Most of the time I’m able to write, synthesize and create for my ideal client, aka you. But sometimes, like with a need to process the past, it veers more into a personal motivation for writing, and that’s what this is. For what I’ve experienced isn’t something that I had prepared for, or read about. It was a set of decisions that led me on my unique path. One in which I had to walk myself (and often crawl or be dragged in order to complete).

[Jump to the end to hear the song for this chapter, be advised highly recommend you read first.]

Now there are certain commonalities and themes that emerged in this journey, but those were unfortunately after-the-fact rationalizations. The truth was I oscillated between shame, fear, courage, and bliss. And my life reflected those extremes. From oneness and absolute clarity with spiritual initiations to existential identity collapse and confusion with integrating it. From feeling all powerful and people lining up to have me do some Akashic Reading or body scanning to powerless in getting out of bed and grocery shopping.

From living with only one perceivable option brought about by charity to exploring expansive “past lives”, dimensions and the cosmos, it was a proverbial washing machine of experiences, perspectives and decisions that knocked loose my sense of center, my support systems and my root. The guru even commented to me how “strong my root is”. Which at the time, I had no idea what that meant – kind of like a doctor reading some lab report and noting that that biomarker in conjunction with your genes evidently means something.

And as a result, I don’t want to intellectualize my emotional state during this process, or gloss over it. For in retelling the story there is definitely the “interpretation” of it, and the narration after it’s all been integrated, but there’s also the set of beliefs, level of energy and awareness that I went through each experience with. Something that adds far greater context to the story.

In fact, it’s one of my biggest annoyances of “experts” creating content about what they would do if they had to do X all over again. They’re missing the biggest factors – the foundational belief system that they have, that their prior experience has “proven” for them to believe versus the beliefs of their followers or audience who had never done X in the first place…doing something over again versus for the first time is a huge difference. And even more important, are the beliefs one has now once success has already been attained compared to another who might have a whole different set.

And so in recounting, I find it’s critical for me to establish my beliefs, energy and awareness at each point – as I was living it. Doing after-the-fact analysis while sometimes is useful, misses the mark in explaining causality.

The best tool that I found that really gets to the heart of this is the Hawkins Map of Consciousness by Dr. David Hawkins. A key factor in it, is that based on one’s level of consciousness, he or she experiences the same objective reality from different lens and react to it differently that lead to remarkably different outcomes. The prime example given is that of getting into a fender bender and the different ways a person can react…

I always enjoy using the RPG games as a further analogy where at each decision point of interacting with a character, you can choose how you want to respond and the game will play out differently. Having already played the game once, you can easily determine what to choose to get the outcome you wanted. And that’s also true if you have a higher level of consciousness, you have a stronger sense of things working out for you knowing which way to respond, while always having the choice to pick any of the lower levels of consciousness to respond as well.

But, if you’re in that lower level, you really only see the singular (often negative) options. So while I (or you), can sit here seeing very clearly that my choices could have been different, that at the level I was at, options were unavailable to my consciousness and due to my belief systems. I also didn’t have the tools or skillsets to be able to reset or get out of certain mindsets or situations that I do now (and teach my clients when called for).

So let’s get right into it…

While joining what externally could be perceived as a cult – and in fact there is a documentary out about this guru and his organization with that in its title – for me, my past experiences of the increasing levels of “cult-like qualities” made joining it a fairly rational next step.

How?

Well I come from a very patriarchal family with a clear singular decision maker that dictated how things went. I went to Jesuit high school which has it’s own strong historical and esoteric ties that required conversion to be a part of. I went to a super loyal alumni-based university that is almost insular in community due to the sports scene. I joined a Big 4 firm in which every waking hour of my life (especially during busy season) was essentially handed over to the organization. I studied curriculum that championed cult-like cultures of successful businesses in business school. And I put everything on the line (finances, time, identity, relationships, network, etc.) to make it work in startup that I had to resign from.

Sounds like a classic set of decisions, except the join a religious cult. But my past experiences led to certain subconscious beliefs which then made it easy for me to rationalize a choice, experience it in a distorted way through my interpretation and perception, and continue down the rabbit hole of consequence that reinforced my subconscious belief that this was the right move for me.

This process happens all the time and to everyone, even you. It’s how we operate. The key factor that numbs someone from this awareness is if one is operating from the consensus reality or outside of it. If you’re in it, you just don’t realize. You think life is just that way – similar to how I used to think. And, just like the 100 monkey experiment, if everyone is trained to believe something, even if it’s not true, than an outsider with a more true belief might be punished for having that belief until it complies with consensus. If you’re one of the 100 monkeys, you think that’s just how life is. If you’re that outsider monkey, you quickly learn this process the hard way. Ultimately, this is what I coined morphic field battling with Victoria and is a part of what we teach to our advanced clients when it comes to creating identities, brands, companies, etc.

So from my experience, what was happening was I was finally pulled outside of the consensus reality with existential crisis and failure coupled with mystical experiences. Then, I was being penalized and attacked for it through no fault of anyone else except for the pervading consensus reality that they subscribed to, and so I chose to keep going down the rabbit hole.

Let’s be honest for a second as well and recognize that it also was clearly the direction to head to in order to appease my ego, bypass my emotions, choose another arena of exceptionalism (spirituality this time), and…also to chase women I started having crushes on…because let’s face it, as an unemployed man with a string of startup failures, my market value in the dating scene plummeted in the arena of women who valued material world gain. But…whole different story in the spiritual world, so it seemed like the winning direction to me at the time.

And out of all of the reasons to pursue it, and as angry as I might be towards my past self for it, it really came down to chasing a few cute women who also joined the zoom calls and were part of the community. If they were going to the event, then I would be there. Even in the context of pursuing”enlightenment”, my baser nature was still there – shadow and all. Even in the testosterone destroying, submissive diet and culture, the Red-Blooded American Man was still in there…as the guru mentioned, the root is strong with this one. And, it was yielding me way more luck in connecting with the opposite gender than to try and find connection with the flaky women of Los Angeles online dating.

I think that whatever would have gotten me to keep moving in the direction of following guru would have manifested regardless. In fact that’s one of the key aspects he offered: write down and request blessings from the guru for anything you want, and “Tatastu!” (so be it). Not too different than praying, just to a different recipient, so why not… the idea of women, a fresh start, enlightenment, some spiritual powers and sprinkle in some self-discipline (I did wake up and do yoga every day, do my Kriyas to cleanse myself, and followed a strict diet)…it all sounded like a possible beautiful new chapter for me.

But when it came to anything outside of the spiritual work, I was miserable. It was much like a startup founder whose life is so wrapped up in the business that anything outside of it was bad that it entices the founder to double down on the business (…so basically the same exact situation that I had just come from). Relationships, family connection, my muscle mass, and especially my finances all deteriorating. I had already put it all on the line in the business, even put business expense on the credit card and financed a few emergencies of my co-founders – all with the belief it’d all be paid back with the inevitable success that was just right around the corner. So, it seemed this wasn’t asking that much more of me than the startup.

But that misery was impossible to cover up or ignore.

When my mom came over one time, she commented on the heaviness of my room. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, for I was still void of connecting with my own body, vibrations and subtle energies of life. Ironically, I could use my third eye and connect with another’s field, deities, sanskrit initiations and darshans from the guru…but I couldn’t feel my own emotions. Simply put, I wasn’t embodied. I had no idea what was going on in my own body. Looking back on it, it’s most likely from self-defense or near death experiences of childhood, maybe some brain trauma from concussions or a few other lifestyle, diet and environmental factors that numbed and disembodied me.

But, what I believe my mom was feeling, was my shame. Me being incubated in that vibration, with really no sunlight or fresh air to clear it out. She picked up (as mothers do), on my deep depression, although it’d be pretty easy to pick up on it…the withering away of my body, the lack of motivation, the way I held myself. The pain I felt being awake, the inability to get out of bed. I remember lying there hoping for a miracle to change my life. It was considered a success if I could get out of the covers. I remember to get out of bed, I had no energy to get up, so I had to roll off my bed to get up.

I had created a mental prison.

Why get out of bed? To look at myself, ragged, disheveled in the mirror? To go and make some plain, tasteless oatmeal on my new diet? To do an hour of moving my body in ways that showed just how inflexible I was? To pretend to look for jobs I didn’t care about? Or get notified of my credit card debt racking up and being unpaid? Or look with fear that any text message or new email might be from one of the employees of my past company asking me what happened and why I left? Nah, I’d rather just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made and how bad I was.

And that’s when the shame kicked in even more. On the outside, with some of the close friends that did come to help and even provide potential job opportunities for me, I used my intellectual ability to try and rationalize that everything was okay. That I was okay. Except the obvious, that I wasn’t.

The trait instilled in me of “make it work no matter what”, push through, be optimistic, see the positive in things, etc. that supposedly makes great leaders, pinned me further into cognitive dissonance. This was all happening for a reason and an even better job opportunity or business idea was out there waiting for me to start. It wasn’t. And yet to try and save face, I made stories and reasons as to why I was okay (aka denial) which added internal narratives to combat the overwhelming truth of my struggles. What it did do though was mentally paralyze me even more, create an even greater sense of shame, and generate an even stronger false center of my identity – not unlike actors, athletes and public figures who are put up on a pedestal that don’t accurately reflect who they are all the time.

On one end, my energy was clearly struggling and I knew it. On the other, I was gaining transcendent experiences spiritually almost every day. I lived in fear of having to confront my honest reality, avoided my grief of processing the loss of my position and my identity that was propped up by it. And I operated in an additional layer of delusion and false pretense that everything was good and I’ll just get a corporate MBA-type job…or, possibly even run away to join an ashram and be a monk. Which to be honest, the guru did mention that you had to enter in a pure and clean way without any residual karma left – so even that in retrospect was a pipedream.

But so is living in the startup world. You have an idea, the bigger the better, you put some fancy business strategies, go to market strategies, and enough money at it, and it “supposedly” works (despite the failure rate). So what’s the difference with that and any of these “visions” aka lies that I’m telling myself? Just look at all the famous founders in Silicon Valley, CEO’s of the big corporations, big time actors, and tales of political leaders who made it with nothing…if they did it, so could I.

So once the marathoning of of Chuck came to a series end, what next? At this point, the withering aspects of my lifestyle became habit. Caloric deficit, poor sleep, staying in the apartment all day, lying on the couch, and scrolling on social media. Plus, eventually the texts of concern, opportunities to help me stopped coming in. It became a big vacuum. And what filled that void was spirituality, esoteric study, and expanding my world view, following my curiosity and passion for the science of the unknown and unseen – which ultimately became the hunt and devotion to the pursuit of enlightenment. No longer was I going to be a fool walking in this world not knowing how things worked, and why things were happening to me…I was going to be an enlightened master.

But that pursuit at the time was like deciding to cross the pacific in a row boat. There’s a vast ocean with treacherous waters that were just waiting to swallow me up. The only plan that I had to navigate my journey was to go be a mendicant monk. And in fact, it wasn’t a backup plan, it was the only option I thought was plausible. (Just ignore the fact that my shadow popped up every now and then to make sure I was on this zoom call to talk with this cute girl…I could still be mendicant right? I’ll just meditate it away..spiritual, new age “playboys” wouldn’t quite describe me, but the base desire of my intention for enlightenment was there…hey, if I got enlightened, then think of the street cred that would get me with the girls.) Like a said, a long ways away from the destination of enlightenment.

This entire time truly was a luxury, for if it weren’t from my sister letting me stay at her place, I would no doubt be on the streets. Not for substance abuse, but because of spiritual abuse. Different drug, same end result: chasing those momentary highs afforded me by the guru, by the meditations, by my own unique abilities being expressed. It was incredibly selfish. And with a caloric, energetic and financial deficit that was trying to prop up a false identity, that’s all I could be. And it had real impact on those who cared and loved me.

My lifelong friends knew something was going on with me but avoided the topic. Not quite sure how to help. I was eating differently, not drinking any more, no longer interested in the same things as before. Whether they thought it was drugs or something else, it seemed something that wasn’t good from their eyes and I couldn’t blame them. Meanwhile, I’m seeing shortsightedness and unenlightened actions on their end – full of judgement.

My beliefs around eating meat, partying, even football and climbing the corporate or entrepreneurial ladder had switched drastically, and they could see it. The fruit of the tree of my beliefs were a ragged looking jobless person, not some well polished financially successful Ivy League MBA. Best stay away.

And so those traditions that created deep roots in me started to erode. Celebrating the holidays with friends, gone. Drinking and tailgating at USC football games, gone. Winter ski trips to Mammoth, definitely gone. Not all at once, but a painful erosion compounded with dramatic moments.

Most of my journey, I’d do exactly all over again, but faster, with more support and skillsets…the very transformation I (and Victoria) help clients through when needed, and with the foundation Victoria and I started. You see, the transformation is something that I wouldn’t take away from anyone. But, it’s one in which I’d wish there was a greater understanding of what’s happening and a modern support system that doesn’t tie into a potential cult, fanatic religion, being trafficked or taken advantage.

That said, there are two moments in which I believe left lasting regret that had been hard to process.

The first was bailing last minute to go to my best friend’s 30th birthday in Austin. It was the epitome of everything I was leaving behind (football, meat, drinking, spending a lot of money, old friendships and loyalty). I had agonized over going or not – doing it out of loyalty and desire to celebrate my friend despite all the things I was no longer into. But, I delayed it so much that I let lack of finances dictate the reason for my decision.

I could have booked the flight earlier (and cheaper), and as one other friend at the time pointed out, I could have driven there. So it really wasn’t about the money. The regret was waiting until the last minute to tell him I wouldn’t be going. I didn’t have the strength and courage to tell him ahead of time, I was still stewing in self denial of who I had become. Looking back, it’s not that I would have gone, but it’s that I pretended for so long that I might have gone. My indecision cost both me and most likely him. His response, despite my apologies, I still wouldn’t be able control. But I could have been more decisive and own the repercussions of my decisions sooner, not tormenting myself and letting it drag on.

I see it as reality making me choose: loyalty to my friend (tradition, obligation) or loyalty to my new path (aka self love). A confronting conversation earlier on would have been better. But for me, I couldn’t get out ahead of it, and I let finances be the excuse rather than standing up for my own self-love for my new direction. To be frank, I had no idea what “self-love” meant other than possibly in an X-rated context.

But that really was the theme of this journey…to stand up with courage for my self love. And, if I couldn’t stand up with courage, life was taking me there anyways.

I don’t know if there would have been a different outcome with my friend had I been more decisive about it, but that’s not the point. The regret is that I knew I wasn’t going to do it and wasn’t strong enough to say why until finances became the “convenient” reason.

Looking back on it all, I could say that it was all divinely orchestrated as painful as it was, for each thing led me to the next. A breakdown is often necessary for a breathrough and expansion. The strong become so because they have hard times to overcome. And that experience gave me a first hand look into how privileged and entitled I was, and what the foundation of my relationships were (or weren’t) built from.

Despite my best efforts to mentally appreciate life and what kind of a family I was born into, I lacked the experience of not being privileged, and my relationships while seemingly built from mutual support showed to be more of proximal convenience and improved status (but as they say, friends last for a reason, a season or your whole life – and I was definitely in a new season). And so both the privilege and superficial relationships started to unfold painfully, one lesson at a time.

No stronger teacher of this was through finances and creating value in the world. Instead of getting a job somewhere, I was in an active rebellion against it. My spiritual and historical studies brought me to the highest level the historical context and lack of material backing our dollar, to the origins of the creation of the dollar, its esoteric symbolism on the money, and how large factions and secret ones were maneuvering to create their version of a unified world right in front of our faces. The evidence was solid, and as I launched myself more and more into the macro side of things, my elevated spiritual experiences brought my sense of identity to associate only with the macro. Despite my best efforts, spiritual ego was inflated and I was spiritually bypassing left, right and center. But that’s where I wanted to live and operate from, disconnecting myself from the reality of my situation, my life and bills.

I was on a rocket ship to enlightenment and no one was going to try and ground me.

But my parents, whom I love tremendously, tried.

Because of my refusal to get a job, but I still needed food, my mom gave me her recycling cans so that I can try and make a dollar of two doing something. And I begrudgingly did. I filled up my car with cans, took it to a place and made about $20. I was there amongst those with pickup trucks, those pushing hand carts that were filled with treasures from local park’s trash cans, in the middle of a Tuesday. You think that might make me wake up to where I was headed?

No.

I wasn’t getting her point. The spiritual “enlightened” version of me connected with everyone there, “seeing the divine in them”, noting that the “universe” manifested me a great parking spot, but the entitled one judged the rickety trucks that were there, the stickiness of sugar from the cans as I emptied the trash bags, and a worry that my car’s interior would be sticky and I’d have to clean it…and finally, the business school grad was analyzing the cost-benefit of the activity, taking into consideration time, gas, mileage on my car and opportunity cost. Talking about how it was a net loss when all factored in…

My father took me to go see my grandfather’s grave in the Compton area. He pointed out the danger and challenges that were present in the area and how other people lived, in order to show me how privileged I was. He was explaining to me his work ethic and how much he was able to provide for me and our family to live where we did (which is true).

But what I saw were friends playing together in the street and in the rundown basketball courts, having fun despite there being vandalism and the occasional bullet-holed windows on the block. The fun and camaraderie was a far cry from the isolation I was feeling. I clearly wasn’t getting what he wanted me to get. And with most of my time focused on the guru’s teaching in India, where he showed the slums or the area that he transformed, the neighborhood of Compton looked like remarkable privilege to me.

My parent’s tried but they couldn’t get through to me. In conversations, I’d bounce from spiritual oneness platitudes to global comparisons to snarky business-school-like analysis to apathetic beliefs. All they could really do was pray. And when that didn’t seem to work, they got angry, gave lectures, tried to connect with me, use guilt, but none of it resulted in a clear resolution. I had clearly failed and was headed to the world outside my family to learn what I needed. But, as acts of love often do, my parents did just the right amount of what they were supposed to do, keeping me on the right side of a razor’s edge from dropping into oblivion and complete destruction and harm.

And so that leads to my second and biggest regret on this journey: is that my parents and loved ones, especially my later relationship with, Victoria, had to stand by and endure this version of me and without clarity of what was truly happening to me, without an understanding of the timeline of the journey I was on, the cost and eventual outcome – would I return normal or forever messed up. And the truth is, it was touch and go for such a long time, that I didn’t even know. But they held on with every ounce of love they could.

The standing by watching while a child suffers with nothing you can really do but pray, has got to be some of the hardest things a parent can face. And I feel so much love for them to be able to do that (and yes, it first started out as an interpretation of abandonment on their part, then alchemized to shame on my part, then acceptance on my part, than love on all parts). And don’t get me started on what I’ve learned about love from my relationship with Victoria. That warrants its own post. Her love, commitment and dedication to me and us honestly is the most valuable thing I’ve received from any of this, beyond the enlightenment, peace, channeling, adventure, growth, etc. It is ultimately the reason for my return from oblivion and path to monk. But it was forged through such hardship, struggle and pain – that I wish it wouldn’t need to be. But…she didn’t reappear in my life until a later chapter….

For now, I felt I had no true outlet for help. My childhood friends were unaware of the experiences I’ve had and easily could have contextualized what I’m talking about as either influenced by evil or mental illness (or both). My family couldn’t comprehend, there was no shared language or shared experience of these experiences of reality. And my journey was destined for me to walk alone for a period of time, to be disconnected from them to really see what was going on within me. I just wish that, like college, there was a clear time to return and more generalized (and accepted) understanding of what was happening.

The community around the guru was the closest thing I had in terms of shared reality context with the mystical experiences and direct teachings from the guru, but they all kinda lacked the business training and understanding of how to create large complex organizations and were focused on importing a foreign culture into a modern one without assimilation or modernization, and what scared me the most was they wavered on fundamental fanaticism that stemmed from the gurus vicissitudes and unexpected channelings during his lectures that moved from inner peace to outer world greatness. [All shadows of mine as well]

And even myself when I looked in the mirror, I simultaneously saw a haggard person begging for help and an enlightened being transcending all challenges. I saw both a rational deduction of bipolar/schizophrenia and unique genius who sees the industrial complex of a twisted psychological medical system that has everything backwards and a limited paradigm to explain what was happening. Combined, I saw an exceptional figure capable of ancient mystical powers but who also could barely keep himself fed. A supposed mendicant monk who deep down had desires of world domination and fantasized about sexual encounters. The hypocrisy was suffocating.

It was clear that I was going through something. That I was off. But the vortex around who I was, was never precise enough to land a pathology, and my own intelligence would know how to answer questions to avoid being cornered into one. I knew that a Western Medicine diagnosis was not accurate, that something bigger was happening to me and that they just didn’t have the answer. And the spiritual community didn’t either. They just normalized it as some concept of Thyaga (penance) and my need to keep “unclutching” and doing completion work and prayer.

It took me 7 years of integration, research and additional (grounded) seeking to finally understand what was happening. And the explanation does in fact come from the Vedic Sciences that describes precisely what was happening to me.

When I read about the answer, despite having the book on my shelf for a full 2 years before reading it, I was stunned. Stunned with the fact that it both summarized my situation to a T and was well known and had documented remedies.

But that wasn’t the full reason of my surprise. The reason it took so long was that I wasn’t ready. Because the remedies it mentioned were ultimately the remedies I had discovered on my own accord and research. And I had to go on my own self-directed journey to experience the remedies, to understand at my core. So that when I read about it, it would be a transcendent experience of fact knowing the truth in the words versus an intellectual or philosophical comprehension of theory. Lived experience versus words on a page.

So what was going on with me? What were the remedies?

I’ll tell you…in the next post.

This period exposed the architecture of my unconscious and laid it bare, open and raw after each layer had been peeled back.

Joining the guru’s movement wasn’t just about spirituality and powers I could obtain. It was about:

unresolved grief
unprocessed shame
a longing to be accepted and belong
a total collapse of my masculine identity
a hunger for meaning again
an escape from facing my failure
a subconscious reenactment of childhood power structures
a desire to be seen (and believe myself to be) exceptional again

I can see now that the cult wasn’t a mistake, it was a painful creation of my own doing, to act as a crucible and mirror that revealed:

every adaptive pattern I inherited
every unmet emotional need
every blind spot
every place I outsourced my power
every unexamined wound
every place my self-worth depended on performance or admiration

This chapter showed me how easily any action (detrimental or not) can be rationalized when identity is fractured. It taught me how spiritual frameworks can become emotional anesthesia, no different than prescription drugs. And it revealed the frightening ease with which a person can drift into extremism when they are untethered from their own body, relationships, and inner truth – a situation that is rampant in the world.

This was not the story of a man who “joined a cult” or who found mystical powers within him. This was the story of a man whose identity cracked open so widely that anything offering certainty felt like salvation – and it just so happened that the form came in the way that it did.

For some it’s the calling of money, or fame or power. For me, it was spiritual ecstasy and possibility. Only in returning back, with groundedness, embodiment, identity, boundaries and purpose – a reconstistuted psyche, could the experience be valued and useful beyond that.

This chapter forged the second principle of Lionheart:

Discernment is born from confronting the parts of us that want to be led by a ‘savior’, that wants to outsource their power to an ‘other‘ or postpone it “for the perfect time.”

From this period, I gained:

a sobering understanding of my own susceptibility and frailty
a deeper humility and restraint around putting spiritual power and visionaries on a pedestal
an ability to somatically decode psychological manipulation when the mind can’t
an embodied awareness of when projection, authority transfer, and ego-inflation occurs
a healthy skepticism and boundaries without needing to close my heart
a clear understanding of why people join high-demand/cult-like groups and how they’re architected in all areas of life, not just spiritually
a compassion for those caught in belief systems that swallow their identity, enslave their reality and cripple their free will
the ability to track the difference between guidance from intuition and from emotional trauma

But the greatest gift (once I was able to survive) was this: I learned the cost of abandoning myself.

I threw everything in my life and beliefs out in an effort to find and know the truth. Start from scratch, Tabula Rasa. An extreme strategy that included I also threw out who I really was, and those who truly love and support me. The absence of your ego means you don’t have an ego, it means you gets one projected on to you by others…and when you’re seeking higher vibrational living, you’re a walking magnet for everyone else’s trauma and shadows…brutal.

From that price, as severe as it was, emerged the clarity, conviction, boundary, spine, and grounded masculinity that Lionheart now emanates as consistently as a human can (not perfectly, but truthfully).

I no longer get swept away by visionaries and their fantasies, by transcendent technologies, or titles of money, fame or power. I look with a keen eye on how one carries themself, the coherence of their inner and outer world, and for the grounded humility present in those who do – not weave, steal, hypothecate or inherit their status.

This chapter didn’t just teach me discernment, though that was the pre-requisite to this chapter’s true lesson. It taught me sovereignty. That is, the application of discernment with truth and awareness to connect to the divine directly, and build one’s life, meaning and reality from there.

For so long, I chased, applied for or paid for belonging. When it was removed, the pain was nearly unbearable. But now, I no longer chase it, I anchor it – existentially, physiologically, psyche, and with my actions.

I no longer seek authority figures. I become one for myself and have found my direct connection to truth, as painful as it is to hold myself to the light with such scrutiny, standards and humility.

But I’m not alone on this path, for I’m surrounded by advisors, facilitators and sovereign peers equally connected to truth as harsh, raw and pure as it is.

But they aren’t the gurus, healers, visionaries or bullsh*tters trying to preach and follow love, light and peace…they’re too busy building what they themselves are here to do, and as a result, love, light and peace follows them.

This was the era where my spiritual and psychological vulnerabilities were fully exploited, but also where some of my most valuable diagnostic abilities were forged under pressure. A conundrum that was so challenging to disentangle, sort and come to peace with.

While the context was distorted, the capacities awakened here are real and now form essential components of my methodology.

Let’s break them down.

1. Acute Pattern Detection in Ideological Systems

Immersing in a cult-like environment created an extreme context for learning:

where belief systems distort truth
how ideological frameworks manipulate perception
how groupthink forms
how power hijacks meaning
how identity becomes outsourced
how narratives override self-trust
how distorted “every day norms” of society can be

This later becomes one of my most potent abilities:

identifying where a client’s worldview traps them
finding the hidden assumptions sabotaging a business
deconstructing belief-based reality distortion
tracking subconscious loyalties
understanding how identity architecture shapes behavior
guiding future technologies and the culture that support them

2. Reading Human Vulnerability + Susceptibility

My own susceptibility gave me:

insight into why people are drawn to charismatic leaders
empathy for those seeking belonging and meaning
sensitivity to emotional leverage points
awareness of unresolved shame and unmet needs
the ability to detect dependency dynamics

This is crucial for my work today. I can now see exactly where someone is giving their power away, and how to temper over-reach of power, because I lived both sides of that equation.

3. Deep Layers of Psychological Vision

This chapter refined my ability to:

hear and see the story beneath the story
recognize where someone’s logic is coping and deluding them
track the emotional substrate beneath their narrative
sense dissonance between what someone says and what they feel
detect incoherence between belief, embodiment and reality
recognize how founders’ own issue reflect in their business

This is the early formation of my somatic oracle’s psychological precision.

4. Understanding Manipulative Systems → Building Ethical Ones

I learned, through direct immersion:

how spiritual frameworks can become predatory
how authority is misused
how devotion can become dependency
how systems shape behavior
how charisma and the sensational can bypass one’s discernment

This taught me the inverse of what I practice now:

ethical power
sovereignty-based leadership
trauma-informed transformation
non-coercive influence
consent-based energetic facilitation

My methodology is birthed with the recognition of avoiding the building of these kinds of traps that are pervasive in society and that I once fell into…hard.

5. The Birth of My Inner BS Detector

I gained the ability to detect:

spiritual bypass
inflated claims
pseudo-enlightenment
performative depth
leaders who speak truth but do not embody it
complicated frameworks that sound cool but don’t work

This is why I believe that my clarity is so precise and why clients trust it.
I can see through what most people mistake for brilliance and most walls of defense, distraction and pomp.

In this time period, the archetypes within me develop not from maturity, but from distortion, pressure, and imbalance…which to be honest, is exactly how foundational archetypal formation begins.

1. THE WARRIOR – Shadow Phase: Submission and Collapse of Agency

Here, my Warrior is subjugated, not awakened. I:

surrendered my will
gave my power away
outsourced my discernment
followed external authority rather than building my own
collapsed boundaries in exchange for meaning

Painful…but crucial.

This teaches Warrior the difference between:

obedience vs. devotion
force vs. discipline
submission vs. surrender
being conquered vs. choosing commitment

Later, this becomes my masculine backbone, but here, much like in the rainy mud of a bootcamp, it’s forming through submission, trials and tests.

2. THE MAGICIAN – Shadow Phase: Ideological Enchantment

My Magician becomes entranced here.

This era shows:

belief overpowering intuition
a fancy narrative eclipsing truth
meaning hijacking my discernment
mysticism fusing with identity
archetypal possession

This is Magician in distortion, not mastery.

But it’s also where I learn:

how symbols influence
how meaning can mislead
how perception can warp identity
how magicians manipulate

Later, this becomes part of my clarity, pattern recognition, and psychic precision, because I learned firsthand how such illusions, realities and gifts can form.

3. THE LOVER – Shadow Phase: Need → Devotion → Dependency

Lover here is:

longing
yearning for belonging
craving to be “seen” spiritually
seeking rescue through initiation

This is Lover without boundaries.

But this also awakens:

deep emotional intelligence
sensitivity to relational energy
awareness of unmet needs
the capacity for devotion
the seeds of eventual partnership maturity

This is the Lover’s wound that later becomes the source of my relational skillset and genius.

4. THE KING – Shadow Phase: The False King and the Empty Throne

In this chapter, King consciousness is:

displaced
replaced by the guru’s authority
overshadowed by hierarchy
unseated in my psyche
unable to self-govern

This creates a crucial imprint:

I learned what it feels like when someone else sits on my throne.

Later, this becomes the fierce clarity of:

sovereignty
agency
integrity
leadership
self-authority

But here, King is absent, and that absence is exactly what forges the real King later.

This was about losing power so that I can later wield it ethically.

It is not the time where I discerned my sovereignty.
It is about abandoning sovereignty so you that I can learn to reclaim it.

It is not about awakened discernment.
It is about indoctrinated thinking so that I can learn what real discernment tastes like.

This is the phase where:

the Warrior goes unconscious
the Magician becomes entranced
the Lover becomes dependent
the King abdicates

This could be perceived as failure, and trust me, I’ve steeped in that for a while. Rather, this is initiation by distortion, the necessary fall before the rise: the shadow apprenticeship that gives Lionheart its depth, compassion, and ethical backbone.

And here’s the song: Lionheart – Chapter 2: Bliss at Noon, Collapse by Night