MY STORY
I found myself in 2015 with everything one would need for a humble, fulfilling existence. Married to an amazing woman, a precious daughter, a good career and a house, but I was deeply discontent. I felt suffocated with the burdens of supporting my family and inanimate, working a career that lacked fulfillment. I struggled with my mental health, battling depressive bouts, debilitating negative thought patterns and self limiting beliefs. These deeply engrained belief systems I held had me stuck, unable to see a path through. I had reached a breaking point.
Although nearly imperceptible, this dark night of the soul stirred something inside me, a subtle internal guidance. I can say with hindsight that it was something that was always there, just neglected. This guidance nudged me to reach out to a friend of mine who was selling handmade journals at the time. I purchased one, sat down and started writing. The first entry in my journal goes..
“Today is the first day of the rest of my life, it’s never too late to pursue something. Life is too short to not be doing what you love and the only thing preventing you from doing that is yourself. You are your own worst enemy and there is no better time than now.”
I had put my foot down and set an intention from the depths of my being to find that ever elusive happiness, so often talked about. I sent out a Universal SOS, to whatever that mysterious force was turning the cogs of reality. This put things in motion and set me off on a journey of transformation.
It didn’t take long for the Universe to respond because soon after I found myself at a music festival and experienced what I would describe as a full-blown transcendental mystical experience. I psychologically experienced my death, accepting my mortality and becoming a point of consciousness beyond my body, one with the fabric of the Universe. I was struck with a lightning bolt of inner knowing that I was an infinite spiritual being beyond the bounds of space and time, intricately interwoven with all of existence. As you can imagine, it’s a difficult thing to capture with language. Any complete attempt to could be the basis for a series of books. Ultimately I was shown I’m not just some helpless victim of circumstance but a powerful co-creator with immeasurable untapped potential. I had always believed in something greater than myself but due to my childhood conditioning, it was a belief that that thing was external. What was made shockingly clear was that I AM THAT, a unique expression of what I like to call The Great Mystery or what many refer to as God. Not the dogma of a bearded man in the clouds but the animating intelligence of reality. This experience completely turned my world upside down and demolished much of what I thought I knew to be true, but it also came with some much needed rewiring.
It was now crystal clear that the idea I was stuck was one of many stories I was telling myself. I begun taking responsibility for the place I had found myself in and set out on a mission to transform my life.
My experience did not bring an end to my mental health struggles, if anything it exacerbated them and drove me to find solutions, off on a long road of integration. I started floating and meditating with a new found obsession for anything related to spirituality, mysticism, philosophy, altered states of consciousness etc, trying to piece back together my mental landscape and make sense out of what had happened to me. Through these new practices, I was beginning to get a handle on my overactive mind and simultaneously started receiving downloads, which were the seeds for a new project. These insights ignited a creative fire inside me. Due to life circumstances and finances, it was very difficult for me to go back to school and start over, so instead I started waking up earlier, watching online tutorials and teaching myself Adobe Illustrator. From there I started messing about designing and the clothing brand, WEME Thread Theory was born.
I spent the following years incubating this idea, culminating with an online store and vending at my favourite musical festival, learning many tough but incredibly valuable lessons in the process. With the application of these lessons, I formulated a new vision for the brand but decided to shelf it for later as my well-being required a more central focus.
Despite the radical transformation I had been through, I still carried the nagging feeling there was something wrong with me, a belief I had carried for most of my adult life. My mental health had greatly improved but I was still plagued by chronic stress, anxiety and a restless mind.
I had been on a quest for years to find an Ayahuasca ceremony as I thought this might offer me the missing ingredient I sought. In 2018 I was synchronistically led to ceremony but it was with a different South American plant medicine/teacher called Huachuma. Huachuma is considered a heart medicine, so these early ceremonies I attended were appropriately called Heart Ceremonies. Heart medicine wasn’t what I was after but it was precisely what was needed.
During my first ceremony, I was briefly able to pierce through a numbness so accustomed, it felt normal. Pink Floyd coined that perfectly. This numbness was felt in my chest as a contraction and tension. As I started connecting the dots it gave new context to my habitual shallow breathing, a tendency that would logically provoke much of the stress and anxiety I battled. To put it simply, much of what I was suffering from were symptoms of a clammed up, closed off heart. All these disparate pieces were starting to come together and make much more sense from a holistic perspective.
These weren’t Grinch severity heart issues but there were some deeply engrained selfish tendencies I had unconsciously developed throughout my life which were slowly being revealed to me. Over the previous years I found myself complaining a lot about what I judged as unfavourable circumstances. Through this new work I was doing, it became abundantly clear how fortunate and truly blessed I have been throughout my life. A sense of entitlement and a lack of gratitude had compounded my clouded perspective. We all have unique challenges and a unique tool kit to deal with our challenges but regardless, compared to many, I’ve been dealt a very favourable hand. These insights may have been blatantly obvious to the outsider looking in but objectively assessing our lives from the inside through the distortions of our subjectivity, is one of the more difficult psychological phenomena we have to contend with. They’re called blind spots for a reason.
This work has come with some deep humblings as to my ignorance in certain areas but as difficult as it can be, I am grateful for it and happy to bring the light of my awareness to anything that will perpetuate less suffering for myself, others and this beautiful planet we call home. This is what has kept me showing up to ceremony and to life in general, the desire to day after day, become a better version of myself, a better husband and father, son, brother and friend.
A major trap that I’ve had to tread very carefully with is the tendency to judge as we peel the layers back and start to identify less than ideal aspects of ourselves. These impulses of the self critic can quickly become a negative feedback loop. What is absolutely essential in this process is acceptance, self love, and ultimately forgiveness. These ways of the Heart are the foundation for all inner work I do. As I continue to uncover the secrets of the heart, I am blown away by its magnificence. It truly is so much more than an organ pumping blood through our body. It is a brain in its own rite that holds incredible metaphysical intelligence. From an energetic perspective, it’s a powerful sense organ and centre for spiritual perception and connection. The intuition of the Heart has the extraordinary ability to discern Truth beyond the intellect of the mind. These archetypal truths are eluded to in the many myths and stories passed down throughout the ages and have nearly been lost with our modern scientific materialism.
I feel indebted to this medicine for the gifts it has blessed me with, for revealing the Sacred Heart, my inner wisdom and innate healing potential. It has given new meaning to my life and helped bring greater clarity to my purpose. I always had a fire within to create a better world but was never entirely sure how to best be of service. This work has called me to face my fears, to bring my unique style and my unique medicine more prominently into the world, to share my story and what I’ve learned in the hopes that it can help facilitate the remembrance of the same healing potential, the same inherent divinity that resides within all of us. We each hold the power to radically transform our well-being, our reality and our world with sincere intent.
It’s taken a Truth seeking spirit and some serious inner fortitude for me to overcome many of my unhealthy habits and unconscious tendencies. I am not claiming to have transcended the lower frequencies of my nature, I still have my difficulties and struggles, I occasionally fall victim to my old ways. But when I do, I meet it with love and forgiveness, I pick myself up, dust myself off and keep moving forward.
And it’s imperative to remember we are never in this alone. We all have potent unseen forces of support, eager to aid and guide us, they’re just patiently waiting for us to reach out and ask for help. My lessons really helped fortify my trust and faith in this support. This has led me through many turbulent waters and now here as I type these words. My lessons have also served to deepen my patience in the rhythm and timing of life. But the continued embodiment of these lessons is where the rubber meets the road, this is the ongoing practice.
So this brings me full circle to where I am today, symbolized by the paradox and the Truth contained in the title of this site. I’m more balanced in the rationality of my mind and the mystery of my heart. In a sense that is what this project is all about. That middle path of Love, beyond polarity, the merging of the left and the right, of the scientific and the spiritual, of logical and intuitive, the seen and the unseen. In an external sense my circumstances actually aren’t much different than they were when this leg of the journey began. What has changed though, radically, is my perspective. This new balance has brought me to a place where I’m much more at peace and content despite external circumstance. Because if we require certain external conditions to be met before we can be happy and fulfilled then it can be lost just as quickly as it was gained.
This inner alchemy i’ve experienced has me feeling reborn to normalcy, with a new found child like love for life. An emptier and more welcoming vessel for my soul to animate. A new comfort in my body, a new depth to my breath, more magic in the moment, a bigger thump in my chest.
The irony is that this journey begun with many unanswered questions but answers inevitably lead to new inquiries until we arrive at a place where we can surrender and find contentment beyond our need to know. There are things that transcend the capabilities of the mind to comprehend and the ability of language to articulate.
And i’d be lying if I said i’ve given up my seeking but I wouldn’t be, if I said I’m most content in those moments when I’m not. And from that silence and stillness we can glimpse the Truth in the question.. without mystery, would there be a plot?..