How I Became the Austin Soul Coach

Curiosity is the most vital part of ourselves that we can be in touch with. It is a deep longing and knowing within that calls us to places, ideas, and people beyond our comprehension. When curiosity is encouraged and tended as a flourishing garden, it can be a rich source of animation and inner power throughout the lifetime. When it is stifled and discouraged, it festers as a lingering wound that increasingly demands our attention and disrupts the false desires we’ve moved towards. 

My curiosity has always been incredibly potent. There were unseen realms that called to me that I could not articulate. I wanted to know everything about the world and its creatures, as well as myself. How was it that I was having the experience of being human? What did it mean that everyone else was having their own particular experience of what it was like to be them? I’ve carried these questions with me for most of my life. The more I traverse, the more I realize that life is the answer. 

Curiosity in my case was mistaken for intelligence, though the two are often interrelated. What intelligence meant for me, however, was that I was naturally gifted, that I could know things more easily and work at the solutions with lighter effort than most. There was a way in which I was treated as special that did little to serve me and my community. Thankfully things that are not true come apart, and though it was a difficult and long process, eventually I outgrew such a crude definition of intelligence and was able to allow my curiosity and creativity to bloom more freely. 

That did not come without great sacrifice and suffering. My identity had been built on a foundation of quicksand, and when the circumstances no longer reflected my reality, my neat little ego concept imploded. I knew that there must be something wrong or deficient with me, that I was unworthy of love and even of life, and flirted with and nearly danced with suicide at the age of 20. However, the thwarted attempt to end my life revealed that the world was not so separate as I had been taught to believe. I witnessed a miracle that night that made the infinitely interconnected and compassionate nature of the Universe perceptible to me. It was the first miracle I noticed, and it would not be the last. 

It is difficult in the modern era to justify a spiritual path. Our technological powers have grown so monstrous, our ability to manipulate physical reality so effective that the ego usurped the throne of the Almighty, something that Frederick Nietzsche proclaimed with the death of God. Beckoning to a greater power became a taboo, a way to ruin one’s career or land oneself in an asylum. Non-ordinary states of consciousness and many psychological processes were simply marked off as aberrations and illness. My own struggles with depression have been cast in the light of funky brain chemistry that can be remedied, after some trial, error, and deterioration, with the help of medication. 

When one awakens to the interconnected, sentient, and benevolent nature of the Universe, one knows that nothing occurs in aberration. The process which we might label “depression” is something within me that requires my attention and consciousness. Through the process of coming to know this other within and by confronting the figures and energies I encounter in my dreams, fantasies, relationships, and visions, I have come to know another side of the mirror. There is that which I think I am, the one writing these words, maintaining this website, eating, drinking, and eliminating, and then there is the ineffable totality of what I actually am, something that could never be named because it is the one doing the naming. 

We are tied to a greater consciousness than our own, and that consciousness can become our consciousness if we humble ourselves to receive it while simultaneously accessing the power of the Unconscious to move deeper and upwards. This process is a holy marriage of conscious with unconscious, solar and lunar consciousnesses, masculine and feminine, ego and shadow. By surrendering to the Unknown we come into more intimate contact with what we truly are, we solidify and gain confidence and clarity in our being, which permits further surrender and contact, and you get the story. 

This process is not linear or pretty. It does not always magnetize compliments and admiration from our peers, partners, and families nor bring us financial wealth or outrageous fortune. The first leg on the spiritual journey is often referred to as a descent, and we will have to venture into greater depths than we ever imagined possible. Contrary to popular belief, the Dark Night of the Soul is almost never the initiation, though it feels that way. The Dark Night of the Soul is not until a much later stage after we have already progressed deeply into our descent. The paradoxical nature of life, consciousness, and experience reveals that the deeper we step the greater heights there are to be seen. By the time we reach our Dark Night, we will have tasted spiritual ecstasy, beheld visions of our life purpose or mythopoetic identity, and be resourced enough to be brought to this great confrontation with immense suffering and the wrenching pain of our separation. It is only through accepting this crucial fact of our reality that we can come into union with the Most High. 

As someone that walks this path, breathes his process, and studies the way, I know that each individual’s journey looks different. I know that what is going on within that process may look strange, aberrant, and diseased from a contemporary standpoint. My role as guide and facilitator is to give credence to this process, to listen to it and teach those under my care how to listen to it themselves. Through this crucial mirroring the soul’s call might be heard, and a process set in motion that may undermine the desires of the ego but fill the Spirit. I am of the opinion that the more people are in relationship to this crucial and unconditioned part of themselves, the greater peace and prosperity might be shared amongst all beings of the Earth. 

This is the value of what I offer. When the voices of well-meaning friends, partners, and community attempt to keep you embedded in what you were, I see the potential of what you could be and place the responsibility of this potential in your hands. I see your traumas and sufferings not as things to be consoled away but wounds to be pressed so that the light may enter. I do all of this with the tact and compassion of someone who has been there and acts not from a place of ego but of sovereign intuition. Only you can discover who you are, and through the many tools, practices, and ways of being I have encountered (and will continue to learn) throughout my life, you too will find the task of fully incarnating as Spirit the only one, ultimately, of moving towards. 

Contact me today to begin or deepen your spiritual journey and rediscover what you were born to do.