My conscious participation in my spiritual path began when I was quite young. When I was about 5 years old I began to be intensely aware of how pervasive suffering was. Concurrent with the awareness was the sense that this suffering was largely unnecessary. A further awareness was that much of the view of reality that the world was trying to indoctrinate me with was either plain wrong or very incomplete. I sensed this was the main source of the unnecessary suffering. I wasn’t clear what the truth was, only that I wasn’t being given it.
Of course, when I was 5 these where more felt impressions rather then clearly articulated thoughts but they did guide my attention and intention. By the time I was old enough to be at our local library and bookstores unattended (9 years old) I was spending huge amounts of time there, especially in the occult, metaphysical and religion sections, but my interests also included science, math, psychology, sociology, health, martial arts (with a special interest in the internal styles) business and finances . Basically anything that would help me explore reality and the potential of what being human could mean. I was intuitively confident that humans are vastly more powerful then most realized. I knew that the stories of psychic and magical powers were not to all fiction. I never developed a belief in any fixed limits.
My passion for these early interests has only intensified over the years and I have spent my who life studying, learning and exploring the means of personal and global transformation. When I was 18 I was initiated into a Hermetic Lodge and began intensive study of Hermetics, Qabalah , Western Ceremonial Magick, and Modern Pagan Practices. It was my primary focus for the next Six years of my life though my appetite remained omnivorous and my studies continued to include eastern systems as well as modern insights from various disciplines of psychology and science. I lead a lifestyle that allowed much time to these pursuits so my immersion was of a magnitude few are able to achieve.
I have had the great fortune to have a continuous stream of important teachers in my life beginning when I was 4 with my next door neighbor, Lily whom I affectionately refer to as my magical grandmother. She had several beautiful gardens including a Bamboo grove and a house filled with mystical symbols, Buddha statues, rosaries, gypsy charms, crystals and crystal balls. She had book like Dante’s Divine Comedy and many theosophy books. She never formally taught me anything but she was very open minded and let me talk about the stuff I was reading at the Library and elsewhere.
Influential teachers (to many to name them all here) continued to appear with very important and powerful impact on my life but it wasn’t until I was 24 I met the Teacher I had prayed my whole life to meet, the one who could guide me to end of the path, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, A master of the Nyingma School of Vajrayana Buddhism. My heart exploded the moment I laid eyes upon him. On September 22nd 1992 I took refuge with him, which is the first step on the Buddhist path. For the next two years my spiritual practice slowly changed focus to my Buddhist Practice. By 1994 it became the central focus of my practice. As before my lifestyle choices have allowed for an immersion few in the west have had the opportunity engage in. I have attended a large number of public teachings as well received close personal guidance from several great masters of the Nyingma Lineage. I have also had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time in retreat including over two years in continuous practice retreat doing practice 8-12 hours of meditation a day. Considering all this great fortune I am still far more screwed up then I should be. But none the less, my immersion in these pursuits has given me the opportunity for very deep exploration. Though I am not even close to enlightened I have tasted enough of the True Nature of Reality to speak with some conviction about it and my teachers have confirmed that my understandings are correct at least as far as they go.
While Vajrayana Buddhism has been the meat of my personal alchemical practice it continues to be heavily seasoned from many diverse sources by my omnivorous appetite for exploring the skillful means of personal, systemic and global transformation.
I have study and become adept at a great many methods of transformation and healing including various forms of body work, energy healing, transformational uses of language, and thus use of technology to support spiritual transformation.
All these combined with a passionate commitment to be the maximum benefit to all beings, places me in a position to be of unique service to those who are looking to “Become the change they want to see in the world.”