What’s required for the work I do with you is sincerity, commitment, and openness.
We need sincerity because without it, we fool ourselves. We deceive ourselves. And we forget.
We need commitment because there’s a lot to do, and a great deal of resistance in the way of us doing it (both internal resistance, and external resistance).
And we need openness because we have to take reflection, and to be able to see and hear that reflection, we have to stay open.
So right here I’m committing my word to sincerity and openness and sharing my story with you – about how I got to be where I am today,
and how I might be able to help you get to where you want to get too.
Like pretty much all of us these days, I grew up with a lot of absence.
The absence of:
- role models
- purpose
- healthy examples of masculinity and femininity
- functional family (let alone community)
- intimacy
I didn’t learn much of anything useful as a child. School was torturous for me – I did NOT want to sit in classrooms all day long, and I did NOT enjoy learning / studying things
that I wasn’t ready for, or interested in. On top of that I experienced a great deal of trauma.
There was emotional neglect, a great deal of bullying (by both children and teachers), and five years of sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher who ingratiated himself with
my Mother and became a ‘family friend’.
Long story short: I entered adulthood a Big Mess.
I was deeply insecure (I honestly thought I was the ugliest boy that had ever lived).
I was socially inept (I had mostly been an only child, never had much social interaction with girls, and never really had many friends).
I was horribly ‘armored’ emotionally.
And so adulting was a series of disasters in which I:
Could barely think about anything other than sex.
Was a hopeless people-pleaser (especially with girls, with whom as a result I wasn’t very successful).
Came across as arrogant and aloof to most people (but it was just a defense mechanism).
I started off my career as an actor.
It had been one of the only things I’d been very good at, so I went to University and studied Theatre Arts.
But by then my confidence was so low that I self-sabotaged constantly and never learnt my lines. Ever.
Do you know how awful it is, how utterly horrifying it is, to be on a stage and freeze because you don’t know what comes next?
They call it ‘dying’ or ‘corpsing’ – because in that moment, you really do want to die.
I was once in a show that won a competition and we got to perform on the Oliver stage at the UK National Theatre.
I forgot my lines in front of 1127 people and I wanted the ground to swallow me up.
Shame? Oh, I can tell you about shame…
I won’t bore you with too many details.
Suffice to say: my life had to really fall horribly apart over the course of many years for me to finally be able to put all the broken pieces of myself back together.
I had to go through an addiction that lasted over a decade and nearly killed me twice.
A divorce, and separation from my son.
Living seven years in a foreign country just to be near my son.
Being taken to court accused of kidnapping (I won).
Homelessness.
Poverty.
Did I mention depression and crippling social anxiety?
Three things saved me:
1. A trauma healing method that I studied and taught and now use as one of the foundations of my work with clients.
It DISSOLVES trauma and transforms it into personal power.
2. An extraordinary spiritual teacher / mentor who took me under his wing and showed me how to be a man finally, and grow up.
He gave me what my Father should have but couldn’t.
3. A Shaman and his tribe from Ecuador that I did a lot of ceremonies with, including several Vision Quests, during which I remembered – in vision – what happened to my Mother’s ancestors
thousands of years ago. This helped me to understand her, and therefore forgive her.
By the time Covid came around I had my son with me full time, had found the love of my life (and it turned out that she’d been in love with me for years),
and let go of the last vestiges of depression, anxiety, and addiction.
And over the years as I used the tools and practices and methods that were given to me, I also improved them and made them my own.
I have helped and continue to help thousands of people recover their souls, heal from trauma, and transform dysfunction into power just like I did.
The system of healing, personal development, and spiritual awakening that I share with you is the very same one that saved my life.
It comes not from me, but from the ancient lineages that I either came in with or have had the grace and good fortune to encounter along my way.
And I share it with reverence.