Andrew MacDonald  |
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What Andrew's about Early on I was headed for the priesthood, but somewhere in college days "lost my faith" as Catholics say and never went back. By temperament and inclination though, I was the sensitive, spiritual type. I loved camping and the outdoors, was painfully shy, interested in books and religion. As a teen I was lost, lonely and afraid and a little crazy too. I had to spend a lot of my adult years trying to find myself. I looked in a lot of dumb places but that turned out to be good. I'm a Mistake Expert. One of my first big mistakes was getting up to my ears in 60s drug culture. Yikes. I went from being a conservative modest boy to being a freaked out hippie hanging onto my sanity by a slender thread. I learned TM (Transcendental Meditation) when I was 21 or so and though I only did TM for a year or so, I've been a student of meditation ever since. It's been a huge training for what reality might be or is. Like a multi-faceted jewel from a dream, meditation keeps on changing shape and hue, showing new attributes and qualities. The complex and poignant moment we find ourselves in has this mysterious quality and the "jewel" is our mysterious nature, the self-reflective result of almost 14 billion years of evolution slowly becoming aware of itself. For a bit I studied with an Indian guy who was in Canada for a while, Swami Shyam. Then I went off to California and studied with Bubba Free John (a.k.a. Adi Da) and later went to India as a student of Bhagwan Rajneesh. Both are well known and controversial masters. I think I was looking for my father. A while after returning from six months in India, I joined a men's group in Ottawa. The experience of frequent hanging out with that group of men, telling our stories, gave me an anchor that was powerful and grounding, extremely valuable to me. I'm still in a version of the same group, twenty years on. I'm convinced from personal experience that small groups are very helpful to individuals and I believe with Peter Block that they're the unit of social transformation. I was the first editor of Everyman Men's Journal, a long-time men's publication that explored masculine psychology in the time of feminism. I gave it the motto, "The world changes when we do" which is more or less my personal motto. I was connected with Everyman for many years and it defined a lot of my friendships and preoccupations. I became a trainer in a practice called Focusing, a kind of self-directed therapy, or emotional intelligence training, and held out a shingle sharing that. I became a hypnotherapist also though didn't practice, an NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) practitioner and more, did some freelance writing, worked marginally in many positions, was a freelance editor, edited Common Ground magazine out of Toronto, worked with prisoners and with multiple-handicapped adults, had multiple girlfriends but was quite incapable of settling down, worked as a contact writer for the Canadian government a couple of times. I also kept up an interest in camping and the outdoors and had some great times doing that. After a spectacular break-up when I was 55 (in 2003) I did a solo canoe trip (basically) from Lake Superior to James Bay, scary but the most fun I ever had. Hope to do more canoeing, especially now that I've eschewed flying. Became a personal coach a couple of years ago and have been working toward supporting people in transition. Currently I live in the country west of Ottawa in Frontenacl county. I'm involved in a host of relocalization efforts here (my website on this is here) and some in Ottawa as well. Meditation's still the basis that I try and have my relocalization efforts come out of. It works best that way and I do too. I want to hear from you and now there's a place for you to do it! Please toss whatever you like on the Relocalizer's Compost Heap! |
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