I am a thirty-something family man with a wife of nearly a decade and a brand new baby boy. We all live in a small house on the westside of Los Angeles with three cats. Although we live in Southern California both my wife and I grew up in various parts of Colorado and most of our family is in the Denver area. My roots are a bit different than many of the people here. We certainly miss the mountains and the charm of Colorado but have fallen in love with California. They are both beautiful states and wonderful slices of our country.

My wife is a teacher at an inner city school and I am fortunate enough to work out of home for a national magazine distribution company. I spend my free time writing books, studying mysticism, building websites, playing Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games and reading. I am interested particularly in politics, history, science, and technology. Many of those fields I spent a great deal of time studying and advancing my understanding on. Above all, however, I try to steer my study and work toward the larger goal of understanding this world and all the people in it. I believe that progressive knowledge is the secret to the salvation of humanity and to that end am constantly trying to fill up my bag of experiences and glimpses of illumination.

I have studied Western Mysticism for many years (since about the mid 1990s when I was still in high school). At first the studies were more spiritual in nature, but as I matured they became increasingly esoteric. I'm not a particularly religious person and in fact, see a lot of trouble with religion in our society. Rather I use my studies to be as objective as I can about the true nature of things or what I liked to call "The Way Things Are". I believe religion has a lot of answers for people and additionally I believe science has a lot of answers. Both ends of the spectrum, however, seem to miss the mark on true understanding. It is a combination of the spiritual senses and the five senses that helps up better understand the world and if one group dismisses one of those aspects they can never truly be objective.

I'm not saying that I am more objective about The Way Things Are then other people necessarily, but I do think the more I try to understand this world with the broadest perspective possible the closer I am to objectivity.

Various traditions in Western Mysticism seem to fit my line of reasoning although I may disagree with certain tactics, actions and implementations. The long tradition of learning about our world predates civilization and the mystics have done a superb job in chronicling this journey in Sumeria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, Meso-America, Arabia, China, Japan and all the way into the modern world. There is indeed merit in learning what the mystics taught whether it be the Freemasons and Rosicrucians or the Jainists and Zen Buddhists. There is a trap however, within mystical studies, that boxes thought into a particular implementation or worst keeps thought secret.

In many times throughout history it was necessary to keep knowledge secret, or at least disguised, because those in power wanted to stomp it out. Fortunately for us, that is no longer the case (at least in many parts of the world). There is no reason to keep mystical knowledge secret nor is there much point in making it expensive. Modern mystical societies tend to keep knowledge reserved for those they consider worthy, whether it be by lifestyle, belief systems or the size of their pocket books. Mystical societies do not own knowledge. Neither do scientists or preachers. Knowledge is universal. It belongs to everyone.

That is why I built The Way Things Are. It is due time to openly discuss the world we live in and The Way Things Are openly and without prejudice. How else can we progress? How else can we learn about each other objectively? We are all in this blue-green planet-sized boat together and until we understand each other and how this boat works we will continue to fight each other over which God is better or how our vegetable gardens cross our neighbor's property line.

Coffee Shop Mystic is a place where we can talk about all things to do with The Way Things Are in a way that is not pretentious, hard to understand or accessible only with a price tag. This is a free, no-strings-attached, place to build our philosophical understanding, dig up the roots of our humanity and see where this planet-sized boat is taking us. It is a place to break down our prejudices, the structures of our self-made religions and to deconstruct the way we live so we can see who we really are.

I am hoping to network with others in this community to join my efforts at Coffee Shop Mystic and perhaps share the fruits of both communites.

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