Following is a message and invitation from Matthew.
After reading it carefully, if you feel the Guardianhood is for you, use the button at the bottom of the page to apply. (Note that this is a personal and private invitation — please don’t share this with others.)
Dear One,
There is an invisible culture alive in humanity that we are serving. It is intrinsically human: born from the divine presence as it is expressed through our embodied nature.
It doesn’t have a name. But if you observe carefully, you can see it thriving.
This culture is the very best of our humanity; of what it is to live a blessedly finite life, made infinite through our intimate relationships with place, family, all people, the earth, the cosmos, and to the great, sentient God-mystery that holds us.
It shows itself in the care we extend to each other. In profound faith and intuitive trust in existing. In accepting the responsibilities that come with the power of our intelligence and the co-creative role that we humans have been endowed with. It shows itself in our willing sacrifice for the greater wholenesses that we are a part of—loved ones, community, ideals, the potential of a better future for the planet.
This culture reveals itself not in a proclamation or dedication to an exclusive name of God or religious or spiritual tradition, but through behavior rather than conscious thinking. Actions that affirm that life is sacred, that love is highest, and that creation is to be cherished. This is the culture oriented to the God that all people belonged to before there was a language to articulate separation, and that we still belong to now. We are born connected to this culture, through our heartbeat and our breath. We inherit this culture through our bones rather than indoctrination.
This culture of care and reverence never dies within us, even when our society temporarily forgets it (for thousands of years at a time), and our collective values obscure it, except in special moments of shared clarity: disasters, tragedies, deathbeds, close calls.
This culture I speak of is like mycelia in the forest soil. We don’t always see it, but it is always there, in every society throughout every age, nurturing the eternal truth that everyone is connected to everything.
If we were to give this culture a name, perhaps we could call it the Culture of the Human Heart.
The Culture of the Heart
This culture thrives in many religions and spiritual traditions, and it is often directly nourished by them, but it is not fully contained by them. Religions and spiritual traditions are authored, codified and structured by humans and our deepest human experiences relating to the Divine. But the Culture of the Heart comes from a place even deeper that human language: our biology and intrinsic spirituality.
When human beings recognize something beautiful, precious, and strong within their culture, they propagate traditions and customs — ways of being together, speaking together, growing and initiating each other, of communing and aligning with what is most important — that strengthen the highest and most important values of their society. Wise elders sometimes help to cultivate new traditions, or adapt old ones, in order to help their culture thrive in new environments.
In this way, religions and traditions shape human culture—including the way the Culture of the Heart is expressed through time—in profound and indelible ways, and are some of our most powerful technologies of consciousness.
But even more than religions and traditions, the Culture of the Heart is shaped by our nature. This nature is intrinsic, irrefutable, and gifted to us by the living universe, the Cosmos, its laws of nature, and God. Not by what we believe about God (that’s religion), but about the innate presence of God in our life, whether consciously acknowledged or not.
The Human Heart is God’s ancient and eternal signature in human physiology. This assures that the Culture of the Heart can never be fully ruined when a religion, tradition or civilization is corrupted or lost. Although religions and traditions are corruptible and destroyable, the Heart is not. Through wise spiritual elders and teachers in contact with this indwelling presence, the Heart will birth, over and over, the necessary traditions to restrengthen its energy and its ways in collective consciousness.
The Culture of the Heart is God’s greatest gift to human beings, because our Heart is our greatest gift to give and receive, and because we are more powerful together than alone, and because culture is what is when we are together.
This culture is deeply, profoundly human, because it is what makes us human. It is every human’s birthright, because it is a part of every human’s nature. As long as we remain human, and therefore connected to our humanness, we have something special to offer each other and all other living beings, in this realm and beyond.
The Culture of the Heart, this gift that dwells as the highest aspect of our collective humanness, is in part created by a human being’s relationship with suffering.
Human beings sit deep in the web of Nature and her innate rhythms and cycles of birth and death.
Birth and death are significant: intense, deeply felt, life-changing for those crossing the veil, and for their loved ones. To live, we must take the life of the plants and animals that are our companions. We love, and we learn that we cannot be attached to the forms of those that we love, for everyone that is birthed in this plane will die.
These experiences have the capacity to cultivate rare and powerful humility, empathy, compassion, sacrifice, care, and love. This is the foundation of human wisdom. This is what we mean when we use the words human and humanity.
As a species, our modern consciousness has not evolved to a place that collectively sees and experiences the deeper reality beyond suffering, nor has it mastered the biological processes that would grant individual immortality. (Instead, modern life utilizes technologies to distract and numb us from our pain, and the pain of others. But this moves us away from the crucible that is life itself, and the path of forging true individual and collective wisdom.)
Through intimacy with suffering, the profound empathy that this encounter forges, and open-hearted connection to the web of life, timely breakthroughs in our collective awareness may occur: abilities of healing, powers of prayer and intention, and group-consciousness-mediated practices for generating coherent influence in the environment. These are capacities that our modern society has forgotten—or perhaps never learned.
Technologies of human consciousness may be the next frontier of collective human discovery. Technologies not birthed through data aggregation (artificial intelligence), but through real, embodied wisdom: the natural, most fully expressed intelligence of our humanness.
One of the most powerful potential technologies of consciousness (given to us from celestial perspectives) is that which is at the heart of our projects: Crystal Earth technology. This is the careful, highly structured use of large crystals for amplifying specific frequencies of energy and consciousness for people, places, and planet. This is the use of crystals as amplifiers, portals, generators, and sacred delineation.
The Culture of the Heart is our potential salvation, and the doorway to these technologies. But the Culture of the Heart is only lived and activated through you, individually, and through us, collectively.
As the Hopi prophecy says, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
The Tradition of Traditions
Just as this Culture of the Heart is as ancient as human physiology, so naturally there has always been a correlating perennial lineage of great teachers and elders who serve, steward, and support the blossoming of this Culture for all of humanity.
We call this perennial expression of traditions orienting humanity to the sacredness and responsibility of life the Tradition of Traditions, or the Master Tradition.
The Master Tradition is birthed by the ancient and timeless ideal relationship between a sentient being and the Cosmos. This ideal has been discovered, refined, passed down, and strengthened by countless generations and traditions throughout human history (and beyond).
The Master Tradition—through all dimensions, time, and space—is the religion that is not a religion; the tradition of many masters and manifestations that does not hold itself as separate or superior to others, just as a forest does not hold itself as separate or superior to a tree. Representatives of the Master Tradition do not hold themselves as carriers of a new, superior tradition. In fact, like a physiology supported by its organs, the Master Tradition relies on the integrity of all of the great traditions and lineages that it holds in its physiology.
The Master Tradition is a web of relationship and wisdom. It advises rather than insists. It nurtures rather than governs. It organizes rather than dictates. It is a membrane rather than a barrier; a doorway rather than a wall. It recognizes the great masters and knowledge of real mastery—humility, power, love, service—embodied through all holy traditions.
We call one who is humble, and in right and ideal relationship with self, environment, cosmos and God a Master. Masters come from all human traditions that have existed long enough to produce real wisdom.
As we know, these Master Teachers and Elders work together in the ascended realms to support human beings in their journey toward divine, embodied realization. These Masters are directly committed to serving the inevitable coming together of all of humanity in the great diversity of lineage, teachings, and traditions at this time on earth.
The coming together of humanity into a global culture and community has long been foreseen by wise ones from every ancient tradition, for this process is not unique to human beings only, but is a pattern revealed throughout the universe as sentient beings of different planets and stars inevitably evolve within their local ecosystems.
Because the power of our modern technologies has outsized second and third order effects on the planetary physiology and the wellbeing of the ecology human beings are a part of, the need was foreseen by these seers that the Wisdom Traditions must come together in the celestial realms of the Earth to help guide humanity through this critical time of crisis and growth, where we have the leverage of gods but the embodied wisdom of adolescents.
This is the Enlightening Tradition
The Enlightening Tradition is an earthly, timely initiative of culture and community whose charter is to be in service to the Master Tradition.
The Enlightening Tradition is an expression of the need of the time for the underlying humility and spirit of service that burns bright in the heart of the Master archetype, and of all Masters, of all holy traditions.
The Enlightening Tradition is a community for this Culture of the Heart at this time on earth, where the rivers of different lineages and teachings are unavoidably joining in great confluences around the world. Our mission is to support the greater and deeper synthesis of human cosmology and spirituality now emerging on earth.
Our civilization requires it to survive and thrive in the coming decades.
To Be A Guardian
To be an Enlightening Temple Guardian is to hold an ongoing relationship with the Master Tradition: Heart Consciousness (what the mystics call the Self that ‘you’ are a part of), the Ascended Masters, Grandmother Earth, the Archangels (laws of nature), and the Divine. To guard and uphold the sacred space, portal, generator, and amplifier that is every human heart, and also the Crystal Earth technology at the Heart of the Enlightening Temple.
Enlightening Guardians are not just guardians of the Temple; they are guardians of the Master Tradition and the Enlightening Tradition. The Temple is a physical and symbolic manifestation of the Divine Heart, which carries the Master Tradition.
The Enlightening Temple is an expression of the Human Heart and the Master Tradition. The Guardian does not sit outside the heart / temple / tradition, but rather is the membrane (mediating layer) between heart / temple / tradition and the greater environment, including humanity and human collective consciousness.
In this way, the Temple is the Heart is the Tradition. All are living, and each contains the other.
Guardianhood is a step toward mastery, and as Guardians, we take a vow of commitment to the way of the Masters.
The Temple acts as a space of training, experience, and service for those supporting the cosmic work of the Master Tradition, the Tradition of Traditions.
Participation Requirements
- CEREMONY PARTICIPATION
- Hold the intention to attend all six in-person yearly ceremonies, including the Potluck Community Gatherings that follow.
- Make an initial commitment to attend at least four ceremonies annually, with at least one being a Solstice or Equinox ceremony.
- GUARDIANHOOD TERM
- Hold the intention to serve for three years as a Guardian.
- Begin with an initial commitment of one year.
- PERSONAL MOON CEREMONIES
- Hold the intention to complete three self-led Moon Ceremonies during the off-season (November through April).
- Follow each with a Zoom closing circle the next morning with other participating Guardians.
- FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
- Contribute a monthly sliding scale donation, based on your personal financial situation.
- Suggested: $36 to $108 per month.
- PLANNING & LOGISTICS
- Attend 2 to 4 Zoom meetings per year for planning and logistical coordination.
- CONNECTION & SUPPORT
- Participate in self-organized quarterly calls with other Guardians and Elders to share and deepen experiences.
Ceremony Calendar
- AUGUST 2025
- New Moon Ceremony: Friday, August 22 – Saturday, August 23
- SEPTEMBER 2025
- Equinox Ceremony: Thursday, September 18 – Sunday, September 21
- OCTOBER 2025
- New Moon Ceremony: Sunday, October 19 – Monday, October 20
- MAY 2026
- Full Moon Ceremony: Friday, May 29 – Saturday, May 30
- JUNE 2026
- Solstice Ceremony: Thursday, June 18 – Sunday, June 21
- JULY 2026
- New Moon Ceremony: Friday, July 10 – Saturday, July 11
- AUGUST 2026
- Full Moon Ceremony: Friday, August 28 – Saturday, August 29
- SEPTEMBER 2026
- Equinox Ceremony: Thursday, September 24 – Sunday, September 27
- OCTOBER 2026
- New Moon Ceremony: Friday, October 9 – Saturday, October 10
Please Note: dates are subject to change. We will give as much notice as possible.
Ceremony Structure
MOON CEREMONY
Generally, Moon Ceremonies take place on the closest Friday evening to a full moon or new moon, in the months where there are no Equinox or Solstice ceremonies.
Day 1:
- Mid-afternoon, day of Ceremony: arrival at Fire Circle
- Sunset: Light Fire
- Sunset: Begin Vigil
Day 2:
- High Moon (or Deepest Night): Conclude Vigil
- Sunrise: Elders and Guests arrive
- 9 AM: Closing Circle
- 11 AM: Break Camp, return home
- 5 PM: Community Gathering & Potluck
Description:
- We begin gathering at the Fire Circle no later than mid-afternoon the day of the ceremony. (Guardians are welcome and encouraged to camp beginning the night before, using the North Camp, if they desire.)
- We light the fire around sunset and begin the Vigil immediately following. The Fire is kept until the Closing Circle at 9 AM the next morning.
- We have at least one Fire Keeper and three Scepter Holders at all times. The Vigil (Scepter holding) lasts from sunset until High Moon (or Deepest Night, if on the new moon), approximately six hours after sunset. At this time, the gong is rung, and the Vigil is considered complete.
- At all times, three Guardians are holding the three Scepters. The rest of the Guardians are either keeping the Fire or communing with the Mother. Guardians may rotate between responsibilities as makes sense.
- There is no resting or sleeping until after the Vigil is completed.
- From completion of the Vigil until 9 AM, Guardians may alternate resting, keeping the Fire, and being with the Mother Crystal. Guardians will also host Elders and guests beginning after sunrise until the closing circle at 9 AM.
Additional Points:
The minimum number of Guardians to perform a Moon Ceremony is 3. If only three Guardians are present, two will be in the Sanctum with the Scepter, and one will be at the Fire with a Scepter.
The ideal minimum is 9:
- 3 Guardians to hold Scepters
- 3 Guardians to rotate into a second shift with the Scepters, and to commune with the Mother when not holding a Scepter
- 2 Guardians to keep the Fire
- 1 Guardian in reserve, communicating between Guardians, walking the perimeter, tending to the Elder Crystal, and welcoming Elders and guests after sunrise.
SOLSTICE CEREMONY
Details to be determined, but will follow a similar format to the Moon Ceremonies, except that the Ceremony will be over three days.
EQUINOX CEREMONY
Details to be determined, but will follow a similar format to the Moon Ceremonies, except that the Ceremony will be over three days.
Please Note: Dates and details are subject to and expected to evolve under Matthew’s leadership and guidance.
Submit Your Application
If you are called to become a Guardian, and are able to commit to the requirements outlined above, please click the button to apply.
For questions about the Guardianhood, please email: guardianhood@enlighteningfoundation.org
