OK, here’s the scoop on me…

So…how did a former pot-smoking, redneck biker finally find his mission in life… and why did it turn out to be THIS?!

 Believe me, this is the last “job” I ever figured I’d end up doing.

 I never thought I was capable of helping people in any really meaningful way, much less by showing them how to have better lives by finding deeper meaning.  But here I am.  And since I’ve begun this latest journey and worked with hundreds of people on a global scale, I know that a fulfilling life is available to anyone…including you.   Most of all, you!

As you might suspect, it’s sort of a long story.

I spent most of my life working in the Michaelbike3 construction and engineering field.  My Dad was a home construction contractor, so I grew up learning something about the building trades.  I went to college for a few years (majoring in English, no less)…but that didn’t really appeal to me, so I kinda ended up in the construction  field by default.  I was smart enough to pick up skills on my own, and I worked my way up from a test driller and materials testing technician to being a construction inspector, and eventually ended up managing multi-million dollar projects.  Roads, bridges, pipeline projects…stuff like that.

19843_1201368446133_231829_nI always carried the self-assigned label of “outsider“.  For as long as I can remember, I never seemed to be able to fit in…not with the guys in suits, not with Catholicism (the religion of my youth)…not with society in general.  Everything just seemed..wrong, to me.   As a member of the boomer generation, I tried fitting into the hippie thing in the 60’s, and later on half-heartedly assumed the biker “lifestyle”.  But even those subcultures had their conventions and “rules”, and if there was one thing I despised more than anything else, it was rules.
After some pretty off-the-wall adventures, I settled down in my mid-thirties (I’m 65 now) to raise a family.  My wife and I eventually built a small house in the mountains of central Pennsylvania (where we still live) for our three kids. 411708_2998148564513_636352242_o I forced myself to fit into polite society just enough to earn a living…but always remaining the perpetual jaundiced observer.  I was living a lie because I was trying to be something I wasn’t; but more important, I wasn’t being who I really was.  Away from work, I maintained my outsider lifestyle as much as possible.  The long hair, the Harley, the pot smoking…I held onto those things as a way to tell the world that no way was I one of “them”.  If you saw me walking down the street, you most likely would have steered your kids clear of me because I was comparatively pretty rough-looking (and I’m still not a fashion plate…I like to be comfortable!  And I still ride the hell out of my Harley.).

But once the kids were grown and I was pretty much running on automatic, I realized that I myself had become one of the “living dead”.  Go to work, come home, eat, sleep, have sex, get high.  Try to amuse myself the best I could, keep my head down to keep The Man off my back.  I was definitely slowly shutting down and coasting toward the Big Sleep – essentially, waiting to die.  WTF was the point?  Despite the “good times” I pretended to have, deep inside I was chronically depressed.  I knew I was capable of much more, but I had no idea what that was or how to find it.

The shift begins…

Then, in my mid-50’s, the rumblings in my life began.  I had lost interest in my profession quite some time before, and it showed.  My performance at work suffered because I simply didn’t care any more…and the guys in suits took notice.  They had always liked my work, but I simply couldn’t hide my lack of enthusiasm any more.  Things were fine at home…until my son had his first psychotic episode and the world fell apart.  We always hope the best for our kids, and he had a great job in the IT industry until he got sick.   Not only that, but I was forced to become a caretaker…a role that I’d thought I’d left behind.  Shortly after that, I finally lost my job.  All of this added up to one hot mess.  I didn’t know what to do.

When my “normal” life fell apart, I tried therapy.  Fortunately, the therapist I consulted turned out to be a very wise man.

I had always had an interest in the spiritual side of things… I’d studied a bit of astrology in my youth and had taken part in some non-mainstream spiritual teachings.  But that lead nowhere at the time, and I left those pursuits behind in disappointment.  But the psychologist, who is very intuitive in his own right, gradually steered me to go back and take a second look at the spiritual dimension.  His motto was, “You get to decide what you believe.”  That resonated in a huge way with my independent streak.  The light bulb went on for me.  Yeah!  I didn’t have to subscribe to any particular teaching or religion just because someone else did.  I began to realize that this was true freedom.  This was my awakening and the beginning of my true spiritual journey.

I read and studied whatever I came across, always keeping what seemed to make sense to me and leaving behind what didn’t (especially material that I couldn’t support with my own observations.)  I grew in the realization of who I really was and what I am capable of.

I took courses in general spirituality, metaphysics, in meditation, and took a look at the latest material around the connection between quantum physics and spirituality.  I spent a lot of time and thousands of dollars, driven by my quest for “knowing”.  I became involved in the practice of the Soul Realignment modality of intuitive investigation and healing (achieving Level III certification), and adapted that framework to its practical application in daily life.  I learned that even though a lot of the stuff I was studying was in some ways pretty far out there, it was just a matter of terminology.  I became very proficient at translating the hard-to-swallow woo-woo into simple, understandable and practical ways to help my clients.  I also attended a couple of seminars… and learned that dancing around and singing “Namaste” wasn’t my cup of tea (at all).  Different stokes for different folks.  For me to assume that way of expression would have been as phony as everything else I’d been rejecting all my life.

I distinctly remember at one point being horrified to find that what I was getting into was considered “New Age” thinking – that stuff was for weirdos, right?.  But remembering what my psychologist friend had taught me, I decided that nobody was going to put a label on what I wanted to believe, do, or say.  My sense of freedom and expansion grew exponentially, and I soon understood what I was really here to do best: to use my natural gifts to help people who had been in the same kinds of situations as I had; to use my intelligence, intuition, my life experience and my accumulated knowledge…and show them that there’s no reason for any of us to be afraid… or to sleep-walk through life.  And I love it.  I got mine, and now I am helping normal people like you to get yours.

A lot of people like you are in that situation; you know there’s more, but you don’t know what it is or how to find it.  You suspect you’ll find it in places you perhaps haven’t looked at closely before.  I can help with that.

If you’re looking for a 105-pound raw-eating, crystal-wearing girl in yoga pants to give you some direction…That’s not me.  Keep looking. 

But if you’d like help from a regular dude who just happens to know a thing or two about life, spirituality and what happens when you learn to connect the dots, I’m your guy.  I can show you why things have been the way they are for you so far,  the potential that lies dormant within you, and what you can do in practical terms to change direction and make a new life.

I’d be glad to answer any questions you have…just hit me up on the Contact  page.

© 2008 - 2017 M.L. Pierich

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Michael Lee Pierich does not represent that he is licensed by any city, state, or country as a professional in the medical or mental health field.