Who What How

WHO

A bit about me; seems a fair place to start. I have meditated regularly for over fifty years and practiced Tantrayana/Vajrayana Buddhism for over forty. During much of that time I was also a successful serial software entrepreneur. Strange bedfellows, kinda. It would be fair to say that I spent much of my adult life trying to manage the competing needs of my spiritual and material worlds, often feeling pulled in opposing directions. You ever feel that way? Over time though, I was able to shift my perspective, using the tools and demands of each of my worlds, to serve a larger and truer, necessarily integrated whole that is my life. I think of it as reframing what’s already there. From that vantage point I try to share what my own experiences have shown me, with folks for whom this all seems to resonate.

WHAT

For me, the task was to unite my worlds under a larger unified framework, if there was such a thing. That umbrella, which I fashioned into a model and process. is comprised of practices and techniques which lead to empowerment and freedom. Simple, and yet wildly comprehensive. In our material lives, we are concerned about ensuring our security and our success. We do that by engendering clarity and level-headed thinking, anticipating needs and events, gaining control and advantage, improving efficient decision-making, and becoming more fluid in reacting to the inevitable challenges that arise. In meditation and other mindfulness practices, we focus on dispelling any illusions we can discern, enhancing intuition, increasing energy, supporting personal empowerment, and loosening any rigid grasp on anything limiting. These are not dissimilar practices, and the common root causes leading to any desired results are all about uplifting consciousness and shifting awareness – by understanding and managing our energy. That’s the name of the game – discerning what causes and conditions lead to greater clarity and insight, and seeing that the opportunities for that exist in every aspect of our lives. Whether you call it Maya, or Samsara, or the Holodeck, or the Matrix – its very existence is for us to use to grow and evolve, with as many opportunities for that as there are individual moments themselves – if we reframe it that way. Exploring all this is my interest. I help companies (and their people), and people (and their companies), and mostly just individuals who are interested, to see the demands and facets of their lives, and the many tools we all have access to, in a more integrated and leverageable way. Ideally, and with the right perspective, we can see how everything in our lives can in turn serve everything else.

HOW

It takes effort in both the esoteric and material aspects of our lives to succeed. But each effort does spill into and impact the other – if we frame it all in an integrated fashion. We can empower ourselves by using classic spiritual practices and techniques to improve our material lives, and by using our life’s challenges and goals to inform and advance our esoteric efforts. As my Tibetan teacher used to often say, “Same as same.” Having been largely trained in Tibetan Buddhist practices, I naturally draw from them. But it’s more about framing them in a broader range of situations, or just making sense in that broader framework. On the one end of this broad spectrum there are techniques that facilitate letting go and being more aware. On the other end are techniques which lead to improved focus, willfulness, and intent. In the middle, where they meet, is balance and equanimity, freedom. Collectively, all of this leads to increased insight, sustained self-empowerment, and the spiraling up of consciousness. Every activity of your life, sought after or not, welcomed or not, but leveraged with the right tools, is potential fodder for that larger evolutionary process.