Writer - Musician - Teacher
My approach to writing is simple: I write from within. While many call me a mystic, my writing desires to make the sacred accessible, to bring the metaphysical into daily life and extract the essence of the perennial wisdom, as it applies to our present world. My writing takes life in that beautiful interface where the extraordinary meets the most ordinary of human affairs.
I began my writing career as a professional songwriter for an American Roots Music group called Manchild, recording with Capitol Records.
Later, I entered a Benedictine Monastery and continued songwriting that documented my years spent as monk in the Minnesota North country. There I was introduced to the poetic language of the mystics, who described the inner journey of the soul as it makes its way through the world.
After leaving the monastery I entered a doctoral program at Emory University in Georgia, learning the language of thesis and analysis in the areas of philosophy, psychology, and religion. My doctoral dissertation was entitled Breaking Down The Neurotic-Psychotic Artifice. The Subversive Function of Myth in Goethe, Nietzsche, Rilke and Walter Benjamin.
Completing my doctoral studies, I began post-graduate work in the clinical area of addiction, researching the effects of spiritual awareness on recovering persons who were following the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and engaged in transforming their lives from within. During this time I published articles in the field of psychology and spirituality, culminating in a book — The Materialization of Spirituality, published by the Institute where I functioned in the capacity of spiritual director.
After my tenure there, I took up experiential studies in meditation under the perennial wisdom scholar and yogi, Dr. Thomas Hickey. My training under him culminated in a book — Across the Fiery Threshold that explores the mystical states and stages of consciousness. It is an esoteric work that I utilize in my teaching, but remains unpublished, awaiting the appropriate time.
In more recent years, I’ve been engaged with writing mystical poetry and with setting the verse of Hafiz and Rumi (specifically the transliterations of Daniel Ladinsky) to rhymed verse and song.
I have written an introduction and contributed a piece — “Intuition & Truing,” for a book edited by D.E. Stevens called Meher Baba’s Gift of Intuition. 15 Essays.
Read More → Book Available at Amazon
I have just completed a novoir (a fictive memoir), a teaching tale delineating the long adventure of the embodied soul on the path of love. I cannot reveal its real title until published.
Adventures on the Path of Love. Volume 1
I have also begun collaboration with a colleague, Deborah Quibell, on a book of mystical poems of aspiration whose purpose is to show the beginning stages of higher consciousness and affection entitled Tonight, the Ancient Door. Poems of Higher Love & Longing.
You had no furniture in your room of golden light,
no chair, no bed in that place of absolute quiet,
void of the curve and tinkling of bells.
There, no need to listen for the footstep of your shapely beloved
in your bliss-filled chamber of aloneness.
Now it is different.
I have come and taken my place
where only yourself and God have dwelt.
I have brought a lamp, a couch, an exquisite rug,
a brush to paint your walls bright with colors of morning.
You did not see me bathing with you in the Ganges
when you made your thousand devotions,
that day you dipped your beads into sacred water
thinking you were alone.
You did not see where I was swimming, naked and pure.
I was in the prayer beads around your neck,
like a bird in an egg, ready to crack open,
from that private place in your heart when the right time came.
My love has flown to you who sincerely longed for love.
My love has eaten all the seeds fallen from your necklace of sorrow.
There are two sequels to my novoir on the path of love, outlines have been written for both and several chapters have been composed for the first sequel.
Adventures on the Path of Love. Volume 2
Adventures on the Path of Love. Volume 3
These five 19th-20th century figures are pivotal and paradigm-breaking writers: Rainer Maria Rilke – for his poetry that explores the sacramental character of the earth, Friedrich Nietzsche – for his philosophy of human transformation, Carl Jung – for his psychology of the collective unconscious, D.H. Lawrence – for his pioneering explorations into the spiritual dimension of erotic union and Ralph Waldo Emerson – for his groundbreaking contribution to the pollination of Eastern mystical thought on American soil.
