Welcome to the unMystery School
For as long as I can remember, I experienced the world through a lens that I could not explain. I was aware of dimensions of life that seemed perfectly ordinary to me, yet difficult to describe to others. There was always a sense that something more was present beneath everyday experience.
I had the gift of growing up in a family and in a culture where the mysteries of existence were not unusual. Dreams, intuition, synchronicities, answered prayers, moments of knowing that could not be explained; these were simply woven into everyday life.
Looking back, I realize the greatest gift my parents gave me was not a set of answers.
It was freedom.
They never tried to hand me a secret doctrine or explain away every mystery. They trusted that my relationship with the Divine would unfold in its own time and in its own way. That freedom became one of the greatest gifts of my life, and one I hope to extend to everyone who enters this space.
I eventually became an Acupuncture Physician, rooted in the discipline of Chinese medicine. I remained deeply shaped by my Catholic upbringing while continuing to study psychology, trauma, neuroscience, contemplative traditions, and the lived wisdom of thousands of patients. Each tradition illuminated something beautiful. None claimed the whole.
Candlelight, roses, and rosary beads · the quiet devotions of my upbringing
Over the years, I noticed something unexpected. People would often lower their voices and quietly say,
I've never told anyone this before.
They would share a dream.
An answered prayer.
An intuition that proved true.
A coincidence too meaningful to dismiss.
An experience they had carried for years because they feared sounding irrational, overly spiritual, or simply different.
By the end of the conversation, nothing extraordinary had happened.
They had simply discovered that they no longer needed to hide.
That realization slowly gave birth to the unMystery School.
Not because I wish to explain away mystery. The mysteries of existence are infinitely greater than any explanation I could ever offer.
My work is much humbler. It is to remove some of the unnecessary obscurity that has accumulated around these conversations, so that ordinary people can recognize the sacred already moving through their own lives.
The sacred has never belonged to a select few. It belongs to ordinary human beings.
To parents. To physicians. To artists. To skeptics. To scientists. To children. To people quietly trying to live meaningful lives.
The purpose of this school is not to tell you what to believe. It is to create a place where timeless questions can be explored with curiosity, humility, discernment, and respect.
A place where ancient wisdom and emerging knowledge are welcomed into conversation with one another. A place where mystery is honored without becoming spectacle. A place where no one has to perform spirituality in order to belong.
One of the questions that quietly guides this school is remarkably simple:
Does this serve life?
We do not preserve an idea simply because it is ancient. We do not embrace an idea simply because it is new. We ask whether it serves life. Whether it nourishes human flourishing. Whether it helps us become more deeply rooted in our own essence.
My deepest compass has become another quiet question:
Am I connected to my essence?
When we lose contact with our essence, we may continue blooming for a while. We become like cut flowers from a florist. Beautiful. Alive for a season. Yet separated from the very source that sustains us.
When we remain connected to our essence, life does not always look like constant blossoming. Sometimes we are more like a tree in winter. Quiet. Bare. Apparently still. Yet deeply alive beneath the surface.
Spring always returns to a rooted tree. Not because it strives harder. Because it never lost contact with its source.
That is the kind of life I hope this school helps cultivate. Not a life of endless peak experiences. Not a collection of mystical credentials. Not the performance of becoming “more spiritual.”
A deeply rooted life. A life that remembers its own essence.
If our paths have crossed, I hope you find here what so many of us have quietly been searching for:
Thoughtful conversation. Intellectual honesty. Wonder. Discernment. Friendship.
And the freedom to explore life's deepest questions without surrendering your own capacity to think, to question, or to remain in relationship with the Divine.
Welcome.
I'm grateful you found your way here.
The unMystery School is a contemplative gathering space rooted in embodied wisdom, ancestral intelligence, and the ancient art of learning to read the terrain of your own life.
It is ancient in feeling. Unafraid of depth. And it belongs to no single tradition.
Offered virtually, open to participants anywhere.
The Living Practices
Four living practices shape this school. Each one begins with a question, and each one deepens your relationship with your own interior life.
Ancient Spanish Monastery, North Miami Beach, FLReclamationWhat belongs to me?The return. Taking back what was buried, silenced, fragmented, or forgotten. The body after illness. The voice after silencing. The future after trauma. The self after fragmentation. Reclamation is not passive recovery. It is the moment you come back for what was always yours.
Liberation is not the goal of reclamation. It is what arrives when reclamation is real.
Palais 365 Portes, Haiti · 2013Inner ArchaeologyWhat was beneath the story?The excavation. Beneath the narrative you were given, beneath the survival strategies and the conditioning, something original was preserved. Inner Archaeology is the practice of going down to find what survived. Not to analyze it. To meet it.
The Grotto, Portland, OR · 2017Tending the Inner GardenWhat am I cultivating now?The tending. Once the ground has been cleared, something must be planted with intention. This practice asks you to become the steward of your own interior life. What grows in the space that has been freed is not accidental. It is chosen.
Rosary Peas, Cypress Creek Rd, Fort Lauderdale, FL · 2025Remembrance MedicineWhat was never lost?The return to original knowing. Some things were not taken from you. They were only made inaccessible. Remembrance Medicine is the practice of returning to what the body always carried: ancestral intelligence, somatic wisdom, and the deep self that was present before the world had its say.
I have the left hemisphere of an atheist, the right hemisphere of a seeker, and the heart of a mystic. It is this composition that has made it safe for me to move through so many ancient paths without losing touch with my own.Vie · Anatomy of an Emergent Mystic
This space is built for humans of all backgrounds who long for a container that can hold the fullness of their humanity, without being asked to diminish, translate, or perform. It is a circle. A circle holds itself.
Wherever you are on the planet, if you are looking for the space that does not exist yet, this is it.
The long-form account of a life lived at the intersection of medicine, mysticism, and ancestral return. A soul that was never asleep.
On the fierce face of grace. The chapter that begins: decenter everyone, especially the church.
Vie · Three years old · Haiti
Meet Little Vie
A friend once shared with me the idea that our inner child is also our elder. Because the child was born first, she is forever the oldest part of who we are.
As a little girl, I always looked forward to becoming a grandma. Today I would probably call that becoming an elder. I was fascinated by wisdom. In fact, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would often say that I wanted to become a sage. That was not common language in Haiti, certainly not for a child, but somehow I knew. The elder, the sage, and the mystic were already present.
Growing up, I loved listening to older people, especially my grandparents. I got to live a childhood filled with stories, medicine, meaning, and depth. Somewhere inside of me, I knew the direction my life was moving toward was the future, yet I always felt deeply anchored in the ancient.
Whenever I look at this black and white picture of myself at three years old, I recognize the wisdom, curiosity, and sense of purpose that have always been with me from the beginning.
Within me, two rivers meet: one anchored in ancient time, another moving toward the future.Vie