I started meditating in 1997 after a spiritual experience that arose when I’d just starting studying philosophy at University. I remember walking out of the campus library and a wave of clear energy swept towards me leaving my mind clear and still.
For about six months I felt much more able to choose peace and my emotions didn’t sway me. But then a trauma happened, and I could feel myself getting sucked into the pain rather than staying true to the truth that had set me free. But there was nothing I could do.
Years passed and in 2002 I studied hypnotherapy sparked by my interest in consciousness. But after helping people for a while, mainly to stop smoking, I felt that wasn’t enough. My heart yearned for something more. So in 2004 I dropped everything and spontaneously flew off to the Indian subcontinent.
After searching in vain for a few months I stumbled across a vipassana retreat in Bodhgaya. And it was here that I had a powerful awakening. I was in bliss for a week, my mind like a vast ocean. I realised that time, space and independent self, were an illusion.
In 2006 I went to Rishikesh in India. After a period of feeling ‘lost’ I woke up one morning and just started walking up the Ganges. It was cold and I only had a t-shirt on, but I didn’t care, something was guiding me. After an hour I arrived at an ashram and floated in, beaming. I didn’t leave that ashram for over a year, I was teaching meditation and guiding yoga nidra there.
I kept returning to Phool Chatti Ashram for several years to help out. But as time went by I started to shake quite violently when I released ‘stuck’ energy in my body. This led me to go on solitary retreats more as I didn’t want to disturb others. I felt in my heart that I just wanted to spend my days in silence and solitude, close to God.
But something wasn’t right. Obstacles kept being placed in my way. And then one day in 2012, my gut spoke. I had met a teacher years before who often spoke about the wisdom of the belly, and by ‘chance’ she was about to lead a retreat in Tiruvannamalai, so off I went.
On this retreat I had some powerful energetic awakenings which brought me down my chakras. It felt like all my efforts to go towards God were turned inside out and I was being pushed backwards, sinking down into something more mellow.
Not long after this I was back in England, studying carpentry and going to a boxing club. I had lost interest in philosophy and immersed myself in embodying my maleness, my humanness. My sacral chakra dominated my path for a few years and before long I had two kids and moved to Berlin, which is where I now live with my family.
And so my journey started purely with nondual contemplation in my head, but now is enriched by following my heart and gut, and sinking below the mind to drink up wisdom from a deeper source.