Part 6 finishes up in Sedona, AZ, where I was getting acquainted with "Spirituality". I was a sponge with an open mind, along with the appropriate discernment, learning about topics I had never heard about (e.g. near-death experience, crystals, numerology, past-life regression, energy, vortex, vibration, etc.). Most of all it was the people I met there that had the biggest impact. They came from all walks of life with a common interest in learning more about life and beyond. 
We found a spot on a hillside where we put down our towels and prepared for a group meditation. I had only a couple of prior experiences with meditations where I had difficulty "getting out of my head", but I found them relaxing. I enjoyed the view during the open-eyed segment of the meditation, and then we were asked to close our eyes and go within. I didn't really understand what this meant other than the closing my eyes part. It was about 5 minutes into the meditation that something extraordinary happened. I felt myself falling into the earth below me, and yet I felt myself sitting on the ground. I was in a free fall but there was no fear. I was in a dual reality, and felt okay with it. 
I descended into what looked like a cavern far below the surface. I was still flying. Crazy huh? And then two incredible experiences happened that I share in this podcast. I did not speak of this for years since it sounded too whacky to share with anyone, and even finding the words was challenging. 
Following my experience I returned home and prepared for my next adventure on my Modern-Day Vision Quest. A series of synchonicities pointed the way to Africa. And off I went, open to new multi-sensory experiences that would forever change my life. 
 

 Discovering Michael: An Inspirational Guide to Personal Growth and Self-Discovery, Balboa Press
Link to Book on Amazon

Part 5 continues with real-life stories about the segue I made from the Personal Growth stage to the Self-Discovery stage and now Enlightenment. As you may recall, I had two key intentions for this quest that were phrased as questions: 1) Why Did I Experience So Much Pain & Suffering?, and 2) What is The Meaning of Life? Synchronistic events and people continued to come into my life that were preparing me for the next adventure of my Modern Day Vision Quest.
I had returned from Europe and became an active volunteer domestically. Many of these activities had death as a common denominator. These experiences we forcing me deeper and I was confronting mortality. I began to contemplate what death was all about? My mother's own death when I was 14 years old, left me with a fear of death and the realization that dealing with these situations left me alone since others did not want to talk about it. 
My experience talking with the monks while visiting the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy, provided me with the first understanding of the word "spirituality" as an option to religion. I wanted to learn more about this, but had no idea how. Well, be careful of what you wish for, since this would all soon evolve into an amazing new segment of my journey and into the topic of enlightenment. 
This segment of my jouney would begin with a random event where a "Pennysaver", a publication that features classified adds for local goods and services, somehow dropped on the floor across the room, and amazingly opened to a page that would open another amazing door to my Modern Day Vision Quest.
 

 Discovering Michael: An Inspirational Guide to Personal Growth and Self-Discovery, Balboa Press
Link to Book on Amazon

Thank you so much for joining. What an honor it is that you chose to share time with me. This podcast series uses the art of story telling to share one of the most amazing adventures in life, what I refer to as “A Modern-Day Vision Quest.” The adventure was my journey of Personal Growth, Self-Discovery, and Enlightenment. 
To sum it up briefly, I had healed most of the wounds and impact from a traumatic childhood which I talk about in my book, Discovering Michael: An Inspiration Guide to Personal Growth & Self-Discovery. Following this phase of growth (which I term Personal Growth), what surfaced were nagging thoughts deep within to related to understanding who I truly am (Self-Discovery), and what life was all about and how I fit in (Enlightenment). Inspired by the movie, "Dances With Wolves", and The Call" by Jennifer James, I left a full-time job to backpack and volunteer around the world. I came face-to-face with situations that challenged my prior beliefs and ultimately resulted in learning about life itself and Discovering Michael. This talk is a collection of true stories about my adventures and learnings to hopefully engage you in a thought-provoking manner, while guiding and inspiring you for your own journey of self-discovery!!
Part 4 continues with real-life stories about the segue I made from the Personal Growth stage to the Self-Discovery stage. In Part 3, I talked about the synchronistic events and people that came into my life that were preparing me for my Modern Day Vision Quest. As I reflected on the recent events and encounters, it became clear that it was time for another leap of faith, this time to venture out into the unknown, the world around me. I had two key intentions phrased as questions: 1) Why Did I Experience So Much Pain & Suffering?, and 2) What is The Meaning of Life? Low and behold, my friend called me and asked if I wanted to join him and his brother on a trip to Europe. At the same time I was returning to home and volunteering in some profound ways, all having to deal with death, although I had no idea of this commonality at first. Off I went on my first leg of my quest. Here are stories to help guide and inspire you to take your own journey within!!
This Episode Image portrays the wonder I had as a child to escape the bondages of my past and eagerness to discover what is out there!! 
 

 Discovering Michael: An Inspirational Guide to Personal Growth and Self-Discovery, Balboa Press
Link to Book on Amazon

Good morning, afternoon, and evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining. What an honor it is that you chose to share time with me. This podcast series uses the art of story telling to share one of the most amazing adventures in life, what I call “A Modern-Day Vision Quest.” The adventure was my journey of Personal Growth, Self-Discovery, and Enlightenment. 
To sum it up briefly, I had healed most of the wounds and impact from a traumatic childhood which I talk about in my book, Discovering Michael: An Inspiration Guide to Personal Growth & Self-Discovery. Following this phase of growth (which I term Personal Growth), what surfaced were nagging thoughts deep within to related to understanding who I truly am (Self-Discovery), and what life was all about and how I fit in (Enlightenment). Inspired by the movie, "Dances With Wolves", and The Call" by Jennifer James, I left a full-time job to backpack and volunteer around the world. I came face-to-face with situations that challenged my prior beliefs and ultimately resulted in learning about life itself and Discovering Michael. This talk is a collection of true stories about my adventures and learnings to hopefully engage you in a thought-provoking manner, while guiding and inspiring you for your own journey of self-discovery!!
Part 3 continues with real-life stories about the segue I made from the Personal Growth stage to the Self-Discovery stage. There was a change within me following all the work I did in the Personal Growth stage, that was longing for a deeper understanding of self. It was characterized by questions such as "Who Am I?", "What Do I Stand For?" and "What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up?" Before I was aware of the questions was a nagging feeling to learn more about myself and life. I share my story about the events and people that came into my life to clarify what this feeling was all about, and ultimately the amazing adventure I was about to embark on.

Good morning, afternoon, and evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining. What an honor it is that you chose to share time with me. This podcast series uses the art of story telling to share one of the most amazing adventures in life, what I call “A Modern-Day Vision Quest.” The adventure was my journey of Personal Growth, Self-Discovery, and Enlightenment. 
To sum it up briefly, I had healed most of the wounds and impact from a traumatic childhood which I talk about in my book, Discovering Michael: An Inspiration Guide to Personal Growth & Self-Discovery. Following this phase of growth (which I term Personal Growth), what surfaced were nagging thoughts deep within to related to understanding who I truly am (Self-Discovery), and what life was all about and how I fit in (Enlightenment). Inspired by the movie, "Dances With Wolves", and The Call" by Jennifer James, I left a full-time job to backpack and volunteer around the world. I came face-to-face with situations that challenged my prior beliefs and ultimately resulted in learning about life itself and Discovering Michael. This talk is a collection of true stories about my adventures and learnings to hopefully engage you in a thought-provoking manner, while guiding and inspiring you for your own journey of self-discovery!!
Part 2 continues with real-life stories about the Personal Growth stage and in particular my experience with what I refer to as the "Tools for Self-Discovery", that are reviewed in more detail in my book, "Discovering Michael: An Inspiraional Guide to Personal Growth & Self-Discovery"

Good morning, afternoon, and evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining. What an honor it is that you chose to share time with me. This podcast series uses the art of story telling to share one of the most amazing adventures in life, what I call “A Modern-Day Vision Quest.” The adventure was my journey of Personal Growth, Self-Discovery, and Enlightenment. 
To sum it up briefly, I had healed most of the wounds and impact from a traumatic childhood which I talk about in my book, Discovering Michael: An Inspiration Guide to Personal Growth & Self-Discovery. Following this phase of growth (which I term Personal Growth), what surfaced were nagging thoughts deep within to related to understanding who I truly am (Self-Discovery), and what life was all about and how I fit in (Enlightenment). Inspired by the movie, "Dances With Wolves", and a calling to explore, I left a full-time job to backpack and volunteer around the world. I came face-to-face with situations that challenged my prior beliefs and ultimately resulted in learning about life itself and Discovering Michael. This talk is a collection of true stories about my adventures and learnings to hopefully engage you in a thought-provoking manner.
Part 1 begins with an understanding of a "Vision Quest" along with stories about the stage of Personal Growth.

I shared in my last podcast my own experience with death and dying and how this helped me to be more comfortable approaching this topic. One of my profound encounters with death I briefly discussed was as a volunteer in hospice care. "The vast majority of people die gradually, as most deaths occur due to chronic illnesses that progress over time, meaning the body slowly shuts down rather than experiencing a sudden, immediate death; this is especially true for elderly individuals where age-related complications can lead to a prolonged dying process." (Google AI). Hospice care organizations provide a more humane environment for those dying. Based on my own experience as a volunteer in hospice, we provided the "human touch and care" that families often could not provide in large part due to their own discomfort with death. 
The unfortunate nature of this is that family members and friends can miss out on the plethora of life's learnings and lessons one can have with those that are on the way out. In this episode I will share some of these profound learnings and how they influenced my life and choices I made while I was living my life. 
Let's begin with a quote from a guide provided by St. Clare Hospice in their guide titled, "How to talk about death and dying". You can access this document at: https://stclarehospice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/How-to-talk-about-death-and-dying-Guide-Ver-2.pdf 
"We believe that when we are able to face death openly, and approach it peacefully and positively as a natural part of life, we will feel empowered to live our days to the fullest. Talking about death and dying is the first step towards that reality, planning for life, and supporting ourselves and our loved ones."
My podcast is all about "Inspiring our Growth in order to Ignite our Potential". As noted in the quote above, "...we will feel empowered to live our days to the fullest." Confronting death has a huge benefit to how we live our life. We recognize that death is a part of life, and therefore a motivation to make the most out of our life. I would also add that it provides a motivation to understand death as a part of life, and what lies beyond. This was the cornerstone of my own journey, to come to understand death which further prompted the contemplation of the meaning of life. 
Confronting our mortality and experiencing our own death is one of the most powerful stages of growth. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, author of "Death: The Final Stage of Growth". Her book was used for our hospice care training. Elisabeth came to her own conclusion: "Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.". Imagine the benefits of coming to this conclusion for how you live your life along with confronting our own mortality. My views and conclusions are very similar to these which has made a huge difference in how I approach the topics of death and dying, along with viewing my own mortality.
Another great resource I would recommend is "Nurse Julie" and her channel on YouTube. She is a "Licensed Hospice Nurse teaching about Death, Dying and Hospice. Helping understand death to live better and die better."  https://www.youtube.com/@hospicenursejulie
 

My life's research on the topics of Human Development and Human Potential culminated in the above framework. It has been nationally recognized for its simplicity and providing a structure for those aspiring to become their full potential.
The 3 stages of growth are outlined in the above image. This was the topic of my initial podcasts, providing an overview of the stages to becoming our full potential. We initially come to understand our personality and identify those aspects of self that need to be addressed so that we can survive and then thrive with the everyday roles and responsibilities we have in life. This is the 1st stage of "Personal Growth". The 2nd stage, "Self-Discovery", allows us to take that hard look in the mirror to question who we want to be in this life, along with our beliefs and values that we want to stand for. The 3rd stage, for those called to understand the deeper meaning of life and beyond, and how they fit in, is the 3rd stage of growth, "Enlightenment" or "Self-Transcendence".
This podcast is a great follow to my recent series on retirement, which is the stage where we more actively confront death and our own mortality. Here we confront our mortality, an essential ingredient to remind ourselves that time is our precious resource that will indeed run out and becomes our motivation to strive to be all we can be. Only a handful out of every hundred or so individuals muster up the courage and drive to enter the 3rd stage of development. However, everyone will enter this stage as we confront the end of our life, our death. This was captured well in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' book, "Death: The Final Stage of Growth". Unfortunately our societal attitude towards death is largely avoidance, which limits the most amazing growth opportunity for those dying along with their friends and family.
According to Psychology Today: "Whether we like it or not one of the only sure fire things in life is that we are all going die. It is one of the subjects that we in the West are discomforted by, embarrassed about and that many of us avoid and this includes avoiding the people who are experiencing grief or who are dying. We don’t talk about death. We talk about sex, drugs and money. We teach our children about these subjects but we don’t talk about death and dying. Death was so common in the 19th century that it was readily addressed. People wore black if they were in mourning and were treated accordingly. If people were dying they planned their funerals with their family and everyone knew to express their condolences if they came across someone who was bereaved. It seems we’ve got out of the habit and the subject has become taboo." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/handy-hints-for-humans/201703/we-need-to-talk-about-death
Is this a key reason that we find so few enlightened individuals here in the US as compared to places like India, where death is not hidden, but instead revered and celebrated? What is the benefit you ask to be talking about death? That we accept it as a part of life and come to understand it so that we can better deal with these times with our loved ones and ultimately our own demise. And with the resources available to us today on this topic, we can find peace, comfort, and even an understanding of death so that we are no longer afraid. This is the ultimate growth we can experience as a part of the Enlightenment stage!
I experienced death at a young age when my mother died from cancer when I was only 14. No one helped me to deal with this traumatic ordeal at such a young age. I returned to school only to experience everyone avoiding me. I felt lost and confused. It was an incredibly lonely experience. Years later I was drawn to volunteer opportunities that all shared death in common. I volunteered at a children's oncology camp, as an Emergency Medical Technician on a volunteer ambulance, overseas in areas where mortality rates were very high, and in the most profound experience in all, as a hospice care provider. Another profound opportunity to learn about death came from a close friend being crushed under his truck and pronounced dead on the scene, only to revive once he arrived at the hospital and having a most incredible near-death experience. I began to learn about death from multiple perspectives which healed the pain from my childhood experience and mostly, gave me peace and comfort about death and my own mortality. I wish that everyone could share these experiences and conclusions! Otherwise, our fear of death and our mortality has a profound impact on our life and can hold us back from fully experiencing life and becoming our own full potential. Confronting death can have this profound motivation.
In this podcast, I expand on these experiences and what I learned. This will set the stage to begin conversation about death and our mortality from various perspectives to hopefully help you to reconsider death and open yourself to more conversation about the death of others and considering your own mortality!!
With love, Michael 

Are you interested in “Squeezing All the Juice Out of Your Retirement?” If so, this Podcast is for YOU!!
During our last podcast we introduced you to Dr. Riley Moynes and his powerful research on the topic of the Four Phases of Retirement. We covered the first two phases, 1) The Vacation Phase, and 2) Disillusionment. We went from the honeymoon phase of retirement where we were delighted to throw away our alarm clock, travel, and enjoy sitting around and doing nothing. Then after 1-2 years, we enter Phase 2 filled with obstacles and challenges as we grapple with the magnitude of losses we experience, including our identity, structure, and relationships, which provided us with meaning and purpose in our life. In addition to experiencing these losses, we enter what Dr. Riley Moynes calls the 3-D’s, which are frequently experienced in this phase, which are a) Decline, b) Depression, and 3) Divorce.
These challenges can either take us down or provide the stimulus for finding a solution. We come to grow from this experience. Our quest is to make the most out of this phase of our life by addressing the question, “What can I do to keep getting me up in the morning and discovering what I can do to provide me with meaning, satisfaction, and a sense of accomplishment?” We enter Phase 3, that of Rapid Experimentation. Here we experiment with a number of new ideas, from volunteering, to learning a new language, taking an art class, and more. We create a new structure that provides us with new relationships, meaning and purpose. According to Dr. Riley Moynes, only about 65% move through Phases 2 and 3.
For those that are successful in Phase 3, we then enter Phase 4, where we Reinvent and Rewire. This is the most satisfying phase since we find new meaning and purpose and discover one common element that gets us there.
Whether you are retired, approaching retirement, or in mid-life where you realize the opportunity to educate yourself on this stage in life to better prepare for it. Sit back and enjoy the education, tips and ideas to squeeze all the juice out of your retirement.