My earliest memories are from living in places like England and South Africa, which were absolutely magical to me. Ancient civilizations and ruins, castles, knights, and amazing wildlife were the stuff of my youth.
Moving back to Edmonton, I started grade school and spent the next sixteen years in academics.
When I was twelve years old, I was asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Without hesitation, I answered “A doctor.” I felt that there was no greater gift in the world than to help others heal.
By the time I reached high school, however, I realized two things:
1. I didn’t actually like the lifestyle that doctors had. I didn’t like the environment they worked in or the hours they worked, and the thought of seeing sick people all the time was pretty depressing to me.
2. I didn’t know how to be, or ever become, professionally dispassionate. What would I do if I couldn’t help someone when they came to see me? How would I feel watching someone die who was beyond my help?
So I changed career paths and went into computers instead, which were just arriving on the scene. I graduated in Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta, moved overseas with my girlfriend, and spent the next many years travelling and working and generally enjoying life.
We moved back to Canada, got married, and started a family, which is when everything started to unravel.
I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my work, although I didn’t actually know why.
After changing jobs several times and becoming more and more more stressed and agitated, I realized that there was something fundamentally wrong. I experienced a panic attack while competing in the World Masters Games, which prompted me to see my family doctor. When he asked me what was wrong, I broke down and told him that I was dying. That was the feeling that I had. My body had started to shut itself down.
Concerned, he diagnosed me as suffering from work-induced stress & anxiety – a common condition among working professionals, I was told. He offered me medication to help me deal with things. I thought that it couldn’t hurt, so I spent the next eight months on anti-depressants and returned to my job after two months of stress leave.
I knew that this wasn’t the answer, however. The medication made me functional again, but it didn’t address the feeling of “something’s wrong.” After eight months of numbness and side-effects, I weaned myself off of the medication and started looking for answers.
A friend of mine recommended that I look into a couple of courses being offered by a personal growth company, and before I knew what was going on, I had signed up for two of their classes.
The first one that I took was called the Enlightenment Intensive. It changed everything.
I had no idea what the class was about… what Enlightenment was. I wasn’t even sure if the instructor was speaking in English, but I could follow his instructions and do the process that he was telling us to do. On day two of the retreat, I woke up. I entered into this space called Enlightenment and I knew, in a heartbeat, why I was unhappy.
My life was meaningless. It had no purpose. I was wasting everything. I wasn’t making this world a better place to live in, a better place for my children or anyone else. I was spending all of my life working in a virtual, electronic environment that wasn’t real.
The clarity that came to me didn’t stop there, however. I became clear on who I am, why certain relationships weren’t working in my life and how I could fix them, the deep balance and harmony that exists in nature… It just continued, and by the end of the class I told my wife, “I can’t go back. I can’t go back to what I was doing before.”
Five days after the class ended, I returned to work, walked straight into the HR department and resigned. within two weeks I had finished my tasks and ended a 17-year career in computers and technology.
When a friend of mine asked what I was going to do next, I said “Learn, teach, and help others.” That was the only thing that I knew.
For the next two years, I threw myself into everything that was offered by this company. I took courses on Enlightenment, relationships and sexuality, life & money management skills, self-empowerment, couples work, and various types of yoga. My wife and I traveled and studied in places like India, Hawaii, and various places in Canada and the mainland U.S.A.
After a while, I started volunteering and staffing. My teachers and mentors encouraged me to continue my training, so I started taking advanced classes for leading and facilitating. I also started exploring the healing profession again, but from a different point of view. I made appointments to try out many different forms of naturopathy, including acupuncture, reiki, reflexology, massage therapies, cranial sacral, etc.
And then I reached a point when I realized that the work that I was doing, was now doing me. It had fallen into me as much as I had fallen into it.
Having explored many different approaches to helping people, I have yet to find anything that works as deeply or as effectively as what I am doing now.
There is no band-aid solution to life. Underneath our medications, our positive affirmations and our “Be Happy!” posters, many people are suffering in deep, profound silence. Drugs, sex, TV, media, work, medications, even spirituality, are all used to cover up what’s really going on.
To this end, I’ve dedicated my life to helping people break through their fears using tools that do work; tools which are not temporary or quick fixes to life.
By working with people in the realms of self-realization, awareness, empowerment, relationships & sexuality, and life purpose, I have found that all of our challenges in life become opportunities for growth, self-development, and action, all aimed at fulfilling your purpose in life!
