My relationship to Circle, and to the teachings of Circle Think, will always be that of a student. The center point of this work is the Great Mystery—quickening life from infinite potential through time and space. Even now, dark matter is a song in our bones and cells, and the Heart Sutra beats within Circles whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
My quest to understand Circle emerged from my own nature: a left-handed, right-footed, proud card-carrying dyslexic who flunked first grade. My spelling still sucks despite eighteen years of formal education. I struggle in this right-handed world to follow even simple linear directions. One of my definitions of hell would be being locked in a room and told to assemble Ikea cabinets.
I’ve always had good fortune finding teachers. In high school a counselor introduced me to Jung when I was depressed and shut down. Exploring my dreams became an access point to my inner life, and I was drawn to Jung’s writings on Circle—particularly the images of Tibetan mandalas. I followed that thread to the Great Stupa of Boudhanath in 1981, with Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha in my back pocket.
I shared a small room with a Tibetan refugee family and began learning the language. There, I sought audience with the resident Rimpoche in search of the highest tantra. He offered a simple teaching: follow your breath.
Once I learned Tibetan, I began my exploration of the Himalayas, spending time in villages and learning from a Bonpo shaman named Wongpo.
Wongpo’s view of the world was radical to me: everything—rocks, rivers, mountains—was alive.
I left Nepal to finish my studies at Brown University, knowing meditation was the key to the life I wanted to live. Thirsty for real training, I found Sufism and was initiated by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The Sufi teachings were like water to a parched landscape.
My first formal spiritual guide, W.H.S Gebel, offered me thorough philosophical and practical esoteric training: breath, mantra, visualization—and most importantly, unconditional love. He saw me whole before I could and set me firmly on my path of healing.
Through Sufi practice, I longed to be of service. From 1984 to 1986, I lived in Haiti, directing an orphanage as a volunteer and working in Mother Teresa’s clinics bandaging cancers filled with worms.
There I met Richard, a retired dentist from Wisconsin. We worked together in the slums, but where I saw only suffering, he saw the Kingdom of Heaven.
Richard’s presence transmitted to me a quality of Circle: wholeness held in faith, a radical acceptance born of love for humanity.
In 1986, I received a blessing from my root lama, Kalu Rimpoche, and soon after met Lama Drupgyu Tenzin—the first Westerner to lead three-year retreats. After a few conversations, I asked him to guide me on a solitary one-year retreat.
In the summer of 1987, I entered a cabin without electricity, practicing twelve hours a day in a true chop-wood-carry-water existence. That retreat began a nearly forty-year long relationship with Drupgyu, who has guided me through many of the most advanced practices of the Kagyu lineage.
In 1989, I met Grandmother Tu Moonwalker, lineage holder of a four-hundred-year-old Apache Wisdom Keeper tradition. Insightful, courageous, and radical in teaching descendants of colonizers, she became my most important spiritual mentor and formally introduced me to Circle studies.
Her apprentice, Grandmother Lane Saan Moonwalker, now carries the lineage, and I am grateful to continue being part of this community.
I also studied with Grandmother Paula Underwood, who carried an oral family transmission; I was a trainer in her Learning Way programs. Today, I support Seven Generation Labs, which preserves her wisdom.
Grandfather Larry Littlebird taught me about the Blessing Way and sacred hunting for over thirty years.
My life has unfolded as it has thanks to the support of Helen Chantler, my beloved partner since 1988. Helen grew up in England and Southeast Asia. I fell in love with her fierce spirit, beauty, and creative intelligence. We studied with the same Indigenous and Buddhist teachers and share a vision around business, community, and regenerative land practices.
In 1995, Helen and I founded Reflective Jewelry, growing it to seven figures while catalyzing the ethical jewelery sourcing movement in North America.
Our business challenged the exploitation prevalent in the jewelry sector. From early on, we were on a mission to create artisan-made and radically ethical jewelry.
With Circle as compass, we sought to create regenerative supply chains in partnership with communities exploited by the gold and diamond trade—fair and equitable exchange had to be the foundation.
In 2015, Reflective became the first (and sadly) only FLO certified Fairtrade gold jeweler in the US.
Circle shaped our path, and in turn, that path deepened my understanding of Circle.
In 2024, we sold our company to our dear employee and friend, Kyle Bi, allowing me to focus on Circle Think.
Now in my mid-sixties, I’m old enough to sit cupping tea, watching the dark woods of my end march toward me. It has taken over forty years to see how my path enables me to teach Circle in a unified whole.
Before I die, I just want to share what I have learned. It just might be of some use to you. If what you read on this website feels true , let’s meet in the moment and see what might emerge.
