MY PHILOSOPHY
If you’re reading this then you’re probably struggling with something in your life.
I've written this page to introduce you to some of my philosophy, in the hopes it will help you with what you are looking for help with.
What you’ll find here is my unique blend of work.
Fair warning, it's a long page! If you aren't particularly a reader, then just jump into getting on a call with me, or send me a message. But if you do like reading..... this is for you.
This has been crafted over many years of deep investigation into multiple wisdom traditions, and as my ability to channel developed I have received and developed many teachings through discussions with enlightened masters. I've invested years into synthesizing them into actual practical methods, honed through applying them in my own life, and with hundreds of clients.
One of the best pieces of praise came when a client actually tattooed one of these teachings onto their arm to help them remember! You don't have to go this far :)
There's a lot here, and it's multi-layered. So it's not about understanding everything, these are just pointers to help you see if there is resonance. If you feel some resonance then the main thing is to step into action. Sign up for emails or reach out and connect.
There is an
Architecture of the Mind
Whatever you're struggling with can be made better by coming more into alignment with this architecture. What is this architecture? The natural background of our mind is loving-kindness. But we have been conditioned to create our lives from fear instead, moving out of alignment with this. To change - to transform the circumstances of our lives - we must align, progressively, with loving-kindness. This page is my attempt to explain how this works and how it can bring enormous benefit to your life.
This is hard to understand
The structure, the architecture of our minds is murky and hard to understand.
This is where my unique flavor of work is: help you work with the deeper layers of your mind in order to make change in your outer circumstances - your relationships, your jobs, your living situations, your depression, your anxiety, your trauma reactions.
It turns out that we can use all of these unwanted experiences right now as an opportunity to create lasting transformation towards ease and happiness and alignment.
And we can learn - fairly quickly - how to navigate this, to start having positive steps forward in our experience.
FIVE STAGES OF RELEASING STRUGGLE
A human journey towards the natural expression of who they are will be in five stages. At each, we must do the work to move to the next. The type of work needed is similar, it is working with the mind. But the way in which we will work shifts.
We must have the humility to recognize where we are, the courage to step into the work, and the relentlessness to keep coming back to it.
Stage 1: drowning. We are not ok on the inside, and not ok on the outside. We are deep in the struggle.
Stage 2: treading water. We are not ok on the inside, but things look ok on the outside. We are powering through. We keep going, maybe we’re doing fine at work but inside we are depressed, anxious, scared, we know something is wrong.
Stage 3: swimming in circles. We are ok on the inside and ok on the outside. But we feel constrained, or stuck, or groundless. We don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing next. We’ve woken up somewhere we don’t recognize. We start to look up and search for what it is we are supposed to be.
Stage 4: flying. We break the surface and take to the sky. Now we know who we are and what we are doing, and we are fully engaged in the work. We soar toward the stars, energized by clarity, purpose, and vision.
Stage 5: radiating. We embody our pure being, bright and free. We no longer move for ourselves alone — we return to help others on their journey. From this seat of truly being fully ourselves, we can go anywhere, bringing wisdom, compassion, and strength wherever it is needed.
SEVEN AREAS OF LIFE
Take a look around your life - you can look in these seven areas. See where you are in each of these areas along the journey I outlined above.
Spirituality: Your inner work, your connection to the world and to the divine, whatever that means for you. Your intuition, your practices that keep you centered, healthy, thriving, your mental health. Do you face the darkness in your mind with courage, or avoid what you most fear
Money & Career: your job, your business, your work, your purpose, your finances, your financial independence. Are you fueled by abundance and discipline, or only by fear of failure?
Intimate Relationship(s): Your intimate, sexual health and relationship with wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, intimate partner(s). Can you meet your partner with wisdom, vulnerability and fearless heart? Or mostly in defensiveness and avoidance.
Community & Friendships: Your friends, your people, people that hold you as theirs, your relationship with your communities. Do you bring natural confidence and joy to your tribe?
Exploration & Adventure: Your sense of curiosity, your passion for life, your zeal, your travel, sense of joy and wonder in exploring. Do you step into the vastness of the world, or stay safely contained, embedded in your routines?
Art & Creative Expression: Your unique gifts to be expressed, your authentic contribution to the world, your writing or art or hobbies. Do you let magic pour through you, or keep yourself hidden, afraid to share who you really are?
Body & Health: Your fitness, your health, your sports, wellness. Do you carry yourself with ease, stand tall in your strength, or are you still at war with yourself, over food, mobility and health?
The thing to realize is:
IT IS ALL YOUR MIND
In order to deal with the things that you're struggling with, having difficulty with, we must learn to look inside ourselves instead of only looking out at what we think is happening to us, being done to us.
This work is not about the outer world, although the outer world is massively impacted by this work, since everything flows from inward to outward. The outer world is a manifestation of our inner world, and our inner world is a manifestation of what our thoughts are made of.
The Architecture of Mind
Remember I said there is an architecture of the mind - here is the basic blueprint of this. We can begin to work with distinguishing these three layers inside our own experience. Working with the deeper layers has a transformative effect on our experience - it engages the engine to propel us forward along the journey I showed above, rather than keeping recreating where we are.
The outer layer of our mind is the world of material stuff that we see "out there" - the jobs, the cars, the houses, the travel, the physical struggles, talking with wives, partners, friends, the objects and so on. Our interpretation of all of this world is indeed a layer of the mind. It is built far more than we usually realize from the patterns of the next layer of mind, the inner layer. We can see this when the same event occurring is interpreted entirely differently by different people.
The inner layer is the world of our emotions and our ways of being, our roles - father, wife, husband, boss, our personality - honest, mean, spiteful, manipulative, leader, kind, and many more. This is a vast complex realm that we are only dimly aware of in general, even as it is what we spend most of our time reacting to. We avoid the monsters in this realm, and struggle to find our good qualities, hidden in the many shadows.
The fabric layer is hidden to many, except those of us that choose into the deep inward journey to uncover it. We have to face into all that the inner layer contains in order to fully uncover this fabric layer. It is the deepest level of drive for us to discover. This is the layer that creates our thoughts, it is the engine. We can say that there are essentially two gears for this engine - we are either creating thoughts and patterns made of loving-kindness, or we are creating thoughts and patters out of fear. and the work here involves shifting from a fear-based drive to a love-based drive.
Why is Change So Hard?
We get caught up with working with the circumstances of our lives, not recognizing our patterns and the fabric of what we have created them with. We work at the wrong layer. We work with the outer circumstances - struggling with what we have created from fear. We don't recognize that it is the pattern that we need to shift. And beyond that, that we need to shift what the patterns themselves are made of.
It's like we are in a raging, twirling swirling whirlpool, and we're desperately trying to push the water to the left and right from inside the whirlpool. It doesn't work! What we have to do instead is work with the conditions that created the whirlpool itself.
We have to see our patterns and choose to work with THEM, not just the effects of them.
Transforming our view of stuckness into a journey (the journey diagrammed above) is key.
We’re not really stuck, even though it feels that way. It’s just that we are recreating our patterns over and over.
Did you get it?
This changes everything! But it's hard to really grasp this. We have to get clear on what it is that we really want.
And what is the force that will propel us across the journey from drowning to flying? Loving-Kindness. Because that is the destination, so in order to go there, we need to practice going there.
We Must Become Radically Clear:
WHAT DO I WANT
In looking at the journey of releasing struggle across the five stages - when we are on the left hand side (drowning, surviving), what we most desperately want is to feel ok, normal. But what we are mostly focused on is escaping, flailing around in the chaos of our mind. Instead, we must focus as strongly as we can on "Being Ok". This is a shift that is hard to make, but is exactly what will shift you from struggle to peace.
When we are in the middle (treading water, ok but stuck) we typically fear looking at what we really want because it might be destabilizing to our lives. It might rock, or capsize, the boat. But that's what we need to do to move, we need to examine the question "What Do I Want".
When we are on the right - flying towards our purpose, we will encounter plenty of obstacles and opportunities to continually increase the flow of the mind. We will uncover traumas and difficulties we thought we had dealt with previously. Learning to look deeply into these and use them as the contrast we need to light the path, is the work.
When we have really got clear about what we want, then we can travel along the paths. Learning how we can approach the work to shift along our path is key to whether we make some consistent progress. We learn to walk first, then leap and run. We can then move into learning the process of flying, and ultimately the ability to teleport can develop. By which I mean our emotional states of stuckness become thinner and thinner, and eventually we can flit between them, we can choose into states of being rather than being victim to them.
Four Paths Through Our Mind
So, how do we make this journey, what direction to do we take?
In working with hundreds of people, and from deep study of wisdom teachings, I have identified that there are four fundamental paths that traversing them will change our entire experience of life. These are the most important, most fundamental shifts in the architecture of our mind where we move from a fear-based architecture to a loving-kindness based architecture.
1. From Information-Seeking to Practical Experience
This path is the key that will unlock everything else in your journey. It is to shift your allegiance from knowledge and information-seeking to your direct experience and practice. I can't emphasize this enough, and indeed it is a fundamental part of what we will work on together. Perhaps you are already well into this path if you have already undergone a lot of transformation, or perhaps you are right at the beginning of it. If you cannot walk this path, then you cannot transform. You will create some change in your life through brute force, but ingrained habits will always pull you back, until you can travel this path to change how you work with yourself.
For those of us who value our intelligence, or have "done well" at school and so on, this can be especially difficult. The act of putting aside our need to figure everything out, and to simply step into doing a practice instead, is very challenging.
Working with one client this became a running joke. We would spend hours calling out this pattern as "The Why Trap" - "Why can't I do this", "Why am I so depressed", "Why did I have anxiety today", "Why is nothing working", and so on. Eventually by cutting through this over and over, and shifting him to focus instead on what he wanted, the journey on this path took place, and his life changed completely, shifting out of alcoholism, ending his depression, changed his business, became incredibly fit, got of crippling debt, and other huge transformations!
The trap is like this: we think that if we can just figure out the reason why we are suffering, THEN we will know what to do about it. But we can spend decades in this trap. The trick is instead to cut through this. If we know what we want - to feel "ok", then instead of focusing on why we are not feeling ok, we need simply to focus on "being ok". We don't need the middle step. And actually focusing on the middle step is exactly what is causing us to stay stuck.
For every path there is a key that unlocks it. The Key to travel this path is: Willingness
2. From Shame to Joy
This is probably the most heart-wrenching path when we see it properly. So many of us are stuck in deep aggression towards ourselves. Strong inner critic voices that shame us constantly. To travel this path, meaning to come to a place of love for ourselves - and by extension all beings - is the most powerful transformative experience there is. It is vital to take this work on. It is so difficult, but so worth it.
This path is one from a place where in our mind we are fundamentally bad, to one where we know that we are fundamentally good. Knowing this at a cellular level - this changes everything.
The Key to travel this path is: Discipline: the true meaning - inviting that which helps us thrive (steadiness, devotion).
3. From Competition to Consciousness
We are typically deeply entrenched in a competitive mindset. We score-keep in our relationships, counting up the hurts that our partner does to us, in order that we can feel justified in hurting them back. We count up the injustices that our boss is doing to us. We see the world around us as judging us, as keeping us down, and we either fight against it, or we shut down.
This path in the mind is to shift to where we become collaborative and co-operative. We see life and the people in it as joyful energy to choose into playing with, rather than something to compete against.
I say the destination of this path is consciousness, because this is the reality of what is "out there" - a loving, open, friendly intelligence, and so in making this shift within our own inner mind, we are coming more into contact with the nature of our own consciousness, rather than being stuck in fear.
The Key to travel this path is: Vulnerability / Honesty
4. From Escaping Reality to Creating Reality
In this path we shift from the normal unconscious way of creating our life into really mastering conscious creation of our life. We learn to shift from trying to escape the bad things, to creating good things. This is where we come into recognition of the deepest layer of the mind in the diagram above - the fabric layer. We start to see how we have been creating from fear, and we shift into creating from loving-kindness instead.
We move from being the victim and bully in our life, to being in your own power. We move from trying to make decisions all the time, to stepping into choosing. We move from constantly recreating the patterns of our past, to creating a new future.
The Key to travel this path is: Focus (the ability to Place your Attention despite what you see)
We Need Container
And now the final piece in this long philosophy page! Ok, how do we actually make the journey along one or all of these paths? Well, in order to accomplish anything, we need a container. A river needs river-banks. Cars need a road. To learn, we need a curriculum. All energy needs a container in order to accomplish something.
In order to accomplish these shifts in our mind, to move from struggle to freedom, we need a container. We ourselves need to cultivate this, and we need help. We need the reflection of a clear mirror, to help us see what is in our inner world. We need some structure, support, accountability - both in ourselves and outside. We need to step into a container.
This is a major part of what I do, is provide container. This has always been the spiritual path, we have just forgotten it to a great extent in Western culture. We often rebel against asking for help, not realizing that are not at all independent, despite what we think. The fear of asking for help, for stepping into a container with someone is itself exactly the pattern of separation that we need to break out of.
We must create a container for our new way of being, as we travel along the journey of the different stages of relaxing into becoming our true selves, moving out of struggle into freedom. It is young, delicate, and needs the support of a container to grow healthy and strong.
The Prognosis - Two Outcomes
A. STAY STUCK
To the extent that we allow the experience of feeling stuck, struggling, not knowing the outcome and so on to determine our choices, we will continue to keep creating this experience.
These things rarely improve without conscious effort.
If we don't really engage with the fundamentals of choosing in to do the inner work, it is unlikely that our patterns will change on their own. We might get temporary relief with the next new thing we find. Or we might just numb ourselves out with whatever our favorite numbing-strategy is - TV, alcohol, substances, sex, scrolling, and keep waiting for our rescuer to come.
B. CHOOSE INTO THE FUNDAMENTAL WORK
Tapping into the fierceness of the life force within you, having the bravery to take a sharp look at where you are and how you are REALLY doing, having the humility to choose to do the fundamental work and really working with the fabric and content of OUR OWN LIFE rather than someone else's, and the faith to choose into working with someone to help.
This is what will help you change your life towards whatever it is that you want. Take a look again at the seven areas of life, and allow yourself to open into the heart-felt desire to shift, to move, to change, to grow.
Step In
Each of the four paths described above has a key, which is the fundamental quality that we need to develop in order to travel on that path. Each path also has a set of practices that are how we can travel it, and a set of symptoms that are indicators that this is the work we need to actively engage with. I have developed this work into a whole set of courses, practices and methods that we will work through, according to however your particular patterns show up.
1. From Information-Seeking to Practice
Key to travel the path: Willingness
Symptoms:
Seeking external input on what to do
Anxiety
Paralysis through analysis
Going in circles
Depression
People-pleasing
Burn-out
Stress
Addictions
Important practices for traveling the path:
running experiments
self-trust cultivator for 15 or 30 days (10 things)
meditation - learning to sit in the storm
Journaling
Be, Do, Have
Care How You Feel
2. From Shame to Joy
Key to travel the path: Discipline: the true meaning - inviting that which helps us thrive (steadiness, devotion)
Symptoms:
Shame
Self-hatred
Internal voices of anger and attack (inner critic)
feeling like an outsider
no / low self-esteem
imposter syndrome
Important practices for traveling the path:
Silent Meditation - seeing obstacles
Metta
Basic goodness meditation
Notice practice: Thought: “What am I making this to mean about myself” + somatic noticing
Looking in mirror
Focus Wheel
3. From Competition to Consciousness
Key to travel the path: Vulnerability / Honesty
Symptoms:
Competitiveness
Neediness
Isolation
Not been seen, feeling misunderstood
Judgemental
Meanness / spitefulness / wanting revenge
I’ll show them
Important practices:
Metta
Tonglen
As without, so within - see our obstacles in what we judge & react to in others
Just-like-me
Vision Web
4. From Escaping Reality to Creating Reality
Key to travel the path: Focus (Place your Attention)
Symptoms:
constantly falling out of healthy habits
deep depression
constantly asking why things are happening to you
drama
always pulled back by the gravity of suffering
Important practices:
What do you want
Be, Do, Have
Reality Creation Loop
So what, now what (fully come to terms with what is, then engage with what you want)
Fearlessness practice (stop escaping)
Start where you are
WILLINGNESS
So. The first key is willingness. Willingness to step in. To practice. To choose into the work in order the better your circumstances. To be more able to handle your work, your relationships, your family, your health, your friends. Willingness to speak, to engage, to practice. To shift your attention from "why is this happening to me" to "I choose to focus on peace, health, love".
Willingness = Action
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In this fast moving world you will simply move on and the patterns of distraction will take over. Being in contact through email is a practical way to be reminded. I send out free articles and videos, guided meditations, courses and options for working together.
Or jump in to getting on a call with me.
We can connect about what you're working with. My approach is simply to help you as best I can, and then based on that we can see if we're a good fit to work together. I don't do any selling to you.
