I grew up in the prosperous 1950s and 1960s in a middle-class U.S. family. I was abused at home and bullied at school.
I started looking for answers when I was 15 and started exploring psychotherapy and spirituality. In what I still see as a kind of miracle, I won a scholarship to international high school at 16 and escaped the abuse and bullying.
I kept choosing it though: fear-based Christian fundamentalist and evangelical belief systems, and then 7 years in a belief-based cult that preyed on my every fear.
Religion became an obvious dead end. Back to psychology and therapy. A year of therapy after leaving the cult that helped me own my same-sex attractions. Shocking, I know.
Training as an actor and singer in NYC 1985-86: then training as a healer: first a license in massage in 1992, then some grad school courses in therapy at NYU in 1994, then a 3-year certification as a Psychic and Energy Healer in 1997, then grad school to become a psychologist, finishing in 2000.
4 years of going to a therapist weekly in the 1990s. Continued exploration of spirituality that has never stopped. Becoming a Yoga teacher in 2001; a spiritual awakening into a profound shift in identity from ‘chattering mind’ to ‘Awareness’ 20 years ago today.
Now 20 years of living ‘awakened’ with something still missing.
20 years of being a therapist, and shortly after that, an enlightenment teacher. Something still missing.
Psychology and most spirituality is about empowering a process, not a person. It’s about a person still needing a process to be okay. It’s not about owning the fundamental LOVE that you and I are at heart.
Psychologists aren’t allowed to say that they love their clients. They use fancy phrases like “unconditional positive regard” or empathy or compassion. They also don’t focus on the love at the core of their clients, they focus on pathology….e.g. ‘what is wrong with you.’
Traditional enlightenment spirituality also focuses on what’s wrong with you and then promises ‘the magical life you’ll have if only you’ll do x, y, and z according to MY teaching.’ It doesn’t focus on the love that you already are, the eternal and infinite that you already are, and the simple patterns in the way of experiencing that.
I can’t be a psychologist or an enlightenment teacher anymore because they break my heart in their disempowerment of people and their lack of focus on love. I have always loved people and have always wanted to help. I still do.
So, the best way to help now, is to be a Mirror to help you to see what you ALREADY ARE: love, peace, truth, awareness and part of Nature. You’re already infinite and eternal and you already have a sense of both, though perhaps not recognized as such.
The only thing in the way is the corrosive patterning of the dominant and destructive culture we live in. A culture divorced from Nature and heading more deeply into artifice, lies, propaganda, control, and substituting the virtual for the real.
I do still offer individual work in the office and by video: uncovering your positive core of Love, helping you to reconnect with Nature, and helping you dissolve the poisonous patterns that have enslaved you and distracted you from the love you are. It’s not therapy or enlightenment anymore, I’m calling it “Mirroring” today.
Occasionally, I’ll offer a small group if a few people are interested.
Let Me Know How You Are
I’m always happy to hear from anyone and everyone that I send my newsletter to. Be in touch and let me know how you are. If you have a question you’re working with, send that too, and I’ll get back to you with a suggestion.
Love and cheers,
Jon