate question would be how could I do the same thing, and that’s everything that this Mystery School is about. It is sharing that understanding and for those that don’t obtain that, well, then you have nothing to share.

But as you guys can tell when you check us out, there are thousands of people all over the world who have found this and love it. And yes, they get a little wacky. I’m one of the wacky people too. We get a little wacky because we get so impassioned about the fact that this stuff works. It works. It’s incredible. It doesn’t work for everyone because so much of it is about the tools that you bring to the table and you using those tools, but it does work for a lot of people. So I would strongly recommend that people do this work, and if you’re going to do service, then you’re going to have progression. That’s ultimately what the answer is. Service is progression and progression is service.

 

Where did the Modern Mystery School lineage come from? How can someone know it is verifiable?

Dave Lanyon: The Modern Mystery School has an approximately 8000 years old lineage, we don’t really know if it goes much further and these are hermetic and esoteric teachings. Now some people would say well, where does that validity come from? Well we have a list of hundreds, if not thousands of books that you can look at those teachings and traditions from. You can go into our websites or manuals, and look at those books to see where all of these teachings are coming from, where their direct link to those teachings are. On that point, sometimes even our own students get confused by this, for example, you’ll see us talk about Plato, Aristotle, or Leonardo Da Vinci and we go down a list of different people. What gets lost in there is that all of these people, and many more that you can find on our websites and manuals are people who use hermetic and esoteric teachings to benefit society or to elevate the thinking of humans on the planet. Once you begin to understand what hermetic traditions are, you’ll begin to grow from that. So you might ask; What is the Hermetic tradition?

Hermetic is the understanding of the mind of God without the corruption and pollution of humans in this world. In other words, hermetic understandings lead to wisdom and that wisdom will always supersede anything else on the planet, regardless of how intelligent someone might be. To rephrase it, the authenticity of a Hermetic teaching is the fact that that understanding will be greater than anything else that someone else could bring to the table; and no matter how hard they try to argue that that understanding is incorrect, the understanding will always be proven to be right. For example, “you cannot share what you do not have” is just one of many understandings. So before you listen to a politician or someone else who tells you they’re going to share something with you. The first thing you have to do is say, “do you have that thing to share with me?” because if you don’t, you’re not being authentic. This is just one tiny fraction of what hermetic understanding is, and there’ve been many great teachers in the hermetic traditions over 1000s of years which you know feel free to to look them up but they’re all over the place.

 

How and why does someone become a Life Activation Practitioner, Healer or Teacher in MMS?

Dave Lanyon: Actually, it’s pretty simplistic. So, as you guys can tell we’re set up as a school which means there are prerequisite classes and prerequisite training because if we’re going to go on to further training we all need to have shared knowledge of what we’re doing. If one were to become a Life Activation Practitioner, Teacher, or one of our Healers, because we have different healing modalities, then what you do is take the Empower Thyself class. There are some prerequisites, for example, to become a Life Activation Practitioner would require things such as sacred geometry. Primarily they are one or two day classes or even evening workshops. You have to complete those prerequisites because it’s the same information we’re going to share in the bigger program, and then you would come to one of our international programs. They’re located all over the world in different locations, they’re taught with different people or different master teachers would teach it. And you would take your training there, get your initiation, learn the modalities, practice the modalities and then off you’d go.

At that point, you would need to be recognized by the Mystery School that you’re doing a class, or a healing modality, or an activation, in alignment with the system that we use and what we’re doing, you need to stay certified. That certification comes once a year, where you need to come in and demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of that modality and if you do well, you get certified. You are not required to be certified, it’s not like I can suck the knowledge out of your head or something. If you’ve attended a class, you have the knowledge, and you can go off and do your own thing anytime you want. But the one thing you can’t do is represent this modality, teaching. or healing is of this lineage or this methodology. Out of integrity, one of the things that we hold really clear is that no one is to take what we teach and basically use it and misrepresent it as their own or other groups’ we are very strict on that for obvious reasons. It’s pretty clear, you wouldn’t come as an honorable person into a class or program, take the material, and then reteach it and say it’s your own. That’s not how we work, we are about honor and tradition so it’s pretty straightforward. We are called a school and there are similarities to traditional education in that you do your prerequisites, you take the class, you graduate that class, you are there for a Life Activation Practitioner, a Healer, a Teacher, and there are levels of things that you can do in that so it’s pretty direct.

 

Why does the Modern Mystery School have its own certification process?

Dave Lanyon: Okay, well, why not. It’s a pretty simple question and a pretty simple answer. We are many things and one of those things is we are professionals, and we like to ensure that this lineage, or our methodology of doing things is protected and being done in the same way that it was handed down to others to do. So, for us to recognize that someone is using these modalities correctly, or teaching this class correctly, or whatever it is they might be doing correctly, they need to remain certified. The certification is super important because it allows us to do an assessment that the person is actually doing the material correctly.

To be quite honest with you folks, in the world today, so much of spiritual work in the new age way of thinking is “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be” and that thinking is kind of lame. Oftentimes, if it is meant to be, you’re meant to work your butt off at doing it and learning it, and there’s a concept that’s really false from our traditions in hermetic teachings – that you don’t have to work at understanding God. You don’t have to work at understanding your place in the universe. Yes you do, you have to work very hard. We nicknamed that process ‘climbing the mountain.’ We say you’re climbing the mountain or that’s our euphemism you’re going up the mountain of your knowledge. So certification shows us that you are still in alignment with the way we do things.

Now how does one not become certified? It’s simple. Just don’t show up for certification, you’re not certified, just do whatever you’re going to do and make sure that you represent what you’re doing in honesty and integrity. We used to operate for many years without certification, but what happened was people were getting completely different kinds of training and teachings, there were highly inconsistent understandings. It was not professional. So we switched to this methodology a number of years ago. And I think anyone who’s in the professional world, understands that certification and licensing just comes with the territory. It’s what it is, but nobody’s required to stay certified, unless of course you desire to do even higher training. So let’s say your Life Activation Practitioner or a Teacher and you want to come in and learn the next level stuff, then you would obviously need to be certified, which is an indicator to us that you are respecting and honoring what has already been given to you prior. I, neither of us, nor any of the senior people around the world, would allow someone to come in who is uncertified and then give them even higher training, because that lack of certification is an indicator to us that you may or may not be in alignment with what’s being handed down to you what’s being taught to you and that you might falsely misrepresent who we are and what’s going on.

So certification to us is really important and although I know it’s kind of a pain in the butt for some people, it is the way we’ve chosen to maintain our lineage, and it’s the right choice.

 

What is a Guide?

Dave Lanyon: So in our Mystery School, we have something called a guide which is a uniquely special position. A guide is special because they are the person given the authority, training,  knowledge, and the power to initiate someone in the Empower Thyself class. To make it simple, they’re the teachers of the Empower Thyself class and I think in the western world there are about 150 guides and 350 worldwide. Anyways, they are the people that teach the Empower Thyself class and we hold them to a pretty high standard.

Sometimes people will say, “Oh, this guy did this or this guy did something that I didn’t like.” We have to understand that guides are human beings and in terms of the entire Mystery School, the biggest drawback of the Mystery School is that it’s full of people because people have all different kinds of things. For example, a guide is trained to do the best possible job, but everyone has their expression of that guide hood. By asking to become a guide, by accepting that role, what you’re asking is to take on being one of the highest level representatives of the hermetic traditions that we share with people. So you are committing to be in the purest way possible to maintain what has been taught to you to hand down and teach to other people and we’re pretty strict about that.

Understanding that people make mistakes, sometimes things aren’t perfect, and there are different dynamics but we’re pretty strict about that. Anyone who asked to be a guide or requested to be a guide would have to apply for that role. And almost always, they are told, is this what you want to do? It takes that level of commitment, request and commitment back to the work, do you want to receive this knowledge? So it doesn’t come easily and it’s not an easy role. You’re asking for a very specific role to be a representative of the lineage, so you step into that role. Now, some would say “well I’ve heard sometimes people are removed from that role” and that’s 100% true.

So I want you to look at it as a job, you request to be a representative of an organization, and then you spend several years not doing the work. At some point in time, we’re gonna say ‘well, you’re not representing the work and you’re not doing what you said you wanted to do or asked to do.’ So we remove them from that guide level but that doesn’t mean they are removed from everything else, they will just be removed from being a guide. We do that because we try to hold the entire guide group which we call ‘The Quorum’ in the highest level of integrity possible. Now, a person can be a guide part-time, and then others do it at a much more formal high level where that’s their entire job, livelihood and everything they live comes through being a guide. We make room for everyone, from the people who want to do the work but they have regular full-time careers to a person who wants to do it 100% full time and dedicate themselves to it. So, we have what we call ‘junior guides’ which are the people that do it on occasion, and then we have ‘senior guides’ which are the people that do it full time.

If a person is removed as a guide, for the most part, it’s because they’re not actually in alignment with what they’ve requested to do, so they’re not performing the duties of what they said they would do. That has to happen sometimes, it has to happen for our integrity, and it has to happen for all the authenticity of who we are. Of course, as you could imagine when that happens, some people get really angry and they explode. We’re sort of used to that explosion when that occasion comes up. I would prefer it didn’t happen, but there’s not much I can do about it. If a person isn’t doing that role then,  they’ve moved out of that role. Predominantly, most of the guides are highly dedicated and they work hard at it, and it’s through that action and effort that they see direct growth. On that note, sometimes people ask how people in the Mystery School come in. They primarily come through guides and between 80 and 90% of all the people that come into the Mystery School, the higher Master Teachers will never see them because they will simply be clients of the guides, the guides will teach different classes and do different things, it’s only a very small number that might decide, ‘I also want to be a practitioner.’

So one of the cool things about Mystery School in terms of growth is that someone can come in through a guide, become adept, and can do hundreds of classes and do nothing else. But everything that the guide is doing, the very processes, the classes they’re teaching, the potential spiritual work, all of it,  that person can learn how to do also. There are no glass ceilings, everybody can go as far as everyone else and to me, that’s one of the coolest things about the work as a guide. The success of a guide comes when someone comes in and takes something with you and says, which is the greatest compliment I can think of, “I want to be like you, I want to do what you do because I think it’s the coolest thing.” That to me is super duper awesome, and that can only happen because of this very special role, a guide exists within the lineage.

 

Why does the Modern Mystery School have titles for their roles? What do they mean?

Dave Lanyon: The Mystery School has lots of titles. I know, in our modern age of thinking, titles tend to lead to thinking that it means bad and yes, the truth is there’s a lot of titles in this world that have led to not good things, but that’s not how we operate. Our titles represent the culmination of an understanding of something. For example, I’m an Ipsissimus – this means that I’ve come to understand these teachings at the deepest level and understand, more importantly, myself as an individual in interactions with the rest of these teachings, the universe, and so on. What’s important to understand is titles exist to indicate there is somewhere for you to go in life. It’s very important to have that open.

There’s not a title in this Mystery School that someone can’t get to. So, in other words, I am an Ipsissimus and what that means is that there is such a thing as an Ipsissimus that exists, and it also means that the door is always open for others to become Ipsissimus because there can be many. So, much like if you were in a baseball team, you’d look at your coach and say coach, and that’s a respectful thing because the coach is coaching you, and if a teacher is teaching, you as a teacher. This is what these titles mean.

I’ll tell you personally I couldn’t stand having a title I like just being Dave, this is just who I am. It was only through talking to Founder Gudni, and honestly taking almost about two years for him to convince me that I had to respect the title of Ipsissimus, and it was for something to leave the door open for others to come with you. So that’s why we have these titles. Every title in the Mystery School, every single one is available to everyone. There is an opportunity for anyone to come in and do their thing and to be honest, there is an opportunity and I hope and I pray for those who come behind us to become greater than we are and keep going and become bigger and greater because this world is in seriously desperate need of light.

It needs a lot more compassion, a lot more hermetic understanding, and wisdom so that we can make some better decisions about where we go in life. So I hope and pray that I hold the title and others hold their titles in this Mystery School so that we can have others come join us and have that same understanding so that we can all move forward together, and ultimately, make this world a better place.

 

Why do some steps on the Mystery School path require an application?

Dave Lanyon: It’s fairly simple because not everyone is ready to do everything, and you have to understand we are a school in the way that we operate. You can look at us outside and say we’re a seminar company. We’re a seminar company that operates as a school. Whatever way makes you feel better, that’s fine, but if you want certain teachings in the school, you’ve got to show a certain level of dedication. Most of that dedication honestly is about being an honorable respectful person in life and that you are respecting what you’ve been given. So, we don’t believe here in the concept of ‘I asked, therefore you must give.’ We believe in the concept of someone needing to be worthy.

In other words, prepared to receive. It won’t do me any good if you were to come to a class or any of the other Master Teachers, Third Order, Council of 12 and you simply were not ready to receive that information. In other words, you’re kind of stuck in your knowledge, and that’s preventing you from actually hearing something that you need to hear, or you are not in a place where you’re able to kind of anchor or understand what’s being taught. We don’t want to take your time or your money, without knowing that at least there’s a step in there where you are requesting the knowledge because you have some concept of what you’re asking for. That gives us and reserves the right to say no, depending on what it is the person is applying for, sometimes the answer is simply no not right now, I would recommend you go and do this for another year or two or something else.

Sometimes the person’s ready and you say yes, that’s great, you can take this training or whatnot but it is the most respectful way to the teacher and the student to be able to teach a class. Is it perfect? No, but it is a very good way to be able to make sure that people have some pre-understanding of what it is they’re asking for, in terms of higher knowledge and teaching.

 

Why does the Mystery School charge so much money for its classes?

Dave Lanyon: That is an interesting question that makes me think okay, how much is too much? What is too much? You see, the question is framed on an understanding that a certain level of the cost of something is too much money. If you bought a Cadillac, is it too much money as a car? Or if you bought a Rolls Royce, is that too much money? or a Bugatti? If you bought a mansion, is it too much money? Or are you getting what you paid for? I don’t accept that question in the phraseology of the way it’s being offered. The Mystery School charges, the value of what we think you get out of it. You, as a freewill human being who lived their life in any way you want, decide if you find it or think that it’s valuable enough. So, if I turned around and said that a Rolls Royce is worth this much money, you can decide if you think it’s too expensive or not.

It all depends on where you sit with things, whether you consider this expensive, or very inexpensive. Some organizations do a lot of seminars and classes that charge way, way more money than we do. Then there are others that charge way less than we do. I will tell you that at the highest end, the school the mage program is probably about four years long and it’s about $100,000, but I have no idea why anyone would take any class that they don’t think is worth the money.  Why would you do it? Just don’t do it. I don’t understand that as being a prerequisite. It’s kind of like saying to the Rolls Royce dealership that they shouldn’t be in business because they charge so much for the Rolls Royces. You don’t buy a Rolls Royce if you don’t want a Rolls Royce, go buy something else.

And so, we are very high quality, very well run organization, and we have the best teachers in the world for the material that is taught and we charge for that. If a person feels that it’s too much money, then I just wouldn’t come. It’s just not something you want to do, don’t do it. But for those who want to do it, it’s many thousands, they do it. Sometimes people say, ‘Well, doesn’t that prevent someone from having some knowledge that they might need, and there might be some truth to that. The thing is when anyone who’s ever struggled financially goes through that commitment, dedication, and discipline. Then, we will always stand behind them to get there. It’s something I do personally, something the other teachers do. We will always figure out a way to help that person go to that class, even if they don’t have the payment for it. If they’re showing dedication and want. We have in the past, done many scholarships where a person will write in and explain their situation and we’ve just granted them, classes, at no charge because that’s the situation.

Although we firmly believe in exchange, and that is that you should never take without wanting to give back because then that creates greed in the world. So don’t walk over to someone and say give me that because I want it, you should always walk over to the person and say “I like that, how would I obtain it.’ So, it’s not always about money. Sometimes it’s simply about the effort and the energy of that person. Oftentimes when I help people financially, I get bitten by it, they take the teachings, run away and never pay for it, and it just comes with the territory, but I’d rather be made to look like a sucker helping people out financially when they need the help than hold back what they need to do if they feel that they can grow through that class.

In addition, there is something where, for the stone-throwers in the world, they try to catch you both ways. If you don’t help a person financially, it could be anything from a $50 evening class to a $5,000 teaching for three or four or five days if you don’t help them; the accusation always is that you didn’t help them. You’re withholding knowledge that they might need or help they might need, what a bad organization. We’ve been accused of if you do help them, there must be some nefarious other things that you’re doing, you’re helping them to control them or something stupid. The reality is, I’d much rather be accused of helping someone for nefarious means than not helping them. So where people are truly dedicated we’re always going to help them. And for those of you that think it’s not the right way to go, well, it sort of is from our perspective and that’s how we’re going to do it.

 

What are the Modern Mystery Schools teachings and beliefs on money and wealth?

Dave Lanyon: Here’s another misconception in the world of understanding spirituality, and this concept that it is only the impoverished that understand the spirit, and that’s kind of dumb. What it does is it leaves all the money to the people who don’t care or don’t feel that way, and it leaves all the people who are trying to potentially improve the situation with nothing, at least through spirituality and maybe trying to improve it in other ways.

But, in terms of the Mystery School, we don’t believe that, we believe in royalty, we believe that everyone is a God -Goddess, each individual and that everyone deserves to be wealthy. That wealth is going to probably require a lot of work on your part, but you should not shy away, or it is not an automatic default that wealth immediately infers that you are a person of ill intent or a person who is not Godly. Of course, you are. All money is, in the perspective of the Mystery Schools, an amplifier for your internal belief system to be expressed physically. So, if I have a lot of money, I can assure you that my feelings about art, the cars I want to drive, the homes I want to live in, the way I want to live, how I want to travel, whatever clothes you’re gonna wear, they’re going to be expressed because you can express it with many more options and a person who doesn’t have it.

So, you’re gonna see the inner workings of that person quite clearly. If that person is a person of negative intent, you will see that, if the person has a positive intent, you will see that. And the reality is that we want the good people to have as much wealth as possible because then you won’t have starvation and suffrage from impoverished situations. After all, the money will be there. So we do not believe, and we do not teach, nor do we support the concept of you being an impoverished person makes you a better person. No. Money makes the world go round. Mastery of it is a big part of it. You have to learn how to master that money, it’s a big part of life, guys. And if you’re getting older in life and you’re still not financially stable, you need to look in the mirror and make some different decisions, whether this Mystery School is not important in that way. What’s important is that you make a decision around finance and growth, and take care of yourself, make sure you can pay for your home, your food, and whatever way you want to live to the best of your ability, but the necessity of abundance is very important.

Abundance is of a great many things, it’s an overflow of love, joy, family, friends, all the good things in life. But one thing that is almost always ignored, especially in sort of New Age teachings, is abundance is income. And on that note, related to that, please never. My advice to you is not to learn how to handle income from someone who has no income, how to handle money from someone broke. In other words, we firmly believe that, especially around the teachings of wealth, that you need to be taught by people who understand what wealth is because when we go back to our hermetic training, you cannot share what you do not have. And so, money expressed in a good way is a very good thing and it can make the world a better place. So we shouldn’t shy away from money, but we also should not live for money, one should use the money to make your life great, your family and friends life’s great, and as many other people as you can touch, you should make their life great, and it’s only through the overflow of abundance.

For example, we can support women’s shelters for battered and abused women and children, because we have an overflow of abundance and then we take that overflow, a good chunk of it and we give it to charities to help them, ones that spend the money on the correct thing. We can’t do that without money guys, if you want to stop starvation in the world, you’re gonna have a much greater influence on doing that, if you have money than a broke person. If you want to help homeless people, you’re going to have a much greater influence if you have money than if you don’t. So, in our teachings, money in a respectful exchange way is a very valuable, very important, and honorable thing to have in this world, and it’s the mastery of money that we have to get to the use of it correctly to benefit ourselves and others in the highest level possible.

 

Do you believe in Magick?

Dave Lanyon: Yes, of course, I believe in magick, but the problem is that the layman or a person outside the Mystery School or at any sort of higher hermetic understanding of what we mean by magick, tries to interpret that to mean something like poof here’s a fireball, or here’s a spell or, point your magic wand and a lightning bolt shoots out of it or something like that. They don’t understand what magick is. Magick is turning nothing into something and something into something else. It’s primarily the process of transformation and so much of magick is about the alchemical process, the alchemy of the transformative process. So magick is very real, and there are certain ways we can operate that magic, but the magic is operated in a way that is often very powerful but yet subtle to the eye, and subtle to the ear, but powerful to the essence of the person.

In other words, the echo of the magic is often showing him fruits as their life goes on, it’s not the poop fireball and I know that a lot of laymen, they like to learn rounds, or you guys believe in magick. Yeah, I do. But if you mean stage magic sleight of hand, I believe in that too because people study sleight of hand magic. I believe in film magic. There’s all kinds of magicks. But we have in our tradition we have left, and completely become blind to the magic of the world that is within our grasp to wield and that magic, so much of it is about certain understanding of flows and frequencies, and how to use them appropriately. And so, you would say ‘well, how do you know magic works?’ And the answer is simple. If you understand the magic, and you have the training and authority on how to do it, you will see the fruits of that magick. But if you’re talking about throwing fireballs, or walking through walls, or levitating off the floor, let me know when you see someone do that. I’d be happy because I’d love to see it too. But if you’re talking about the magic that transforms, the magic that changes all of life to a better flow that allows you to see the greater whole, 100% that magic exists without fail.

 

What makes the MMS different from the New Age or other spiritual schools?

Dave Lanyon: You know, that question comes up sometimes and for some of you it’s going to kind of push your buttons, some of you are going to understand it differently. As a Mystery School we believe that the way to know hidden knowledge, which is within thyself, is that you have to work at it, you have to work with peeling that onion, peeling those layers back, and getting to that work that you want to try and find what’s going on inside of your mind, inside your heart and life choices. In essence, understanding also, what is going on around you, the universe, why people are doing what they’re doing, those kinds of things. That study requires commitment and hard work and so the Mystery School holds people to that commitment.

When someone says, I want to learn a higher teaching, one of the Master Teachers might say okay, that requires a year long study or a commitment of meditating two hours a day or whatever the commitment is, we hold you to it. And usually, to be honest guys in writing, most spiritual practices in the New Age movement, and I’m not talking about necessarily things that have more grounded history like Buddhism, Shintoism and things like this, but New Age – ‘what is meant to be is meant to be.’ They don’t require or demand any sort of commitment and fulfillment of those commitments. And I can tell you that if your path is left to the ego, if your decisions to know thyself are left purely to your ego, and what makes you feel better, you will inevitably fail, there’s no two ways about it. So I want to share with you guys something that I came up with and it’s called the pancake principle, it’s really important because of so many teachings in spirituality, and let’s just sort of leave religion out of this, for this aspect because in religion, you have a different context and different sort of dogmatic setup.

So let’s just talk purely about the New Age, so much is about making you feel better. So it’s the concept of, let’s say you love pancakes and I’m making peach pancakes, the best pancakes in the world, the greatest pancakes you’ve ever had. If you don’t like peaches, I make awesome blueberry and chocolate chips. If you just like  buttermilk, I can go with whatever you want. I will make you pancakes with real maple syrup and all the good stuff, and with a little tear in your eye, you say “those are the best pancakes I’ve ever had” which is fantastic. When you eat those pancakes, you feel good, you’re  happy and it brings a smile to your face. Now that wonderful pancake breakfast that you had doesn’t change any aspect of your life. You’re not going to suddenly understand that the universe is brighter, you’re not suddenly going to understand why the world is working the way it is, you’re not going to suddenly understand progression, none of that is going to change but for a moment in time, you will feel a sense of comfort.

That sense of comfort is a very dangerous thing because in the Mystery School traditions, we are directing you and helping you to find true inner joy and inner joy is the state of being. It’s a state of existence to be enjoyed. It’s not something that comes and goes like happiness and so much of what’s happening in the New Age, is that they’re trying to offer you happiness. I can’t say that for all of them because there’s so many different organizations but they’re offering you the pancakes. We’re not really about the pancakes. We’re about long term growth. You need to understand that growth is often highly uncomfortable. You have always grown and I will challenge you to this and even though I don’t talk to every single person on this camera, your growth has always come from the greatest challenges that you faced, and then overcoming those challenges to then grow.

So, it is from the greatest struggle that we gain the greatest reward. The beautiful struggle that you experience inside the Mystery School is about the struggle of yourself. There’s no external struggle, and the only way you’re going to get past that struggle is through a commitment. You’re going to commit to get to the other side of that struggle. Here’s the thing to do, anything that is not natural, requires commitment. If it’s natural, you don’t need to commit to it, you do it naturally. An unnatural state, which is often the only way to transform yourself into a higher sense of self or a higher way of knowledge is to do something unnatural. And in that unnatural thing that you want to do, you have to commit to that thing. So in other words it’s not natural for us to understand physics or quantum physics, we weren’t born to sort of understand it, we have to do an unnatural thing, we go to high level training, teachings, high level universities and we learn that thing and make that commitment.

Now the tree of commitment is planting to do something, the commitment always has to be something that isn’t natural which means, in essence, it will challenge you right from that first understanding. I am now being challenged by something because it’s an unnatural state which we have to work on and obtain something valuable. I’m going to have to have that level of commitment and that commitment is only going to come through discipline and consistency. So if I say I’m committed, it means that something is unnatural for me. The only way that tree of commitment will bear fruit, is if I tend it with discipline, and I stick with it, and I’m consistent. If I’m disciplined and consistent, then the commitment will fulfill the fruits. The Mystery School holds you to your commitments. If you come to me and say “I want to learn this” and I say the way to learn this is that you must meditate two hours a day but you don’t meditate two hours a day, you have broken your covenant with me as a teacher and with yourself. And that’s where we make a big difference because I will hold you accountable at the higher levels.

In the beginning it’s not like that because it’s completely up to you what you’re going to do, but once you get higher up, this is where sometimes people say “well the Mystery School rejected me” it’s because you’re generally not holding to your commitment and that’s where the failure comes in. Yeah, that gets stones thrown at us, but I and the rest of the leaders in this Mystery School would rather have stones thrown on us for holding people to their commitment, because that’s the only way they’re going to get there, than to turn around, melt down and just let a person do whatever they want. If you came into this Mystery School, into this lineage and did whatever you want, you would fail. It would be a tragic waste of your time and money and the teachers, whoever they may be teaching you time and money. So we hold you to your commitments, we hold you to behaving to the best of your ability, in alignment with what you’re asking for. We understand that mistakes are made, we understand that you’re not perfect, we understand that sometimes you stumble, but as long as I see that discipline and consistency, even if it’s not perfect, and that tree is there, then you can go as far as you want to go, and that’s the core difference between the Mystery School, and sort of outside teachings.

To be honest, for a lot of people coming into the school, it’s hard especially if they’ve done other things, and then they come here and we go “but you committed to this so we are not opening the door in this particular teaching,” then they get a little frustrated but you have to learn as a human being if you want to be successful in life, inside and outside this mystery, you have to learn that when you say something, you have to back it up. If you say ‘I’m going to do that’ then you really should do that. And in terms of the Mystery School, when someone says ‘I’m going to do that’, we take you at your word, that that’s what you’re going to do, and we remind you of that in some cases that that is what you’ve said you’re going to do. So that’s the core difference.

 

How did you personally get involved in the Mystery School?

Dave Lanyon: Well, I was doing mental health work, and I was also a martial arts coach. I’ve done a bunch of different martial arts in my life and I just thought it was an aspect of life spirituality that needed to be explored more because I was crossing it in many different avenues in my life. I did the traditional way, I studied Reiki, I did a bunch of other things, some new age and some older traditions. I found success and understanding with some of it, and then there were other things that I found to be very tripe and not valuable in what they did. So one day, a mentor of mine who was one of the people I respected in mental health, directed me to this person and said that you need this, what we now call Life Activation. So I went, only because I had tremendous respect for my mentor. She was a super good lady, super good at what she did, and so I respected her for that.

So I went to this person and got a Life Activation, which was so not who I was, but I did it anyways and that led them to talking about me potentially going to see some guides to get the Empower Thyself. I resisted doing the Empower Thyself, and at the time I didn’t understand why. I just didn’t want to do it to the point that I was turning around on my day to attend the Empower Thyself class and heading back home. Eventually, I went and I did take the class, received the initiation, got the training, and through the whole thing I sat with my arms and legs crossed. There’s growling, snarling and being the impolite human being in that class. I was you know the guy that kept pointing and saying “how do you prove that?” “You prove this and prove that to me” because I wanted all the mental construct, and yet I was ignoring through that entire process, what was happening inside of me. I was feeling better, I was feeling different, I was feeling I was going the right direction, I was feeling I had clarity, and yet my mind kept saying “yeah, but this can’t be true and that can’t be like this and you can’t prove this” so I kept jumping from thing to another.

Eventually that led me to having an opportunity to go to the US to do what we call Healers Academy Week 1 now, it was called a different program back then. I went down there, and  I resisted every moment I was there. I was so frustrated inside, and yet for some reason my feet could carry me forward even though I was so frustrated with the experience because I’m not a woo-woo guy, I don’t like the “meditate on a flower and the energy comes in” it’s not who I am. Plenty of people like that, awesome. But, I took that training and that led me to the thing that I was seeking the most which was to become a Ritual Master. Once I went from Healers Academy to the Ritual Master Program, I began to get a lot more understanding and still tremendous resistance. This is pretty much on the money factual, I probably quit, five to ten times a day for the first five years that I was doing any training with the Mystery School, because my ego was just driving me nuts.  I was so resistant to everything and so frustrated by all these concepts that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Then one day I stopped, and I have to put a lot of it on Founder Gudni, who never stopped supporting me, but also at the same time, never stopped pushing my buttons and driving me crazy. But he stood with me through the insanity, and often the conductor of that insanity and I eventually overcame that, gave up, and said “the authenticity is coming from me.” I realized it was me that was authenticating why I was doing it because of how I felt, the way I was living my life, and I was just happier, more peaceful, more upbeat, and clear headed. All these good things were coming and they came through this weird system that didn’t make any sense to the mind. So you might call it magic, if you want to put that as magic. If your mind can accept it and it causes it to happen, we can also maybe say that’s magic. So, another form of magic.

 

The key difference is that I wasn’t born into some higher destiny, I wasn’t born walking on water or being able to perform miracles, I’m just a regular guy. One of the things I like to remind people of is that if a regular guy can find a path of inner peace, the way I did, then so can you. I am a direct product of the teachings of this lineage, and I’m a direct product of what Founder Gudni works so hard, through his craziness to make happen. I stand as an example that there is a way to become more clear about everything in life, to become more enlightened, to be more happy and healthy, to have good relationships, to surround yourself with good people, and do all these things. If you find another way to do that outside this Mystery School, God bless you, go for it man, do whatever you’re going to do, find that way, if it’s working, thumbs up from me, I 100% got your back, but this is how I found my peace.

I don’t stand as an example of someone with some massive predestination and superpower, I stand as an example of a regular everyday guy who fought through all my ego and struggled to get there. It was the tools, the training, and the teachings that got me there. So I have tremendous respect for this lineage, I have tremendous respect for Founder Gudni and for my brother Ipsissimus Hideto, who was a huge help in getting me here. It’s not easy guys, it’s not easy at the highest levels, it’s very hard, but because something’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. It’s probably worth more if it’s harder than it’s easy.