On thinking about what led me into Three In One

In 1981 I discovered Touch For Health. I had been interested in philosophy and had been searching for a truly holistic approach to the understanding of the self and its well-being. I immediately saw in the manual an approach that didn't rely on learning a list of symptoms and treatments for them. It didn't rely on the authority of a practitioner. I saw that it respected the unique individuality of each person, and it was systematic. It's founder did not set out to train health practitioners, but instructors who could bring this method of self-help health care to the general public.

In mid 1982 I took Instructor Training in Pasadena with Mary Marks. And that's when I met Gordon Stokes.
In 1985 I took Practitioner and Instructor training in Educational Kinesiology with Paul and Gail Dennison
Later that year I attended Advanced One Brain with Gordon. It was three days of non-stop amazement. I still remember vividly how I was affected when I observed the changes of a person's face and eyes as they accessed memories of childhood experiences. This was powerful stuff we were doing, and it was safe, gentle, respectful and easy. In the next two years Gordon presented the workshops up to Facilitator Training in 1987. In 1991 I went to Burbank and repeated all of the training from Tools to Facilitator Training, and was asked to be Faculty Coordinator for Australia.

John Thie and Gordon Stokes held similar visions while creating their very diffrent systems. They set out to encourage people to take responsibility for their own health and well-being, and to provide safe, effective, inexpensive methods that anyone can use for dealing with the stresses of living so that they can live rich and satisfying lives.

While we are putting so much energy into creating professional training, I want us also to put at least as much energy into keeping alive this original vision.

On thinking about what led me to where I am now in my life's work--
some of the milestones. . . .

Home

Being born into this world and growing up on a dairy farm in Qld, Australia. Moving to the city for high school and joining a religious order right after high school. Going to the USA for philosophy and theology studies and being ordained a priest, then to the Philippines to teach philosophy, and back to the USA for more philosophy studies and teaching. Deciding that my interest in philosophy was not in fitting into the academic world but is my real friendship with Sophia. Taking a year of training in spiritual guidance at Gonzaga University in Washington State and returning to Australia with plans to work in that field--and, from then on, nothing went as hoped or anticipated.

Individual conscience is an absolute. I had been taught as a child: always follow your conscience; "even if the pope tells you to do otherwise, you have to follow your conscience". However, no assistance was given on discerning one's conscience. Discernment is necessary because fear and mental and emotional stress usually over-ride conscience and cloud it. The Catholic and Sufi and other religious traditions have highly developed the art of spiritual guidance, but this is available only to very few people. After being told that I was the authority of my own life, I was also taught as a child to fear making mistakes, and that the only safeguard was to believe and act the way I was told to. All of this was enforced by instilling a terror of what might happen in the afterlife to those who did not follow the rules. All of this created great conflict in my life.

Our future does not have to be the inevitable con-sequence of our past choices and reactions. This is the whole point of our work. To the extent that we can honestly acknowledge and accept our past, we are free in the present to create a different future based on what we see as the best thing to do. We can recognise what was influencing us from within and from without, acknowledge our actions and their consequences, accept them, then we are free to discern what's best for us and make free choices for a better future. My life made some big changes through this work, and I'm a lot healthier

Of course, if we are part of the world, then what is happening to her is affecting us, and, I wonder if that is where we get a lot of our aches and pains. Certainly what is happening to us, and to all of humanity, is happening to the world. It used to be thought that the world is alive, has a soul. Most ancient cultures still know this. Western culture, particularly in the last few centuries has become permeated to its core with an attitude that the planet is a hunk of inert matter to be exploited by those who are quick or powerful enough to take possession of it. This attitude and the greed of recent generations has had devastating effects on our world. It began with a denial of the soul qualities of the world, and moved in such a way as to be destroying those qualities.

In 1993 I had a powerful dream that highlighted this matter of humanity's relationship to Earth as the future central concern of my life. It is interesting that our group sessions, guided by use of the One Brain System, have brought us to focus on this concern. Robert Sardello's Love And The Soul, Creating A Future For Earth, and Freeing The Soul From Fear have become a major guiding resource. I am very much looking forward to continuing our explorations of these themes.

"Philosophy Night" is not one of the "official" Three In One events at my place, yet we explore universal themes in the same way as is done in the advanced courses. Matters of conscience and discernment are the core of it. "Philosophy" means, litterally: be-friending Sophia (wisdom). It's our "culture corner".