"The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill;
the willingness to learn is a choice."
— Frank Herbert
Recognition
The Work
Most approaches to development start in the wrong place. They pursue insight before building the ground that allows insight to hold. They seek change before addressing the distortions that make change impossible to sustain. The result is people who have had real realizations. And are still living the same life.
This work begins differently. It begins with stabilization. Not calm, not comfort, but the functional capacity to remain organized as things get complicated. Without it, nothing else holds. Insight fades. Clarity dissolves. The old patterns reassert themselves, and the work has to begin again.
From that ground, insight can arise. Not engineered, not performed, not scheduled. The kind that occurs when the apparatus of seeing is less compromised. When you stop reacting long enough to perceive what is actually happening. This is not a realization you are given. It is a clearing of what was in the way.
What follows, gradually and without announcement, is capacity. Not confidence. Not control. The range of what becomes available to you when you are no longer being pushed around by your own perception.
This is not a program. It is a discipline. It does not have a conclusion.
Fill out the form or open the calendar. A few sentences about where you are is enough. There is no wrong way to begin.
The door doesn't require a perfect knock.
A 20-minute call at no charge. Not a pitch. A real conversation to find out if this work makes sense for where you are right now.
If it's not the right fit, I'll say so.
Sessions shaped around what's actually needed. Not a fixed curriculum. The depth and frequency are yours to determine.
The work follows the person, not the program.
The work goes where it needs to go. It ends when something real has shifted — and you know it.
Honest company for an honest inquiry.
The Method
This work is oriented by the S.I.P. framework — developed by Thiago Leão in Nothing to Unlock: Applied Nondualism in Coaching. Thiago is a mentor and an ongoing collaborator in how this work is practiced.
The functional capacity of the nervous system and the attentional faculty to remain organized as complexity increases — without collapsing into reactivity. Not calm. Not comfort. The ground without which nothing else holds.
The spontaneous reorganization of perception that occurs when stabilization is sufficient to reveal previously obscured patterns. It cannot be forced. It cannot be scheduled. It arises when the conditions are right — and holds when the ground can sustain it.
The capacity for non-reactive, skillful action under conditions of uncertainty. Not control. Not dominance. What emerges when the system is less distorted — and therefore less compelled to impose its distortions on the world.
Development, in this framework, is subtractive — not additive. You do not gain something new. You remove what interferes with what is already there.
1. to be true; to exist as truth; to be in reality
From verus (true, real, genuine) + esse (to be, to exist) · Classical Latin
Graduate student in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University — where depth psychology, embodied practice, and the nature of consciousness are treated as serious academic disciplines, not electives.
Clinical experience in neurofeedback, individual and group practicum, and facilitation of student-led therapeutic communities — grounded in direct, one-on-one work with real people navigating real difficulty.
Murid initiate in the Inayati-Maimuni Sufi Order and facilitator at the Charis Foundation for Interspirituality and New Monasticism — with a daily contemplative practice that informs every session.
Maintains a regular meditation practice across directed and receptive styles — sitting with what arises rather than managing it away.
The Guide
At 21, I was living a life that looked fine from the outside. A relationship. A job. A place to live. And I was miserable — settling for all of it, surrounded by people who kept telling me I was doing great.
Then I lost the job. We moved to Las Vegas. I took a job in motorcycle sales, bought my own bike, and got on an eight-lane highway. I don't remember what happened next. I woke up in a hospital with broken orbital bones, a broken jaw, a handlebar that had been removed from my thigh while I was unconscious, and no memory of how I got there.
"This is not why I survived."
That voice showed up in my recovery and never left. Within a year, I left the relationship, left the job, and moved into a tiny apartment in San Diego — so small I kept my clothes in the coat closet.
That's where something became clear. I wasn't the only one. Almost everyone I knew had found a way to make peace with a life that didn't quite fit — and had learned to call that peace maturity, or practicality, or just growing up.
My practice is rooted in an interspiritual faith — the recognition that no single tradition holds a monopoly on the real. I am a Murid initiate in the Inayati-Maimuni Order, a Sufi lineage interspiritual at its heart, and a member and group facilitator at Charis, a foundation for interspirituality and new monasticism. Alongside mindfulness and meditation practice, these paths share a single commitment: direct encounter with what is actually true, beneath the noise of constructed identity.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been a parallel teacher — not spiritual, but epistemological. On the mat, there is minimal latency between concept and reality. You either execute or you don't. There is no room for the kind of self-deception the rest of life permits. I will practice it until my body gives out.
How We Work Together
Three ways to engage — each shaped around honest, unhurried attention. No packages, no upsells. Just the work that's needed.
$85 · 90 minutes · one time
A single conversation for those at a threshold — navigating a transition, a question, or something they haven't been able to name yet. No commitment required.
What you'll leave with is a different angle on what's already true. Not a solution — a shift in how the problem is held.
$95 · per session · 4–12 sessions
Ongoing one-on-one work for those who want to go somewhere specific — through shadow material, a meaning crisis, or the construction of a life that actually fits.
Progress isn't linear. What is guaranteed is honest company, consistent attention, and a space where the real thing can surface.
$80 · per session · structured series
A structured introduction to meditation, awareness practice, and the philosophical frameworks that make them meaningful. For those who want a practice, not just a technique.
You won't leave enlightened. You'll leave with something more useful — a practice that is genuinely yours.
Not sure which is right for you?
Start with a free 20-minute call →Begin
There's no wrong way to start. A few sentences about where you are is enough.
The Writing
MIND, MYTH
& MODERNITY
A determination to uncover what remains real in modern life — exploring the depths of the human psyche, society, identity, philosophy, psychology, and consciousness. The writing that runs alongside the coaching work.
Read on Substack →"I am not writing this from outside the system I'm describing. None of us are. That's exactly the point."
The essays at Verum Esse don't perform insight — they return to the felt experience of what's actually happening. The coaching and the writing emerge from the same source.
Subscribe Free →FAQ
Is this therapy?
No — and the distinction matters. Therapy is a licensed clinical service oriented toward diagnosis, treatment, and the remediation of psychological suffering. This work is coaching: it is forward-looking, philosophically grounded, and concerned with how you are living rather than what is wrong with you. Many people do both simultaneously, and that's fine. If you're already in therapy, this is not a replacement — it's a different kind of conversation. If you're in acute crisis, therapy is the right starting point.
I'm functioning fine. Is this even for me?
That question is itself a signal. The people this work is most suited for are not falling apart — they are high-functioning, self-aware, and quietly aware that something isn't adding up. If you can hold your life together while also feeling like a stranger inside it, you are exactly who this is for. You don't need to be in crisis to deserve honest attention.
How is this different from other coaching I've tried?
Most coaching is goal-oriented and solution-focused — it assumes you know what you want and just need help getting there. This work starts earlier. It asks whether the goals you're pursuing are actually yours, whether the life you're optimizing is one you chose, and whether the story you're telling about yourself holds up under honest examination. If that sounds more rigorous than what you've experienced before, it probably is.
What actually happens in a session?
Sessions are conversational, unhurried, and shaped by what you bring. There is no worksheet, no homework assigned by default, no protocol to follow. What there is: a space where something real can be said, examined, and sat with — without being immediately reframed, fixed, or sold back to you as a growth opportunity. Sometimes sessions are quiet and careful. Sometimes they move fast. The work follows you, not a curriculum.
Is this based on a specific methodology?
Yes. This work is oriented by the S.I.P. framework — Stabilization, Insight, Power — developed by Thiago Leão in Nothing to Unlock: Applied Nondualism in Coaching. Thiago is a mentor and an ongoing collaborator. The framework is not a technique to apply but an orientation toward how human capacity actually develops: not by adding something new, but by reducing the perceptual distortions that prevent what is already there from functioning clearly.