I grew up in a conventional Western medicine family. Science was truth. Logic and reason was the way. I find great beauty in the scientific method. I admire that cool objectivity. Ideally in science there is a dispassionate willingness to consider any hypothesis. We get an idea about how things work and then test it by doing experiments. Then we share the results. An important part of the scientific method is to see whether or not when others do the same experiment they get the same result.

The world made sense to me growing up and it was under control. Then, after a bit, the world didn't make so much sense and things seemed completely out of control. I was in high school in the 1960's, and then in college in the early 1970's. By my second year of Oberlin college, I couldn't see the point of it for me. I left school, took various jobs and wandered. That was its own education - working as a cook, running a food co-op, delivering wood-stoves, taking short-term clerical jobs in various offices.

After a bit, I found myself at the Ali Akbar College of Classical North Indian Music in Marin. I loved the few World Music courses I had taken at Oberlin College. The musics of other cultures are wonderful doorways into how others see and hear the world.

Then I discovered the Adult Degree Program, which at that time had its home in Goddard College, Vermont. In that program we would go up to Vermont for two weeks every six months. During those two weeks we would design our study for the next six months. Then we would go out into the world and do it. The only further requisites were was that we write about our experiences and then present them when we got back to Vermont for the next two week session. In this setting I completed my B.A. degree.

I took to self-directed learning immediately. I read books, interviewed experts, visited healing centers, went into wilderness areas in New Mexico, visited meditation centers and more. In the recounting I realize I've been pursuing self-directed learning ever since.

Eventually I wandered up to Boulder, Colorado. There, in an effort to be practical and have a career, I took a Masters degree in Buddhist and Western Psychology. Having a foot in two different worlds is invaluable – it gives you a chance to work from two different perspectives. It defuses the conceptual rigidity which seems to afflict any established academic discipline. Between two very different points of view one can perhaps find a reasonable truth based on one's own experience.

From one point of view meditation is psychological fieldwork. One sits and observes the dynamics of one's own mind. Instead of trying desperately to control our minds, we could get to know them. The awareness itself is sufficient to institute the necessary changes. That to me is a key point in Buddhist psychology.

In Boulder I also began to learn Tai Qi and Qi Gong, two overlapping disciplines from China which unite movement, breathing, meditation and exercise. This was really a pivotal point in my life. As it turns out, much of Tai Qi and Qi Gong carries a strongly Daoist influence. Ultimately, Tai Qi brought Daoism into my life. I consider myself a free spirit, but if I was to make a home in a world tradition, that home would be in the Daoist tradition.

However, my road was to be not only long, but also winding. After graduating from the psychology program I stayed in Boulder, working with severely disturbed people suffering with things like psychosis, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and the like (although other traditions would have quite different ways of describing these deeply painful states).

The Tai Chi tradition I had connected with was called Yang Style Short Form. This came down through a very famous Chinese herbalist – Professor Cheng Man Ching. I realized that Tai Chi was the physical therapy arm of the classical Chinese medicine traditions. I resolved to study Chinese medicine.

Yet while Lao Tzu (the founder of Daoism) was calling, a more stern and demanding figure seemed to stand in the way – Confucius. In Confucianism, one's social duty is paramount. Diving into the mysteries of the universe is considered self-indulgent. 

The social duty of Confucius is mainly defined by one's obligation to one's family. From the point of view of my conventional Western medicine family I was off indulging in some kind of untested craziness. It had, they believed, to be dangerous and could certainly lead to no good, especially in terms of career.  After long consideration I decided to go to conventional Western medicine school and pursue my interest in Chinese medicine afterwards.

What a long road! But I certainly had the mind for it. The sciences were to me an open book. Clinic was harder to two reasons. First, I have learned that the most fundamental healing thing any healer can do is to fully meet the consciousness of the client. When people are suffering deeply, that can be a challenge. I was used to being safe in my clean, clear world of intellect. But I got over it. It was like weight lifting. Little by little I got stronger and stronger in this regard. Ultimately, I realized a very important thing. We have a choice – we can hope to create a safe, quiet little corner with walls around it where we avoid the suffering of the rest of the world. Or we can embrace our fundamental unity with humanity and life, realizing that no one is healthy until everyone is healthy. No one is safe until everyone is safe. No one is abundant until everyone is abundant.

The other challenge of my Western medical training was to look upon the suffering and disease in my culture with the knowledge that much of it was unnecessary and much of it was being treated in a less-than-healing way. This remains a challenge for me to this day. From my point of view, from the inside looking out, very few people realize how corrupt and dysfunctional our medical system is, and very many people suffer deeply and die because of this.

I stayed the course and became a General Practitioner. Then I studied Chinese medicine, ultimately getting my Master's Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine from The Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences in Oakland in 1997. As I went through my Chinese medicine training I paid my way by working in Emergency Rooms, Urgent Care clinics and Worker's Compensation clinics.

One of my teachers called medical training "the longest exercise in delayed gratification ever invented." I have to agree. It was really only after finishing my MD and training as a Licensed Acupuncturist that I felt able to properly return to those disciplines which interested me so deeply - Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and Daoist medicine. But it was worth it. I had a clinic and practiced Chinese medicine wholeheartedly for about twenty-five years.

Some time toward the end of that twenty five years in clinic the practice of meditation began to become more and more important in my life. I remember one pivotal week where I was supposed to fly down to Los Angeles for a massive infusion of teachings on the subject of Daoist medicine. I realized I just wanted to stay home, sample a few meditation texts and be in quietude. Things were shifting, but of course it took my ambitious mind full of fixed ideas a while to catch on.

Ultimately I began to practice meditation under the guidance of a teacher in the Santa Cruz, California area named Marlies Cocheret de la Moriniere.  

During my years in clinic my practice was exciting, exhilarating. I gave my very best to each client, and I always met them with the intention that there is no limit to healing. Then, around 2016, I felt my energies waning. I realized that if I continued full out in clinic, I would fall very, very ill. It was time to change again.

I retired from clinic and began to write and teach.