Mysticism and faith were a large part of my life from the time I was a teenager up until about the time I started my junior year in college.  I grew up in meager beginnings in Maryvale.  Maryvale is an urban village within Phoenix.  It has always been considered a community with high crime rate, and as far as outsiders see it as a “bad” neighborhood filled with gang violence and poverty.  Some of this may be true, but it isn’t too relevant to the point of this essay.  I bring it up because faith has always been a part of my life.  In this context, I don’t mean religious faith, but faith that “I” could become anything I wanted, and not have to be destined to a life of poverty.  Growing up I had always had big dreams about being a famous musician or actor, and not have to worry about getting my next meal, or if we will have a roof over head. Although I tried to make these dreams reality; I did not have support and more importantly I didn’t have a plan  This faith is when you have no plan, but believe that something will happen as long as you believe.  This faith is easily lost, and for me as with religious faith, was lost the more educated I became.

Prior to my dreams of being a famous musician I wanted to be a Veterinarian.  Writing this at 36, I would still have liked to become a veterinarian, but I have severe allergies to most dander and saliva from the types of animals that a traditional Vet would care for.  Once I realized Vet would not be an option was around the time I started to learn to play the Guitar.  I found in ease in writing catchy lyrics and melodies, and so I figured the rest would be easy.  The only down fall was that I could not sing for some reason, at least not then.  When I was in fourth grade I tried out for the school choir, and I was told that I would be no good.  I was told by the instructor that I couldn’t carry a tune.  I imagine that has always played a part in my fear of singing.  What I did find out much later on, in my late twenties, was that you could make your voice better by practicing.

The true reason I wanted to become a musician was because I figured a record deal, which I didn’t really understand how worked, would allow me to take care of my mother. I figured it would allow me to never have to worry about money again.  So that is what I spent all my time doing.  However; I have to admit I really had no plan. I just figured if I wrote songs, and formed bands, and those bands performed then magically we would get a record deal.  However; that wasn’t the case.  I do have to admit if I just kept doing that then I think at some point it may have paid off, but money was always the end goal.  The other problem was that my band mates and I didn’t have the same goal.  They wanted to make music for the sake of making music, and I wanted to make music for the sake of making money.  That had always been something that made it difficult.  Then I made a lot of bad decisions that left me with no place to live, so I followed a good friend to Flagstaff while they finished college.

While I was there I started to believe that the best way to get my footing in the world was to get a college degree.  However; it had to be a way to make money.  Through research I landed on Finance and Accounting.  This is when my traditional belief system started taking a weird turn.  Somehow both of these subjects came fairly easy to me, but they were based on facts.  Not to mention the math courses, the science courses, and philosophy courses I took prior to starting the actual coursework in Finance and Accounting were all based on computation or logic.  Accounting, apart from the fact that you can hide expenses places, is pretty  straight forward.  It is based on the fact that Assets = Liabilities + Equity.  The whole bases for how Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Statement of Cash Flow work is that they are interconnected.  If something is off in one of them, then there is going to a problem with the others.

Prior to this there really was no sitting down and thinking about life and what to accomplish.  It was I can do this because why wouldn’t I be able to do it.  I just have to move and start doing it.  But with accounting you start to understand order and systems.  It isn’t that things work because they work; they work because of this, which leads me to Finance.  Finance is interesting because you are really learning two separate things in Finance school.  The beginning of it you learn Corporate Finance which is essentially how to understand cash flow and plan for projects.  You spend your time modeling situations, and then based on numerical outputs you make a decision.  The second part of Finance school is portfolio management which is essentially the same thing.  You either use fundamental analysis or technical analysis to decide on which securities to purchase to make your portfolio stronger.  Without going into too much of the detail it is essentially finding ways to have a portfolio of securities make the most money with the least amount of risk.

Essentially, you learn how to not rely on faith.  The type of faith that I had been accustomed too.  You have to learn how to explain your findings and prove that when you do this then this other thing will happen.  I graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degrees in Finance and Accountancy in 2012 at 28.  I went back to school in 2007.  5 years I spent learning how to make decisions based on numbers and then planning to make those number happen.  Then I spent another 2 years getting a Master’s in Business Administration. All in all I spent seven years in school.   The number one thing that I learned to do was to plan, and not rely on belief or in this case faith because it isn’t valid.   Which is great, and I encourage more and more people to make plans that have actionable steps to reach their desired outcomes.  That part isn’t bad.  I have achieved a lot not relying on faith or belief without proof. The problem is that this thinking has deteriorated my religious faith as well.  The faith that I originally talked about; the faith that pushes people to create dream boards, or dive into all kind of self-help books is in my opinion are useless.  I will say that vision boards are good at visualizing your goals, but with out a plan with milestone dates on getting their don’t serve as anything more than a conversation starter.   The whole mindset about “you gotta have faith”, that I am glad that I have educated out of me.  It leads to a world of ignorance, and that is something that I do not want a  part of, but the religious faith or maybe we can call it the belief in something more, that is what I want back. That is something I long for.

Along the way to going back to college there is a religious element that I have not mentioned.   My Uncle Gary, a Hough, was brought to the Christian faith through his wife Diana.  Originally, they were Baptists, but when I joined the church they belonged to at around 15 years old they were practicing Wesleyans which is a break off from the Methodist Episcopal Church.

What attracted me to the church at that time was the music. I really enjoyed singing worship songs. I also enjoy talking about theology and wisdom. Specifically, I enjoyed learning about Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and the book of John to name a few. I also was intrigued about the offer of salvation, especially since we were living slightly above poverty.  During this time I thought about being a Pastor, but then something changed. I learned about the Rider-Waite tarot deck.

I fell in love with the imagery, and my religious like took a change.

The tarot lead to an astrology course, and practicing witch craft. Then I learned about Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, and the Golden Dawn.  While trying to become a professional musician, I would study as much esoteric literature as I could. I had a regular routing every morning practicing esoteric rituals to align myself with my Holy Guardian Angel. In a lot of esoteric traditions the goal is to connect with your holy guardian angel and practice devotion for the entity.  Through this devotion you gain enlightenment or become one with the entity.  You also traditionally learn to invoke entities, for the purpose of  gaining other types of wisdom or for help. When I was around 23 I invoked an entity to help me graduate college and get a masters degree. From then on all I focused on was school. The irony was that from that moment on my faith slowly diminished.

The reason it diminished is because it didn’t have a place in my daily life.  As well as the other meanings of losing faith I mentioned above. The constant day in and day out of planning, and building models using facts to make predictions just wears down the faith. It slowly reduces faith, because anything after life doesn’t really make since. It is more likely that it will he similar to how life was prior to birth. Nothing.

When I was around 27 I decided to turn to Buddhism.  Specifically, Jodo Shinshu which is complete devotion to Amida Buddha. That lasted a few years but the unwavering faith never came.  My life became a constant search for money and climbing the corporate ladder. The ladder I am still on, but focusing to get off as soon.  However, coming across the religious experiences my business partner John has during our journey to build the 3T Fitness brand has invigorated me to explore more esoteric mysterious.

Another reason is because in Mahayana Buddhist tradition nihilism is, for lack of a better word, a sin.  I will be honest; I have a strong urge to be gifted the secrets of the universe, and I believe that can be found in Buddhism.  During my search, I came across a sutra entitle The Awakening of Faith.  So I begin my journey to awaken my faith.