My childhood was filled with nature, playgrounds, sports and the relative ease of small-town life. At ten, my family moved to the suburbs and by my mid-teens, I was feeling disconnected, rebellious and increasingly alone. I was suffering from a shortage of meaningful culture and spiritual touchstones.

After graduating high school, I followed an invitation to work overseas. I spent my twenties developing a multimedia career while living in metropolitan centers, working in demanding environments and navigating foreign locations. I learned life lessons, technical skills and business practices. I explored international politics, finance, art, humanities, science, culture, ideology and ethics. I also learned the value of wholistic operations and integrative systems.

My life-based education offered a strong sense of accomplishment and freedom. Although I was satisfied in many ways, there was still a deeper, more enigmatic calling to something more meaningful. I reached a tipping point in 1990. My path shifted and I accepted a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. A year later, I moved to Los Angeles to work in music video and television production. That same year, I was introduced to a local artist-grandmother who invited me to join her monthly sweat lodge ceremonies. I found inspiration in her wisdom, authenticity, ceremony and prayerful ways of being. She encouraged me to walk my path, seek deeper answers, release the mind and reconnect with nature.

By 1994, I was feeling burnt out. I took a sabbatical in the coastal redwoods of Northern California, a place not far from my childhood home. In the quiet of the forest, I slept until noon, walked with no destination, unwound beneath giant redwoods and searched for answers.

After six months of rejuvenation, I felt pulled back to Los Angeles to accomplish my goal of directing. It was there, on set, in the middle of managing actors and crew, that I realized that my professional life was incongruent with my personal and spiritual needs. I was acutely aware of the cost of my occupation, lifestyle and distance from nature. I was 28-years-old and feeling a fundamental change of heart, mind and life purpose.

I spent the next six months searching for a conscious production company. To no avail, I sorted my belongings and relocated to Oregon to focus on my wellbeing. I took a local production job and spent most of my time out-of-doors. I enjoyed the slow pace of life and kind people. I loved riding across town in winter snowstorms or stopping to enjoy a swim in the summertime river. Then one evening, while biking in the hills, I had a spontaneous mystical experience that shifted my reality. I was at a complete loss for words and understanding. I realized then that I needed guidance to help me navigate this new reality.

My chiropractor introduced to a Chinese qigong master who invited me to study deeper mystical knowledge. Seven months later, I received the Tibetan Avaloketesvara initiation and undertook an educational journey to China and Tibet to work with qigong masters. When the programs concluded, I stayed on in Lhasa to have more time to explore my inner and outer terrain.

While in Lhasa, I had a deeply moving experience with a group of monks at a Buddhist temple. I was invited to join their ceremony. With uncertainty, I sat down. A monk placed his traditional yellow hat on my head and wrapped his woolen robe around my shoulders. He encouraged me to chant. To my surprise, I knew how to make the guttural tones. I chanted with the monks for some time. They and their Rinpoche smiled with pleasure. I smiled back. I felt a deep sense of peace, knowing, and familiarity. This experience stirred a sense of remembrance, connection, resonance, and an insight into the mystery of the Life Force that presented Itself to and through me back in Oregon.

Days later, I travelled further into the Tibetan plateau, to a monastery close to Chomolungma (Everest). There, I had an encounter with an elder, adept caretaker who had been observing my meditation. Late in the afternoon, he asked about my reasons for visiting. My answer was clearly not satisfactory. He strengthened his voice and shook his broom, repeating his query. He then said, “Go Home! You won’t find what you are looking for here! You will find the answers you seek in the land where you incarnated!”

What?! Why? When? Who?… How?…

My return ticket was some weeks away so I departed for Nepal and onward to India to follow a vision I had received. During my visa stop in Kathmandu, I had another supernatural experience that stretched my reality even further. My mind had no reference for what was occurring. It was as if life’s mysteries and orchestrations were being revealed to me in real time without a filter or instruction.

I flew on to New Delhi and took a 12-hour bus to the Tibetan enclave at Dharmsala. En route, I met a German monk who pointed me to a quiet refuge at the edge of town. I spent my days meditating, visiting temples, exploring the landscape, contemplating life and discussing documentary ideas with the Tibetan government in exile. In my last week, I took a bus into Nepal to visit the birthplace of Gautama Buddha and the presence of Mayadevi.

When I returned to America, I heard the words of the caretaker pointing me to my country’s own native traditions. Shortly thereafter, I began training with the Lipan Apache wisdom tradition and cultivating media projects based in ecology, sustainability and outdoor adventure. A year later I met my future wife and embarked on a quest to find a suitable homestead.

No sooner had we settled when my path took another turn. In 2002, while filming a reality tv series, I sustained an injury that turned out to be a reality check for me. It was another nudge to go deeper into the path less travelled. My physical recuperation revealed the limitations of western medicine and the exclusion of my mental, emotional and energetic wellbeing.

I decided to change my career track and spent the next four years researching, studying and certifying in a number of integrative healing modalities and weaving it into a professional practice. I found gratitude in the process as ABC Television had paid for all of my education and regeneration. I learned first-hand how an obstacle can give way to a beautiful opportunity. 

In 2005, I attended an energy medicine conference in the Peruvian highlands. There, the indigenous medicine people invited me to return to study with them one-to-one. This was my first apprenticeship with the Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain Tradition. It was a deep homecoming for me– one that offered a harmonic pathway to integrate my personal, professional and spiritual lives.

After two years of directed learning, research and initiation, I was invited into the celestial realms of the tradition. This began a more intensive period of cosmological experience and training. In the autumn of 2007, I was initiated by lightning and tasked with organizing retreats in Peru, traveling abroad to convey Andean wisdom, and facilitating people’s process of awaken consciousness.

A year later, in Peru, I received a vision to make the film Wisdomkeepers, Paqo Andino. When I arrived home, a friend gifted funding for the project and I began pre-production in earnest. Filming began in early 2009 and wrapped in late 2010. During this period, I learned to balance the needs of relationship, parenting, filmmaking, teaching, clients, homestead construction and my initiation process. It was full on. I was trusting the process and juggling demands.

In January of 2014, I began a six-year global journey to offer film screenings, cosmological talks, consultations, programs and retreats. When the world’s borders closed in 2020, I landed in Western Montana to rest, reconfigure and spend more time with my children.

These past years few have been a time of introspection, recalibration and regeneration. Guidance assuredly saying, “continue what you are doing. Rest. Prepare yourself. It’s almost time for what comes next.”

Looking back to 2007, I began a series of projects to offer wholistic lifeways and sacred practices that have, for the most part, been lost to time and modern culture. The wisdom itself is not my own. I am a messenger. I base my work on conscious living practices, self-responsibility, non-duality, community, sovereignty, trust, inner wisdom and sustainability. I have dedicated myself to tending the inner fire and creating opportunities for people to learn to live in a more meaningful way– a life based on freedom, interconnectivity, mutual benefit, empowerment and joy. I find life and contentment are up to us, our perspective, and willingness to fly.