Embark on a profound exploration of spirituality with Jeff Carreira, a seasoned teacher and visionary leader whose journey from uncertainty to enlightenment has paved the way for transformative programs and retreats. Delve into his unique approach to coaching, meditation, and mystical vision, and discover the profound insights awaiting within The Mystery School and The Artist of Possibility magazine. MysticMag has the pleasure.
What were your professional beginnings like and how did you get into spiritual work?
I have been interested in spirituality since I was a young child. Having been raised Catholic the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a priest. All the way through high school and college I felt deeply uncertain about life, I didn’t understand what the point of it was. I looked around and saw that very few people, if any, were truly happy. Most people were working at jobs they didn’t like and in the end, the reward for a lifetime of work was that you could take a break from working. Soon after graduating from college, I started seeking by reading books and seeing teachers. I met one teacher who inspired me so much that I decided to leave my career and the life I was living to join a spiritual community, where I lived for the next twenty years. In the community, I was able to do an enormous amount of spiritual practice and study with other like-minded and deeply inspired people.
Eventually, I became a teacher in my own right. I never intend for spirituality to be my profession. I just wanted to open to divinity and grow and share everything I discovered with the people around me. When the community collapsed, as so often happens, I felt deep uncertainty about what I wanted to do, but there were many people that knew me who wanted to continue with spiritual work, so I continued to teach and over the past decade my teaching work has grown larger than I ever planned, but fundamentally I still do the same thing I always did – open to divinity, grow and share what discover.
What can people expect from your programs and retreats?
I teach from my own direct experience. I have written dozens of books about different aspects of spiritual life and when I teach I share the best of everything I understand about how we can become very centered within ourselves and open to the miracles of existence. In my programs and retreats I emphasize a form of meditation that I call The Art of Conscious Contentment. When we are able to rest comfortably in the silence of our own minds, the work expands and we begin to develop the inner perceptions of mystical vision. People can expect to discover that deep within them there is a place that is pure awareness. That place, which is their True Self, is always calm and peaceful regardless of circumstances.
As we learn to identify with that part of ourselves we find ourselves able to live gracefully and generously in life. What they can also expect is to learn how to look at the experience they are already having from a dramatically different vantage point. They will see that they were always having mystical insights and experiences, but they were filtering them out of their conscious recognition. As they learn to relax the culturally conditioned filtering systems that keep us locked in conventional reality, they can expect to see that they are always having mysterious experiences and insights they can’t explain. They will realize that we live in a vast reality that includes not only everything we can see but so much more. Opening to life in this way makes every moment of being alive a blessing and an adventure.
What ideas and principles do you base your spiritual mentoring on?
The first principle that my mentoring is based on is the recognition that there is nothing wrong. We are trained to judge our life by comparing it with our ideas about how life should be. Our lives often don’t measure up to our ideals so we conclude that there is something wrong. This habit of comparison creates existential anxieties that not only hinder us from living happy and fulfilling lives but blocks us from discovering the higher spiritual truths that our hearts long for. I help people recognize that nothing is ever wrong, it just is what it is. It becomes wrong when we compare it to our ideas of what it should be.
If we don’t do that then we see everything much more clearly, including the fact that we want things to be different. From this place of open receptivity miraculous life changes become possible. The second principle is based on the conviction that we are higher-dimensional spiritual beings. Our physical existence on Earth is beautiful and deserves to be cherished and cared for, and at the same time, it is only a small part of who we are. The open receptivity that we can find through conscious contentment will inevitably reveal that we are much more than we think we are. We know more than we are aware of, and we are capable of more than we imagine. The ultimate purpose of my mentoring is to support people to open to their true potential and discover that they are cosmic beings directly connected to the living wisdom and love at the heart of this universe.
What can you tell me about the work that you do in The Mystery School?
The Mystery School is a graduate university for the soul, and like any university, it includes both course work and campus life. The Mystery School is an online community in which all members are encouraged to learn from me and from each other. Our members have tremendous expertise in spiritual practices and philosophies and they share them in courses, programs, and retreats. The Mystery School is also where I teach with people most intimately. It is where I can share the leading edge of what I am discovering and I can be candid about both the miracles and the challenges I face along the way. I believe that maintaining spiritual relationships is the most important part of spiritual life. By associating and engaging with like-minded individuals we are able to co-evolve in ways that simply are not possible on our own. The mystery school is the most important part of what I do because it is where a higher way of living is being nurtured and cultivated.
You are also an editor of the The Artist of Possibility magazine. What topics does the magazine cover and why would you recommend it to our readers?
The Artist of Possibility is a free online quarterly magazine that I created a few years ago. We are currently producing our 18th issue and the topic is The Necessity of Rest and Relaxation. The magazine is interview-based. Each issue includes contributions from people who are exploring the very edges of what is possible. Some of the people we speak to are as well-known as the authors Dan Milman and Stephen Cope, as well as the yoga teacher Dharma Mittra.
Some, like the tarot reader Pamela Eakins or rock musician Chela Harper, have achieved prominence within their domains of expertise. Others are wonderful examples of the mystics among us. People who do not have any public platform, but who have tremendous wisdom to offer. Our editorial team produces the magazine to explore ideas that we believe are important to all spiritually minded people, but we also hope it provides people the opportunity to recognize the wisdom that they have to share, and perhaps the courage to share it.
Is there anything else about your work that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
The only last thing I would add is that everything I do, the online programs, in-person retreats, and The Mystery School, are all serving one overarching purpose – to support the upliftment of human consciousness. How we live generates our consciousness just as much as our consciousness dictates how we live. I have seen how we can come together in ways that bring all of us into higher states of consciousness and hold us there. I believe in the possibility of a spiritually enlightened society. I know that it can’t be attained in one lifetime, but it is a possibility worth dedicating my life to. The endeavor to evolve human consciousness has always attracted passionate and spiritually inspired individuals to its cause and there are many today who are pursuing this dream in many ways. My work is my way and I am blessed beyond measure to have attracted a beautiful group of people who want to do this work with me.
To learn more about Jeff and his work, you can visit jeffcarreira.com, emergenceeducation.com, and mysteryschool-memberscircle.com
