My one desire is to love the whole of my experience, the whole of life, unconditionally, in every moment. Put it differently, my one desire is to know the true nature of reality, the true nature of myself through surrender to it. Put another way, my one desire is to fully experience, fulling feel, whatever I am experiencing, right here, right now with no filter.

One of the first things I questioned when I was a child was the validity of war. Two of my heroes were Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. I was brought up Catholic and embraced my faith. I understood Jesus to be calling others to be like him, not look to him to be saved. Further catalyzed by professors in college I questioned the lenses I had been taught to see the world through more deeply. I intuited these lenses distorted some deeper seeing and that their rims pressed against my true face and were not themselves it. I looked outward and saw the lenses mirrored in the other and in my own self-reflection. I reached toward my face and felt their contours. I was on the trail of the illusory self, though barely sensed that I saw the lenses of my beliefs through eyes that needed no aid in their seeing, and feelings that needed no interpretation in their feeling.

I questioned my Catholic faith and the existence of God. I had considered priesthood before college, a major in philosophy before settling on one in English literature with an emphasis in writing. I was inspired by the stories of Steinbeck and Faulkner, Camus and Kafka. My writing would change the world for the better I thought. But the walls of my self and the world around me continued to crumble, a crumbing (and a birthing) that I now feel as a natural, organic process, just as all of life is.

I switched my major to sociology, and then psychology, and then back to English Lit., but no emphasis in writing now. I was going to be a high school English teacher. But the desire for that too crumbled to the ground. I envisioned a few more careers for myself, careers to better this world for us all, before my faith in western civilization lay in ruins. No God, no faith, no ideology, no personal identity felt true. College professors, the writings of Thoreau and Emerson, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "The Tao te Ching," my ever increasing questioning of myself and the world around, and my persistent sense that Jesus's message was about nothing other than to love, not about creating a religion or a politics, propelled me to look elsewhere for how to live. I turned to the indigenous cultures of the world for answers to how to live in harmony with nature (both the inner and the outer). I didn't notice I was still looking outside of myself for guidance on how to live, however, as I hopped on a plane to Ecuador, my girlfriend unwillingly following (in both of our hearts), neither of us truly willing to let go of the vestiges of a dying relationship. I was going in the hope of contacting true indigenous humans still living free of the taint, as I saw it, of modern society. The trip was a flop.

I returned to the U.S. as lost as ever. I worked construction, got fired, then decided to go to a Hindu ashram in Nova Scotia that followed the non-dual teachings (the understanding that there is only one Self, that all is One) of the Indian sage Ramana Maharshi who had died back in 1950. So at twenty-four I hiked the Appalachian Trail to Katahdin then headed north to Arunachala Ashrama in Nova Scotia where I helped take care of the ashram amidst meditating, chanting, and reading about the teachings of non-duality through the lense of Hinduism.

I was drawn away after a month with the intention of returning. The river of my life meandered elsewhere, to a small family-owned organic farm in North Carolina where I lived and worked for two years before moving to the New York City branch of the ashram I had stayed at in Nova Scotia, though I didn't feel authentic following the practices of Hinduism anymore than Catholicism. I read the spiritual books of the American spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen. I heard him speak in New York City. I moved to his community in Boston and lived in it for five years before moving back down to Asheville, North Carolina. After first hearing him talk in New York City in 1997, it took me until 2013 to finally part ways with Andrew and his teachings. When he stepped down from his role as "guru" for abuses of his power it confirmed the suspicions I had had of him from when I had first read his books.

My ten years in Asheville were with jobs working with severely autistic people in group home settings, as well as working at an organization called Eliada Home for teenagers and children with behavioral challenges who have been taken or placed out of their homes. I have worked most recently through several one-on-one jobs with young men diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Not going into any detail I have grown a great deal through working with them.

My one desire is still to live fully in the here and now. No more, no less. I find myself dipping down into its waters at times. It's beautiful. How could we want anything more than what is already happening? What else is even happening, outside of our own minds? My processes continues to unfold . . . as all of our processes do . . . as the one process does . . . .

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I am driving by car, moving from Asheville, North Carolina to Ashland, Oregon.

Interests

Above all, to be here now. Within the here and the now, writing poetry, ecstatic and improvisational dance, observing myself, knowing myself ever more deeply, philosophizing with others for play, playing for play's sake, watching the world around me, especially the natural, non-human made world, reading about the nature of the self/reality (but that is on the wane at the moment), seeing new places, seeing the familiar anew, questioning, and questioning my questioning, and beneath it all feeling, feeling this reality that is right here, right now, where no mediation is required.

• arts
• writing
• books
• literature
• poetry
• dancing
• dining
• politics
• reading
• catholic
• hinduism
• teaching
• psychology
• religion
• sociology

Music, Movies, and Books

My favorite music, movies and books is always changing, these days usually what I am listening to, watching or reading in this moment; I don't have the same favorite things as when I was seven years old, obviously. I recently heard Jim James's recent solo album "Regions of Light and Sound of God" in a cafe and immediately fell in love with it. I have listened to it many times in the last two weeks. Also have checked out his "My Morning Jacket" albums and love that too (Circuital and Evil Urges). At the moment no other music is really moving me, including other new music. Some bands that have a special place in my heart: The Beatles (like many of us), The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Tool, Boards of Canada, Saul Williams, Devendra Banhart, Sorne, Radiohead, Bjork, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Santana, Critter's Buggin', Nine Inch Nails, Ben Lee, Simon and Garfunkel, Papadosio, John Hopkins, Bibio, Fleet Foxes, Bob Marley, Tom Waits, and others that I can't think of at the moment, and any music that moves me to dance (which is almost any).

Movies that have moved me from childhood through adulthood: E.T., Papillon, Platoon, Chariots of Fire, onto more "artsy" directors including Jim Jarmusch, Carl Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai, Akira Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson, Terrence Malick, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Richard Linklater, Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Bela Tarr, Godfrey Reggio, Alexander Sukurov, Charlie Chaplin, Artavazd Peleshian, Stan Brakhage, Les Blank, Fancis Ford Coppola, Hal Ashby. And I love Monty Python films, and many other individual films such as Harold & Maude, Alive, and the recent film "Wild" with Reese Witherspoon which was a big inspiration in me packing up my stuff and heading out west.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

In 1994 I hiked 1,600 miles of the Appalachian Trail.

Teach, Learn, Share

I love to share my time in helping another in whatever way, cleaning a house, taking out garbage, working on a construction project. Learn? I'm always open to learning new things about this incredible world of ours. Share my ear, my thoughts, my kindness, my time and energy. Any teaching I might do is hopefully inadvertent.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I love to engage in explorations about the nature of reality, the self, or almost anything else - but merely as play, not as argument or debate. To me thinking about the nature of things is just a lot of fun because isn't it all just a mystery in the end? And like I stated above, I would love to share my time and energy (including buying food) with my hosts for opening up their homes to a wayward traveler.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Ecuador, England, France, India, Switzerland

Countries I’ve Lived In

Mexico, United States