The Truth Is Within: From The X-Files to the Inner Files

For Rosh Hashanah the other week, I had the pleasure of gathering with family at my 95-year-old Grandmother’s house. My ten-year-old niece moderated a game in which she’d pull a card from a box and read aloud the question on each card. We took turns answering. It felt a lot like Cacao Circle: receiving a prompt and answering one at a time.

When she asked, “What was your favorite show growing up?” my answer leapt immediately from my heart: “The X-Files.”

I was obsessed from the first episode, which aired when I was just eight years old. My dad and I, two imaginative Pisces with escapism tendencies, watched the show religiously. I don’t remember if other family members joined or not, though if they did, they certainly weren’t as immersed as we were. This show became more of my world than my day-to-day. I even once spotted an X-Files novel out in the wild and asked my mom to buy it for me. She seemed delighted by my desire to read. “The X-Files” had me by the soul. I couldn’t get enough.

Recently, while relistening to Segment 5 of iPEC’s Law of Being self-mastery program, which Chris and I facilitate, a revelation surfaced: one of the main reasons I was so captivated by Mulder and Scully was because they were the only models I had for fellow “thermometers” who question everything we’re told to believe about the nature of existence.

I didn’t have many archetypes in my field of awareness demonstrating what it might look like to challenge the status quo. Though something told me to look beyond the paradigm. As the youngest of three, puzzled by perceived inequity, I placed my faith in some loving entity who witnessed my struggles in sibling narratives. In moments of injustice, I’d retreat to my bedroom and cry to the ceiling, “You saw that, right?” Or I’d recount the scenes in a journal to reassure myself that I hadn’t gone crazy. To ensure I was not invisible or inaudible. To confirm I did in fact exist. I was convinced there was a family conspiracy being kept from me. The only one who seemed to tell the Truth was Nana, though she spoke in code. Through scripture, classical music, or stories about her sisters being struck by lightning and communicating through the weather.

Sometimes a question would form in my head: “Ask Nana this…” followed by a curiosity like “Do you believe in reincarnation?” She would answer with transparency, honesty, and trust in my capacity for understanding. Nana saw the old soul in my young eyes.

Though I always felt there was more to the story, and I was on a journey of uncovering. I recognized Nana as the wise sage who held the keys to the mysteries of the Universe in the palm of her hand. My task was to know which questions to ask. When questions weren’t available to me, she showed me where to look: within my own outlets for creativity. Writing, drawing, playing on her piano, crocheting, fitting grammatical structures together like tangrams. Nana taught me that well-constructed sentences are the gateways to communication on this planet of language.

Other than Nana’s wisdom of the ages and my Dad’s stories about ghosts at the Chart House, no one really seemed to be sources of information about existence itself. I wanted to know why we were all here. And what all-knowing entity was watching us. All of our Hebrew prayer books praised the Omnipresent entity, Adonai, but the scripture felt too human to me. I wasn’t grasping how we get from God at point A, to humans at point Z. How we make the leap from infinite, transcendent Source to very human concepts, stories, and rituals.

Enter: Fox Mulder.
I was right after all. There’s indeed a conspiracy taking place, and it goes far beyond my youngest-child narratives.

Aliens became real. All those hairs that stand up when I’m spooked not only became a valid form of heightened intelligence, the feeling itself became an addiction. I wanted to understand that spook. Like when we’d read scary stories at sleepovers and I’d stay up all night, eyes darting around a friend’s unfamiliar house, holding my breath, bracing for impact, expecting to catch a glimpse of a ghost or spirit.

Through my weekly ritual of watching The X-Files with my dad, I gave myself permission to explore worlds that, though unknown, felt real to every fiber of my being.

The show drilled two mantras into my head: “The Truth is Out There” and “I Want to Believe.”
While today, I resonate with two different mantras: “The Truth is Within” and “Believe nothing. Entertain Possibilities,” at the time, Fox Mulder became my most resonant archetype. He was The Seeker. And so was I.

Returning to Segment 5 of the Law of Being…

This is one example of what it looked like to feel like a “thermometer” my whole life: trying to sneak up on my family when they weren’t looking, convinced I would catch a group of aliens shape-shifting into human form. Either they were aliens, or I was the alien. Nothing else made sense.  

Screen Shot from a Law of Being workbook page.

Though the thermometer stage of being might look different for everyone. As I’ve been enjoying discovery calls with prospective clients, I’m noticing a similar theme. Sentiments such as, “I just feel like I have more to offer the world,” and “There’s got to be more to life than this,” are becoming increasingly frequent. I hear the thermometer in these musings. Law of Being describes Thermometers as “beginning to awaken to their ultimate potential and true essence. They are asking many questions such as, ‘Who am I and why am I here?’”

To offer a more familiar cultural reference, I think of “thermometer” as the entry point into Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. The thermometer is primed to take a leap into self-study. Assessments, personal trainers, professional development, mentorship. Taoism, Buddhism, wisdom of the ages. And through such study, the Thermometer/Seeker crosses the threshold into unknown realm. The domain of supernatural wonder. At which point, the Seeker is invited to test one’s new skills through trials, challenges, opposition, and the innermost ordeal. In today’s Spiritual lexicon, we often refer to this crisis as “The Dark Night of the Soul.” The descent into darkness, confusion, and suffering where the ego is stripped away, the old self “dies,” and we are reborn into alignment with Spirit. Uncovering our gifts through this process, we become victorious and ready for the final stage of the hero’s journey: Return, in which we recommit to the transformation and return home, bringing wisdom, healing, and offerings for the community. We return as the Thermostat.  The Law of Being describes Thermostats as “awakened people actively pursuing a powerful, high-potential experience, and they know they are much more than physical bodies.” They are described as making adjustments to the temperature, or what I think of as creating their preferred ripple effect in the world.

My personal mission as a Thermostat is to help reduce Catabolic Energy and help increase Anabolic Energy. Specifically by spreading Empathy. Though the truth-seeking thermometer is forever within me, as is the sleeper (which the Law of Being describes as “not consciously aware of the surrounding temperature. They’re not even asking questions, nor are they aware of the questions to be asked.”) It may seem confusing that I would exhibit thermometer tendencies as a child, yet also identify the sleeper as a part of who I’ve been. The Tao explains how this might happen:

Pages from our Taoist textbook created by our teacher, Jesse. Founder of Immortal Arts Academy (along with a photo of me feeling into my pure childlike sense of wonder at Hasedera Temple in Kamakura, Japan).

While kids collect Pokémon cards, plushies, dolls, and Hot Wheels, adults collect stress. With financial obligations, social commitments, work responsibilities, familial expectations, household maintenance, and a steady drip of cortisol-inducing news media, it’s no wonder we accumulate Catabolic Conditioning. When that acquired conditioning becomes chronic, we can slip into the Pure Mundane State (the all-dark circle shown above). Nothing Celestial remains. We become a “sleeper.”

Though it’s imperative that we breathe life into the Celestial. Our Life Force depends on it. We must weed out the acquired mind as best we can and replace those roots with optimism, joy, wonder, & wellness. As we see in the description of the Pure Mundane State above, “worry and negative emotion weigh heavy.” Adults cling to our worry, as though if we worry about something enough, we’ll solve the problem. Though when has worry ever proven effective at changing the world and making it a more positive, inspiring, collaborative, regenerative place? When we locate the energy of worry in the framework of Energy Leadership using the Energetic Self-Perception Chart below, what do we notice?

Here’s something to regard as we review the above chart: the difference between worry and concern. Worry contracts us into our heads: overthinking, imagining worst-case scenarios, overwhelmed by the weight of the world, incapable of taking inspired action. Concern expands us into our hearts. As Ram Dass says, our hearts go out, and we’re more likely to take compassionate, service-oriented action.

In Energy Leadership terms, that heady worry often festers in Level 1 (lethargy/inaction). Some people transmute it into Level 2 defiance, believing protest to be an effective form of creativity, though protest is often fueled by anger and outrage, which is still Catabolic. The invitation is to expand into Anabolic levels. Taking responsibility for our thoughts and behaviors. Maybe even inviting radical acceptance (Level 5) for where we are now as a civilization, so we can dissolve the illusion of “my side vs. your side” and instead find ways to collaborate.

When we consider all of the innovation and creativity at our fingertips, why wouldn’t we quiet the worry and instead use our imaginations for entertaining the possibilities of a civilization synthesizing our talents, gifts, and dreams into a shared goal. Many hands make light work, so let’s roll up our sleeves and co-create the change we wish to see in the world. May we evolve beyond our fight-or-flight instincts, overriding our Catabolic programming by exercising Anabolic practices. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Screen shot from the Instagram archives.

Many still cling to the illusion that governments will save us. That we elect them to serve us. If there’s one gem of discernment The X-Files gifted me as a child, it’s: don’t trust the government. The story of “service” is a smokescreen masking the redirection of public funds toward endless war. A game of thrones in which we the people are pawns. Governments don’t serve; they control through deception. It doesn’t matter with which side of the aisle one identifies. If governments - right or left - were effective, I would have been proven wrong by now.
Accepting this need not be frightening. It can be liberating if we choose to activate the sovereignty within our DNA. Maybe it’s the first step toward disentangling from the acquired mind and reclaiming our power as Celestial beings. Perhaps it’ll help us to reduce the anger manufactured by the outrage industry so we may start the process of refining the self, as portrayed below.

Pages from our Taoist text continued, portraying the path back to purity.

Throughout our nearly four years of study with our teacher, Jesse (pictured above practicing an Inner Alchemy method known as Neidan), we’ve been reminded of the importance of relaxation. It’s one of the reasons Jesse’s guided meditations are my favorite. Relaxed inhales and exhales not only become accessible; over time they become more familiar than the constant tension we carry while navigating this dense world.

One morning during our Qi Gong retreat in Japan, after we completed our Neidan practice, Jesse offered a window into the theory. For context, Jesse prefers to teach through practice, just as he learned during his own training and apprenticeship with three Taoist masters in China from 2002 to 2009. In many traditional Eastern lineages, theory arises from within through the experience of practice itself. Still, sensing our intellectual Western minds were hungry for conceptual knowledge, Jesse offered lectures after each seated practice.

One point he made continues to reverberate in my Feedback Loop: “The Tao is an incomplete system. Quantum physics completes it.” My eyes flew wide; I turned to Chris and whispered, “Energy Leadership!”

The quantifiable nature of Energy Leadership is rooted in quantum physics. So much so that when I look at the imagery of waning Mundane and growing Celestial (pictured above), I see decreasing Catabolic energy and increasing Anabolic energy. And when I see the empty circle representing the Primordial & True State as well as the Absolute Open Nothingness state, I feel Level 7 Energy. A state of being I’ve been able to access first through my Energy Leadership studies, and affirmed through my Qi Gong practice.

Referring back to the Energetic Self-Perception Chart where Level 7 Energy is depicted as the most expansive ring of Self, resonating with complete objectivity, absolute passion, and pure Creation, I present the possibility of returning from such practices as the Thermostat. Having reached this state of objectivity, one walks through the human realm with considerable choice. And with each choice, we set the temperature, trusting our influence to be a worthy ripple effect.

As I recalibrate my own system to align with and embody the ripple effect I’ve chosen to create, it’s time to redirect my truth-seeker energy into creativity. And I’m not turning my back on Fox Mulder by shifting my focus. In fact, I’m honoring him. The alien technologies and advanced civilizations described in The Golden Future would launch him on an entirely new course of discovery. I’m happy to carry the torch for him, simply picking up where The X-Files left off.

Only now, I’m excavating inward for answers, rather than suffocating in an endless web of global conspiracy. As the Tao “Truth About Oneself” emphasizes turning one’s gaze within, we know where to look for Truth.