I am a philosopher, first and foremost and from this flows my writing and teaching ability. My primary years of teaching included not only the martial arts but the physical arts being one of the first wellness consultants in America and having clients as varied as the United States Senate, President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sport and L.L. Bean.

My worldwide Otherworldly experiences, many witnessed by others, are mythic in stature and rival mystical tales of the past that have been recorded in many sacred texts.

I view my first pilgrimage in 1981 to England, Wales and Scotland as the actual beginning of a quest that had its roots many years in the past with my enrollment in the martial arts as a freshman in college in 1964. Even though I had attained a Black Belt in Chung Do Kwan Karate, it was not enough. The art I studied focused more on the physical and little on the mystical or spiritual, which was the real reason behind my desire to enter into the martial arts in the first place. I have always had a natural fighting ability so learning to fight or as a means of self-defense was not my desire in studying the martial arts—but the legendary mystical abilities of martial masters was my driving force.

My need for martial power—warriorship—had sprung full blown as a young 16 year-old. It was a visual tale that literally changed my life—a vision and soul rite of passage, so to speak. It vibrated a deep soul memory within the core of my being that never left and only grew stronger. It opened the gate for a birthing of a personal mythology of the heroic warrior and the sacrifice of heart that would eventually take me across the world seeking and searching for knowledge and power.

The visual tale was called The 300 Spartans. The ancient Spartans were the saviors of Western Civilization as a result of their heroic action and sacrifice at the Pass of Thermopylae known as the Hot Gates. In the spring of 480 BCE, King Xerxes of Persia set forth to conquer the Greek city-states with a titanic army of over 200,000 men as well as a massive fleet rumored to be close to 1,300 vessels. His final goal was the conquest of the whole of Europe.

The independent Greek states rallied to the invasion, and as always, looked to the heroic warriors of the Greek city-states—the Spartans. Even though there was little love-loss between the Athenians, the naval power, and the Spartans, this was a time for unity not bitterness over past woundings and rivalries.

The Spartans were not only the greatest and bravest warriors that the world had ever seen, but they were also very spiritual as well as religious. Sparta was a city-state of spiritual warriors, not merchants, where the women held equality with the men, such an uncommon practice elsewhere in Greece at that time. Committed to honoring their deities throughout the year, the Spartan army was forbidden to fight during one of their religious festivals.

However, the king and his personal bodyguard of 300 were not honor-bound by the religious laws of Sparta. These laws kept the rest of the Spartan army from marching to battle, but not King Leonidas and his personal bodyguard. Aware of the Delphic Oracle’s prophetic message that Sparta would be sacked or Sparta would mourn the death of a king from the house of Hercules (where Spartan kings claimed lineage), the Lion, as he was known, still went forth with his 300 to secure the pass at Thermopylae. True to their honor and loyalty to their king, the Spartans’ sacrifice down to the last warrior at these ‘pillars of fire’ echoed throughout history as one of the foremost examples of bravery, courage and valor.

Leonidas and his courageous sacrifice and loyalty sparked a soul memory deep within my heart. And from those soul moving qualities of this one movie, I began to remember my incarnations, and from that day forward, commenced a quest of spirit that would take me far and wide.

It was around 1981 when I stumbled upon the ‘art of the ninja.’ On the surface this art of Ninpo seemed to be what I had been searching for since my teenage years. Accordingly, in 1983 my wife and I traveled to Japan to participate in the first international Ninpo Tai Kai. As time marched on, you may say that my ‘balloon’ slowly deflated. Between 1983 and 1989 I gradually determined that the mystical talk was just that—talk and no walk.

In 1989 I departed one organization and switched to its rival organization and became a personal student of its Japanese Grandmaster. I knew that this would solely be for physical training and knowledge and not the mystical powers that I had been seeking.

It was this Grandmaster that presented me with the name of my dojo. The dojo is named after one of the three sacred mountains of Japan—Hakusan.The name came to him in a vision.

Ironically enough the magical martial and healing powers that I had been seeking were discovered within the indigenous shamanic cultures, not within the martial arts. In the summer of 1987 Sherry and I journeyed to Mexico to study with a Curandero—a shaman. At this time I was asked to journey to Peru the next winter and be initiated in a Peruvian Shamanic lineage by another Curandero. As an aside this Peruvian Curandero was also a martial artist of his culture’s old time warrior tradition. This initiation occurred in 1988 and is mythically recorded in The Return of the Feathered Serpent.

During the fall of 1987, before my initiation in a sacred lagoon in the Andes, I experienced a descending spirit exorcism, an experience that made a man a magician.”[i]  The setting was a cemetery on a sacred mountain in Japan and the time was October of 1987. Sherry and I had just brought a group to Japan to experience the sacred mountains and esoteric secrets of this enigmatic land known as the Land of the Dawn or Rising Sun.

During the late 80’s, we were also approached by Mom and Vince Stogan, Coast Salish elders and medicine people or, if you will, shamans to apprentice with them and learn their mystical ways. Vince was a modern day John the Baptist and passed on to me the power to put people into the stream—the oldest form of symbolic death and re-birth: submersion baptism. In addition, Mom and Vince passed on to Sherry and I their full shamanic lineage.  

To this day, our time and experience with Mom and Vince Stogan and other indigenous people of power are treasured memories. Looking back, the exorcism in 1987 was the first of many powerful, transformational, profound firsthand religious experiences. Besides the exorcism there were two other extremely divine firsthand experiences—my vision in 1993 and the visitation in 1997. The visitation occurred ten years after the exorcism and completed a cycle—Alpha and Omega. My forthcoming book, The Greatest Lie Ever Told, tells these stories as well as many other adventures that we experienced.

After nearly thirty years you might think that I am complete. But no; birth and death are two sides of the same coin but the substance of life is the journey, as dark and light as it may be. And thus with a song in my heart and a smile etched on my face, I journey on!