ABOUT ME

How Things Started for Me

My own path began with a sudden shift out of a chaotic life into a direct search for truth. The initial commitment brought about what’s often called a ‘kundalini awakening’. Although this resulted in a dramatic shaking-up of my view of reality, it didn’t leave me in any sort of lasting awakened state.

When the kundalini energy eventually went quiet, it was like being left to get on with the work alone, although I had now been given enough motivation to believe that there was something worth giving my all to. My life up until that point had been very fear-driven and lacking in anything like discipline or self-honesty. It still feels like a miracle to me that qualities such as these — discipline, honesty and a commitment to face difficulty — gradually became central to my path.

Meditation in the early days was strained and effortful but over time became my foremost practice. There’s a lot more I could say about the journey in its different stages of unfolding, but it’s probably most useful for me to share more about the present.

Where I Am Now

Where I find myself today is in a different life, and it can be hard to describe this difference in a way that does justice to it.

On a practical level there’s an ease and naturalness that was completely unfathomable to me in the past. I also find my life full of the things that once seemed out of reach but so desirable to me: uninhibited creativity; intimate communication with people, animals, and nature; and an increasingly intuitive relationship with my own body.

However, none of this touches the essence of what has changed. If I had to put this into words, I could define it as: the realisation that we don’t need to settle for anything less than that which we really, truly long for in our innermost being.

The Question of Enlightenment

When someone is offering any sort of spiritual support, I think people often want to ask the question “Are you enlightened?” I also understand why many teachers don’t want to address it, because the nature of enlightenment is paradoxical.

Enlightenment doesn’t actually happen to a person. It can only ever refer to you: the consciousness that is present now and reading these words, not the personal you, and never to an object. But this response can feel unsatisfactory; most people want an answer on the human level.

For my part, I can say I’m not abiding in an enlightened or egoless state - the sense of personal self or ego is present as I write. However, my relationship to the personal self has changed, and this page wouldn’t feel complete if I didn’t acknowledge the deeper experiences that come through, and that, day by day, further soften the structures of identity.

Tastes of the Real

Ramana Maharshi’s question “Who am I?” has become paramount and vividly alive for me. In deep sitting enquiry, attention naturally seeks its source: the place where the sense of individual self comes undone, and the unlimited being ‘behind’ it is revealed. When this root of identity is touched, the journey, the desire to help others — the whole narrative — dissolves. Being itself needs nothing, and there is no outside or other.

This dissolving of self isn’t fully stable or pure for me. It comes and goes, and it still carries an intensity that shows where resistance remains. From the personal side, it feels like a gradual shift away from identification with the body-mind towards identification with unlimited, formless consciousness. The change feels progressive to me as a person: something that grows day by day. From the side of consciousness, however, it is clear to me now that there is no progression at all.

These tastes of reality, though not stable, ripple out into my life and are continually transforming how I interact with the world. To me this feels like the shedding of old defences and an opening to love.