Who am I to save the world? I am just some guy on the internet. I don’t have any particular expertise or credentials. But in some ways this ordinariness is actually an advantage. I am not some exalted leader to be revered. If I can do this work anyone can. There is no particular reason you should listen to me other than maybe I can get you to think.
At first I tried to keep myself out of this essay, but what I have to offer is myself. Not just the shiny parts I want to show to you, but all of my rage, sorrow and pain too. Not just the gifts that I have, but the broken hurting places too. To give this any chance of working I can’t hold anything back. I need to bring in everything that I am. All of me is sacred and holy. All is welcome and loved.
And all by myself I am nothing. I have to somehow inspire you to bring in all of yourself. All of your joy and all of your pain. All of you is sacred and holy. All of you is welcome and loved. And together as we look out at the world we need to find a way to bring everyone, yes truly everyone into it. How could it be otherwise? We need all of us. I want to hear everyone’s story.
But first we start with me. Let me introduce myself.
My driving trait seems to be curiosity. I always, always want to dig deeper into the Truth of things. Especially if it is hard. The greatest gift you can give me is to help me see a truth I have been hiding from myself. This is where I started. This drive to explore has taken me to many amazing places, most of them internal.
My purpose is to climb tall mountains and leap into worlds unknown to chart the course for others to follow. Let me unpack that a little.
I’m attracted to things that are challenging and hard. And again I’m talking mostly about internal challenges. The hard work of climbing a mountain is more than worth it for the view.
When you finally get to the top of the mountain you now have a choice. You can go back to your familiar world or you can jump off into the unknown to see what comes. Once I have discovered some new world inside of myself I typically feel called to leap into it to really experience it. Without knowing exactly what I might find.
Now that I’ve done a fair amount of exploring it is time for the final phase of my purpose. I have climbed a number of mountains and leapt off of them. And truly I look at all the people who have gone so much farther than me and wonder who I am to try and talk about these mountains. But it is now time to do some charting. I have some things that are worth passing on. And in fact switching to this new role feels like yet another scary mountain to leap off of.
We all have these beautiful, undiscovered worlds within us. Let me show you some of mine.
I have made three sacred vows in my life. I know that sounds so weird — who in this day and age makes sacred vows?!? I didn’t intentionally set out to make these vows, and it would not have worked even if I had. They actually are the key discoveries I made while doing all that exploring.
I will tell the full story of these discoveries later on, but first let me introduce them.
When I was emerging from a very dark, hurting time in my life; a time when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue living, I made my first sacred vow to lead a deep rich fulfilling life. I had to remember that I mattered.
To make sure I honored that vow I changed my name. I did it to make sure I would never forget my vow. It worked. I had known for a long time before that what the name would be because I am an explorer. “Odysseus” is the archetype of the person embarking on an odyssey.
The way I found myself out of all that suffering was to do intense personal growth workshops. Those workshops (along with meditation) were one of the very few things that worked. I tried therapy with a few Freudian psychiatrists but their approach seemed (and still does frankly) like mostly nonsense. So personal growth workshops it was. And I did a lot of them. The month of my 50th birthday I did a particularly powerful workshop ( at HAI) and I stepped into a lot of joy. I finally committed to fully loving myself. I had made that commitment before, but this time I really meant it. It was a big step deeper into an ongoing spiritual awakening, and brought me into a new phase of my life. After struggling with my weight for years, now I found it surprisingly easy to lose the 25 pounds needed to get back to a healthy weight. And more importantly it was easy to maintain this new weight because I absolutely only ate what worked for my body (turns out strict Paleo works best for me). I committed to aging as gracefully as possible so I did things like getting my hormones checked and started lifting weights regularly. I finally got the facial reconstruction surgery that I had been putting off, and the list goes on.
I continued to do HAI workshops and at one of them a woman stood up and vowed to love everyone unconditionally. I was floored — that was such a bold, brave thing to do! It seemed almost crazy. No one had told her to do this; she just went and did it. But then at the very next workshop I found myself standing up to make that same exact commitment.
People who really know me describe me as very love based. I find that description astonishing. It is true, but it is kind of like saying I am very oxygen based. Of course I am oxygen based! I am quite attached to breathing. But so are you! And just like we sometimes forget to stop and really let ourselves breathe, we also quite often forget to stop and let ourselves really love. To me it seems obvious that everything is Love. Everything. We come from Love and return to Love. Yes really. There are maybe only fleeting moments when this was really clear, but then as we all do we forget. The trick is to forget less and less. I promise you there is an immense amount of joy to be found in the remembering.
A few years after doing those workshops. I did guided, psychedelic Medicine work and went into even deeper joy. Most mornings I find myself in joy. Now that I am mostly out of suffering, my focus has shifted to service. I want to help people not just find their way out of suffering, but into their own joy. Oceans of love are right there waiting for all of us. Just begging to be let in. Somehow, someway I want to help people let at least some of that immense love in.
My second vow changed me. Opened my heart more than I thought possible, and pointed the way to something yet more. So ten years after I stood in front of that HAI gathering I stood yet again in front of a HAI sacred circle and declared:
I remember. I keep on falling back into that trance of feeling small and separate, but just like in a meditation where my mind wanders I will keep on remembering that I am part of something much, much bigger that connects us all in Love
I awaken. I know that there is a bigger consciousness that wants to awaken in me and awaken in the world. I will serve and nurture this awakening that wants to happen.
We do this together. This world is desperate for healing. As I awaken I will stand in my power and then look out to others who are awakening. And they will look back to me. Together we will ask the question, “How are we going to heal this world? What is our plan? How do we do this together?”
I’m stepping into the Elder phase of life. I think this is a phase that humans are supposed to go through. it is a time when we start to reconcile with our inevitable death. A time when my own needs seem less and less important. I still, of course, have my ongoing work to do but what I want to focus on most in my remaining time is the health of the tribe. Before I die, I want to leave a world that works for my grand kids. A world that works for all of our grand kids.
So how am I going to do that? Without realizing it I’ve spent a life time exploring this. I think we already have the answers we just need to bring them into an integral whole. Let me share with you some of my key learnings.