A Mystic in Maine: A Guide to Self-Knowledge

By Russell Yates

What does it mean to be a mystic? Does it mean examining the very fabric of reality and developing paranormal abilities? Can anyone tap into their innate abilities to connect with the divine? Author Russell Yates says yes—and shows the reader in chapter-by-chapter detail how to gain a self-consciousness characterized by reduced fear and evidenced by paranormal experiences.

Mysticism is about leading a magical and miraculous life. Mysticism is about love and joy, living a happier life, and being free from worry.

Using personal anecdotes and examples from mystics past and present, Yates describes how you can become a mystic by clearing perceptions, harnessing reality, connecting with the divine life force, and gaining paranormal abilities. He teaches techniques for meditation and examines the five practices that can result in self-consciousness: observation, meditation, concentration, visualization, and introspection, which can be applied universally to many spiritual paths.

Yates doesn’t ask you to believe in any gods or ethereal planes or religions. He only asks “that you harness the spiritual power, the personal power that you’re already using but take for granted.”

In the course of this book, Yates will point out what this personal power of the mystic is, and how it can be developed. He won’t try to tell you what’s real, but he will ask you to examine your own reality. This book is not about changing the physical world around you, although that can indeed result from mystical practice.

...This book is about changing the world within you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
• Release date: Feb 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781621834076

Russell Yates

I am a mystic, but I was not born this way. Everything in my life has sent me in this direction. Every dream, every painful event, every desire to know the truth of life has pushed me in the direction of becoming what I am today. I was born in the mid-eighties, I grew up on the coast of Maine before there was the internet, I spent many hours on the beach damming up streams and playing with the flowing water. I spent untold afternoons there in the hot sun, cracking open one rock with another to see what they looked like inside. I often found iron pyrite – but dreamed of finding gold. At night I stared at the night sky and dreamed of having magical powers. Little did I know, the universe was listening to those prayers. Today I am married, living happily with my three dogs and ten cats.

Book preview

Introduction to Mysticism

Only as high as I reach can I grow,

Only as far as I seek can I go,

Only as deep as I look can I see,

Only as much as I dream I can be.

~K. Ravn

I can tell you how to become a mystic, how to clear the perceptions, harness reality, connect with the life force, and gain paranormal abilities. I won’t ask you to believe in any gods or ethereal planes or religions. I only ask that you harness the spiritual power, the personal power that you’re already using but take for granted.

I will point out what it is and how it can be developed. I won’t try to tell you what’s real, but I will ask you to examine the very fabric of your own reality. This book is not about changing the physical world around you, although that can indeed result from mystical practice. This book is about changing the world within you.

In this book I will teach nothing occult but will ask you to move toward the inner light, with your perception and powers developing as a direct result. Those seeking only power may be sorely disappointed because there are no shortcuts to spiritual power. If you use your personal power to create and experience a search for power that you don’t have, you’ll always be searching and never finding. The only power you’ll ever have is the original power, the power to perceive reality (e.g., as a search) and thereby create the fabric of your own existence as you experience it.

There is great happiness and peace of mind to be earned here alongside taking up your inheritance of spiritual power. You don’t have to believe in a god to be a mystic. Although the practice of mysticism is literally the practice of oneness with the divine, it can be comprehended as oneness of self, a totality. Atheists, agnostics, and devotees are all kinds are capable of the same human happiness and mystical experiences.

Without the general quieting of the mind resulting from self-development, it is extremely difficult to be a mystic. If you can let go of hate and fear, you can find bliss. You can be religious or non-religious, but if your heart and mind are heavy with painful thoughts, compulsions, and unhappy feelings, it becomes difficult, at that particular moment, to exercise your great personal power, or to perceive anything clearly or on purpose. Although this internal cleansing can be the hardest thing you’ll ever do, in the process you’ll learn to use the powers that you’ve used so instinctively to live in a small, self-limiting dream.

We already possess all our spiritual power. It can no more be separated from us than you can separate yourself from yourself. To harness it we must learn to use our mental capacities on purpose, and unite the self with a sense of totality. The best way to do this is by taking up the process of cleansing the personality and developing a more positive space that is full of clarity.

Mysticism hinges on this clear perception. It literally hinges on our perception of our ability to perceive. If we think perception is just a receptive capacity, we’ll be stuck in whatever reality we happen to perceive at the moment. But if we understand that perception creates the reality we experience as much as it displays it, then we can find a measure of freedom and navigate into inner spaces we prefer (that is, on purpose).

In this book I will ask you to become a spirit walker. I want you to learn to navigate from one reality to the next. I want you to choose what you experience as real. You can have a luck consciousness or a poverty consciousness—we can see ourselves as rich or poor outside of physical circumstance. What we perceive we believe, and what we believe becomes that which seems real to us. This is backward.

As a mystic, you’ll perceive what you have chosen ought to be true or real, and you’ll believe not in the chosen reality but in your own capacity to navigate between those spaces, as a master of those spaces instead of the victim. In this way personal power is withdrawn from thoughts that lead thoughts, drawn into the authentic self. Thoughts have always been your servants—but for as long as they’re leading each other, there will be chaos in your inner kingdom. You must take up your inner throne.

A mystic becomes a master of fear as (s)he realizes that the perceptions that elicit it are optional. Fear can throw a wrench into your personality. When you fear something, you begin to push against it. Paradoxically, by pushing against the idea of a scary event (e.g., loss of your own life), you’re actually drawing it even more into your day-to-day experiences and thoughts, thereby increasing your own suffering. There is such a thing as healthy fear or caution, but there is also fear that eats away at people for much of their lives even when there is little danger.

The idea of danger-out-there can be extremely hard to let go of, especially for those who have suffered traumatic stress. The idea of constant danger must be laid to rest in order for a person to experience real peace or happiness—not because there is no danger, but because the fear of danger is more or less optional. We’re free beings after all.

If you want to be a mystic, compulsion and fear must be dealt with. Heavy fear or anxiety must be dissolved to make space for paranormal or mystical experiences. When the mind is quiet, subtle vibrations can be experienced or detected quite naturally. It’s nearly impossible to have a mystical experience when the mind is full of fear or hate because those emotions lead to confusing and distracting thoughts.

The spiritual path is useful for accomplishing this in its own way, letting go of hate, fear, anger, and cultivating compassion, especially through the practice of introspection—which is self-examination or looking inwards. Someday, with practice, you won’t be afraid of the universe anymore. It’s a different way of being than the masses have; a kind of living with inner peace and harmony. It’s a small but fundamental change.

If you read this book carefully, you’ll eventually take the reins of your personality away from the circling thoughts. If it seems impossible that you could ever let go of fear or successfully meditate, that is an example of perception-that-creates because you’ll find that your beliefs are true. What if you perceived yourself to be mentally and emotionally free, and able, and even deeply indestructible, or even unlimited? It’s a journey to get to that point, but it is where we’re going here.

In the human game there is only one rule. Inside, you play by the rules that you set. That’s where self-limitation comes from (I can’t do that, I’m not smart enough, I don’t have a say in my perceptions)—yet, we’re not just perceiving but defining reality as we think those thoughts, even defining our ability to perceive.

Above all things this self-development takes time. As a beginner, your main task is to let go of fear when you see fit. The scariest thing you’ll ever do is let go of your own fear, but I’m not asking you to just do it. In this book I’m giving you all my tools and pointing you in the direction of self-knowledge. If you want to be a mystic, then you must cleanse the self, be honest with yourself, and turn your subconscious into the conscious. If you can do that, if you never give up until the task is done, you’ll eventually awake one day and realize your spiritual power has always been like a pearl in the palm of your hand.

Fear is your servant and always comes to you when you call. You have always been its master—but you have to discover that yourself. Self-awareness is the goal of the mystic. Through understanding oneself, fear can be laid to rest the same way one would put down a heavy object they’re tired of carrying.

Mysticism is the path of self-discovery, of discovering who and what you really are—discovering your true power. It is the path to connection with the life force, connection to the divine that exists at the center of the self. It is rewarding beyond comprehension, but requires us to face our own suffering and take responsibility for our thoughts and feelings.

All of us are on the mystical or spiritual path, whether we know it or not. We’re all in the process of self-development and self-discovery, moving toward self-unity. It is when we begin to do this on purpose that we accelerate our personal development and discover the truth of what it means to be a human being. The mystical path can sometimes be difficult and arduous, and at other times bright and easy. The path up the mountain of self-knowledge is sometimes long and uphill. But once you get there, the view is unforgettable.

Welcome to mysticism.

Guidance

Mysticism is the search for the truth of the mystery of life. It consists of our most primal questions, like Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? and What is life? We each must evolve our own answers to these questions.

Mysticism is about understanding the source of human experiences and returning to that source. It has been called the divine but has little to do with gods or deities. It is a path that much of modern-day science feels is a great deception like the world’s many religions.

Mysticism is not about religion, in the same way that vision is not about sunglasses. Mysticism is about unity of self and unity with the divine. What is the divine? It is like the infinite ocean, and you’re a single drop of sea spray, temporarily under the illusion of separation from your source. But are you the droplet or the water? Are you a creation, merely alive, are you the life force itself? Are you a flame or are you the fire?

***

My name is Rusty, and I’m a self-trained mystic, born in 1984. I was introduced to mysticism around age twelve by several books I had picked off my mom’s shelf, starting with The Spider, Egg, and Microcosm by Eugene Kinkead and E. B. White, Agartha: Journey to the Stars by Meredith L. Young-Sowers, and then the works of Cypriot mystic Dr. Stylianos Atteshlis. I went from there to sample some different obscure texts like Jane Roberts’ indecipherable Seth series, but things only made sense in the context of Dr. Stylianos’ teachings on the Research of Truth (and Agartha’s clear vision of the human spiritual condition). Stylianos preferred to be called Daskalos, which means teacher in Greek.

Daskalos shared many ideas but mostly said that you should discover the truth for yourself. He said, If you want to know the taste of salt, head to the salt mines. He didn’t just give me answers to my spiritual questions, he gave me a map and pointed me in the right direction. He gave me a mystery, he gave me a sense of wonder, a passion, and that’s what I hope to pass on to you in this book.

This book is a guide; I will share what I know of the mystery of life, keeping spiritual conjecture to a minimum. If there are other people out there who find themselves on the mystical path, the information I present ought to be invaluable—or at least affirming. If you’re reading this book coming from an atheistic perspective, it may stand out as a great falsehood. However I am a real mystic, and mysticism, magic, and miracles are real. Even an atheist can become a mystic, although they might be challenged to find nonreligious language to explain their experiences.

This is a layman’s guide, because I have never had any proper schooling from any mystic, religious, spiritual, or disembodied (or channeled) figure. I have meditated, read, and researched in my own time of my own volition. What I know I have come to know