Past Lives, The Earth School, & Attracting Mystical Friends

Seek and You Will Find

Learning Remembering

Late last summer after I’d been studying the mystical for about a year I made the comment to my wife that it didn’t feel like I was learning mysticism, but rather that I was remembering it. I said that because while I’m somewhat bright in certain areas, there are many subjects that don’t come easy for me. I rarely pick stuff up on the first try.

But mysticism rang true for me instantly, and in a way like nothing else I’d ever come across.

A month after I shared that insight with my wife I met with a woman who’s an intuitive and energy worker. She had no historical background on me or my interests, and within 30 seconds, and without prompting, she brought up that I had recently been tracking down sacred knowledge, and that this esoteric wisdom that I’d been seeking was not something I was learning, but rather it was something I was remembering.

Upon hearing these words my zoom persona collapsed into tears. I felt seen in a way that’s hard to describe.

She went on to tell me other things about who I was, not as my present-day personality, but at the level of my soul-identity.

Those were powerful moments for me.

A mystic sharing with me that I had been a mystic too; and now, by the grace of the Divine, I was making my way back along that path once again.

---

Many Lives, Many Mystics

I recently wrote about the comfort I’ve found in reincarnation.

And the topic of reincarnation is so ever-present in my life these days that we hardly use the word any more. I’ve yet to meet a mystic who doesn’t believe in reincarnation; they all do, even the Christian mystics. It’s just a given.

But the Christian mystics can be a little hard to come by. Sadly they’re rarely to be found in churches. To date the most direct audible message I’ve ever received from Christ was actually delivered to me by a mystic with a Hindu background.

I found that hilariously beautiful.

And so I was sitting with this mystic friend of mine the other day and he told me out of the blue that life is often challenging for me because I see it as a sort of endurance test rather than something to be enjoyed.

This insight is deeply true for me, although I’m not sure I’d ever been capable of bringing it to the surface of my awareness before. Or at least not able to put it into words. There are a few verses in the New Testament about endurance that I always felt a certain solidarity with; but he was helping me see that this had become a blind spot for me. Yes, sometimes endurance is absolutely required and highly admirable. And sometimes we need to be able to just relax and enjoy life.

But this is what he does, my mystic friend. He tells me what lies beneath the surface. My deepest secrets that I barely know myself, and then I’m like, oh, yes, of course—that’s exactly right.

So he went on to say that I’d lived a few lives in Puritan New England (a few centuries back) where I’d often had to suppress my deeper insights about the Divine, about God, about Christ; and this suppression had all been very painful for me, both consciously and subconsciously.

He’s shared plenty of past life stuff with me before and at first I took these stories as possibly metaphorical, but still quite helpful. But the more I’ve worked with him, and the more I’ve seen him nail every other aspect of his work, the more I’ve accepted that what he says about previous lives is accurate and true, as best as he can see.

Once he told me I’d lived as a scribe in a small settlement on the shores of the Dead Sea. I looked it up afterwards and this settlement was home to a people group I’d just spent the previous month accumulating a number of books about because of the deep longing I’d felt for the mystical community they’d established a couple thousand years ago.

Literally my heart hurt when I would read about this community, as if I missed it.

Was he somehow picking up on the desires within my field? Or were these desires of mine driven by a past life that I’d lived twenty centuries ago among these people?

I’ve now heard about 20 or so of my past lives and they all seem to ring true, not only to what I feel is true within myself for this life, but also on an even deeper level. It seems I’m often here doing similar things. Those similar things over the last thousand years or so have often seemed to involve me serving as a sort of bridge for people out of the institutional rot of oppressive power structures like the Church™ and into a more expansive understanding and experience of the Divine.

And so while it took me a while to get here in this life, it’s no surprise that I’ve once again found myself beginning to try to do a similar kind of work here with this substack.

---

Manifesting Mystics

In early 2024 as I had just gone into the deep end of mysticism I was studying a book called Advanced Manifesting by Tara Springett.

The Only Book You’ll Need on the Topic

Don’t let the subtitle about fulfilling your dreams turn you off. All of your dreams are about bringing more love and joy into the world, right?

Many of you know of my affinity for Tara and her gift for presenting advanced spiritual concepts in plain, simple language with practical guidance. Her blue book on Consciousness was my literal gateway into mysticism and led me to resolve my multi-decade hunt for what I now refer to as Reality.

In her manifesting book Tara gives us a simple formula for attracting those things into our life that will benefit not only us, but also all of creation. All miracles, magic, or manifesting (whatever word we’d like to use) should always follow this intent; for the benefit of all creation.

So using Tara’s book as a guide I created my own manifesting list with friendship being one of my primary focuses. I’d historically been blessed with a number of great friends who were reliable, trustworthy, and intellectually stimulating; but once I began to find interest in the mystical I suddenly had only a couple of close friends that shared my interest.

And that was lonely.

Here I was finally uncovering the secrets of the Universe after a decades-long search with almost no one to share it with. Fortunately I did have my wife and another pal who’d both survived the whole Christian Deconstruction process with me, and they were both very good listeners who supported my enthusiasm.

But I desperately felt I needed to find the others.

I knew they were out there.

So with guidance from Tara’s book I wrote this prayer to the Universe, asking for the thing I wanted most:

Friends - incredible beings in relationships of mutual enrichment for the benefit of all humankind. We are already on the path of coming together.

I make this offer to the Universe, and I invite all who like this offer to come into my life to help bring this into reality

I align myself with you, Higher Consciousness, the most powerful positive force in the universe. I declare that all of this, or something even better, comes now easily into existence for the highest good of myself and all beings.

I am effortlessly making every change in myself and my environment that is necessary to reach my aim. I totally open up to receiving and enjoying all these wonderful gifts.

If this prayer resonates with you, use it. Tweak it. Find the words that ring true for you and the life you’d like to enjoy.

---

Third Place For the Win

A couple months later I felt a nudge to reach out to someone I’d been following on Twitter/X named

Tom Morgan

. I’d found him several months earlier and he’d quickly become my favorite follow on Twitter/X. A bright guy, originally from the world of finance, asking woo questions, and oh, by the way, he struck me immediately and consistently as kind and genuine.

But this feeling to reach out to Tom was strange because first of all, sending cold DMs to strangers on the internet wasn’t really my thing. And secondly, I wasn’t sure if the idea was even a good one.

But as I wrote about recently this was more than an idea. It was my intuition¹ at work in a powerful way. And even though I had little experience (and zero training) with intuition, it was firing off big time.

And I probably ignored this intuition for a couple of weeks, because again, I was probably thinking “what’s the point?”

But it kept arising, again and again, until one morning I saw Tom was tweeting a question that I felt only I could provide the perfect answer for.

So I did it. I reached out and shared what I thought might be some helpful information to him. And it turns out it was helpful, and we struck up an ongoing conversation.²

Soon we were on a zoom call. And then another.

A couple months later, in late May, I sent him a text:

Have you studied or given any thought to “third places”?

Historically we had home, work, and a third place; typically church or some other community gathering spot.

This probably helps explain gyms, pickle-ball courts, yoga studios and country clubs, but society at large is severely lacking in healthy third places.

I spend so much time thinking of how to find a “third place” to help myself and others grow in consciousness.

The label of “third place” originates from sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe a spot that wasn’t 1) home or 2) work. Historically it was a third place such as a church or social club, or other community-forming gathering spot. Even a couple decades ago most adults had a spot known as a “third place.”

Tom immediately replied with a “Haha” and “Launching this in a couple weeks” with a link to the early framework for The Leading Edge, which soon became the amazing community that he’s built.

How it started

Today Tom is a close friend who’s enriched my life beyond words. I love him like a brother and feel like I’ve known him forever.

He recently wrote about why Leading Edge became a thriving community and then laid out the purpose and framework of what high-agency, consciousness-expansion communities can truly look like. He explained that any successful community of this type should be intimate, agentic, and relatively small (capped at 150 members.) A primary focus is high-integrity content and everyone receives benefit in direct relation to what they put into it.

Maybe I’m biased as a member of Leading Edge, but I can say with zero hesitation (and no exaggeration) it’s one of the single best things that’s ever happened to me in my life.

And an answered prayer.

Tom has managed to attract some of the coolest, kindest, and most open people in the world, all in one place. Everyone is successful in their own way by default, so there’s no posturing or striving. It’s mostly sharing and helping and supporting in an atmosphere of love and fun.

Through Leading Edge I’ve made dozens of new friends around the globe who are all interested and focused on a lot of the same stuff I’m into. And I’m regularly exposed to new ideas and practices being shared by some incredibly generous and talented people.

Let's Build the World Wise Web

And Leading Edge isn’t alone. Other leaders such as

Scott Britton

and

Alexander Beiner

have also created communities as well, and I hear great things. I’m also excited about Sangha and the wisdom circle they’re creating.

And there are also what we might think of as less-permanent communities where someone can still meet awesome people and form meaningful bonds like The Way of the Rewilded Soul program that my friend

Kevin Kaiser

is launching soon.

Most of these communities are invite only, with an extensive application process, and some may even be closed to new members. These are hubs filled with high-agency folks committed to working on themselves and supporting one another so that they can be a positive force within whatever new world emerges in the coming years.

And I want to call out that I’ve used the words high-agency a lot in the last few paragraphs and it’s intentional. The Earth School needs people who can get stuff done in the world in partnership with the Divine. We need those who are skilled in the affairs of the world and in connection with the Divine.

And to be clear, the focus on these communities isn’t solely spiritual, nor should it be; but spirituality is often an important component for members. So perhaps these groups could be more properly categorized as wisdom communities. But as the founders of each of these communities understand, there is no wisdom sans spirituality.

The point is that these “places” exist, and if you ask the Universe you’ll probably find what you’re searching for, when you’re ready.

And if you’re a high agency person who can’t quite locate what you’re looking for, then maybe you’ll create your own wisdom community, as that’s how all of these existing groups originated in the first place.

A favorite tweet of 2025

---

The Earth School

Once we can begin to understand the structure of our lives and reality as a sort of school that allows us to learn many spiritual lessons as part of our never-ending growth and development, it can help reframe most, if not all, of life.

Hearing those 20 or so past lives of mine and who I was, what I’ve done, and what sorts of skills and energetic traumas I’ve picked up along the way has been tremendously insightful.

It seems that during my many times on Earth I’ve already had most of the things I deeply desire in my current life; the mystical roles and abilities.

(Please don’t judge my desire to be a wizard.)

And in some ways this knowledge certainly helps me deal with the stresses, challenges, and disappointments that sometimes arise in my current day job.

As far as mystical abilities go, will some of those come online for me in a bigger way in this incarnation? I certainly hope so.

But even if they don’t I can trust that as long as I’m aligning myself with the Universe as best I can, then everything that’s supposed to work out will work out.

Another benefit of hearing about all these past lives is that I’ve come to realize that I could care less about the financial status of my personalities from 500 or 1000 years ago. This insight becomes tremendously freeing for my current life as it relates to all the silly societal games we play.

At least partially inspired by a recent meltdown I had over a work spreadsheet.

---

Two Things

There are two things that matter during our time here: people and spiritual progress.

-The spiritual progress that we make as we wisely grow in our abilities to love and unify. This process will never ever end. As Jesus said, don’t you know ye are gods?

-The other souls we interact with along the way. Sometimes we’ll help others and sometimes others will help us, and we’re all helping one another even when it looks like we’re not.

People and spiritual progress are forever intertwined. We can only learn so much sequestered away on the mountain. And there’s always an opportunity for growth when others are around.

Another insight I’ve learned from my mystical friend is that the affinity I have for the individuals in my life seems to be directly influenced by the number of previous lives we’ve shared together.

Anytime I give him the name of one of my pals he not only tells me all about that person, often summing up the whole of our relationship in a handful of words; he can also tell me the number of lives that friend and I have shared.

And this number of shared lives always matches the level of connection the two of us share.

Is this information of shared previous lives real? Is it symbolic or metaphorical based on something he’s picking up in the field?

Either way I find it astonishing.

Seek & You Will Find

We’ve all been doing this a long time. If you read articles like this and they light you up inside then understand there’s a reason for that. Each of us, in our own way, is remembering. So if there’s a pure desire in your heart to find others you can talk with about these topics then I’d say this desire exists within you for a reason.

We shift our inner world and the outer world follows. So go ahead, raise your hand. Ask the Universe. Be bold in your request. And as more of us on the mystical path connect (or reconnect), something powerful happens.

Each re-connection strengthens us. Restores us. Reminds us of who we are.

Your mystical friends are out there, I promise.

And they’re looking for you too.

"Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends."

-Hafiz

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this article please be sure to ❤️ and 🔄 it so others can find it too. Where have you found friends to connect with on spirituality or mysticism? Let us know in the comment section…

If you enjoyed this perspective please share with any friends or family members who might share these interests.

This substack currently has a small audience of only a few hundred readers. If you feel this topic is helpful or important please join our mailing list as we explore these and other important insights.

Thank you for being here and have an awesome week❤️

1. I’m blessed to be someone who feels like they have good ideas fairly regularly that allow me to accomplish many things that are positive in my life, and I find I generally act on these good ideas rather quickly and consistently. But when intuition arises, at least for me, it generally doesn’t seem to have the label of “good idea” attached to it. And it’s also not arising in my head. Rather, intuition seems to be more of a feeling or awareness coming from the center of my chest. And it always seems to appear as simply information, rather than something brilliant I just thought up. Not good, not bad, just information.

2. The full story from Tom’s perspective can be found here.