To the one who never got their letter…
I never received my invitation letter to Hogwarts, even though after reading the books so many years ago, I secretly wished we lived in a world where I could have. I was never discovered by a Jedi Master to be unusually Force-sensitive and invited to train in a Jedi Temple. And I never once found a wardrobe that led me to Narnia.
But I think there's a reason so many of us are drawn to these stories and sometimes read them over and over again. Even though our logical minds say these are works of fiction, a deeper part of us knows they're pointing at something that has to be real.
We refuse to accept that this mass-produced, materialistic world we live in is all there is. On some level, we know there's something more. We know that we're capable of more, individually, as well as collectively. And when we read about an owl delivering us a letter that invites us into the world we always suspected was there but were never taught or shown, a part of us cries out, "Yes! That's what's been missing from my life!"
We know there's a secret world out there of magic, miracles, intuition, energy, and things that simply aren't taught in church or school or polite society. We crave these things. We seek them out. I've been pondering this today, and I think I've figured out why.
I think we each have a longing to be discovered, to be tested, and ultimately to be inducted into a hidden world that requires everything of us, by people who've already been there. For some of us, that combination of discovery, trial, belonging, and a world that is more real than this one beckons us more strongly than any combination of "success" by this world's standards. That's why we return to our favorite books time and time again. They give us a taste of what we know life should be.
That searching is ultimately what drove me all over the world, seeking out experiences similar to those of Harry, Luke, and the Pevensie kids. I met a shaman in a dream who invited me to come work with him in the physical dimension. Eight months later, I found him in Peru. I worked with a medicine man who taught me to open up parallel dimensions and interact with creatures straight out of mythology. I ended up living with him for over four years. I've discovered and worked with yogis and sorcerers who don't have webpages and been taught processes that have changed my life and my understanding of who we are, what we are, and why we're here.
And that calling to be discovered, tested, and to belong to a world of magic is still with me. I think it's what spirituality largely was before the modern world got its hands on it. One of the yogis I study once said that a part of his path included dancing every day for six months, ten hours a day! He would sometimes fall over unconscious, only to wake up and start dancing again. There was a purpose to this, of course. It naturally arose out of his meditation practice that he'd been initiated into. But imagine that… ten hours a day!
I remember instances in my life when I'd meditate for 10 seconds to "keep my streak" on a stupid app. I didn't have much of a practice at those times, but I know what it's like to devote myself to a path. I know what it's like to chant a mantra for 16+ hours per day as part of a spiritual process. I know what it's like to give up everything the world has to offer and go and live with a teacher, drinking deeply of something that can't be found in books.
When my last teacher died and I returned to the "normal world," I started to notice that a lot of spirituality has lost touch with tradition. We like to think we're beyond that. Things like dedication and discipline aren't fashionable in a world where people promise "you can be a shaman after just one ceremony."
But I'm feeling the call to bring that back. I'm feeling the call to build something that's part Hogwarts In Real Life, part Convent, part Jedi Academy, and part Boot-camp meets warrior monastery.
In what I'm building now, there are five paths. I'll introduce the fifth first, because it's the piece that brings everything else together. I call it The Author's Path. It's the meta-path… the path the other four are in service of. Why walk any Path of Awakening or Path of Power? So that you can create a life you love. Whatever that looks like and whatever that means to your Truest Self. That's why Author is the meta-path. The other four paths look like this:
Boot camp meets warrior-monastery. This is the path of the forge. It's not a gym membership, it's a discipline. You start where every real warrior tradition starts: release, learning what your body feels like with nothing being held, nothing being braced against, nothing being wasted. From there you're built, strategically, deliberately, alongside others going through the same fire, by someone who's already walked it and asks nothing of you they haven't already done themselves. There's a code here, and a silence, and a hardship you'll be able to point to later and say, simply, I did that. Twenty levels in, this is a body with nothing left in its own way. Strength that costs no strain, power that never has to announce itself, because it's already fully at home in you.
Convent meets temple. This isn't training. It's a vow. You begin the path by meeting yourself without a single judgment. This is the first act of your entire life reorganizing itself around love instead of performance. It's less a skill you build and more a way of being you grow into. A life of service and love slowly becomes the whole of who someone is. What starts as a private softening becomes, across the path, a presence: someone whose attention alone is enough to let another person finally exhale. Twenty levels in, this is love with nothing left to protect — a heart so unguarded that people near it start to heal, not because of anything you do, but simply because of what you've become.
The Jedi academy and the feeling of an ancient order. This is the path of and beyond the mind, into what's been called Higher Mind. Level 1 starts with catching your own thinking in the act and learning to see clearly instead of being run by fear, old stories, and reflexive certainty. There's a code here too, and real trials to pass before you're trusted to call yourself what you're becoming. It starts small: noticing a single thought as just a thought. It ends somewhere most people never even suspect is possible: ruling the mind instead of being ruled by it, wielding thought as a tool rather than living trapped inside its noise. Twenty levels in, this is a mind so clear that truth simply arrives, undistorted, because nothing is left standing between you and what's real. The Level 20 sage is in contact with the deepest nature of reality, able to shift reality not through miracles, but through clear-seeing and small actions that make seeming miracles become possible.
A hidden school, an old lineage, and a door to somewhere else. This is the path for the part of you that has always suspected there's more here than anyone told you — and it will prove it to you, not ask you to believe it. It begins like discovering a hidden school: a whole curriculum of the unseen you didn't know existed, learning to feel a real current of energy respond to your own attention. It deepens into something older — direct transmission, initiation into a lineage that's been quietly kept for exactly the people ready to receive it. And further still, it opens into somewhere genuinely other — dimensions of experience most people will spend a lifetime and never even glimpse. Twenty levels in, this is a life lived in constant, causal contact with the current underneath everything — the feather that turns the avalanche.
The letter that says you were chosen. This is the one that isn't a path so much as the reason any of the other four will ever matter to you. It's the moment you're told, and you feel it's true, that there's a far bigger story here than the one you've been living, and that you are the one who gets to author it. Every choice starts here. The first breath you take back from autopilot, the first time you catch yourself about to sleepwalk through your own life and choose something else instead. It's the thread every other path runs through, the one none of them is allowed to outrun. Twenty levels in, this is a life fully authored… command of your own attention, your own state, your own creations, held so lightly that you're not gripping any of it, just offering it, open-handed, to whatever wants to move through you next.
The system is called The Opus. This is a reference to alchemy's Magnum Opus — the Great Work of turning lead into gold.
I've noticed that often in life, there are the super woo, spiritual people and then there are the more materially-minded action takers. I've spent time in both camps. Usually, people are one or the other. The Opus is both. We'll explore the depths of spirituality, and we'll bring treasures back from those depths and do epic shit in the real world with it. Otherwise, what was the point? The four paths are in service of you becoming The Author and creating a life you love.
I know this message is getting rather long, and that's intentional. It filters out the wrong people. So if you're still with me, the next part is specifically for you.
Back in college when I played too many video games, I was sometimes invited to beta test up and coming games. More than just getting early access and a steep discount to these games, the idea of beta testing was to give feedback to the developers as you embarked on your journey. The game was in a development stage. It was sometimes rough around the edges. And so the beta testers helped test the system, offer feedback, and they got to experience something incredibly exciting before everyone else.
That's what I'm looking for with The Opus. Beta testers. People who are ready to dive into at least one path, commit to it, try it out, and share their feedback. Specifically, not lurkers. Not people who don't plan on posting or sharing. Not people who don't have time to devote themselves to evolving. If now's not a good time, I get it, and that's fine. There will be later opportunities.
The Opus is a commitment. There will be trials you must pass at certain stages to advance. There will be real-world stuff you must do to show that you're not someone who just gathers ever-more tools and modalities, you're someone who turns ancient wisdom into actions that make a difference in your life and the lives of those around you.
But if you're someone who secretly wished they'd gotten a letter to Hogwarts, consider this your own. You're invited to apply.
Before you are four doors:
Can you release everything you're holding onto, and find your power in what's left?
Can you meet yourself without a single judgment, and let that be the beginning of love?
Can you catch the voice in your head in the act of thinking, and realize you're not it?
Can you feel something moving through you that isn't your body, your heart, or your mind… and follow it?
Which door did you feel calling you,
before your mind got involved?
Sincerely,
Chris von der Mehden
Founder, Mythava University