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, increasingly rebellious and alone. I was suffering from a shortage of meaningful culture and spiritual touchstones.

After graduating high school in 1985, I followed an invitation to work overseas. I spent my twenties developing a multimedia career while living in major metropolitan centers, operating in highly-demanding environments and navigating international locations. I learned technical skills and business practices, explored politics, finance, art, humanities, science, culture, ideology, ethics and learned the value of wholistic operations.

My life education offered me a strong sense of accomplishment and freedom. And yet, there was always a deeper, enigmatic calling to something more meaningful. In 1990, I accepted a scholarship to focus on my creativity and expression at the San Francisco Art Institute. A year later, I moved to Los Angeles to work in the television and film industry.

Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to a local artist-grandmother who invited me to join her monthly sweat lodge ceremonies. I found myself inspired by her wisdom, authenticity, ceremony and prayerful way of being. She saw me, and encouraged me to walk my path, seek deeper answers, release my mind and reconnect with nature. Over the next couple of years, I juggled media production and spiritual exploration.

By 1994, I was suffering from burnt out and took six months off to rejuvenate in the redwood forests of Northern California. There, I slept until noon, walked without destination, sat under giant trees and searched for deeper meaning.

After my sabbatical, I returned to Los Angeles to direct my first commercial campaign. On set, in the midst of directing a hundred person crew, I had the stark realization that my professional life was utterly incongruent with my personal and spiritual needs. I was suddenly aware of the cost of my occupation, metropolitan lifestyle and the true expense of living away from nature. I was 28-years-old, sitting in a director’s chair, trying to grasp how to navigate a fundamental change of heart, mind and life-purpose.

After completing editorial, I spent the next months searching for a conscious production company. To no avail, I sold my belongings and relocated to Oregon to focus on my wellbeing. I took a local production job to make ends meet and spent most of my time out-of-doors. Then, one evening, while casually mountain biking, I had a spontaneous mystical experience that completely shifted my reality. I was at a complete loss for words and understanding. I needed serious spiritual guidance to help me navigate this newborn reality.

My chiropractor introduced to his Chinese qigong master who invited me to study and explore deeper mystical knowledge. Later that year, she invited me to receive the Tibetan Avaloketesvara initiation from the Dali Lama and undertake an educational journey to work with qigong masters in China and Tibet. When our program concluded, I stayed on in Lhasa to explore my inner and outer landscapes.

That week, I had a deeply moving experience while observing a group of monks chanting at a Buddhist temple. Unexpectedly, a monk looked directly at me and invited me to join them. With uncertainty, I sat down next to him. He placed his traditional yellow hat on my head and wrapped his woolen robe around my shoulders. I began to mimic the guttural chants, and to my surprise, I realized that I knew how to do them. I chanted with the monks for some time. They and their Rinpoche smiled at me with pleasure. I smiled back, experiencing a deep sense of peace, knowing, and a familiarity with something I had never done before. This stirred a sense of connection, resonance with the cosmology and a glimmer of understand for the Life Force that introduced itself to and through me back in Oregon.

A few days later, I travelled into the Tibetan plateau to a monastery near Chomolungma (Mount Everest). While there, I had an encounter with an elder, adept caretaker who had been watching me all day. Late that afternoon, he approached and inquired about my reasons for visiting. My answers were obviously unsatisfactory as he strengthen his voice and shook his broom in discontent. He told me to “Go Home! You won’t find what you are looking for here! You will find your answers you seek in the land where you incarnated!”

What?! Why? Where? Who?… How?

My return ticket was still some weeks away so I departed for Nepal and onward to India to follow a vision I had received days earlier in Lhasa. During my visa stopover in Kathmandu, I experienced another supernatural event that stretched my reality even further. My mind had absolutely 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 instructions.

I flew to New Delhi and took a 12-hour bus ride 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 in temples, exploring the Himalayan landscape, contemplating life and discussing documentary ideas with the Tibetan government in exile. I wrapped up my journey with a trip into Nepal to visit the birthplace of Gautama Buddha and experience the energetic presence of his birth mother, Mayadevi.

During this trip  abroad, I found a deep sense of inspiration and spiritual resonance. When I returned to America, I heard the words of the temple caretaker pointing me to my own country’s native traditions. I then began training with the Lipan Apache wisdom tradition and cultivating media projects based in ecology, sustainability and outdoor experience.

A year later I met my future wife and embarked on a quest to find a suitable homestead. No sooner had we settled than my path took another significant turn. In 2002, while shooting a reality tv series, I sustained an injury that turned out to be my  own reality check. It was another nudge to go deeper and further into the path less travelled.

The process of recuperating from my injuries revealed the limitations of western medicine and inspired me to change my career track. I spent the next four years researching, studying and certifying in a number of interdisciplinary healing modalities and weaving it into a professional practice. I was grateful as ABC Television had paid for my reeducation and training. And, I was astonished to learn first-hand how a seemingly difficult obstacle could lead to such a beautiful and supportive opportunity. 

In 2005, I attended an energy medicine conference in the Peru. While there, the indigenous medicine people invited me to study with them 1:1. This was my first apprenticeship with the Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain Tradition. It was a deep homecoming– one that offered a truly harmonic path to integrate my personal, professional and spiritual lives.

In 2007, after two years of hands-on learning, research and initiation, I was invited into the celestial realms of the tradition. This began an even more intensive period of cosmological experience and training. Later that year, I was initiated/struck by lightning and then tasked with organizing retreats, traveling abroad to convey Andean wisdom and helping people awaken consciousness.

In mid-2008, I received a vision to make the film Wisdomkeepers, Paqo Andino. Two weeks later, a friend gifted funds for the project and I began pre-production in earnest. Filming commenced in early 2009 and completed in late 2010. During this time, I learned to balance relationship, parenting, filmmaking, teaching, clients, homestead construction and initiation processes.

In January 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 have been a time of introspection, recalibration, regeneration and preparation for what comes next. Guidance repeatedly and assuredly says to me, “continue what you are doing. Prepare yourself. It’s almost time for the next chapter...”

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 simply a messenger. I base my work on conscious living principles, self-responsibility, non-duality, community organization, sovereignty, trust, inner wisdom and sustainable practice. I dedicate myself to tending the inner fire and creating opportunities for people to come together to learn to live in a more meaningful way– a life based on interconnectivity, mutual benefit, embodiment and joy. At times I find that it is not easy, but thankfully, when we learn to let go and flow with Creation, it becomes apparent just how simple life really is.