The Path to My Calling:

In my early thirties, my life appeared ideal. I lived in Santa Barbara, California, nestled between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. I was in a loving relationship with Jessica, who would later become my wife, and I was pursuing a doctorate in education, imagining a future as a professor. From the outside, everything seemed to be in place.

Internally, however, I was deeply unsatisfied. Beneath the surface, I struggled with a persistent sense of emptiness accompanied by depression, anxiety, and chronic insomnia. I tried to manage these states on my own—using coffee to push through the heaviness—only to find myself caught in a cycle that intensified my anxiety and disrupted my sleep even further.

Eventually, I sought professional help and began weekly psychotherapy. This work helped me understand how unresolved pain from my childhood, particularly my parents’ troubled marriage, continued to shape my inner life. While these insights were meaningful, they did not resolve the deeper unrest I felt.

I then widened my search, exploring meditation, Qi Gong, yoga, and channeled guidance. During this period, I came across an article in a holistic health magazine about a traditional shamanic healer named Eliot Cowan. He practiced in the shamanic tradition of the Wixárika people of the Western Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico. Remarkably, Don Eliot—having recently moved from Mexico—was now offering healing sessions in Santa Barbara, just minutes from where I lived.

I began seeing Don Eliot monthly, and over time I noticed a genuine shift: I felt more peaceful, more joyful, and more at home in myself. What I did not anticipate was what followed. About a year into this work, I began having unusually vivid and unsettling dreams in which I encountered powerful non-human beings. At times, it felt as though I had crossed beyond the realm of ordinary reality.

When I shared these dreams with Don Eliot, he offered an interpretation that changed my life: they were a clear indication that I was being called to become a mara’akame—a shamanic healer in the Wixárika tradition. This was not a path I had ever imagined for myself. Yet, despite my resistance, something about it rang profoundly true.

What opened before me was not a choice lightly taken. This calling required a lifelong commitment, beginning with six demanding years of apprenticeship that included pilgrimages to sacred sites in Mexico. While I felt relief at discovering a deeper sense of purpose, the path was mysterious, demanding, and far outside the framework of my academic and cultural upbringing. What grounded me was the knowledge that this tradition had offered healing and wisdom to the Wixárika people for thousands of years.

At the heart of this tradition is the primacy of the heart, embodied by Tatewarí—Our Grandfather Fire—recognized as the First Shaman and the guiding force behind all authentic healing work. Through the guidance of Don Eliot and a traditional spirit-speaker, Don David Wiley, Grandfather Fire became my central teacher. I was also supported by revered elders such as Don Efrén González Carrillo, born and raised in the Wixárika homelands.

This calling ultimately addressed the emptiness that had once plagued me. I was shown that, through this path, I could serve others in ways that engage mind, body, and spirit—beyond what modern medicine alone can offer. The work required deep surrender, humility, fasting, pilgrimage, and the gradual receiving of sacred healing tools known as muvieries, which come alive only through sustained devotion and relationship with the divine.

I was initiated as a mara’akame in 2005. Don Eliot remained a close friend and teacher until his passing in 2022. Since then, my work has continued to deepen under the guidance of Don David and Don Efrén. I was also initiated as a Firekeeper through Sacred Fire, allowing me to facilitate communal fire rituals that help restore connection in an increasingly disconnected world.

Nine years ago, guided by Grandfather Fire and my elders, Jessica and I settled in Carrollton, Georgia. Here, in our Fire Council House, I continue this healing work—drawing upon an unbroken lineage of wisdom and the living presence of the sacred—to support others on their own paths toward wholeness.

Playing My Part In This Effort Is My Greatest Joy.