I have always had a deeper  connection to reality than what my physical senses could take in, so much so that my perceptions would often times disturb me.  As I advanced through my teen years I experienced intense dreams of dying and evading death.  The dreams had a specific progression starting with experiencing death and moving on to the evasion of death, complete peace with death, and finally, to facing death and not dying.  The dreams marked an experientially based belief in that death is but an awakening, and that the awakening I experienced through my relationship with death in my dreams, was the impetus for my spiritual exploration.  My motivation for exploring the spiritual realm was quite literally, spiritual, rather than conceptual or philosophical.  So, with great resistance to change I began my spiritual quest.

Meditation started as an instinct as I had never received any formal training in breath work or the art of inward concentration.  I  had never really even thought of what meditation was, I just did it.  The first meditation I can fully remember consciously creating was in my room at my apartment in Dania Beach, Florida.  I put on the song "Severance" by "Dead Can Dance" and drifted into a state of relaxation.  At the time I was dating myself so this was like a little date I went on.  I came to a place of inner stillness and decided that if I concentrated hard enough I could jump off the 8 foot ledge I was sitting on during my meditation without hurting myself.  I did it repeatedly, over and over again until I lost the urge.