Tangible Minds™

My story

This work is my life, and has been since I was a young adult. In my early pre-med years, I set my sights on a career as a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, determined to peer into the secrets of consciousness. But a series of what some people might call religious or enlightenment experiences led me to reject my plans and drop out of school altogether. These experiences could also have been termed manic or cyclothymic, as they marked the onset of what modern medicine calls bipolar disorder. My life became a tumultuous interplay of passions and desperations. By the time of my diagnosis in 1987 at the age of 28, my life was a failure by every measure.

At that point, I committed myself to finding a way out that did not involve medication. I relied on deep introspection, self-hypnosis, journaling, and long walks to try to unravel the knots of my psyche. But it wasn't until 1994 that I stumbled on a strange "trick" of the imagination that enabled me to shift a depressed mood instantly. A year later, I had developed this exercise into a full-blown method and used it to end my intense mood cycles.

In the time since then, I have alternately been immersed in developing this work and trying to leave it behind. At times I felt that I just wanted an ordinary life, with a job and a family and the comfortable routine many of my friends have. A crisis in 1999 focused my energy even further - I developed testicular cancer, and my work became a profound support in enabling me to open to the lessons of my illness, focusing on becoming "just Joe."

Later, I landed a decent corporate job and enjoyed it for several years. Being a contributing member of a community of people working for good was one of my most satisfying experiences, and stood in contrast to my otherwise predominately solo life endeavors. But my work kept calling me back, and in 2004 I returned to it in earnest, leaving my job and starting a small practice.

These days, I feel blessed to have been given this work, and excited to be sharing it. I appreciate the irony of having come full circle without intending to, back to a central role in investigating the secrets of the mind. My life is rich with meaning, with friendship, with love and connection, with dance and play. Professionally, I teach; I do this coaching; and I hope to travel soon as well, and to write about all that I have learned. It's been a long road, and in some ways, it feels like the fun part is just beginning. Please consider joining me on the journey.

My identities

Teacher: Using what I have learned in my study of the tangible, feeling mind, I draw out discoveries and insights about yourself. Using these, you establish new relationships among the many parts of yourself, relationships that are living, dynamic, and supportive of your highest good. This is learning, at the deepest level, about you.

Scientist: I ask questions, and systematically interrogate reality until I have answers and new questions. I have done this broadly, making new discoveries about the shared human realities of the tangible, feeling mind. Using these discoveries, I assist you in your own personal inquiry into the explicit reality of your self.

Artist: I value beauty and elegance, and my medium is that of ideas, concepts, models. I believe that truth is beautiful, and beauty holds truth, and I have pursued both in creating the theoretical model of this work. The model encompasses a broad swath of human experience while at the same time it exhibits the elegance of life itself.

Idealist: I believe each human being has access to a personal highest good, unique to the individual yet congruent with and complementary to the highest good of all. I believe this highest good is within reach because each day I experience my own life moving closer to my own ideal, and I witness others around me doing so as well.

Pragmatist: I value what works above all, and I apply this test of value to everything I create. If an idea or method is not effective, I tear it apart and put it together again in a new way. When it works, I continue to test it more widely until I find a way to break it. In this way, my work evolves, growing stronger and more universally useful over time.

Systems Thinker: For me, everything is related to everything else, and I am fascinated by relationships and patterns. I can drill down to analyse detailed causal relationships, and zoom out to grok overall trends and themes. For me, a valid theory integrates well into a larger whole while being simultaneously relevant to fine-grain applications.

Iconoclast: I believe that evolutionary development is often served by starting afresh rather than tinkering with existing systems. This is what I did when I returned to the absolute ground level of actual, felt human experience as my reference data for developing a new understanding of the mind, without referring to pre-existing models.