It’s hard to summarize both the lived experience and the reflection of it in a few blog posts. Heck, my own journaling fills entire books during this time period.
I have so much to express, it’s like a backlog of gunk so bear with me. Let’s begin…
[update: at the end of each part, I created a song that attempts to summarize everything and really evokes the experience I’m trying to relay, so if you’re one who doesn’t enjoy reading and wants to get the “Cliff Notes” then scroll to the bottom to listen (but I personally advocate for reading everything to give greater context…biased, obviously)]
First is the excitement, joy, pain, and struggles. But really I want to get right to the point. That being most succinctly summarized as the heroes journey.
But this is one of a psyop mind controlled brainwashing…that I opted into…mostly.
Personal transformation is just that, brainwashing just brought into the light. Affirmations, somatic embodiment, releasing beliefs, building new ones, creating new habits…all the self-help industry is just a commercialized form of mind control.
But when you add in beliefs about life and direct experiences that transcend your own foundation of reality, that’s when it can get dangerously destabilizing…and that’s exactly what happened to me.
As my mom always requests, tell me you went “Skydiving or did something dangerous…but only after you did it” aka don’t tell me you’re about to do it which gets me worried what could happen…let me be mad at you for doing it after (and of course having survived).
And that’s why it has been silence on my end for so many years.
I wasn’t quite back yet.
And like the adventures of Odysseus, just when I think I’m out of the clear and back “home”, life has a way of giving me a few extra detours, bonus levels (or needing me to retake certain tests I didn’t pass the first – or third – time).
So, was it worth it? What was that treasure, power or new insight that the hero comes back with that (ideally) make it all worthwhile that he gets to share with the world?
The version 7 years ago would say that it was unlocking, developing, and embracing my unique spiritual abilities. The ability to channel Deities, access the Akashic Record, and create morphic fields of intelligence that guide my life and others. Real life wizardry that my Jesuit High School Education never taught me about, but which I have since learned, is rampant in their history. Id’ say: Mystery schools, levels of conscious awareness, abilities to consciously craft reality, that’s what it was all for.
The version of me 2 years ago would probably say that it’s about creating an expansive enough view of reality that combines and transcends all religions and philosophies in a way that is practical and applied to my life and others. To help me understand my passions, declare my purpose, and create my Total Life of Joy, and facilitate others to do the same. To understand (and experience) that to establish a state of completeness – aka peace – it is not about living life without enduring pain, suffering and human challenges. That peace is a far flung difference from the rosy-glassed Disney-like belief I once had and chased for so long “of love and light.”
The version of me now would say that it was the perfect continuation of what I intended from the depths of my soul – to learn, create, explore and understand so that I can build the capacity to lead the life and vision I know in my heart to be true. The exploration of academia, business, medicine, biohacking, philosophy, society, science and ultimately reality combined without fragmentation, without siloing and missing the point of it all. …Oh, and for love. Love that exists on a whole different level than what I believed, what people “teach” in a coaching program, and what only bits are gleamed from lifelong partners still madly in love 60 or 70 years down the road together.
You see, I popped through the limitations of my view of the world (and reality) on all accounts…for being too curious, for asking too many questions without accepting the half-truths, for kicking the tires myself and not taking another person’s “word” for it, for knowing too much while knowing so little at the same time. For being the son of an adventurous and observant mother and a ruthless truth seeking and moral-bound father.
So what does this actually mean?
After reaching an existential crisis and what would generally be considered a psychological breakdown after resigning from Human Garage (the company I co-founded and brought from 2 people to 49, from $10k to $200k/months), I reverted to wasting away…my mind and body through the intense pursuit of spirituality and trying to find meaning and purpose behind all that had happened and was happening.
My achievements at the time were watching and completing a full season of Chuck on TV. The story about an average loser gaining access to incredible knowledge and skills through mere luck of being in the wrong place at the right time. No doubt, I found myself yearning for that as well…some act of God that would change me, my situation and what I saw myself as – jobless and more devastatingly, hopeless and defective.
Going outside to go for a walk was too difficult at times, and so too was walking to the kitchen to make or even grab food. Without the noise, distraction or illusion of living a life projected onto a TV character, my mind and self-talk would spiral into shame and self-hatred attacks. m
Seemingly calm showers or baths would just become an echo-chamber of self-punishment mentally. There was no respite for the stories running in my head. It was exhausting and paralyzing. I was in my own world of hurt, shame and disgrace. The only antidote that seemed to numb it besides distraction of fantasy was apathy.
Never did the thought of physical self-harm come to mind, but if I could find a way to evaporate in some scenario that left my family without pain…well that’s what I found myself searching for for so long to no avail. If it wasn’t that, it was replaying my past year’s decisions, wondering what I could have done differently – also to no good conclusion. And when that intense seeking left, phantoms of my consciousness: my father, mother, grandparents would psychically be throwing every demeaning thought, accusation and attack at me for my failure and disappointment – sometimes all at once in an un-muteable roar, and sometimes even I jumped in and started attacking myself with them. This echo-chamber created more of a prison than an outside observer might label: staying as a loser rent-free at my sister’s…for it followed me everywhere I went.
As days turned to weeks, the patience and understanding of the resignation from family started to turn into worry. And for good reason. I had also chosen to live what’s called a Sattvic Diet – a specific diet of foods that kept you balanced in the Ayurvedic Tradition. This was the path I chose because I had startedt to really follow the teachings of the spiritual teacher who I met in India a few months prior. He kept mentioning that this is the way to spiritual enlightenment.
Except completely changing my diet and not knowing what to cook – as since pre-birth I had lived off of meat – became a recipe for malnourishment and a caloric deficit that left me withered, emaciated, and haggardly. But it honestly reflected my disposition on life. Nothing mattered, so why eat? Why take care of my appearance? My identity, world and relationships I wrapped into the success of the business and when that was no longer my reality, it wasn’t hard to have no one come and check-in on me. And while some did from time to time, those whom I’m deeply grateful for, the isolation easily amplified my view of myself as a complete loser and failure.
I needed help, human connection, and a supportive community. And what filled that was this guru talking about Living Enlightenment and his followers all seeking elightenment.
And well, enlightenment quickly became all I was seeking. Some concept I had no idea of at the time, but it seemed to serve as both a salvation to my existential crises and help me explain why, after following every rule I could think of, doing all that I thought I was supposed to, I ended up in this situation.
The conclusion: that my world view that was taught to me in school and by my religion was fundamentally limited in scope of what true reality is. If it were an algorithm, it was clearly missing a few key variables – and all that the guru was saying, all that Hinduism was talking about, filled in and explained those variables.
Now, it’s easy to type into ChatGPT or listen to any trendy superficial influencer about many of these concepts, but at the time, his daily Youtube live “Satsangs” aka teachings were the only source of information I had.
And his method, rooted in Vedic Sciences was impeccable in its results: read something (in Sanskrit), read what it does, listen to his direct experience of what it does, and then go and close your eyes to experience it, and sure enough – it would happen.
These “Slokas” never not did what they said they would do. And what they said they’d do is more of something like out of a fantasy novel or the Matrix than normal. Even in small groups connected via Zoom without the guru, they worked. From remote viewing places, to all knowingness, to experiencing the past of others and being right, to learning unknown mysteries…everything was checking out. And let me tell you, the neurochemical cocktail of entering into these meditative and altered states (fully exogenously sober), was – and is still to this day – the most addicting things I’ve experienced.
For a man in his quarterlife crisis, it seemed as though the very answer to the prayers to receive the powers of Chuck had been answered. And of course, the fanfare, pomp and circumstance around the teachings within the community members only added to its allure. This guru had like the level of fandom of Michael Jackson or Taylor Swift.
It seemed that through this, I found my answer.
And looking back on it 7 years later, I can still say that it still holds water. I did find the answer I was looking for. Despite my eventual rejecting Hinduism to pursue other teachings, and then later reconciliation with its teachings combined and the New Age, Kabbalah, Indigenous Tribes, Mystery Schools (both famous and unknown), Alchemy, Quantum Physics, Law of Attraction, Sorcery, Catholicism and ultimately my faith in Christianity, Jesus and Christ…the truth Hinduism revealed to me is still truth from a different lens. But some truths get too hard to accept at times.
The craziest part is that while looking at the Sanskrit, not knowing what it means and definitely butchering how it’s pronounced, I still got activated in my third eye and crown…and it worked. The initiation is in the written language itself, much like some people (including myself) say Hebrew is…the language symbols are the activation. And my work in creating sigils (thanks to getting my start with Dr. Joe Dispenza) makes it easily true to believe.
But, while I had seemingly found the answer to reality, to science, to knowingness, and even to Zero Thoughts Per Second and glimpses of what I’d call enlightenment, it came with other hooks and attachments…to the guru, to the community, to their collective beliefs, and to unknown, unseen entanglements and implications on higher planes of existence.
All religions, and all corporations for that matter, have many of these same hooks and strategies in their organizational design. Analyzing it like an Ivy-League Business School Grad, I was quite aware with how to build a cult following, in fact we studied it in business school with examples of various businesses who built cult-like customer bases, and how to engineer it. We even deployed these tactics within our own Clusters within school to build a tight-knit group..and of course, universities use it to remind us as alumns why it’s so important to stay connected…and donate. Many of these principles we were incorporating at Human Garage…and like a good little MBA, I was doing a good job implementing them.
So I walked in to this guru’s operations analyzing everything and recognizing many of the tactics and strategies, and normalized it. (What does that say about corporate, startup and academic life?…but I digress) But…there were so many more things happening on higher levels of the unseen, the unaware than what normally goes on in a business or university.
For while universities and businesses want your loyalty and money, which of course the guru and his organization did as well (through donations or specific products/programs/blessings), and while even my Jesuit High School taught and embedded beliefs about religion, these organizations were within the current paradigm of modern society in America – which includes supporting yourself. But, just like in a Church, once you attend, there is a pull (as benign and well-meaning as it may be) to convert/be a part of it, there was that deep pull by the guru’s organization to go beyond the teachings and lectures.
While conversion to a Church may simply require a few beliefs, weekly attendance and perhaps consistent tax-deductible contributions, the core of this became to be part of a Hindu Nation, or to become a mendicant monk within the ashrams or nations that were being built.
To me, the approach seemed more than logical, in fact, it seemed down right brilliant and in-line with my previous upbringing and teachings, the natural fullest expression of what he was doing. And I’m used to big bold ideas and communities that I had been a part of. I joined a university that has one of the biggest alumni loyalty bases that it keeps reminding for donations (Fight on!). Business school is about finding the next level of your job/career/life purpose. My childhood Church talks about community, togetherness and mission trips. And even my previous forays into startups and Human Garage, I took the strategy to commit my everything into it…so throw myself into this? It did seem like the logical culmination of everything….If you’re cringing already, sorry.
Imbued with a new view of how reality works, unique abilities unlocked within me that I never knew I had, a community that lived in a way that made sense, and with a charismatic leader that helped shape me into an early morning riser who did yoga to finally address my lifelong lack of mobility, ate cleanly (although minimally), no longer cursed or drank alcohol, and was all together more considerate and aware of my body, my emotions, and others….it was looking quite promising from that perspective
….versus having to swallow the other side: a jobless, thirty-something who let himself, his family and his closest friends down in business, with no significant other or perceived future path or desire for employment or a career…
The answer felt pretty simple what to do, which path I was “destined” to take.
So I took it….
Looking back now, every ending (with enough time and healing) is seen as a new beginning. [And it took a while to get to that level to see it as such…but it was and is there.]
What I thought was a collapse (and for all intents and purposes it was), was also just the beginning of a profound reorientation. But that reorientation required me to pull all the stories, narratives, beliefs and projections of the future and my identity into the void, push that delete button (and empty the trash… cause maybe it could be restored by some miracle?…nope full on removal).
And that required a true grieving process, and without that process, I’d carry around the heaviness, disorientation, and “what coulda shoulda been” each day forward in endless loops in the mind.
I was never taught how to grieve and my upbringing suppressed any potential skill of that in men, for it was perceived as a sign of weakness – and in certain (limited) times, I have come to respect that as true. But most of the time, the strongest thing to do is to breakdown and to grieve, in order to be able to breakthrough.
And for me, breaking down was not a detour, it was the path. And that was so challenging for me to recognize. I felt that a part of my life just froze in time. Like streaming a movie or show that stops downloading midway. I was looking for the reset button on the wifi, or some divine intervention to redirect me back to “normalcy” to continue to stream it. I went to the ends of the world and known reality to try and reconnect the signal to keep playing that movie, to live out that narrative that was so clear in my head of what life should be.
But the signal wasn’t broken.
The truth is that everything I had built my identity with up until these moments couldn’t withstand the truth of who I was actually becoming and what my reality actually was reflecting.
My psyche didn’t fail me. It did exactly what a human system does when the life it is living is no longer aligned with the life it was designed for. It protected me until it couldn’t, and then found a new narrative and view of reality that worked to appease the criteria of what my fragile ego needed to keep going, only long enough for it to breakdown again and again, removing layer after layer until it was fully raw and exposed.
The shame, the apathy, the spiraling self-hatred, the withdrawal…these weren’t character flaws, they were the psychological fallout of an identity that had been stretched past capacity and then shattered by truths it wasn’t ready to hold.
This chapter was the death of the old scaffolding upon which I existed:
- the “high-achieving son”
- the “startup success story”
- the “prestigious resume”
- the “I can think my way out of anything” identity
All of it had to dissolve because none of it was structurally capable of holding the intensity, sensitivity, and spiritual bandwidth that was awakening in me.
It couldn’t contain it, and so in order for my new identity to emerge, my reality had to break open. Like a chick needing to break out of the egg to build enough strength to exist. For those walls of a safe, structured reality I had built around me had also become walls of limitation.
And the spiritual guru wasn’t the real beginning. He was just a continuation of a long line of teachers, mentors, facilitators and bosses on my path of expansion. The difference was the intensity and totality of the breakdown precipitating it. But it was that breakdown that was the real beginning.
Some credit gurus for creating breakdowns in people’s realities so they can see the way (death brings way for new life), but ultimately it’s my own Self that created the opportunity in which the guru played a supportive role in. As the saying goes, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
And to be clear, a breakdown is what was fully needed, and something unavoidable and fully appreciated. For it stripped me down to the only thing that could survive the path ahead:
A psyche that was no longer protected by illusion of both my own creating and that of a limiting society’s.
This was the moment my story stopped being about pursuing accomplishment, external achievement and seeking praise and recognition, and started being about truth and my capacity to handle it.
The kind of truth that endures all scrutiny and doesn’t crumble under pressure, but feels nearly impossible to rise up on because of its intensity and implications.
This chapter forged the first principle of what has become known as Lionheart – my 6.0 Self – 6 versions of identity upgrades, reflection, expansion and integration over the years. The Lionheart is what I reference as the most upgraded version of who I am today thanks to my journey.
And the first principle of Lionheart is:
Truth requires the death of the identity that’s built upon expectation.
While there’s so much benefit to the power of positive thinking, when there’s a lack of discernment, humility and embodied (aka earned) outcomes – it corrupts the identity to one of entitlement, of ungrounded expectation, and of incoherence.
This is similar to the wisdom in the story Icarus who flew too close to the sun. The fine line between optimism, pride and delusion, between what is and what could be.
The fatal limitation of confidence in linear cause and effect predictions and modeling that Nassim Taleb so eloquently puts in his book The Black Swan. Something I knew, but thought was more so about investing and forecasting stocks and macro events and politics…not me…no, it applies to me too. It applies to everyone, and when left unchecked, unbalanced and unsupported by habits, systems and structures, it becomes toxic. And often only it’s removal (as chaotic, messy, uncomfortable as it might be) is what’s required for it to be seen.
The unconscious illuminated.
To see through the distortions, amplified by today’s media, technology and agendas. To see through your own bullsh*t (as well meaning, and rationalized as it may be).
I have emerged from this period with:
- a deeper reverence for the fragility and brilliance of the human psyche – up until this point it was purely academic, theoretical and about “others”…not me
- a lived understanding of what collapse really is (and isn’t) – and more importantly how to keep going
- an embodied compassion for anyone whose worldview has imploded – it’s happening more and more and will most likely be the origin of the world’s next pandemic
- a recognition that awakening without grounding is instability, not transcendence – as much as I’d love to try to delude myself into thinking otherwise
- a capacity to guide others through existential rupture because I’ve been there – an identity rupture is both brutal and the kindest thing you can do to yourself
- a commitment to never again build my self-worth on external identity – a continuous practice to wash me of all the tendrils that society and structures thrive on – while also keeping myself open, sensitive and able to receive the joys and challenges of life without numbing myself in an overly Stoic way
And most importantly: I learned to stop hoping something would save me – be it a guru, a job, a supplement, a miracle, a relationship, a technology, a philosophy, a politician, a religion, a currency, an extraterrestrial, whatever…
This was the moment I stopped being a character in everyone else’s narrative and agenda and began learning how to author my own.
This was the first undeniable birth of the Lionheart within me, not the confident leader, not the strategist, not the architect, but the part of me that refuses to look away from the truth, even when it costs me everything I thought I was. And that cost, was putting aside being a level 63 character in someone else’s story and begin living in my own…accepting that I had to start back down at level 1.
This chapter didn’t give me power. In fact, it removed me from nearly all my sources of power – for they were all externally generated and granted.
But rather, it gave me the capacity to understand truth and generate and hold internally and divinely generated power, responsibly. What I believe is the true source of sustainable, coherent power.
It taught me that time punishes attachment more consistently and intensely than it punishes making mistakes. For mistakes can be corrected, learned from and life can go on, but clinging to a delusional outcome (or story) keeps one repeating cycles of what they know no longer fits. An endless hamster wheel. A perpetual reopening of the wound.
The “happily ever after” narratives that were programmed in my head as a child evolved into “keep going no matter what” in my 20’s. And this experience ushered in the next wave of initiation and the next evolution of wisdom.
It was no longer about learning persistence, but about the development of the courage, trust and resilience needed to release what once worked but no longer does. And to do so before it crystalizes into my identity and reality as a permanent narrative of failure that I can’t get out of. And to build the capacity, habits and systems in order to stay there.
Even though this period covers the intensity of the collapse, it also contains the first activation of the abilities that would later become the core of what I’m here to offer through a professional methodology.
Collapse wasn’t just psychological breakdown, it was the stripping away of the old identity scaffolding that kept my deeper perceptual systems dormant.
Here’s what was quietly being awakened beneath the pain and abandonment:
1. Heightened Somatic Sensitivity
My nervous system became more porous, more resonant, more responsive. At the time it felt like becoming weaker, frailer… but in retrospect, it was the beginning of:
- subtle somatic tracking
- micro-sensation awareness
- embodied diagnostic awareness
- emotional attunement to others
- the ability to sense disharmony
This is the clearing out and building of a new foundation of what later becomes my capacity to be a skillful intuitive. The evolution of which starts with removing the gunk and layers of delusion, a natural process for anyone going through an awakening or healing. But my journey didn’t stop there. This laid the foundation for many more stages of initiation and expansion that I intentionally (albeit recklessly and incoherently) pursued that resulted in me being what’s called a somatic oracle. I learned that growth is messy, and it often comes at a cost.
The lesson for me was walking the reality that I both:
- paid the price (and those associated with me unknowingly did as well), and
- I did in fact attain certain skills in the process which was the reason I embarked on this to begin with
2. Field Perception (Morphic, Emotional, Relational Fields)
The collapse dissolved the psychological buffer between “my thoughts” and “the surrounding field.”
This later matured into my ability to:
- read the energetic architecture of a person
- sense coherence and incoherence
- feel where someone is lying to themselves
- track emotional fields
- diagnose relational or organizational tension
But at this stage, it was raw, overwhelming, and disorienting. I didn’t have the awareness, language, or conviction yet to embody these abilities as a normalized part of who I am and what I did. They were fleeting moments, exceptional, and outsourced.
But, they were real, accessible, repeatable, and useful once I learned how to train it, accept them, build an identity that not only embraced it but wasn’t defined by it, humbled myself to the truths of humanity and my own shadows, and surrounded myself with a resonant tribe who supported and saw this in me.
3. Symbolic Cognition (Archetypal, Mythic, Pattern Recognition)
Even in the collapse, my psyche was reorganizing around symbolic meaning.
This is the early formation of:
- archetypal mapping
- mythopoetic interpretation
- narrative diagnosis
- identity tracking
- seeing people as constellations rather than characters
This is one of the keystone skills in my methodology today, and allows me greater fluidity to interface with individuals, partners, businesses, and their departments.
4. Dissolution of Ego Identity → Access to the Unconscious
While painful and destabilizing, the ego collapse temporarily removed the filters that normally gatekeep intuitive or unconscious information.
This seeded:
- direct access to my (and others’) subconscious patterns
- the ability to detect shadow material in others
- intuitive insight into root causes
- fast pattern aggregation
- systemic overview cognition
The cost was high, but the capacity became real as I observed, understood and was affirmed each step of the way.
5. Brokenness as Initiation into Empathy
My extreme suffering built the somatic memory of what collapse feels like from the inside.
This later becomes:
- my capacity to guide people through spiritual crisis
- my sensitivity to psychological rupture
- my understanding of trauma’s chaos physics
- my ability to hold others through ego death without destabilizing them
This is one of my most precious and human of all the skills developed from these gifts.
My old identity dies and my deeper gifts begin forming at the existential level.
Nothing was coherent yet. Nothing was refined. Nothing was safe.
But the raw material, the psychic clay and sensitivity that Lionheart is built from was born here. Each masculine archetype dripped-in its lessons to expand who I was to be, Lionheart.
1. THE WARRIOR (Shadow Phase: Collapse → Endurance)
This era forced the Warrior into the most brutal form of initiation:
- endurance through suffering
- facing one’s internal void
- surviving the inner battlefield where there is no enemy but the self
- finding the thread of life inside despair
This is the proto-Warrior, not yet disciplined to an altruistic cause, not yet directed, but aroused and tempered by the pain.
Later, this becomes my stamina, resolve, resilience and ability to hold clients through their most challenging moments.
2. THE MAGICIAN (Shadow Phase: Dissolution → Sensitivity)
The collapse tore open the perceptual borders of my psyche and my construct of reality. This awakened the Magician’s raw sensitivity:
- intuition
- symbolic cognition
- pattern recognition
- somatic awareness
- liminal perception
- access to unconscious material
- openness to the unknown and unseen
- embracing the fear and chaos
In shadow form, this felt like overload, a bottomless fall, a never ending series of realizing how little I know of my reality. Later when integrated, it becomes a multidimensional clarity, the root of my somatic oracle identity that can move in and out of so many layers of a person’s reality: identity, beliefs, emotions, relationships, business, finances and more.
3. THE LOVER (Shadow Phase: Longing → Openness)
My emotional collapse opened a channel of longing so intense it stripped me bare. I had already been longing for a majority of my teenage and adult life for this kind of connection, with stints of it followed by long valleys in the collapse.
This took that to the next level touching not just romantic connections, but all that constitute a tribe. This is Lover in its most painful form:
- yearning
- abandonment wounds
- vulnerability
- emotional overwhelm
- existential desire for connection
But this is also what later allows for my:
- deep empathy
- attuned relational presence
- the ability to love fiercely and faithfully
- devotional leadership and partnership with Victoria
- ability to hold my clients in the way that I do
This is Lover before it becomes love, before it finds love in one’s self.
4. THE KING (Dormant Phase: Identity Death → Space for Rebirth)
In this chapter, the King is not alive yet but coveted and lusted for. And in that, the throne of the King, the inner seat of authority was emptied. That was essential. It became recognized, desired and actively pursued. And in that pursuit, emptied of all things both good and bad.
The collapse wiped out:
- false identities
- performative confidence
- externalized worth
- borrowed narratives
- inherited expectations
Only when the kingdom of illusion burns can what gets rebuilt be a true recognition of what the kingdom was meant to be, and the rebuilding of such warrant an earned Kinghood.
And yes, this chapter is the burning.
The Warrior suffers.
The Magician awakens in shadow.
The Lover aches alone.
The false King dies.
This crucible is how I believe a real masculine identity is forged, not by ascension or bestowment, but by descent. Not by insight and bloodlines, but by collapse and rebirth. Not by power, but by a present humility towards discipline that is forged from the rich experience of surrender and resilience.
This chapter is the underworld descent that makes the raw material for all aspects of Lionheart and it’s future ascent possible.
This is the “show me your receipts” of your descent and pain that justifies the worthiness of the kingdom I am here now proclaiming to steward as I lead myself and guide others.
And here’s the song – Lionheart Chapter 1: Descent Leave Receipts Behind
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