Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for [humans], otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person’s own life.
Epictetus
Hi, I’m Tao Wanderer*.
It’s tricky knowing what to share here—how much personal history matters, what provides useful context without being self-indulgent, what is over-sharing. I guess the honest approach is to share the experiences that have shaped my thinking over these years, so here it goes.
I was born in a South American country in the mid-1980s, in a lower middle-class family. I was a sensitive, introverted, and intellectual child with an intense feeling of connection with ‘something bigger than myself’ but no satisfactory explanation for what that could be. I went to a Catholic primary school, which greatly shaped my worldview at the time, followed by a mechanical engineering apprenticeship where I saved enough money to go to England at 19. I lived in England for 4 years, then short stints in Ireland and the US. I then moved to Aotearoa New Zealand, where I lived for about 15 years, followed by more short stints in Eastern Europe, Central Africa, and Iraq, before settling in Australia.
I’ve held many different jobs along the way, but in the past 10 years, I have focused on creating social change and worked for many NGOs. I studied philosophy, anthropology, and environmental studies at university in my 30s.
Seeking
The only thing I’ve ever been truly passionate about is trying to understand existence, reality, nature, spirit, and god—concepts that have always felt like one and the same to me. This has remained with me throughout my life, and everything I’ve done has been, consciously or unconsciously, towards this end—though I only recognised this many years later. I’ve searched for explanations in countless books, documentaries, podcasts, academic papers, discussions, and formal studies and, most importantly, many days and nights of introspection, journalling, meditation, and explorations of consciousness with and without consciousness-altering substances and techniques.
This journey has led me through several spiritual and existential crises that took ‘me’—or rather, what I thought was ‘me’—beyond the limits of my ordinary mind and into what mystics across traditions describe as direct spiritual experience. I first experienced what Western culture calls depression around age 13, which was closely followed by one of the strongest existential crises of my life. This crisis almost completely broke me and became, I now understand, a major catalyst for my need to comprehend reality, though I couldn’t see that connection at the time. The primary trigger was recognising that the Catholic worldview I’d been raised within—which formed the foundation of my identity —couldn’t accommodate the existential questions that guided my life. What followed were years of depression and, as the cliché goes, substance abuse and intense crises that took me to the edge of my mind. Many years later, I finally received a formal diagnosis of chronic existential depression.
Those were dark times, but they also gave me invaluable intrapersonal knowledge and opened a new pathway that changed my seeking forever: the first-hand exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness. This has since become an important part of my journey and my approach to the themes discussed here.
Initiation
In my late twenties, alongside depression, I also began experiencing manic episodes and had the most significant experience of my life—what our culture calls a psychotic breakdown. This was about six weeks where I experienced extremely challenging physical, emotional, spiritual, and existential learning. The lessons were taught experientially, that is, I ‘saw’ and ‘became’ them in my being, with any theoretical understanding emerging secondary to that transformation.
When I started returning to my ordinary state of consciousness, I noticed profound shifts in my being —shifts that continue to change me in ways I’m still integrating. I also realised that this experiential approach, even if chaotic, gave me actual insights into the nature of reality and, as a result, I came to understand the irreplaceable value of direct, experiential knowledge in exploring reality—not as substitute for rigorous thinking, but as its necessary foundation.
Many contemplative, mystical, and shamanistic traditions have described such experiences and their value for individuals and communities for thousands of years, as spiritual initiations, shamanic crises, or kundalini awakenings.
These days
To borrow from Ram Dass, my favourite contemporary teacher, many of my psychological and spiritual challenges are still present, but they’re no longer mountains—usually just smaller hills. Depression still makes an appearance now and then, and whatever process of spiritual development I am undergoing isn’t linear but more like a messy scribble with phases, highs, lows, and everything in between. This is where I write from: not from having ‘arrived’ at some final understanding, but from ongoing surrendering to the process and engaging with questions that continue to unfold in unexpected ways – just like many of us.
*I write under a pseudonym because my society still sees many of the subjects discussed here as taboo.