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Hello friends, I’ve written and rewritten this introduction ten times this morning, and it still doesn’t feel right. In fact, at the moment, I feel so messed up, so broken, so clueless that I don't know if I should be writing this book at all. And yet even in the midst of my mixed-upness I feel compelled to write to you today. There's this eternal itch, a cosmic pull within me that won't let go.  When I am quiet with myself, I get this wild feeling.  Every cell in my body feels ignited. Like an electrical zap, it pings me again and again, calling me against my own volition to move deeper into this world.  And so here I am writing this book to remind myself, you, and all of the battle-worn human beings out there that beneath this tornado of doubt - actually smack dab in the  CENTER  of it exists a kind of magic, a kind of love so eternal that it can't be divided.  It's swirling and whirling at our heels all of the time, waiting for us to stop running from it, waiting for us to drop to our knees and say, “Okay, I give up. You can have me.” And when it finally overtakes us we realize there was never any reason to run. This book is about calling - my calling and yours. It's about going into the caves our parents told us not to enter. It's about being pulled by something so much greater than ourselves. In the midst of our messy human lives something bigger beckons.   At the age of fifty-two, divorced and on my own, life demands of me in ways I never imagined it would. Bills need to be paid and responsibilities need to be tended to, and yet there's this elemental pull.  I feel a tug beckoning me deeper into the mystery of it all. There's a calling that refuses to be ignored.  And so, this book will follow my one-year experiment where I ask, “What happens when we follow that inner pull towards greatness? What happens when we follow our bliss?  What happens when we allow ourselves to sink wholeheartedly into the magic of our lives?” Can we be happy? Can we pay the bills? Can we play the human game while simultaneously going deeper into the nether realms of our wild, passionate hearts?   For this book, my journey will be documented in real time. Like a series of postcards sent to you, my reader friends, I will head into unfamiliar territory with a notebook full of questions, reporting back to you as I go.  Included in this book will be the interviews I conduct. Like a podcast in written form, you’ll get to join me as I talk with healers, mystics, artists, and visionaries who are following their personal callings. I’ll be conversing with those who have sought to foster and fuel their inner genius and now look to inspire and touch the inner glow of others.  We’ll discuss magic, mystery, and the strange balance that us mystic-visionary-eccentric types must cultivate to live and work in an often off-kilter and unsupporting world.   Author and teacher Marc Allen, whose interview you'll find in the pages ahead, tells a story about his thirtieth birthday. He was broke and miserable. On a desperate whim, he wrote down his ideal scene - everything he wished for his five-year future. This small act set him on a course to eventually create the New World Library, one of the most well-regarded publishing houses in the United States, helping millions of people connect deeper with their souls.    In my ideal scene, I imagine, three years from now I have a beautiful property nestled along a fresh and flowing body of water. As a helper - a healer of sorts, I assist people in discovering their magic within. In this vision, I have enough money to support myself and other visionaries on their journeys.  Perhaps by sharing my writing journey with you, we can together realize our dreams. Since my divorce, my life no longer moves in straight lines. For me, it darts and juts around with the rolling currents of my soul, like an underground river it forges unseen paths, aggressively carving out underground caverns, building a new sense of self from the inside out.  Lately I no longer know who I am.  This book will document the magical, mysterious inside-outness of life as we together explore the mythic possibilities so many of us yearn to follow, leading us deeper and deeper into our inner forests and yet somehow always bringing us right back out again.

Yesterday I was scheduled for my first official interview. But I was not in a good headspace. I called my brother. “I’m thinking I should cancel with Marc,” I said. “At this point, I don't even know what this book is about. I don’t want to waste his time.” “Isn't the fact that you are doubting the book, part of the book itself?” Eli asked. “Isn’t your self-doubt what makes the story more compelling?” I laughed. In the moment he understood the process more than I did. I decided to go ahead with the interview. I'm so glad I did.  Marc Allen is the owner and founder of New World Library, a powerhouse in the world of soul-inspiring books. His collection of published works includes authors like Joseph Campbell, Deepak Chopra, and Eckhart Tolle.  I've paid for a number of virtual classes with Marc and even interviewed him for a podcast several years ago. He has some wild stories from his magical life surrounded by famous spiritual teachers.  In his personal teachings Marc shares powerful techniques for overcoming our doubts and stepping into the life of our dreams. I've been using his teachings for years and have been utilizing his lessons in the development of this book. It turns out that talking with Marc was exactly what I needed. His light-hearted, impish look at life always lightens my heart.  In this book, I will be including many transcribed conversations. Because written and spoken words look quite different on paper, I've worked diligently with the text to make it more accessible, staying true to the content, but also taking slight liberties with the words to honor and reflect the natural flow.  Marc Allen- “Okay, we're set,” I say after setting up the Zoom call and pressing record. As I talk, I can see Marc on my computer screen, situated in what appears to be his office. He wears wireframe glasses and comfortable clothes. Marc has lived a wild, playful life, exposed to some of the greatest spiritual teachers.  His demeanor is relaxed, like that of an old, wise hippie who, now in maturity, has settled well into his role as a mentor.  “I was just looking over my notes,” I say. “Some of these questions are kind of out of the box…”  “Great,” Marc answers with a smile. “The more out of the box, the better for me, because I've answered the more typical questions so many times .” “Okay,” I say, “My first question for you - ‘Is magic real, and how can it help us on our journeys?’” “Oh, that's a good question. I like that,” he answers thoughtfully. “Magic is definitely real. I mean, it's just chemistry.” He continues, “I once gave a talk to a group of twelve-steppers about magic and the spiritual side of it all, and this chemist came up to me afterward. He said, ‘I'm a chemist. What if it's all chemistry?’ And I said, ‘Well, it is all chemistry. It's chemistry. It's physics. It is science. It's the creative force of the universe.’  Mark continues, “Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that we tend to think of the things we don't understand as magical. He said, when any sufficiently advanced civilization goes to another civilization that's not so advanced, the less advanced civilization will think the more advanced one is magic. We just apply the label ‘magical’ to things we don't understand.  There is a great mystery behind it all that I don't think we can ever understand. We can look at chemistry. We can look at the Big Bang and we can look at the simple elements of hydrogen and helium that resulted and see how they merged and developed. We can see how all these elements developed and ended up forming these planets with these people on it, with DNA in every cell of their bodies.  We understand the physics and chemistry of it, but what is the force behind it? That is the mystery. I love the book The Art of True Healing . It's short, so I have the entire book in my chapter four of The Magical Path . He starts the book with these first two sentences: ‘Within every man and woman is a force that builds and controls the entire course of our lives. Properly used, it can heal every ailment and affliction we may have.’ And then as he goes on and says ‘Properly used it can create abundance…to create wonderful relationships.’  There is this force and it will remain eternally mysterious. We can't deny it. It is the force that took us from a little teeny tiny seed of semen into an egg, and then that one cell doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled until finally, we have something like thirty trillion cells. We can understand the physics and chemistry of it, but what is that force behind it? That to me is completely magical.  We don't even need to understand it. All we need to know is we can summon it into our lives,” he says.  I mention the frequency with which synchronicities have been appearing in my life and tell Marc, “I keep thinking about Joseph Campbell. You know, when he says, ‘If you follow your bliss, these helping hands come.’ Do you see that as well?” “Oh, definitely. Yes. Definitely. I think that's very common. When I quit doing the job I didn't like and started doing what I loved, my whole perception of time completely shifted. When I was doing a job I didn't like, I was so aware of the passage of time. I looked at the clock a dozen times a day.  Then I started doing my own thing, and I would just glance at the clock, and two hours would pass. It felt like ten minutes. A lot of synchronicity happens, for sure. I think maybe it's happening all the time, but we just become more aware of it…more tuned to it.” I mention some of my personal concerns for the future, and he begins to reminisce, “I remember when I wrote down my ideal scene on a sheet of paper. I said, ‘I want my own company, and I want to do it in my own lazy way, just working when I feel like it.’ In other words, you know, following my bliss every moment. I do remember my doubts and fears. I (overcame) them when a friend told me about a friend of his who had seen Buckminster Fuller speak. Bucky Fuller, in his 20s, came to a point where he was either going to commit suicide or look at his life as this totally unique experiment. So he decided, ‘Okay, I'll try this experiment.’  In (Buckmeister Fuller’s) 70s, he looked back on what he called his ‘50 year experiment.’ I just latched on to that word experiment,  and I said, ‘Okay, maybe (he's) right.’” It was then that Marc decided to try his own experiment. “I thought probably in a year or two, I'd come to (realize) that you can't be totally lazy and start a company and be creative, too. I thought, you have to work hard, as my dad would say.  I got all that stuff from our culture. We all did…almost all of us. But I found after a year or two, my experiment was kind of working. Now, I did at first have to work at a job I did not like. I knew nothing about business or money or raising money or anything. In my book, The Millionaire Course , I list a dozen different ways to raise money. And that was pre-internet. So there's many more with the internet.” “When I started, I knew nothing of that. I'd been an actor and a musician and a spiritual seeker, and I knew nothing about money. I had no interest. My first (business) plan was one page. My plan was to get a job, any job, and try to save twenty percent to put into the startup company. That's exactly what I did.  I got this horrible job typesetting names and numbers for a bank - a company that made stamps for banks. They're completely out of business now because it's all antiquated. But I spent eight hours typing a name and a bank account number…a name and a bank account number…a name and a bank account number, over and over again, starting at 8:30 in the morning. That's where I was looking at the clock every three minutes, you know? But I did it. And then I found a job typesetting the UC Berkeley newspaper. And that was fun. Plus, it started at four in the afternoon. I don't do mornings. So it worked for me.  Then I got fired from that job for not showing up on time and that's when I started (on my own). I was immediately making three or four times the money that I was making working for somebody else,” he said. “So, what brought you from type-setting names and numbers to being a big-time publisher?” I asked. “Was it you being a special person? Is it you harnessing magic? Is there something that you have that's uniquely you? How do you get to this point?” “I know I'm not special,” Marc said. “Certainly, there are a ton of people that are way more intelligent than I am. I'm a normal, ordinary person. I just saw what my dad did for thirty-five years, working five days a week for a corporate job he didn't really enjoy. He didn't talk about it much, but his whole attitude was, ‘Well, you just need to get a job. You don't need to enjoy it.” And I just rebelled against that thinking, ‘This life is precious’. I remember my dad talking about a national explorer show (he saw on) TV about this South American tribe in the Amazon forest. The men worked about four hours a week . Once a week they went out into the woods and they got this one huge, special kind of tree. They cut it down and hauled it back to their place. And then the women spent a few hours a day just opening up the tree and hauling out the stuff and cooking it.  They all did incredible art and music, and they played with the children. I remember my dad saying, ‘We're doing something wrong.’” And I agreed with him. I absolutely agreed with him. Yes. We're doing something wrong. So, I wanted to do something else. I just gave it a shot! I decided to start my own business, and I did this funky little catalog.” Marc turns to the table beside him and picks up a photocopied, folded piece of paper with hand drawings on it. “I found an old copy of it,” he says. “It was on a single legal size page. It had three books in there, two albums of music, and a calendar… and a let's see…”  Marc flips through the pages and stops on an image.  “...and a mini poster and a postcard. My friend and I put this together. We threw in some workshops.” He looks at the old brochure again and says, “We had a gypsy love charm in it too!” I laugh. “So we had like six different things. We said, ‘Something should probably sell.’ I remember we pulled together all our friend’s and relative’s names, every name we could get. We started our mailing list with two hundred names, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I bet we'll get one hundred  orders.” Marc paused and smiled. “We got zero orders. Zero .” “We got friends coming by, wanting free copies of things because they were all broke like we were. That was the beginning of the company.” Enchanted by his humble beginnings, I asked, “But you kept going! Why? Why did you not give up?” “I got to a place where I was set up with the typesetting. So I realized I could keep this typesetting (job) going as long as necessary until I build a company that can actually support me. It took four or five years. Maybe that's because that was my five-year ideal scene.” Marc stopped and pondered. “I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had made it three years (instead of five). I laugh. “ I'm going to try a three  year plan.” I say. “I'm a little older than you were.” “Yeah. I had just turned thirty. But why did I keep going?” He asks rhetorically.  “I didn't have any alternative. I didn't like any alternatives. You know? I didn't like the thought of getting a job and working for anybody else.” I then told Marc a little more about my story. I say, “So, my dad passed away a year ago. He was a psychiatrist. I had been trying for a while to find ‘my thing’, to figure out what I was supposed to be doing with my life. On that same day that he passed, I had this epiphany.  I thought, ‘Oh, I'm supposed to be a counselor. It’s what I do anyway. I listen.’  I continue, “This is what I live for. This is me in my bliss, talking to people and hearing their stories, and helping them find their beauty. So, I'm like, ‘Okay, I'm going to do this.’  I got very diligent and applied to a bunch of master's degree programs. I got in and it was all miraculous. The school was very close to my home and everything just fell into line, but when I got to school, I knew on my first day that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I knew it on the first day.  I’ve been listening more to my intuition lately and my intuition was saying, ‘Oh hell no.’ And so I went for a walk in the woods…a very angry walk. And I'm like, ‘Okay, Universe, what the heck? This was the plan. This was how I was going to make my money.’ So, I stuck school out for the week, and I was very diligent that week, focused on my studies, but then I said, this is not me.  I cried a lot because this was supposed to be my path. I said, ‘I still want to be a healer. I want to be a helper, but on my own terms, incorporating the mystery and the magic.’ And so that's where I'm at now. I'm building this vision, following your Magical Path course, and laying all this stuff out.  Now there's this nudge to write a book, too,” I tell Marc. “And a part of me is like, ‘No! It's too much’ Yet I'm feeling all of these messages inside me. Just interview people write the book, and do it all.  And I'm like, ‘Oh, all right, fine.’” I returned to my questions, “So, what keeps you on this journey? Would you call it fearlessness or faith? What is it?” “I don't know,” Marc answers. “It's not faith. I've never had to come to believe anything. Maybe it is a fearlessness. Being an actor and a musician, I had a few times, especially as a musician, where I was horrible. I bombed.   I bombed tremendously…and as a stand-up comedian. I bombed at the comedy club. I bombed so badly once playing at the Fillmore East in New York City. We were doing a play off-Broadway. In the play there was music I had written, and we had a piano there, and people loved it. They said, ‘Oh, do you want to play at this benefit at Fillmore East?’ We said, ‘Sure, if it's benefiting something, great!” And so we went there.  We didn't do a sound check or anything. I walked out and there wasn't a piano. I thought, ‘Okay, there's no piano…okay…I think I can get through this with a guitar.’ None of the other people were musicians. They were actors. The song was so bad. People were groaning and turning their heads away, covering their heads with their hands. I bombed! I bombed in front of, I don't know how many people…a thousand people or something. And it's one of the best things that happened to me.  A musical hero of mine was there from Minnesota - Spider John Koerner…It was really deeply embarrassing. So then I thought for a minute. ‘Okay, what do you do now?’ You either commit suicide, or life goes on. Life goes on. So you move past it. You learn some lessons from it. I learned, ‘Okay, don't play anywhere where you don't do a sound check and you don't have a piano.’ So, it was great.  Maybe that helped my fearlessness about starting things. It's okay to mess up. Messing up means you're trying something. You're trying something! You're stretching. It's fine. In fact, it's highly educational.” He grins and then continues, “Yeah, it's a really good way to learn things, to just jump in and give it a shot.  I did this with my stand-up, too. I was invited to perform at a comedy club down in LA for some reason. And oh, I was horrible. They were turning away and groaning and hiding their faces.   And so I went, ‘Okay, it’s not my thing to be a stand-up comic, I guess.’  So yeah, I just started my company. I started doing these six different things (in the brochure) and thought, ‘Something will work.’” Marc's demeanor was relaxed as he talked. Feeling comfortable, I decided to tell him a little more about myself,  “I have this vision,” I said. “My friend Paul helped me set this. I said to him, ‘I want to sit in a gazebo with a small group of women, and I want to just talk about life and open our hearts…but I'm telling you, just this morning, I was so miserable. I was so  miserable. So, what I do to help myself is I just dance. I don't know what that is, because I'm not a dancer. I just move my body.  This time as I danced, I had this vision. I pictured myself getting a bunch of women together and we just move together and make fools of ourselves.  There's a lot of people who are kind of sad and feeling alone right now. I'm thinking it would be a good way for people to get out of their funks.  So I stopped in the middle of dancing this morning and wrote on Facebook, ‘Does anybody know of a free space where I could host a movement class?’ I've never done anything like this in my life. I'm insane. But I got a huge response. All these women are like, ‘I'm interested,’ Marc listens intently then answers,   “I remember watching Rajaneesh. I was with him one time at some kind of big event in a park in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He had this chaotic meditation . That's what he called it. He just had people jumping and jumping and running around.  Your idea sounds great. I encourage you to go for everything .” Marc continues, “Have you ever heard of The Grandmother Bench by any chance? It's starting to be a global movement. This guy was a therapist in Zimbabwe. He said there's one therapist per 1.5 million people in Zimbabwe. So he got this idea to have grandmothers sit with people on a park bench. So he ended up literally getting 14 grandmothers in Zimbabwe and scheduling them. And they agree to meet at the bench and people come and do therapy there. They have no accreditation. Most of them…a lot of them can't even read or write. But they're grandmothers. So they're smart.” I then ask Marc, “So, do you think we each have a unique soul path? Do we each have a dharmic path that we're meant to be on?” “Yes, yes. We're absolutely unique,” Marc answers. “I know in my study of Tibetan Buddhism in one of the first teachings (my teacher) said there's (different kinds) of wisdom. They break it all down.  Number one  - There is the ultimate wisdom of enlightenment. We are one with it all. We're enlightened beings. We all have that. That's the greatest wisdom of all.  Then the second wisdom is that we're all the same, the wisdom of sameness. Every one of us is identical in terms of our needs and in terms of our bodies. The third wisdom is differentiation. We're all totally  different.  Simultaneously, they're true. We're all the same, and we're all different, and each of us has our own unique type of wisdom. We all want the same thing. We are on a deep level, totally connected, and all the same, and yet each of us has a very different path to discover.” I smile. I am thoroughly enjoying my time with Marc. I say, “I heard Michael Meade mention that some people don't figure out their calling until they're on their deathbed.” “I'm sure there are people on their deathbed who have that realization,” Marc answers. “And there's other people that never have that realization. I don't know if you believe in past lives…maybe they just need many, many more lives to figure it out.” Marc pauses and reflects. “I don't know about past lives. I don't remember being born or dying, so I don't really know, but yeah, I agree. Some people just know early what their thing is. Others never really figure it out.” I then turn the conversation to his role as a publisher. “You get so many manuscripts landing on your desk,” I say. “Can you sense when someone is tapped into their inner genius?” Marc answers, “To me, the Power of Now  is the ultimate (example of this). I knew within reading the first two sentences. It was absolutely, uniquely written from a higher state of consciousness. With the good books (I will think), ‘Oh, this is unique. This person has something to say that's worth publishing.’ So many of the rest are…I often use the word generic. We, of course, see a lot of those books. And so many seem just very similar.  But of course for the writer, they're discovering it themselves and so I always encourage people to write books, if nothing else for yourself.  For so many people, their first book has to be their story. They need to tell their story. I say (to them), ‘Well, it's good that you wrote a memoir, but now if you want a book that sells, take what you know, develop it into a course, or get something happening online. Become a consultant or teacher and then write your book directed towards the people saying, ‘This is what you need to get from here to there.’” Marc says. “Do you think we know when we're on our dharmic path?” I ask Marc. “Can you feel it in yourself when you're on the path?” “I definitely think so. I think it affects every moment of your life. Yes definitely. Hopefully, as you grow up, it ends up affecting your reactions to every moment of life, so you're not some kind of ping-pong ball batted back and forth by external events. (Instead) you're like a rock…” As Marc talks, his voice becomes calm and smooth. “...like a quiet rock sitting in the sun.” Several days prior to talking with Marc, I pulled out the coursework I had saved from one of his classes. Using his Core Belief Process, I wrote down my doubts and fears and then wrote down the worst things that could happen - inflating my fears temporarily. In the next step, I wrote down the best things that could happen. From that I created several affirmations that I've since jotted down and remind myself of during my morning meditation.  My favorite one so far is: “I am clever, resourceful, and creative enough to build financial success for myself in unconventional ways.” I told Marc, “I think your Core Beliefs Process and the affirmations that come from it help us develop that rock-solid foundation you talk of. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but can the affirmations themselves be like a rock for us?” “Yeah. There are things that bring you back to that rock, bring you back to your presence. I love the image Eckhart uses. We're like an entire ocean, and all our thoughts and feelings are just waves dancing across the top. You go deeper and deeper into total serenity, silence, and bliss.”