Mystery School: inside a temple training

The calling I couldn’t ignore

I thought I would spend this winter quietly in Puglia.

Olive trees. Writing. Space.

And then I saw a Facebook post.

A six week Temple Training at a Mystery School in New Zealand. Starting February 1st, 2026. For people who feel a “calling.”

I scrolled past it.

Then I scrolled back.

A calling?

I had heard of mystery schools before. Temple trainings. Ancient knowledge being shared in modern times. My first thought was, “How amazing that these kinds of initiations still exist.” Maybe one day. When I’m older. When I have more time.

But this post would not leave me alone.

I looked up the training and read its purpose:

“The soul shines through the garment of personality, integrating it instead of being hidden by its structure.”

I did not fully understand it.

But I felt it.

At the same time, I felt resistance.

There goes my quiet winter.

New Zealand is far.

Six weeks is long.

And I still don’t really know what the training will actually look like.

A Mystery indeed.

And yet the feeling grew stronger.

I have to be there.

Guess what. I was accepted.

When life starts cleaning itself up

The moment I decided to go, something shifted.

It felt as if my life began clearing itself.

Priorities became sharper. Some projects suddenly felt complete. Other things wanted to be finished before I left. Conversations that had been lingering for months resurfaced. I found myself tying up loose ends, sometimes consciously, sometimes through dreams, sometimes by sending one last message to close a chapter.

Sometimes the other person was ready too. Sometimes not. And that is okay.

Later, I heard that in traditional cultures, major transitions are marked by simplification. Releasing. Letting go of what does not need to cross the threshold with you.

So this urge to clean up my life before entering the temple is not something dramatic or modern.

It is ancient.

And deeply human.

If I had only two months to live…

When I committed to the training, I had a strange thought.

What if I had only two months left before something fundamentally shifts?

Not in a dramatic, dying way.

But in a before and after way.

What would I do if I knew that from February onward, something essential in me might change?

The answer came quickly.

I would go see the people and the places that matter most to me.

Not someday. Now.

So I bought a round the world ticket.

Instead of quietly preparing in Puglia, I created a whirlwind. I traveled fast. Very fast. From continent to continent. Visiting friends. Former homes. Places that shaped me. People who witnessed different versions of me.

It was intense. Beautiful. Exhausting.

I moved at high speed, almost as if I was compressing years into weeks.

There was something slightly irrational about it. Why this urgency? Why this need to see everyone before entering the temple?

And yet it felt clear.

If something inside me was about to shift, I wanted to honor the life I had lived until now. I wanted to look it in the eye. To say goodbye to certain versions of myself. To reconnect with what truly matters.

Only then did I feel ready to step through the gates.

From survival to something else

For most of my life, I lived in survival mode.

Not visibly dramatic. Not chaotic from the outside.

But internally, always on. Always alert. Always doing.

Producing. Creating. Moving. Solving. Building.

About two years ago, when I announced my ‘retirement’ / sabbatical, something shifted. For the first time, I consciously chose to stop organizing my life around productivity.

I began creating space.

Space in my calendar.

Space in my days.

Space in my head.

Space in my body.

Slowly, I stepped out of survival mode.

But I did not land in ‘thriving’, as I had hoped.

Not yet.

I became more surrendered. More magic started appearing. Things flowed more easily. Life felt less like pushing and more like allowing.

And still, I sensed there was another layer.

A deeper exhale that had not happened yet.

To truly let go, I realized, I would need to feel safe.

Deeply safe.

Apparently, New Zealand carries that energy. Wide landscapes. Distance from the world’s noise. A sense of groundedness.

And here at Highden Temple, this estate has been a sanctuary for decades. Maori roots. Different religions. Different tribes. Different mystery schools. All using this land as a safe container for transformation.

Something in me recognized that.

If there is a place where I might be able to release the last subtle layer of vigilance, it could be here.

Maybe this is where I stop running on adrenaline.

Maybe this is where pleasure replaces urgency.

Maybe this is where being becomes natural instead of something I consciously practice.

I do not know yet.

But I am willing to find out.

Are we the crazy ones, or is the world?

I am inside the gates of Highden Temple.

A mystery school. A place for inner work, awareness, and spiritual exploration.

To outsiders, places like this are sometimes labeled as a cult, a sect, sometimes even a madhouse.

People assume that if you step away from the mainstream, something must be wrong.

That anyone diving into consciousness, silence, or mystery must be a little insane.

From the outside, we might look like the strange ones inside the gates.

Less busy. Less noisy. Less distracted.

And the world outside?

Fast. Loud. Dangerous. Overstimulated. Always scrolling. Always chasing.

The world calls itself sane.

And quietly questions places like this.

But what if it is the other way around?

What if these gates do not keep madness IN, but keep it OUT?

What if this is a place to protect sanity, where you can stay grounded in a world that has lost its center?

I do not have the answers yet.

But I am here to find out.

A back cover written inside the temple

I offered a book writing workshop to the group. As an example, I asked ChatGPT to write a back cover for a book about this six week training.

This is exactly what it came up with:

What happens when you remove distraction, step into community, and dedicate yourself fully to discovering why you are here?

For six weeks, a group of spiritually aware strangers move into an estate. No escape into routine. No hiding behind productivity. Each day of the week is devoted to a different dimension of being human.

Community.

Creativity.

Eros.

Power.

Ritual.

Cosmic timing.

Through shared living, astrology, structured exercises, confrontation, and sacred rituals, each person is challenged to uncover the one thing that is unmistakably theirs. The gift that only they can carry. The role they are meant to play in the greater design.

But purpose is not found in isolation. It is revealed in friction. In mirrors. In desire. In resistance. In devotion.

This book takes you inside the experiment. The tensions. The breakthroughs. The unexpected awakenings. And it shows you how to recreate the process in your own life, even if you never step foot on an estate.

You will not just read about spiritual development.

You will experience how it unfolds.

And you may begin to see your own gift more clearly than ever before.

Because the bigger picture is not somewhere out there.

It is waiting for you to take your place in it.

When I read it back to the group, we had an unexpected thought: “I would want to read that book!”

Now I am living it.

To be continued…