The Adventure of a Self-Actualized Life
To live a self-actualized life means that we live with a sense of movement, progress and adventure. If we take our feelings and values seriously, then they will move us into, and out of, different situations, careers, relationships.
To self-actualize means we consent to live and to be lived by Life. We don't just go with the flow -- we engage creatively with the flow and become more conscious of who we are in the process.
If it seems to time to wait, watch and do nothing, then we surrender our will to make quick changes. But when it seems time to speak, act or make changes then we courageously do so.
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My work with people is about encouraging a conscious, transformative and empowered vision of what life is. That often starts with understanding your unique personality type - for which I find Jungian typology (popularized by the Myers-Briggs test) and the Enneagram.
dialog about the inner and outer life -- with emphasis on taking stock of the feelings behind it all. When we live without valuing our feelings, there is a tremendous cost to our happiness and to our soul. Without emotional catharsis, grace or intuition entering into consciousness, then there is no real transformation of the personality.
If all men live mechanical, unpoetical lives, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world.
Some people know me as their psychologist. Others know me as a spiritual teacher and author. My work embraces the practical and profound dimensions of human experience - honoring the deep psyche and its wounds, as well as the spirit and its divine nature.
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My work is based in spiritual clarity, awakened consciousness and depth psychology. It is both deep and dynamic, sacred and mundane. I connect with people on the soul level and am a strong ally for your healing and awakening.
As a deep feeler, intuitive and creative, I am able to facilitate the arising of deep feeling, vitality, and passion as well as sanity, insight and wisdom. To be specific, my personality type is INFP.
This means I am uniquely able to help you get rooted in what is essential and most meaningful to yo
I am passionate about bringing out the most powerful and positive aspects of the feminine and masculine in us. It's not a matter of men becoming feminine but of integrating the feminine and knowing how to relate to it. Ironically that makes them more genuinely and consciously masculine. Same for women and the masculine.
I work as a catalyst not just for healing but for the full empowerment and enlivening of consciousness in and through the human personality. I do not believe in, or teach any kind of ego death, but rather the natural shift from a painful, unconscious and material sense of self for the conscious, joyful, and spiritual vibrant and rooted self - or Soul in human existence.
I include sexuality in this and I teach men and women how to bring divine, vibrant love into their sexual intimacy and relating.
Whichever spiritual teacher you like, I guarantee that I am not saying what they are saying. Many are offering one-sided tips about "letting go" or detaching from thoughts when you really need to figure out how to think and which feelings or intuitions to pay attention to. Trying to embody a total neutrality or passive tolerance of "the moment" implies that you are not a conscious participant in life but are somehow either separate from it or so immersed in "the oneness" that you no longer have any conscious role in contemplating, choosing or directing your life. This is false.
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I am completely opposed to the making of spiritual men into sterile, effeminate and passive observers of their lives. I am also against the widespread brainwashing of women out of their deep feminine, relational, mothering and sexually ecstatic natures by postmodern, progressive and (sometimes) eastern teachings.
I believe in traditional values not out of adherence to religion but out of a conscious embrace of the instinctual, archetypal ground of human nature as it awaken to the spirit. When we separate from our instinctual and physical nature we get possessed by lofty intellectual, postmodern ideologies or mass systems that have nothing to do with honoring the human heart and soul.
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I help people solve all kinds of ordinary problems while realizing a higher love and consciousness in the process.
Without a higher vision, our attempt to heal or solve problems is too shallow. I help people get real about ordinary, daily problems in life and love because these are exactly where we need to look for our spiritual growth. The path goes right through the heart - through struggles with love, money, sexuality and lifestyle.
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As a Jungian psychologist, I embrace the "depth" approach of psychodynamic therapy, which honors our early development, attachment style, relational wounds and need for meaning. It uses the empathic space to shed the loving light and understanding that leads to catharsis, insight and integration. It also involves a clinical ability to detect personality disorders and serious forms of dysregulation or identity instability. Jungian psychology also pays keen attention to our personality type as introvert/extrovert, feeler/thinker, intuitive/sensate or perceiving/judging.
In the therapy office and in my spiritual guidance work, I also bring a direct, here-and-now, intuitive kind of guidance for spiritual expansion and inspiration. Many of my clients say that 1) they never received a real "depth" approach in therapy, and 2) they never worked with anyone who was informed by spiritual awakening or a higher vision of masculine/feminine polarity.
So how did I come to this psychospiritual work?
In 2006, during my Doctoral training, I went through a life-changing awakening of consciousness. It was a classical enlightenment or Satori experience as Zen calls it. It also involved a spontaneous, full Kundalini opening, as described in the Vedic/Yoga tradition. This means it was a very full, deep shift of being rather than a partial "glimpse" or insight. I felt I was utterly reborn and cleansed-through at a deep level. But I still retained my ordinary personality and many blindspots. These emerged and had to be faced over time.
In any case, these are the kinds of awakenings that, traditionally, make someone able to teach as a guru, spontaneously from direct, dynamic wisdom. At any given time, I could sit down in front of a hundred peope and give a spiritual talk without preparation or concern as to what to say or do. I realize many people will see this as a claim to some absolute authority or ultimate truth, but it is not that. It is simply a more direct and intuitive level of knowing. For myself, I reject any guru status or traditions. I prefer to work as an ordinary spiritual teacher and friend. I stand only on my imperfect human character and everyone I work with is free to criticize or disagree with me.
The awakening brought a deep inner silence, energetic opening and a wellspring of intuitive insight. It fundamentally changed the depth, clarity and expansiveness of my consciousness. As I gradually came back down to Earth, I settled into my natural personality. I observed myself becoming far more masculine, strong-minded, creative, irreverent and practical.
My focus is on helping people find healing, love and intuitive vision. My approach is about first getting real about who you are as a human being (Human Design, Enneagram and Myers-Briggs are useful), opening yourself to divine guidance and transforming your sexuality (among other things) toward something both sacred and ecstatic. It's about understanding your unique personality and process of self-actualization.
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When we look to make the unconscious conscious, we have to look at that very basic things that keep you unhappy and living a compromised, self-denying life instead of a conscious, empowered and boldly creative one. For most people these issues are around love, sex, compatibility, work and lifestyle. The issues revolve around your personality type -- its unique strengths and blindspots.
With highly accurate and swiftly moving intuition, I help people understand who they are at the soul level and where they are going. My style is warm, engaging, surprising and intuitive. I am usually pretty gentle but can also be fearlessly blunt when needed.
Most people I work with experience deep transformation, breakthroughs, and a sense of being seen and understood on a level they never had.
Presence.
Real love and connection.
Psychological integration.
Spiritual vision and vitality.
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I can show you how.
Not by giving you another list of tips, tricks and tools.
But by guiding you in a process of transformation that changes you for life - inspiring, uplifting and clarifying decades (lifetimes?) of self-doubt and confusion.
By talking with you in depth and helping you see what's hidden within - or sometimes - what's right in front of your face.
If you've been feeling stuck in some painful habits or difficult relationship issues, I welcome you to reach out. Attending to your inner life will create positive changes in your outer life and relationships.
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When you are struggling and need solid guidance, I offer much more than just listening. I will actively help you understand yourself, sort out your relationships and transform your life in the process.
I will not only empathize deeply with what you're going through -- but I will also guide, educate and inspire your personal growth. Most people I work with experiences significant breakthroughs and improvements.
I have helped many people profoundly improve their lives, and I'll be honored to help you too. Let's have a quick phone conversation about how you're doing lately.
There is an art to making what is unconscious, conscious. It involves learning to look, listen, and take action from the inner observer, the timeless soul or being within.
My work as a psychologist provides a strong foundation for understanding the unconscious patterns of dysfunction and relational conflict that most people struggle with.
I've been struck by how stubborn these patterns can be, even among those who are engaged in spiritual studies.
In my view, our task is to replace a narrow, deficient identity with the radiant sanity, love and intelligence of our real self.
Opening and restoring the feeling function - our capacity for deep sensitivity, beauty and relatedness - is an essential aspect of my work. ​
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I help people around the world live from conscious presence, understand themselves and infuse their relationships with a higher love. I am a highly empathic, intuitive and strong ally for your authentic self to emerge from unconscious patterns of disempowerment.
I believe our spiritual goal is to actualize the soul's love, wisdom, creativity and joy through the often challenging material play of Life. Once we have deeply realized our conscious nature, our becomes a reflection of the essential self.
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My work is devoted to helping people navigate this sacred inner process.
The creative, spontaneous soul sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us. These promptings are our true fate, which it is our business to fulfill. A fate dictated from outside, from theory or circumstance, is a false fate.
D.H. LAWRENCE
Following Your True Fate
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My desire is to help people live out their true fate, as D.H. Lawrence calls it. It's the fate that lives somehow in your bones and calls you to fuller consciousness. We are called to distill our authentic personality out of the haze of unconscious conditioning and habit that hides our true nature.
I believe the most life-affirming, spiritually enriching thing we can do in this lifetime is learn to fully know, love, and express ourselves. But which self, exactly? What is the authentic, real self of anyone?
Let me first say that I don't mean loving your self-image. That's an illusion. We have to look for something deeper.
It could seem like a myth to speak of people's true, authentic, or higher self -- certainly to those who believe we are nothing but biological machines. However, I observe that when people find emotional healing and insight into their nature, it's like a new kind of light comes on in them. It's the natural light of consciousness.
Insofar as someone becomes conscious, they start to express more of the universal spiritual essence, as well as their best talents and qualities.
Something that is uniquely true within them comes forward to be expressed. From that new vantage point it becomes clear that all the former, emotional struggle and mental cloudedness was never our real self. It was just a confused mind.
There is something primal, awake and intelligent about our conscious nature -- that once it begins to shine a light on our psyche, it starts to integrate our personality and infuse our thoughts, feelings and actions with more love and wisdom.
But not only that, it brings about the uniqueness of that human soul. We then see the spirit directing the life and the personality as if to fulfill its higher purposes and callings.
These callings may have been known a long time, or they may come as entirely new visions for what to do. We then feel that our being and doing is arising from a deeper source. It is coming from the real me and yet something is also greater than me -- my higher self or even God.
I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done.
Franz Schubert
By contrast, what I call the false self is a state of unhealed pain, self-alienation, and existential blindness. It's a clouded state of mind where we don't know that there really is a far more vivid, empowered and pure-knowing state of being.
A conscious, self-actualized and empowered person does not feel they know everything or that they can put the ultimate truth of life or God into any simple formula. But they know there is that universal, guiding spirit within and around us. Some kind of inner, transcendent light and meaning that shows the way.
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Deep Support for Your Inner Life
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What hurts, calls for attention. From attention comes understanding - and then transformation. I'm here to help you pay closer attention to your inner life.
When you more deeply understand your thoughts, feelings and actions, you start to actualize your full potential. New insights naturally bubble up, and healing happens. Your daily energy and attitude become more fresh and dynamic, full of optimism and courage rather than fear and doubt.
But to get to this place, there is inner work to do. To know who we are, where we are going and how to get there starts with exploring the more unconscious areas and blindspots in our psyche.
For this process, there is nothing more powerful than receiving the compassionate support and insightful feedback of an experienced guide and mentor --- Someone who can quickly see the whole picture and help you plant the seeds of change in your life.
This is what I do as my life's calling and mission. I facilitate growth through deep listening and highly accurate reflections on where your biggest challenges and opportunities are.
What is it like to work with me
In my experience, the most powerful catalyst for higher consciousness is to come into a deeper, more honest relationship with ourselves and others. It's to treat everything in our psyche and daily life as worthy of attention and care. That is why the most luminous and transformative conversations are often those where you feel free to talk about the most difficult aspects of your experience. The areas where we are feel the most stuck naturally hold the most potential for transformation.
Working together, you will encounter a clear voice of grounded wisdom, and you will feel deeply seen on all levels. My role is to meet you at your growing edge. I listen for the pain that's never been heard and needs to be spoken. I also listen for the words and ideas that signal new energy and growth in you. And I use laser-sharp intuition to help you see your main obstacles and opportunities for higher love and perspective.
I help people develop a soulful and integrated vision of psychospiritual development. Our task is to bring luminous awareness and insight to our psyche. As we live from conscious presence, we can realize the pure awareness, love, and energetic vitality of our real being.
The way is through. I can show you how. If you feel called to broaden your consciousness and enrich your inner life, I welcome you to contact me.
The Way Is Through
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To be human is to harbor some rather stubborn blocks to love and peace within us. Even the most conscious and kind people will often feel reactive and agitated. Relationships and stressful life situations sometimes make it difficult to know what is true and what to do.
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Our personality is an evolving expression of the spirit that we are. We all harbor negative habits of the false self that disempower us. We also hold a higher, noble self within us which is made of radiant sanity, divine love and wisdom.
Often in our culture, realizing our true nature is portrayed as a simple, cognitive process of exchanging negative beliefs for positive ones. There are many coaches and guides who claim they can help us let go of "limiting beliefs" but their methods only touch the surface, rational mind.
Questioning thoughts or telling ourselves how amazing we are does not transform the deep psyche. In my experience, a depth approach is required.
It's only by bringing real love and understanding to the psyche that we will grow spiritually and accomplish our life's purpose.
My gift is in seeing people's spiritual strengths and challenges with unique clarity, bringing the healing light of empathy and gently pointing the way forward. My joy is in seeing the most authentic essence of the person come forward and flow into life with renewed vision and vitality.
I help people get real about who they are, what they feel and how they're living. This creates the foundation for lifelong self-actualization and spiritual awakening.
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Experience Transformation
Have a look at the different types of support I offer. If you're not sure what you need, just send a message and I'll be glad to answer your questions.
MEN'S TRANSFORMATIVE
COACHING
RELATIONSHIP COACHING
Experience and background
I have engaged deeply with Jungian therapy, my Catholic roots, the Zen tradition, the cultural and spiritual history of Europe, Near-Death Experiences, and many Judeo-Christian and Vedic (Indian) mystics. The teachings of Australian teacher Barry Long on masculine-feminine intimacy and love are also a part of my work. I also worked with several mentors in Jungian therapy.
Since my mother's passing in 2020, I have also talked with several mediums who had their own near-death experiences and came back with profound spiritual gifts. So, I believe strongly in spiritual realities, and have experienced some of them directly. I am not remotely an academic intellectual who relies on "science" to tell me what's true. Science cannot say much about deepest sense of meaning, joy, or transcendent experiences.
During my journey I have experienced a broad range of insights, powerful dreams, peak experiences of bliss and transformative relationships. I am familiar with all kinds of existential crises and spiritual phenomena that many therapists are not familiar with.
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My work is rooted in two main themes:
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I believe that traditional depth psychology and psychodynamic therapy - especially in the Jungian tradition - is a profoundly healing, Western wisdom tradition that honors the complexity of the human psyche and the mysterious depths of the soul. When people seek out "therapy" to help with their problems, many do not receive genuine psychodynamic therapy. Instead, they often receive a vague form of counseling or passive listening that lacks clinical insight and spiritual/existential depth.
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I believe in the transformative power and validity of spiritual revelations, including spontaneous awakenings of consciousness and also, especially, near-death experiences.
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While much of "therapy" offered in the marketplace is a bit shallow, spiritual teachings in popular teachings tend to emphasize intellectual beliefs, a flattening relativism that masquerades as higher wisdom, and a denial of the luminous qualities of thought, feeling and purpose.
Instead, we are constantly urged to distance from thoughts, feelings or "judgments" in a vague (and vain) effort to get over our "ego." No one comprehends exactly which thoughts, feelings or judgments are meant to be dismissed, denied or ignored as "unreal" in various moments.
While we all know that our self-image (persona, in Jungian terms) and negative thinking can create a fragmentary, painful constriction of our being, the eastern-inspired notion that we need to dwell in a meditative awareness or "oneness of being" entirely beyond ourselves is entirely too simplistic and often nihilistic.
It is often suggested that our spiritual liberation is a state of being entirely without a "self" - where the self is wrongly defined as a wholly unconscious and neurotic state of mind - as though we cannot realize a luminous, conscious, connected and divine experience of the self or spirit.
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My view is that the popularized, eastern-tinged vision of spiritual enlightenment is shallow and misleading. Ironically, this popular vision that is supposedly about ending all suffering tends to address itself mainly to people who mostly suffer from overthinking, worry or perfectionism -- as though deeper moral failings, dishonesty, addiction, and personality disorders do not afflict people. Instead, the popular notion depicts the cause of all suffering as a chattering mind that harbors "desires."____
I believe deeply in the immeasurable value and divine image of every human being, that we are each an eternal soul who is only visiting Earth for a short time. I do bot believe we are here merely to realize that we don't exist as individuals or that everything is meaningless. These are disastrous distortions of what spirituality is about.
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My approach is based in depth psychology and a practical spirituality of love, courageous action, energetic openness, self-understanding, and a joyful, devotional attitude toward life and/or God/Source.