This article is the fourth of a 6-part series on the practice of We-Flow.

In We-Flow, Part 1: How to Work with More Joy and Effectiveness, I share my first experience at a 2-day We-Flow Immersion in late September (5 months ago) and the surprising outcome of that weekend. I attended a second immersion in early November, in which the impact amplified in a way I could hardly believe. I tell that story in We-Flow, Part 2: Moving Towards Effortless Manifestation.

I was already feeling a bit disoriented at that point, having the thought, “this is too good to be true”. From that place I wrote the third article We-Flow, Part 3: What is the Stewardship Course, in an attempt to understand and contextualize what was happening to me.

Then I joined the Stewardship Course (SC), which is the highest-level We-Flow training. I attended the first weekend of the SC course a month ago in Amsterdam. It was a small cohort of students plus 2 leaders, all attending in person (We-Flow has both live and virtual events). I came from Berlin. One student came from the US.

This and the follow-up We-Flow, Part 5: Expansion vs. Integration, are my most comprehensive We-Flow articles yet. I am writing them partly for myself , to help me understand the deep changes that are occurring to me in such a relatively short time. I am trying to answer the question: how is it possible, in such a short time, to see my life bootstrapped to the level of success and happiness I am currently experiencing (granted, this is still “oscillating” as explained below). Am I dreaming? Could this just be what I call “bipolar ideation”? I can’t exclude that possibility, but my positive results are tangible and continuing.

Heads-up here that I don’t receive compensation for this article, and I am not saying that the same thing will happen to you, or that We-Flow was the cause of this transformation. It could be that after 10 years of deep developmental work I was just “ready to pop”. It is also a fact that concurrently with my We-Flow experience I discovered a practice-goal called Persistent Well-Being (PWB), and I was able, finally (after 20 years of trying) to execute a daily somatic embodiment practice and start meditating. That alone would have been worth the price of admission, especially given that PWB training is now free through the app. To note here that PWB is separate from We-Flow, yet fully compatible. More about this below.

The Question I Couldn’t Answer: Why Was I Unhappy?

For roughly a decade, I have been one of the more committed practitioners in the global Authentic Relating (AR) and Circling community — as a student, author, and eventually as a facilitator who began to build a modest livelihood around it. Over that time I touched genuine depth. I met my wife Sophie through the movement and our relationship, although sometimes turbulent, is the best thing that has ever happened to me. My network, my writing, my capacity for presence, my ability to hold a room — all of these grew in ways I am genuinely proud of.

And yet, for most of those years, I was also chronically anxious, financially precarious, and very lonely. Not miserable: there were real peaks of joy, connection, and transformation. I traveled the world and wrote a lot, and many of my relationships (the thing for which I live) were deep and nurturing. But underneath all of that, sat a background hum of instability and discontent that my decade of inner work had not resolved. And a panic-fueled kind of drivenness that caused me sometimes to make costly mistakes and engage in addictive behavior.

That is the question this article is built around: How is it possible to spend years in dedicated inner work and still be unhappy?

And equally importantly: what does We-Flow offer (if anything) that actually addresses this?

I want to be careful here of not sounding like a new, starry-eyed convert 🙂. I am as much an “AR and Circling evangelist” as I ever was, especially given the relative affordability of these practices, this being in line with what I call “the democratization of transformation”, another goal of mine. I am also still very much in the unknown about the miracle that seems to have occurred to me.

But I now, finally, have a working hypothesis of how this happened. It turns on a distinction that I think is one of the most important and least-discussed in the whole field of personal development. The distinction is called “Expansion vs. Integration”.

Background Unhappiness and Financial Unsafety

Let me define some terms before going further.

By “background unhappiness,” I mean the chronic low-grade dissatisfaction that persists even in people who have done extensive inner work. It takes various forms, in my case drivenness and addictive behavior. For others it is more like a low-level depression or compulsive worrying, like “living under a cloud”. Think of it as a background hum of incompletion, of unexpressed gifts, of a life that has not quite found its right form. Perhaps a sense that life is way too much work for insufficient pleasure:

“Don’t die with your music still in you” – Wayne Dyer.

This had become my mantra in those years. But although I had started singing (kind-of / sort-of), it hadn’t yet fundamentally changed me. For sure, it wasn’t making me much money.

By “financial unsafety,” I mean a constant worry even in the midst of a purpose-driven life. This is the writer who can’t pay the rent, the gifted healer or facilitator who can’t get any clients, the business owner who loves their job but can’t quite seem to get the cash flow right.

These two things are deeply related. In a conversation I had with Stéphane Segatori — Co-originator and steward of We-Flow — he described it this way: some people have genuine, even significant well-being, but the moment their financial safety is threatened, that well-being begins to oscillate. The inner resource is real, but it is not stable under pressure.

Other people may have financial safety, but at the cost of their well-being. Maybe they work in a corporate culture that does not align with them and requires sacrifices which feel out of integrity. Or maybe they are relatively fulfilled in their career and financially stable, but they have a nagging sense that something is missing. Common examples of this include desire for a relationship, an obsessive existential pre-occupation or distress of some kind, or a constant undefinable sense of dread. Maybe they don’t even know what the problem is, they just know that something is “off”.

These kinds of people are not unusual by the way, rather they are the norm. I was in the first category (of financial unsafety): I had found my purpose and I had found real connection, but my finances were challenged and caused oscillations in my mood. The worst, of course, is when you have both background unhappiness and financial unsafety together. This is a pretty miserable fate, but sadly (again) it is also very common.

So what do these people do? They take a transformational workshop, of course!

They become Authentic Relating enthusiasts, for instance. Some of you reading this, have had your experience of life profoundly altered by attending Circling events and workshops, or other transformational communities and events such as Burning Man. You have experienced “expansion” and had deep insights and meaningful connections. For a while it seemed (as in my case) that your life was working better. But sadly – or maybe tragically – this state did not persist.

Stéphane’s mapping of this is unusually clear: We-Flow works simultaneously on two axes. For those with well-being but financial instability, the practices help stabilize livelihood. For those with financial security but persistent background unhappiness, the practices deepen access to Persistent Well-Being. The goal — and this is what distinguishes We-Flow in my experience — is to create conditions where both axes reinforce each other, rather than pulling in opposite directions.

Why Authentic Relating and other Expansion Practices Don’t Generally Create Financial Safety

Authentic Relating and related practices often fail to generate income or lasting stability for their practitioners — even the most dedicated ones. This is related to the previous distinction, Expansion vs. Integration.

Expansion is what happens when you go to a good workshop, a retreat, or a circling weekend. Your horizons open. You touch depths of connection, presence, and creative possibility that you did not know were available. New needs arise — new desires, new visions of what life could be. This is real growth. But it is also, in a certain sense, a kind of destabilization.

Because expansion creates a liminal phase: a transitional space between the old self and the new. The old structures of motivation, identity, and livelihood no longer fit — but the new ones have not yet been built. This liminal phase can be disorienting and, if it is not held well, genuinely costly.

In Layman Pascal’s landmark article, The MetaModern Business Bureau (MMBB), the author identifies at least six mechanisms through which expansion-oriented practices can actually harm livelihood, rather than support it. I’ll summarize them here:

First, the attention depletion problem. Expansion creates new desires and new topologies of interest. If financial life has not been stabilized before this expansion, the energy that was previously going towards livelihood gets redirected towards the new. Work becomes less interesting. Focus diffuses.

Second, magical thinking. Many relational and spiritual practices rightly train practitioners in comfort with not-knowing and trust in emergence. But this wisdom can slide into a subtle passivity — an expectation that life will deliver without requiring concrete action. The “trust the unknown” teaching needs to be held alongside, not instead of, practical initiative.

Third, trauma activation. Deep relational practices can and do surface old material. This is generally a good thing — but it also creates a genuine need for post-processing support that is rarely built into the training structure. People sometimes leave a weekend of profound Circling holding more than they walked in with, and with no clear container for what to do next.

Fourth, negative social field dynamics. Community-based practices create rich, sometimes intense social environments that become their own source of drama, distraction, and sometimes conflict. The community that was meant to support growth can become another front requiring energy and attention. In extreme cases, sucking attention away like a vortex.

Fifth, and perhaps most structurally interesting: the gap between expansion and what Ken Wilber called “Showing Up.“ Wilber said that Showing Up practices — the embodied, practical integration of inner growth into real-world behavior — are a hundred times more powerful and necessary than waking up, cleaning up, or growing up alone. And yet, the field of integral and developmental work has produced remarkably little codified practice in this domain, until now.

Sixth and related to the above (this is the real killer): the daily-life implementation gap. Many AR and circling programs – let alone the more popular transformational programs like Tony Robbins and Landmark Worldwide, mentioned in my parallel article Authentic Relating, A Map of the Territory – many of these programs consider daily-life integration, and financial stability in particular, to be outside the scope of their offering. Maybe they will give you some ideas of what to do, and the fantasy that you can actually do it on your own; but then you don’t do it. Alternatively, they keep you on a kind of addictive treadmill where you need support from the program. And then, you are on the hook to spend more thousands of your scarce dollars. You don’t yet have sufficient well-being energy to create the financial resources and purpose-driven life that will, in turn, generate more well-being. Your life has not yet bootstrapped itself.

And from there you fall into the trap which countless people, me included, have fallen into: you know what to do, more or less. But you don’t do it. And then you (me!) enter into a guilt and shame spiral, and maybe never get out of it.

This is the problem that We-Flow addresses. I will say more about that in the Part 5 article.

For now, however, let me tell how my discovery of Persistent Well-Being (PWB) initiated a real personal revolution. PWB was created outside of We-Flow, but it has been fully integrated. PWB is “baked-in” or integral to the We-Flow structure and curriculum.

A Personal Example: My Daily Somatic / Embodiment Practice and How PWB Has Helped

I will give a personal example here.

As noted above, I learned about PWB through We-Flow and started applying it immediately (through the free app, The Finders, which is wonderful).

I have a long history with Sivananda Yoga. I have been to perhaps 20 weekend retreats in as many years, always leaving energized and inspired. I used to say that there is no malady, physical or mental, that can withstand 4 hours a day of yoga in combination with a simple vegetarian diet. It was even effective with my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which no other modality or treatment could touch. Aside from retreats, there is a very powerful, 30 minute morning practice consisting of two breathing exercises and 4 rounds of Sun Salutations which, whenever I practice, changes my day.

You would think that I would do it every day, religiously, would you not? Well, I haven’t. Never, consistently.

Until now.

What finally changed my attitude was my discovery of The Finders app and reading about PWB. There is a good article about that (a bit technical) Enlightenment and the Psychology of Self-Transcendence: Pathways to Fundamental Well-Being and Prosocial Behavior. Skip forward to section 5 to read about the most reliable and predictable mechanisms to have Self-Transcendent Experiences (STE’s). It is through PWB practices.

I was so inspired by all this, and the prospect of learning how to meditate (I have been trying unsuccessfully for 20 years, which includes four different 10-day retreats), that I overcame my resistance to a daily somatic embodiment practice. I have been doing something like that every day now for two weeks. I discovered a local Osho Dynamic Meditation place, which also does the job, and is better for me than a sitting meditation.

PWB practice is also not that complicated, I learned. At core, it has to do with training the brain to be happy and with finding what’s called your “meditation fit”. Nor is it necessarily time-consuming. A half-hour a day of meditation or any kind of somatic practice, plus a few exercises you can do from bed before sleeping and immediately after waking, are extremely powerful.

It turns out that I am still not very good at meditation. I am learning how that works. But I am pretty good at having happy thoughts. At some level (I am realizing now) I am actually exceptional at having happy thoughts. Who knew what a little bit of practice could accomplish?

All this has been a game-changer for me. And although it coincided with my engagement with We-Flow, it is a separate track. PWB and We-Flow feed off each other, they are very complementary. For instance, I have added a We-Flow practice called “Golden Diamond” to my bedtime ritual, and it has been very powerful.

Another way of saying this, is that PWB made me aware of a fundamental blind spot I was carrying: this is the common Western idea that happiness comes from meeting your needs. It turns out that the Buddha was right about this: it doesn’t work. At least not by itself.

In its simplest form, I would put it this way: money doesn’t make you happy, everybody knows this. Nor does being happy make you money, necessarily. However, if you work both, and particularly within an intelligent framework like We-Flow, the sky is the limit.

Continue reading We-Flow, Part 5

We-Flow, Part 5: Expansion vs. Integration [currently in production, I will update the link later]. This article starts to explain how We-Flow solves the “integration gap” and why it is different from almost all other trainings in this respect.

I am re-stacking Scott Barker’s article, How to prepare for the next decade, as it was quite impactful to me, and to the 1000 or so people who liked it.

Why was it impactful? First because my own life has been quite turbulent lately (I am not alone in this), and the article helped to give me some direction in the face of the upcoming chaos. Furthermore, it so happens (what a coincidence!) that I too am currently imagining my next decade’s developmental arc.

And secondly, one of the practices recommended by Scott is to start each day with a daily 1 hour embodiment practice. Today for the first time I did an Osho Dynamic Meditation (it is quite close to our house in Berlin and not expensive) and it totally rocked my world. Even prior to that, I had been following the Fundamental Well-Being (FWB) program through the free app, and it had inspired me so much that I did my 30 minute Sivananda Yoga starter series for two days in a row. This hasn’t happened in oh… a decade? 😊. The free FWB app is amazing, by the way. Prior to this the course cost $1000. I will write more about this soon.

A reminder: How to keep this Substack relevant to you

This Substack is about to triple in post volume, with the new content focused on Authentic Relating and newer approaches like We-Flow.

If you like everything I write, including my signature super-vulnerable “in the trenches” posts about my own development (along with “best of breed” resources such as this post), then do nothing. If you are only interested in that (and not the Authentic Relating or We-Flow stuff), you will be able to unsubscribe from those categories without leaving the blog entirely.

Keep on reading Scott Barker…

Keep on reading How to prepare for the next decade

You are also always welcome to reply to this email, email me to marco@marcbeneteau.com, and comment / like this post. I will send you your tip in the mail 😊.

A note (in case you are getting too many mails from me)

I have re-organized my Substack to make sure you receive articles that are relevant to you. This article is part of a new Substack category AR & Circling. If you are mostly interested in my trademark “confessional-style” posts, you can unsubscribe from the AR & Circling category (this category) without leaving the Substack entirely.

To recap, here are the new categories:

• Stories and Ramblings: Personal writing, reflections, and life updates. If you’re here mainly because you like me and/or my writing, this is the category to follow.

• AR & Circling: Practical orientation for people new to the field: basically, how to get value from AR.

• Monetizing AR: Writing about the business of Authentic Relating: running groups, building programs, applying relational practice to entrepreneurship, and newer approaches like We‑Flow.

Context of this article

In this Part 1 article in the series Authentic Relating, A Map of the Territory, I will try and give you something practically useful: a review article which gives you a “bird’s eye view” of the various Authentic Relating (AR) practices, lineages, and communities. In this Part 1, I share the overall context of the Authentic Relating movement, tell my story, and give you some reasons for engaging. It is all work-in-progress, and the later parts have not yet been written. Read this series if you are intrigued by the potential of AR, but confused about what it is, what you can get from it, and where to start.

In the series I will systematically unpack the major lineages and communities including similarities, differences, culture, and providers (of which there are many). I will also mention a few closely adjacent practices which you may want to know about.

Note that in the upcoming Circling Guide (3rd Edition), currently in crowd-sourcing, there will be a full list of all the Integral We-Space practices. If you are not at all familiar with Circling, I just published the first 3 chapters of the Circling Guide (3rd Edition) to the web. Find it here.

I am keeping this series as tight as possible, but be aware that this is difficult given that Authentic Relating is a large, emergent, open-source, global movement for personal and social transformation under distributed leadership. This alone makes it a unique emergence in human history, as very few personal development organizations are either open-source or under distributed leadership. We are, essentially, doing away with guru/disciple models of transformation and we are also doing away with LGAT-style (Large Group Awareness Training) trainings. LGAT’s and guru/disciple lineages have dominated the personal development landscape forever, and this continues. Tony Robbins’ most popular program, Unleash the Power Within, costs $495 at a virtual event with 10k+participants – and this is the low-end pricing for a Tony Robbins event! By contrast, AR and related Integral We-Space practices are both more cost-effective and long-term impactful because they often include what we call “integration”, through ongoing community support for instance. So if you are here because you are looking to engage with Authentic Relating and have questions, you are in the right place.

The fact that “we” (we in AR and related movements) are initiating a cultural revolution of historic importance cannot be over-stated. I refer to it as “the democratization of transformation”. Non-Violent Communication (or NVC) is a precursor to AR and also meets the above criteria for an effective and credible transformational community. NVC got the ball rolling, and remains ten times the size of AR (roughly 500k people impacted, versus roughly 50k people impacted by AR and Circling). But AR is like NVC on steroids, and also more diversified. If you are looking for a quick comparison of AR and NVC, please read NVC and Circling; how they complement each other from the Circling Guide, 3rd Edition.

My story, in brief

I will tell a very abbreviated version of my story here, not to brag, but to lend credibility to what may sound like some rather inflated claims. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt because I do have a not-so-secret agenda: I want to enroll you in what I call, jokingly, “the one true religion”. In my defense, I am not alone in my enthusiasm for Authentic Relating. Indeed, the longer I practice, the more of an “Authentic Relating evangelist” I become.

As told in the Circling Guide, I encountered Circling at the now-defunct Boulder Integral Center in late 2016. Boulder Integral was at the time the worldwide hub of Circling, and you could circle 6 hours a week and join all their yoga classes and co-working for $75/mth. It’s a great shame it shut down in 2019, otherwise I would probably still be living in their basement 🙂.

I arrived at the Boulder Integral Center after 30 years of seeking, and I immediately “got” the potential of Circling as both a practice and a movement. The following year I moved back east and put in roughly 250 hours on the online Circling platform Relateful.com. I started a small private (or committed) online Circling group, which was amazing for a year and then fell apart. I still believe that private groups are the best way to learn AR, and I will say more about this later. I think of Circling as the “gold-standard” Authentic Relating practice, although not the only one. Whether Circling should be your first point of contact with AR, however, is a difficult question to answer. More about this later.

In that first year (2016) I also wrote the Circling Guide. This got some push-back from some people in the community given I was just a newbie at the time, but the Circling Guide has since become the most popular book on Circling. There are now two very good books on Authentic Relating, by Jason Digges and Ryel Kestano, but in those days that was not the case.

What initially really impressed me about Circling, in addition to the power of it, was its potential applicability to all spheres of life: personal development (of course), but also business and entrepreneurship, family, sexuality, social justice, intentional community and co-living, trauma healing, spirituality, you name it. It is a great joy for me now, to see the enthusiastic community response to the upcoming Circling Guide Anthology (3rd Edition) with expert coverage in each of those areas.

I went on to lead private groups for free for the next 8 years, and started leading professionally in early 2025. I still lead a weekly free men’s group that is now in its 6th year. I tried to start an AR-inspired intentional community in Mexico, which was a spectacular failure. But I did meet my current wife through the movement, Sophie, who is quite a powerful AR leader, better than me actually. I am good at the blah-blah, also known as context-setting which is also important. But she has the wisdom and the presence. We are a very good team, which is exactly the point (“where two or more are united in my name…”).

Bottom-line, my life has been completely transformed in 10 years or so. You could say I have found my tribe, which is huge for me. Furthermore, the transformation is accelerating. It’s very intense for me right now, but also very fulfilling. I write about this in an earlier article.

Authentic Relating or Circling?

[Please refer to the above chart]

Circling is a practice and community inside the larger practice and community of Authentic Relating. Meaning that: Circling is a sub-group of Authentic Relating. AR is, in turn, a sub-group of what’s called “Integral We-Space” modalities and communities.

Please stay tuned for Part 2, where we will talk about what Authentic Relating is and what you can get from it, define the different practices, and help you choose a community and a provider.

A clearer Substack

This post does three things:

1. Clarifies how this Substack is now organized

2. Names what I’m orienting toward this year

3. Points to a few concrete ways to connect

Quite a few of you on this list are personal friends and acquaintances from my legacy list “Marc’s Life and Travels” (aka “Marc’s narcissistic ramblings”) which has been running for nearly 30 years. There are a couple changes happening to the list which I want you to be aware of, whether you are on the legacy list of old friends of mine, or whether you are here because you are interested in Authentic Relating.

The news is: yes I will continue writing my trademark “confessional style” posts, which I like to imagine as being entertaining and thought-provoking. This is the style of my latest book, by the way, I call it “spiritual psychological entertainment”. However, I am fundamentally re-orienting this substack towards Authentic Relating, Circling, and related integral we-space practices.

To make that navigable, posts are now organized into clear categories:

• Stories and Ramblings (this post) Personal writing, reflections, and life updates. If you’re here mainly because you like me and/or my writing, this is the category to follow.

• Authentic Relating & Circling Practical orientation for people new to the field: basically, how to get value from AR. This includes an upcoming series starting with [Part 1] Authentic Relating, A Map of the Territory: Practices, Lineages, and Communities.

• Monetizing AR Writing about the business of Authentic Relating: running groups, building programs, applying relational practice to entrepreneurship, and newer approaches like We‑Flow.

You can subscribe or unsubscribe by category at any time, without leaving the Substack entirely.

What I’m orienting toward this year

For the last 3-4 months I have been in a very rapid transformation. I wrote about this in the We-Flow articles, and while I cannot assume causation, I do want to note the synchronicity of my attending my first We-Flow immersion at precisely the time that this cataclysmic shift started occurring.

Moreover, the shift seems to be accelerating. The best way I can describe it is as “consciousness is taking over”. The changes are scary and disorienting, and I am continuing emotionally all over the map. But the level of success I am having, the quality of my relationships (especially with my wife Sophie, the most important person in my life and whom I adore), my optimism about the future and my level of happiness, have all taken a decisive and undeniable turn.

In addition to We-Flow, I’ve been influenced recently by work around Fundamental Well‑Being (FWB). I’ll keep references light, but if you want to explore on your own:

• The extraordinary book The Finders

• 45 Days to Awakening app (recently released)

I may write about this more later—but it will stay clearly contained within Stories and Ramblings.

Ways to connect

If you want to say hello, you’re welcome to reply directly to this email, or write to marco@marcbeneteau.com.

If you want to connect through practice, Sophie and I are currently offering:

• Connection Game – Tuesday, Feb 10 ($25). More information and register here.

• Authentic Relating in Community (ARC) – starting Feb 17 (from $350, with some scholarships available). More information here.

Thanks for being here and accompanying me on the journey, whether you came across this blog just now or have known me for 30 years.

Note: My other Substacks, Relational Erotic Intelligence, which explores deep sexual intimacy along the lines of my book As Lovers Do; and Creating Utopia which explores Intentional Community (IC) in the we-space, will probably remain dormant this year. Both topics however are active areas of investigation, and I am 100% clear that I want to live in an IC which is directly sourced from the we-space and that this will happen.

Quick Check-in

I’m keeping this brief.

I’ve put together All‑Star Joke Collection 2 — a curated set of jokes and comics I’ve been collecting over the years. If you enjoy my writing at all, this is a lighter touch.

👉 Read the All‑Star Joke Collection 2

What follows is the short personal update that feels worth sharing.

My marriage update, and what I’m lear…

Read more

I have an important announcement: I’ve just finished the final edit of my magnum opus, a book that has been 20 years in the making. It’s a memoir called Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: The Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict.

It is the story, in all its beauty and wreckage, of my lifelong pursuit of redemption through deep sexual loving. And of the women who helped me (some would say “enabled”). Two of them in particular, whose beautiful letters are included, allowing you to know the hearts and minds of these two extraordinary women in their own words, and to see how they related to the relational idiot I was at the time.

This memoir isn’t about self‑improvement or spiritual instruction; although it does include the story of my primary mentor whose name is Victor Baranco, and whose ideas were ahead of their time.

No, it’s about what happens when you pursue your daemon into the darker places, leaving (as I did) a trail of relational destruction behind. Amazingly, this strategy actually worked for me, as I am now very happily married.

The book is finally complete, and this marks a genuine inflection point in my career as a professional writer.

Why This Story Might Matter to You

If you’ve ever stayed too long in a relationship that appeared to be destroying you, wondered if your life had value, or struggled with relationships and mental health issues, you may relate to my story. I do believe that my story has human interest, but it’s not just about me. I actually consider my life and my trials as fractals of the current “meaning crisis”, our collective struggle to find meaning and fulfillment. The path I chose – rightly or wrongly – was through sexual intimacy.

Between 1993 and 1999, I was caught in a love triangle that unraveled my mental health, distorted my sense of reality, and forced me to confront addiction and dependency. But from this, I grew into the man I am today.

The final chapters trace how meaning and sanity returned, the role of my writing, and deeper reflections on the arc of my life and what I call “epochs”. I try and communicate the things which, if I had known them 30 years ago, might have saved me and others a lot of grief. If you want to read that chapter, I have published it separately in the article On life’s “Epochs” or developmental cycles.

Why I’m Inviting You In

I want feedback and reflections from real readers. I’ve just completed a final substantive edit of this book after years of rewriting, cutting, and tightening. If you choose to read this book now, you’re helping ensure that a story about obsession, love, neurodivergence, and redemption lands with the force and care it deserves—so that when it reaches a wider audience, it speaks clearly and cleanly.

If you’d like to be part of this, I’ll send you a free Kindle copy, or a print copy if you’re willing to share a mailing address. Simply reply to this email, or write to me at marco@marcbeneteau.com. You’re welcome (not obligated) to tell me how it lands. And if you genuinely feel that the book deserves to be read, an honest Amazon review helps it find the people who are wrestling with the same questions.

If You’d Rather Just Read It

That’s welcome too. If you prefer to support the project directly, you can also just purchase the book here.

How This Fits with my Other Books

I have previously published two books:

As Lovers Do: Sexual and Romantic Partnership as a Path of Transformation was my first book, completed about 10 years ago. It talks about the sexual teachers who have been important to me (including Baranco), and is (I would like to think) a “crash course” in feminine psychology, targeted to men. It has earned me a small fan club, partly because I had a wonderful editor (God Bless you, John Kelsey).

My second book, The Circling Guide, is now in a major expansion / re-write as well, through a successful crowd-funding project. The goal there is to position me as a thought-leader within the Authentic Relating movement. If you are interested in Authentic Relating, a $10-25 donation there will get you the new Circling Guide Anthology when it’s published, and also support the movement.

The other books are very synergistic with the memoir, but Broke Single Crazy and Old is my favorite. I hope you like it.

Table of Contents (TOC)

This is an extract from the final chapter of my book, Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: The Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict. For the context of this article, and if you are interested in getting a free copy by becoming a proof-reader or writing an Amazon review, read the prior article An Invitation into a Story About Love, Obsession and Becoming Yourself.

On life’s “Epochs” or developmental cycles; and writing as a transformational practice

In the 20 years that followed my final healing from Ellen in 2003, there were, of course, other key development experiences. I was with Rebekah almost a decade (2004-2013) in a turbulent but highly co-creative partnership. We are now very good friends and have some joint business projects.

My life appears to run in developmental cycles lasting 7-10 years; what I am calling here “epochs”. Each epoch, so far, has been demarcated by a woman. Alexa and the aftermath was one such cycle (1985-1995), Ellen and Sasha another (1995-2003), then Rebekah (2004-2013). Breaking the pattern, my latest cycle (2013-2022), did not have a primary woman, and the initial happiness or mania was shorter.

As already told, each cycle tends to be happy at the beginning, even manic; it then gets more difficult; and typically ends with a deep but ultimately redeeming depression. Each ending clears the trauma (or consolidates the learning) of the cycle, and starts a new phase of life fresh and clear, full of possibilities and excitement. For instance: it’s no accident that I met Rebekah in late 2003. I was energetically “clear” for the next adventure after I wrote the 2003 memoir which was so impactful to me. Often cycles are bounded by geographic moves as well: In late 2003 I moved to Philadelphia, and shortly afterwards met Rebekah and moved in with her to the Yonkers Morehouse. This would not have happened if I had still been carrying Ellen’s psychic ghost.

My last epoch (2013-2022) has been a dark time for me. There was no primary woman, the “unbearable lonely horniness” was ubiquitous, but I did travel extensively and write 3 books. Each book was an ecstatic experience, but didn’t last long as I write very fast. I can’t really complain. My depressions are short, and my manic periods are unforgettable, and quite productive.

As of right now (January 2026), I feel that I have written everything I have to write for now, at least about myself. I will write again, perhaps, when I have more life experience and more stories to tell. I have never needed “morning pages” [Julie Cameron] or anything like that. I have never had writer’s block. When a book wants to be written, it takes over and I do nothing else until it’s complete. I drop all other work and most social engagements. These writing spurts don’t usually last very long. A few months, at most, and then I am spent and complete. Books rarely complete in one writing spurt; this book took at least five spurts, over the course of 20 years. This fact makes this book different from all the others. It is more my “testament,” or my legacy, than any other of my books. I hope there will be a sequel, but right now that is difficult to imagine. If there is a sequel, it will be in a different style, because I will be a very different person.

Sometimes I think a book is finished, but it’s not. I lay it to rest for a time, and then pick it up again. None of this is inside my control. For instance: I had completed a very similar version of this book in 2016, ten years ago. I said in the introduction that I unpublished it because it did not get any attention, and because I did not want to be identified with psychiatric diagnostic labels; but that’s only part of the truth. The deeper truth is that it wasn’t finished. Something was missing and the context was wrong. When I realized what was missing, and got over my fears over publishing a sexual autobiography, the new book was mostly complete in two weeks (!). This would not have happened unless the latest (2014-2022) developmental cycle had ended in “clear”.

I know when I am starting a new developmental cycle because life gets up to full-speed (or warp-speed), I have a burst of creative activity or synchronistic events that are not coming from me but from “source,” and because I am happy. Sometimes I fall in love, as I am now as I write. Often at the beginning of a new cycle I move (“geographic cure”). In addition to finishing my third book, I got married a year ago to the woman of my life and am preparing a big update to the Circling Guide Anthology book. I have a lot of exciting plans. The “war against myself and against the world” has declared a cease-fire. The world is giving me back a quiet “yes,” for maybe the first time in my life. I am throwing up my stuff against the world, and it is whispering to me (finally!): “I like that”.

Or perhaps I am finally giving myself a quiet “yes,” given that the legions of admiring fans are not yet pounding on my door, the world has not yet discovered me as the re-incarnation of Jesus, the Buddha and Nietzsche combined, or rolled out the red carpet for me. But I am quietly pursuing the “meeting of hearts and minds,” the “life that was made for ecstasy” in my own way. For this I am oddly content. All quiet on the bipolar front. I don’t know what to make of this. Happiness is an unfamiliar experience for me. The key appears to be my writing.

I cannot force a book out that is not presented to me. This is why the 2016 memoir edition sat for 5 years. It’s possible (although not likely) that I will never write anything else again. I am okay with that; I have no choice in the matter. I would actually be fine if I never wrote anything else again, provided I was happy and productive in other ways. It may be – to some extent this is what I hope for – that one day my life will be so interesting and exciting that I will feel no need to write anything, that writing would just be a distraction from life. But I doubt it. I am a writer, first and foremost; and a relational leader second. If those aspects were reversed, I could be happy living and never writing. But I doubt that I could ever be truly happy without a book in gestation, even though I may not have a clue what the next book will be.

This may be the last book I ever write; but I always feel that way after writing a book. Every book I write feels like the best one I have ever written, and the last one I will ever write.

This is perhaps my bipolarity speaking. I am okay with my bipolarity. It just needs perspective. I say more about “perspective” in the next section.

Get the book from Amazon at Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: The Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict.

Table of Contents (TOC)

This is my 3rd article about the powerful practice of We-Flow. It gives the context of the Stewardship Course: how it works, what it does and what you can expect from it.

The first article, We-Flow Part 1: How to Work with More Joy and Effectiveness described my experience at We-Flow immersion in Amsterdam in late September of 2025, and gives some context of the practice.

The second article, We-Flow Part 2: Moving towards effortless manifestation tells of the dramatic changes in my life, 3 months after attending that first immersion.

The fourth article We-Flow Part 4: Fundamental Well- Being, Financial Unsafety and Background Unhappiness, gives the larger context of how We-Flow both resembles and diverges from three other powerful modalities: Authentic Relating, Integral Coaching and Fundamental Well-Being (“The Finders” course).

So what is the We-Flow Stewardship Course?

It is a 6 month, three long-weekends training with weekly follow-up (this is important, see below), designed to certify participants to teach and steward the We-Flow system. The total cost is $7,500—a number that makes no rational sense in my current situation, as told in the Part 2 article.

And yet: I’m in for the first weekend. What happens after that remains open.

To be clear, this price point is comparable to other high-level trainings in the Authentic Relating space—but with an explicit expectation those trainings usually avoid: that increased impact and income might be natural byproducts of learning to work from collective flow rather than against it. If this is true, then We-Flow ought to be a no-brainer.

But is the expectation that We-Flow will pay for itself, actually true?

Ay, there’s the rub.

The temptation now is to describe the We-Flow Stewardship course as a training: three weekends, weekly calls, practices, certifications, skills. All of that is true, but also misses the point. So let me back-up for a second.

The Stewardship path was created because a structural problem exists in almost every transformational modality I know.

People have peak experiences. Powerful ones. They touch depth, love, coherence, purpose. And then they go home — back to their lonely flats, troubled relationships and depressing jobs. And hope and pray for a better life.

And it works, for a while. (Been there, done that…)

This isn’t a personal failure. It’s a design failure.

Most Modalities Don’t Address the Integration Gap

Most personal development and spiritual practices are good at expansion. They expand awareness, sensitivity, compassion, insight. But expansion alone does not produce a life that works.

There is a largely unaddressed middle territory — the long, often lonely phases where expanded states must be integrated, implemented, and scaled into daily life, livelihood, and relationships.

This is where many people quietly stall. People leave retreats inspired, only to find themselves unable to translate what they touched into concrete action. Or worse: they return to their old patterns after spending thousands of dollars and gaining hope for a deeply connected life full of passion, inspiration, deep loving and joy – and then have those tender hopes smashed. It’s really heart-breaking.

We-Flow as a Living Social Technology

We-Flow is not a single technique you apply, nor is it a method you practice in isolation. It’s a living culture — an awareness-based social technology — designed to make collective flow, integration, and real-world implementation more reliable.

The simplest way to say it is this: We-Flow creates conditions where consciousness reorganizes your life.

This happens through a combination of intentional flow practices, explicit relational agreements leading to deep connection, inner practices, and something genuinely new: an integrated human support system that operates in real time.

The system emerged empirically, through nearly a decade of continuous experimentation inside what became known as the We-Space Lab in Amsterdam.

Again and again, the same discovery was made: when human beings orient together around presence, purpose, and mutual support — and when this orientation is sustained — something reorganizes at a level deeper than willpower. People of a more religious orientation (myself included) might say: Spirit takes over. But everyone notices the difference: Projects unlock. Relationships find their right place. Energy returns. Resources manifest (such as in my case, as told in the Part 2 article).

What Stewardship Actually Means

The word stewardship does not mean leadership in the usual sense. It does not mean authority, status, or expertise.

A steward is someone who shows up — for themselves, for others, and for the larger field they are part of.

One metaphor used often in We-Flow is the plane analogy: each of us is already sitting in a vehicle of purpose. A steward doesn’t fly the plane for you. They help you understand the vehicle you’re already in — how it works, how to orient yourself, and how to use it consciously.

We-Flow recognizes three dimensions of purpose — biological (self, family, finances), transformational (your gifts in service of the world), and transcendental (awakening, well-being). Rather than treating these as separate paths, stewardship integrates them into a single, lived trajectory.

The Four Core Desires of a Steward

When stripped down, the stewardship impulse expresses a surprisingly simple set of desires:

• I want my gifts to be used — by and for humanity — in a mutually beneficial way.

• I want to live in the most natural and aligned partnerships available to me.

• I want persistent well-being — not peak happiness followed by collapse.

• I want all of this integrated into one coherent life, within a network of like-minded hearts.

This is not a utopian fantasy. It is a practical orientation toward life that demands infrastructure supporting creative action and well-being. Creative action and well-being then feed on themselves, thus creating even more action and well-being. It’s a simple concept—and yet a concept that no other training program delivers on.

A personal example and case study: My story with Landmark Education

Let me give a personal example of a program that “almost” gets it right: Landmark Worldwide, a popular personal development program, what is called a Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT). Landmark was my Alma Mater prior to my entering Authentic Relating 10 years ago.

I did one very intense year of Landmark 20 years ago . It cost me close to $6,000 (which is very cheap, by the way, for a year of transformation). Landmark was very valuable to me: it got me connected to people and gave me a sense of my real gifts. It gave me a practice community and a way to try out new ways of being and get feedback. It was profoundly transformative. But to continue my growth, I would have had to stay in their eco-system, at a cost of many more thousands of dollars, and who knows how many more years of work.

Instead I chose to quit. I got tired of sitting in fluorescent-lit conference rooms for 12 hours at a time (that was 20 years ago. One can hope they have upgraded their lighting since then). But more importantly, I got tired of playing Landmark’s game: enrollment and registration in Landmark programs. I wanted to play my own games.

I discovered Circling 10 years later, and I have not been the same since then. But Circling is often seen as a personal development practice. It lacks integration, it lacks structure and accountability and ongoing support. It also lacks pathways to monetization and to taking your work into the world.

We-Flow fills that gap.

Why We-Flow Works Where Others Just Plateau

The key mechanisms are worth naming explicitly.

1. First: reversal of the usual model. Most systems aim for peak experience first and hope integration follows. We-Flow inverts this: daily integration and real-time support create conditions where peak experiences emerge naturally, and then stabilize.

2. Second: backup. Backup is not “help”. It is a new category of human support. It means standing next to someone — available, attuned, and responsive — while they access their own inner autonomy. Backup eliminates isolation at the exact moments where people usually collapse back into old patterns: fear, overwhelm, decision paralysis, emotional reactivity, or financial stress. Crucially, giving backup increases the giver’s flow as much as receiving it supports the receiver. The culture becomes self-reinforcing.

3. Third: intentional flow. We-Flow identifies natural phases of flow and teaches people to recognize and ride them. Flow stops being an accident and becomes a skill.

4. Fourth: full-spectrum integration. The practices apply simultaneously to inner life, relationships, livelihood, and organizational contexts. Nothing is excluded.

The Stewardship Foundations Course: What It Actually Provides

The Foundations course is structured as three in-person long weekends, supported by weekly integration and progress calls, continuous group backup, and direct application to participants’ real lives and projects. The weekends are currently in Amsterdam, but some of them are hybrid (in-person and remote are both possible).

What makes it unusual is not just the content, but the structure and containment / support. Obstacles are worked with in real time (meaning that you are transforming on-the-spot, simply by being inside your challenges and feeling what that’s like). We learn the 30-40 core practices, how to apply them to our situation and – equally importantly – what practice applies to what situation.

At a We=Flow event I can see myself in a true “action-learning” setting. Action-learning is what I need because I am too ADHD to take on anything that smells like discipline. And I enjoy hanging out with people. Especially smart people.

We-Flow trains across five overlapping disciplines:

1. Self-Stewardship: inner autonomy, emotional transmutation, and well-being stabilization.

2. Collective Stewardship: holding and facilitating group coherence.

3. Individual Stewardship: one-on-one backup and coaching.

4. Business Stewardship: conscious entrepreneurship and livelihood alignment.

5. Executive Stewardship: organizational and cultural consulting.

In other words: whether you are simply looking for greater somatic stabilization / less reactivity, are actively working on financial stability or Fundamental Well-Being for yourself, or are part of a team or a family in which you want more love and more effectiveness — We-Flow is there for you. It recognizes the emergent nature of reality, and adapts. It has to do with alignment to Consciousness, rather than controlling your environment to maximize pre-determined outcomes or metrics.

We-Flow certification exists, but it is not the point. Becoming capable of showing up — consistently and without self-betrayal — is.

What We-Flow Changes in Your Life

I have not personally experienced the long-term effects of We-Flow (but looking forward to it!). However, I have heard from other graduates that life becomes simpler. Fewer projects, more aliveness. Less seeking, more happiness and embodiment. Stress decreases while income increases. Relational intensity stops being a problem and starts becoming fuel. Conflict transforms into play. Grief becomes warmth. Fear becomes motion.

Perhaps most strikingly, dependence on teachers and endless trainings fades. Inner wisdom comes online. Support remains; but it is mutual, not hierarchical.

Why This Matters Culturally: Standing at the Threshold

We live in a shame-based culture that prizes independence while starving people of support. At some level we learn that we are the problem – when the problem is actually the system:

“Insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” — [R. D. Lang]

Some people think that the system is deliberately organized to keep us in distress, so that we remain dependent and compliant. I don’t believe that. I believe that the system(s) we have inherited are just stupid. The system was created prior to the discovery of the Integral we-space. Now it’s time for an upgrade.

By making asking and giving support explicit, normal, and skillful, it creates a culture where coherence spreads naturally — into families, teams, organizations, and communities.

Could it really be that simple? To just normalize the idea of asking for and giving support? As opposed to the idea that asking for support is shameful?

I am entering the Stewardship path because something has clearly begun. This beginning took me completely by surprise. I can’t really say that I made it happen. It just happened to me while I was there. But I WAS there. This reminds me of Woody Allen: “80% of success is showing up”.

As such, the claim is not exactly that life becomes effortless. It’s more the idea that effort reorganizes itself, aligned with something larger than individual will.

If We-Flow delivers on even half of what I am already seeing, it represents a missing intermediary step between a life that actually works, and a spiritual awakening.

But why not make an attempt to go the whole way towards success AND awakening??? What do we have to lose, by imagining that Consciousness can deliver this?

What if “we have nothing to lose but our chains.” [Karl Marx, albeit in a very different context]

Indeed: Why not?

Click here to see a list of We-Flow events. The We-Flow Foundations (Stewardship Course) Weekend 1 happens in Amsterdam, Jan 29-31. I will be there.

Continue reading We-Flow Part 4

Continue reading We-Flow Part 4: Fundamental Well- Being, Financial Unsafety and Background Unhappiness.

Note: This is the second of a 4-part series on the practice of We-Flow. The other articles are:

• We-Flow, Part 1: How to Work with More Joy and Effectiveness

• We-Flow, Part 3: What is the Stewardship Program?

• We-Flow Part 4: Fundamental Well- Being, Financial Unsafety and Background Unhappiness

Where I am coming from

In my previous article, We-Flow, Part 1: How to Work with More Joy and Effectiveness, I described my first We-Flow immersion in Amsterdam last September: what the practice is, where it came from, and why it caught my attention.

This piece (Part 2) is a follow-up, written three months later, after living with the aftershocks of that immersion and completing a second We-Flow experience: a virtual immersion six weeks ago that triggered another wave of deep change.

“Effortless Manifestation” Is a Dangerous Phrase

I am now registered for the first weekend of the We-Flow Stewardship course, beginning in Amsterdam in late January of 2026.

But why a dangerous phrase? because “effortless manifestation” sounds inflated at best, delusional at worst. Three months ago, I would have rolled my eyes at it.

And yet, I’m forced into an uncomfortable position: my lived experience over the last quarter simply does not fit my previous models of how success happens. Something has changed.

Do I know for certain that We-Flow caused it? No. Is this guaranteed to work for everyone? Absolutely not.

What is clear, however, is this: at minimum, I am an unusually good We-Flow case study. Even if my results are a “fluke” (not reproducible), I feel that this is a story worth telling.

So here is the story of my transformation through two We-Flow immersions. In just three months.

We-Flow in Hindsight

When I revisit the core principles of We-Flow practice with the benefit of hindsight, I do see a coherence that wasn’t visible before.

However, I am not accustomed to this level of success. On top of that I am a [self-diagnosed] bipolar, and therefore quite suspicious of high states. For the last six years, my life has been—there’s no poetic way to say this—a shit-show. Chronic financial stress. A longing to see some tangible results towards my purpose, a purpose which Charles Eisenstein named so well in “that beautiful world which our hearts know is possible”. What I got instead was: relational turbulence, at best. A definite ambivalence about the rest of the human race (“you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them”). Feeling not-seen, misunderstood and dumped upon on a regular basis. I never quit (thank God), but part of me was beginning to wonder whether there was something seriously wrong with me.

That pattern only truly began to break when I met (and later married) Sophie, about sixteen months ago. A miracle. Perhaps the Lord Jesus Christ finally had mercy on me, a sinner. But my life remained quite turbulent.

Before We-Flow: Where I Actually Was

Anyway: when I arrived at my first We-Flow immersion in Amsterdam, I wasn’t inspired or expansive. I was tired, sad, lonely, overwhelmed. I was also in serious financial trouble, questioning whether a professional writing career was still viable, or whether it was time to give it up and get a “real job.” This was problematic, by the way, as I don’t have any marketable skills besides writing. I tried to start an AI Agency, but failed. My heart wasn’t in it. Or maybe I am just too old for that.

But something happened early the next morning, after the first day of the We-Flow immersion. I sat down and wrote a piece that felt like it came through me rather than from me: When I Was a Child, I Was Happy: 40 Years of Life in 600 Words. The article emerged from flow. It really made no sense at all to continue investing in autobiographical writings on my Substack platform. But when flow happens, I don’t argue. I obey.

The piece landed and received strong feedback. More importantly, it changed me. I knew something had moved, but I didn’t yet trust it. I filed the experience away and returned to my otherwise chaotic life.

The Second Crack in the Old Pattern

The weekend of my second We-Flow immersion, a virtual event this time which I attended from Berlin, I was in worse shape than before. Sophie and I were in the process of breaking up. Emotionally raw. Financially strained. Unstable. I later wrote about this in The Bipolar Writer’s Life: Notes from the Berlin Underground. That article also landed. I know when I have written a good piece because something moves inside me. The best I can describe it, is as a felt-sense of “quality”. I am internally at peace. Momentarily happy.

And then, improbably, something else happened.

Sophie and I sold out our Authentic Relating in Community (ARC) program for the first time ever: 12 people, nearly $3,000 in revenue. That income arrived exactly when it was needed.

The next week, our relationship was hanging by a thread, but we made it. “There is still life in these old bones”, I said to myself.

At the time, it felt like a fluke. It wasn’t.

Momentum Continues…

What I didn’t realize then was that something fundamental had shifted, and that the next six weeks would reorder my life.

I won’t unpack the full chain of events here, but here are the highlights:

• I decided to write a Circling Guide 3rd Edition as an anthology, completed my own contributions using existing material, recruited 15 influential leaders in the Authentic Relating movement to contribute articles, and launched a crowdfunding campaign that reached 40% of its $3,000 goal in a single week.

• We completed the ARC cohort, and it was a genuine home run.

• Our Thursday night in-person Authentic Relating and Circling events in Berlin suddenly took off—strong attendance every week, consistently deep impact.

• I also came face-to-face with a quieter truth: despite being partnered, I was lonely. I needed deeper friendships beyond my marriage—and I began taking concrete steps in that direction.

Other things happened too. My turbulent marriage settled down. I found myself deeply in love with my wife again, happy, more loving and surrendered to her than before. And very sexual. This last event is quite new, it occurred towards the end of those brilliant 3 months.

I was and continue very-very high, obviously. And at first all I could think was: God, that great sadist, is fucking with me. Three months to accomplish all of this? You gotta be kidding me. I will wake up one morning and the whole house of cards will fall down around me.

What I am looking at now — what I hope to achieve in the month prior to the We-Flow Stewardship course — is more “Fundamental Well-Being” (FWB). This is from Jeffery Martin’s ground-breaking book. I will say more about FWB in a later post. I equate it with what I call “somatic stabilization”.

So what exactly is the We-Flow Stewardship program?

What is it actually training people to do?

Continue reading at We-Flow, Part 3: What is the Stewardship Program (or click the image below)

Elizabeth Gilbert was my favorite author even before Eat Pray Love made her rich and famous. I devoured her earlier memoir The Last American Man (memoirs are my thing) and of course I loved Eat Pray Love along with millions of others. But her latest book, All the Way to the River: Love, Loss and Liberation, absolutely blew my mind.

This is Gilbert’s most powerful and socially relevant work yet. It’s about her lifetime sex and love addiction, told through the story of her ten-year friendship with Rayva, her hairdresser who became her closest companion and eventually her lover. Gilbert gave Rayva a house rent-free, encouraged her writing, and when Rayva was diagnosed with terminal cancer—six months to live, her liver ravaged by prior addictions and years of alcohol abuse—Gilbert left her husband and went to be with her.

The first months were ecstatic. Then Rayva relapsed. It started small: “bitters” which (according to Rayva) contained no alcohol. Then came the cocaine, the pills, the full descent. And here’s where Gilbert’s codependence revealed itself in all its ugly glory. She paid for everything. She enabled everything. She lost her mind.

The most harrowing scene in the book is when Gilbert plans to kill Rayva. Actually contemplates murder. Rayva, who despite her addiction remained a relational genius, immediately sensed it. The “intervention” that followed—told in tragic-comic detail—was a masterclass in unskillfulness. When Rayva told Gilbert she had “thrown herself at her,” it wounded Gilbert so deeply she went into complete emotional withdrawal. They did not see each other for months.

Eventually, they meet again at the home of the friend who took Rayva in during her final months. Gilbert becomes a crucial presence at Rayva’s deathbed — a service of love, grief, and cosmic reckoning.

And then Gilbert did something even more radical: she stopped all romantic relationships, shaved her head, stopped drinking and all drugs, and spent the next five years in 12-step recovery. WOW. The memoir ends with Gilbert discovering – for the first time in her life – the benefits of being alone. Including the karmic near-miss of her ending her “sobriety” with a man she was intensely attracted to, only to discover later that he was married.

The book is both hilarious and very moving in places. Gilbert captures the absurdity of recovery meetings, the insanity of her entering a full-blown “junkie” lifestyle (despite being a world-famous writer), her eventual choice between healing and maintaining anonymity. More than anything, I am left with the “aliveness” and intensity of addict relationships and addict lifestyle – which of course I relate to very strongly. It’s not all craziness; there is love and humor and fun there. The “humanity” of it is touching and beautiful. This is addiction as teacher, trauma as doorway, love as demolition. Gilbert went all the way down and came back. And she won against her addiction, which is truly extraordinary.

But my biggest revelation – with profound impact on my own turbulent marriage – was this: relationships don’t work without God. I’m skeptical of 12-step programs in general (my story is that the deep we-space facilitated by Authentic Relating is a superior transformational modality), but they clearly worked for Gilbert. Her willingness to surrender to something larger than herself, to acknowledge her powerlessness over her patterns, to seek healing through spiritual practice—this is what saved her. Perhaps the deep we-space is not enough: you need to acknowledge, and then surrender, to something larger than yourself. Perhaps you need God.

PS: Gilbert is now 56 and very prolific. I can’t imagine what she will come up with next, or whether she could ever write anything else as good and as socially significant. To my mind, this book raises her from one of the best modern writers to guru status.

To read the larger context of how this books fits within my current life and development, read my previous article The Bipolar Writer’s Life: Notes from the Berlin Underground.

This marks a real inflection point. After a long stretch of grinding, things are suddenly working across multiple fronts and I am “firing on all cylinders”. The creative writing surge alone would be noteworthy, but it’s happening alongside breakthroughs in my AR leadership, my marriage, and what I’m now calling my “life‑legacy project”, something you start thinking about at my age. I try and keep it short, but please be aware that getting it into ~1,000 words is already a victory.

We’ve come a long way from the original “Marco’s narcissistic ramblings”, which is how this email list started out 30 years ago. Some of you may remember this.

Historically, I am not fully happy unless I am in love or writing a book

Right now, I’m doing both—and possibly joining the founding team of a new intentional community in Virginia. The combination feels surreal. I am a bit too much in shock at my good fortune, perhaps, to fully feel the emotion called “happiness”. This may be my “tragedy story”, however (to quote my lovely wife, S.).

Time to re-think the tragedy story, perhaps. Or simply surrender to my life as it is and go to God (including the existence of tragedy stories). I am considering all options.

Note that I was basically an atheist until a few weeks ago. In these early days of my “conversion experience” (if you can call it that), I still don’t have much of a mature concept of God. I’m jealous of people who seem to have God on speed dial. With me, He communicates through riddles and sideways nudges. The bastard.

What actually triggered all this?

It began with Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, All the Way to the River, which I reviewed in this article. It hit me hard. At the time, I was in a meltdown with my wife, obsessively biking to calm myself, looping the same angry thoughts and unable to stop. On the upside, I have now explored the entirety of Northwest Berlin by bicycle.

Then something clicked (with Gilbert’s help): Wait. I’m an addict. A sex‑and‑love addict. An alcoholic. A bipolar. Of course my life feels out of control. What else would it feel like?

I will write more about this—including the three days S. kicked me out of the house (fully deserved)—in a forthcoming piece: Love, Rage, and God: The Year We Didn’t Kill Each Other. Marriage as Spiritual Practice. Right now it’s still a bit raw.

My current core inquiries are about creative mania as both gift and liability; chaos as a doorway to authenticity; and intimate relationship as laboratory for consciousness. Without some kind of spiritual frame, all this is just depressing. Or, at best, “sound and fury signifying nothing”. With God, maybe it becomes workable.

Enough said about that. Otherwise it might confirm to some of you I have completely gone off my rocker this time.

My AR career finally takes off

Even before the marital explosion, things were shifting. For the first time ever, we sold out our online program, Authentic Relating in Community: 12 students. Two sessions in, it’s already the best program we’ve run. As much as S. and I trigger each other, we’re strong complementary teachers. I joke that I’m the Circling philosopher, while she’s the love‑machine. Together it works.

The timing mattered financially too. Yes, I can live simply on Social Security. No, we haven’t been living simply. We traveled to the UK to see dear friends from our AR peer group, then went to the Transformational Connection Festival in Amsterdam. I’m still paying that off. A few months ago (as I wrote at the time) I had zero clients after four months. Last week, one finally appeared. God is great.

Meanwhile, our Thursday AR + Circling nights took off: 10+ people weekly, consistent regulars, and big experiences being reported. Momentum, at last.

The Intentional Community project

This part still feels fantastical, but here’s the outline.

A year and a half ago, Sophie and I led a program that spawned an unusually magical AR peer group. We kept meeting. Maybe we were just mirroring each other’s psycho-pathologies, but rapport like that is rare.

Six months in, someone floated the idea of living together. Wild, considering two of us were in Berlin, two in the UK, one in the U.S., and at the time none of us had met in person yet.

Fast‑forward: we’re now in active conversation with an intentional community startup in Virginia. We love them; they love us. There’s land, existing buildings, and even a retreat center. The five of us could become the “heart of the community.” If it happens, it might be the first intentional community built explicitly from the integral we‑space—the deep relational field cultivated in Authentic Relating.

Honestly, I’m still pinching myself.

A follow‑up piece is coming: Intentional Community in the We‑Space: The Business of Belonging.

What else?

Nothing dramatic (and thank God for that). Still working on my tragedy story. Still in wonder and confusion and humility at the challenge of being me. Still pursuing this thorny, joyful and heart-breaking problem which is, IMHO, not just at the center of my personal neurosis, but at the center of our collective neurosis. The problem is, how can human beings get along? How can we “create the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible” [Charles Eisenstein]

If you haven’t read the previous article The Dream Is Alive, Part 1: The Trellis Community Story, you may want to start there for the context of where we are and what we’re seeking.

My passion for Intentional Community (IC) is 25 years old. In that earlier article, I explain my “why” and tell the full story of the commune I founded with my first wife, which ran from 2007–2013. A failed experiment, but a glorious one.

Before diving into the current situation, let me answer the question:

Is an Authentic Relating Intentional Community Even Possible?

Yes, absolutely—but it’s still experimental and edgy. As I shared in a prior article Trauma is Good For You, the more there is at stake, the harder it is to do AR. The stakes don’t get any higher than with people you are choosing to live with, hoping to grow old together, and with whom you have pooled your money to create a joint project. This is one of the reasons why most Intentional Communities fail. And even if they stay afloat, they often become total shit-shows.

There are currently two (and only two) ICs in the world fully sourced from Authentic Relating (AR) principles. I’ll share where they are at the end.

How Our Project Got Started

I’m part of a group of five people who met through an AR program Sophie and I ran about a year ago. When the program ended, we liked each other so much that we kept meeting weekly. At first, we had no particular agenda—we just went deep every time on our personal issues. It was kind of ecstatic, as good AR groups can be.

Soon, we discovered that we were all deeply interested in Intentional Community. We found an IC-in-formation near Lisbon called Neos and got excited, but ultimately decided not to invest. The main reason: we want multi-family housing and the ability to build our own homes—which doesn’t fit with Neos’ planned development model. (That model, standard for eco-villages, is easier for zoning approval but less flexible.)

Still, Neos remains immensely attractive: the idea is of a group of cultural creatives living in the we-space and collaborating on world-changing projects. The founders don’t explicitly claim AR roots, but they embody the kind of consciousness our group is seeking.

We are now looking to either join or—more likely—start an IC sourced directly from the Integral We-space. This is the umbrella-term for the kind of consciousness that Authentic Relating and Circling practices generate.

The Main Problem of ICs

The core challenge of intentional communities has always been the same: how can people truly get along? In a cultural-creative IC, the game is even higher—you don’t just want harmony, you want co-creation. You want to “create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible” (Charles Eisenstein). We also want a focus on health and well-being and shared practices — what one member of our group cleverly calls an “AR-shram”.

To me, the main purpose of an IC is to bring together kind, caring, fun, funny, and smart people—people who spread joy and who have enough self-awareness to pull back when they’re not spreading joy. Such people attract like-minded souls and amplify each other’s impact.

There’s a common belief in the IC movement that strong agreements create good communities. Actually, no. Good ICs are created from love. Agreements and shared philosophies help, but they’re not the foundation. The foundations are emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and kindness. These things cannot be legislated, don’t happen “by accident” (meaning it’s a lot of work), and there is not a spiritual philosophy in the world that can guarantee it happening.

So the central question is: can higher states of consciousness and love be trained?

I would argue yes. Love emerges in the inter-subjective we-space—something AR directly facilitates. This takes a minute (or a lifetime) to master. But until people give up the illusion that there’s a single perfect philosophy or developmental model that guarantees harmony for all time (after we have agreed on it, of course)... until that happens, we’re stuck. Even AR is not exactly a “model”, as it’s emergent. It’s adaptive to the people and circumstances at hand.

Next Steps

If you’re interested in co-creating an AR-sourced IC with us, email me at marco@marcbeneteau.com or WhatsApp me at +49 1573 9667979. Our group is considering all locations right now, but we are in active conversations with a community in Virginia.

So Who Are the Two Existing AR ICs?

They’re both fairly early stages. Although there’s an explosion of eco-villages and co-housing projects worldwide, a true AR-sourced IC would raise the bar significantly.

1. Transformational Connection House (Portugal): Technically a guesthouse for AR practitioners. I recently heard the business model isn’t sustainable yet, and they’re exploring new directions. I spent several days there and loved it. Especially the daily circles.

2. Twin Peaks (working title) in Marshall, North Carolina: Not officially AR-branded, but with Sara and Geof at the helm, how could it not be? They just closed on the land and are offering six homesteading lots.

Interested in Authentic Relating?

Our next program starts Tuesday, Nov. 4

A check-in before the story

I will start with the context of the full article (published on my new Intentional Community Substack, Creating Utopia). To skip the context, and/or if you were part of the Trellis communal experiment (2007-2013), you can read the full article directly.

It’s been five months since I launched my AI agency. Still zero paying clients. Financial pressure is high. But so is the creative fire: I’ve written some of the best work of my life lately. Pieces like Starting Over at 65: Broke, Brilliant, and Betting on Ideas; When I Was a Child, I Was Happy; and (for my one pro-bono client whom I love) We-Flow: How to Work with More Joy and Effectiveness.

Even with all this production, depression hit again this week. Nothing new — I know the terrain — but it’s never fun. I write, at least in part, to keep the depression at bay.

So why keep writing?

Because I can’t not.

I say to myself: “Marco, you can look for a job tomorrow. But today, you must write.”

The problem is that at my age, a “job” is not enough. It’s actually kind of depressing. I want a life-legacy project. I want work that I enjoy and which makes a difference. I want to know that I can help people through my words, actions and ideas.

So I carry on with my hobby projects. Yet my inner critic is brutal: You’re too far outside the mainstream to ever matter. You’ll die in the gutter, sick, broke, alone and forgotten.

Then I remember my wife Sophie — living proof that my darkest story isn’t true. But when my “genius” pieces don’t explode with new subscribers (still hovering around 400), the voice gets louder. I know it’s irrational, but it’s there.

The Good News

In the midst of all this mishigas, two big shifts are happening currently.

First, I’m learning to write shorter, tighter pieces. AI is helping a lot with that. I am discovering that the combination of Marco + AI is much better than either of them alone. I am not embarrassed about writing with the help of AI, I am proud. Because without me in the driver’s seat, AI writing is not great. And without AI, my writing is just not as good. It’s that simple.

Second, I’m niching down. My writing is all over the map, making it difficult for people who want my content to find me. I have already split off my sexual writing into a new Substack, Relational Erotic Intelligence. Subscribe there is you are interested in my book, As Lovers Do, or in my sexual writings.

And now I am splitting off another Substack: Creating Utopia. It’s focused entirely on my journey with intentional community.

The new Intentional Community Substack starts with The Dream Is Alive, Part 1: The Trellis Community Story — the tale of our six-year experiment in Philadelphia (2007–2013). Some of you lived that story with me; others may be discovering it for the first time.

Twenty-five years after Trellis failed, I’m starting again. My goal now is to find, or start, an IC that is sourced from get-go from Authentic Relating ideas.

Get the full story of what I have learned about IC in the last 25 years here.

Interested in Authentic Relating?

Our next program starts Tue, Oct. 28 at 7pm Eastern / 1pm CET

Introduction – My First Encounter with We-Flow

Note: This is the first of a 4-part series on the practice of We-Flow. The follow-up articles are:

• We-Flow, Part 2: Moving Towards Effortless Manifestation

• We-Flow, Part 3: What is the Stewardship Program?

• We-Flow Part 4: Fundamental Well- Being, Financial Unsafety and Background Unhappiness

I recently attended a We-Flow immersion, a two-day workshop in Amsterdam with Stéphane Segatori and his team. As someone who has spent over a decade in the global Authentic Relating (AR) and Circling community — and as the author of the most popular book on Circling — I was deeply curious about how this practice might translate into business and work-life contexts. My personal passion has long been to explore how these relational practices can support organizational life, leadership, and innovation.

The workshop itself was hybrid: two facilitators (Stéphane and Agnes), two participants in person (including myself), and three joining via Zoom. I was initially captivated by a “Meeting Owl,” a camera/microphone device placed in the center of the room that automatically highlights the current speaker on Zoom. Some pretty nifty tech 😄.

Stéphane began by setting context with something simple yet profound: the right balance of playfulness and seriousness, which is at the core of We-Flow. As someone who enjoys both, this immediately landed with me. I could relax, knowing that this was probably going to be fun.

We continued with check-ins. I was impressed by the presence and thoughtfulness of the other participants, thinking to myself that this looked like a power-group.

Soon I encountered one of We-Flow’s distinctive practices: “receiving backup.” Here, one facilitator takes a participant into a side space (physical or virtual) if they need attention in order to become more present. I witnessed Stéphane reading the energy with uncanny precision. At one point he asked the other local participant, unprompted, if she wanted a “backup” breakout. She immediately said yes. His intuition — tracking not only the group as a whole but each participant’s readiness — was remarkable.

As the day unfolded, the group moved into deeper resonance. I can’t recall every process (later I learned there are over 30 of them), but what stayed with me was the sense that Stéphane and Agnes were attuned to the emergent needs of the group with near-psychic clarity.

By the end of the first day, I felt strangely happy — buoyant, light, expanded. The next morning, immediately after I awoke, I wrote one of the best pieces of creative writing I’ve ever produced: When I was a child, I was happy: 40 years of life in 600 words. As a brief summary of my life, looking into the future from the lens of the past, it was a fitting exercise to begin my second day of We-Flow.

By the end of the second day, I was physically tired, but the group coherence remained palpable. I took a nap in the afternoon, and it was one of the most restful I have ever had. I truly felt that this was “my tribe”.

After the immersion ended, I was in a very high, expansive state. Over the next week, my creative output exploded. New essays flowed out of me almost daily. My networking leapt forward. New opportunities opened, potential collaborations, even a job offer. Books I’d been searching for appeared. Even clarity in my marriage seemed to emerge as a byproduct. We-Flow didn’t just affect me in the room; it activated a wave of momentum in my life.

This was my personal entry point. But what exactly is We-Flow, and why does it seem to catalyze such effects?

What is We-Flow?

We-Flow is an emergent relational and livelihood practice born at the intersection of integral theory, authentic relating, circling, and Zen state training. Stéphane Segatori describes it not as something he “created,” but as something that emerged in collective practice: the we-space between people committed to inquiry, listening, and creation.

At its core, We-Flow is about intentional origination (setting a shared intent) and intersubjective validation (checking experiences together in real time). Instead of relying on one expert or top-down authority, the group co-creates its own intelligence. The result is a space where creativity, connection, and productivity arise naturally. I later learned that this is called an “execution container”: we are meeting to connect, but also to get creative work done.

Through every practice, there is a strong focus on consent: the leaders frequently poll the group for what they want, and there is always an opportunity to do solo-work, if it feels more alive than the group session.

We-Flow integrates simple but powerful practices:

• Appreciations – ending meetings by naming what we value in each other.

• Checking assumptions – surfacing hidden beliefs to get more into shared reality.

• Playfulness & seriousness – actively balancing lightness with focus

• (Action-enablement - at any moment action in the space is welcome.)

• Backup - giving focused attention to those who need to reset. Helping a person return to a state of presence and aliveness.

• Breakouts – Similar to Backup but with multiple people. A sub-we-space where people are receiving or doing the exact practice they need at this very moment.

• Follow-up and Integration: this is perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of the training: 8-weeks of follow-up meetings where each cohort gets to take the practices into real life. We-Flow is more than a workshop, it is an integrated life-practice.

The effect is not abstract. It’s a shift I felt in my body / mind and overall attitude towards life. My decisions happened faster and more easily, creativity flowed, opportunities multiplied.

Two Applied Variants: Individuals, Organizations

We-Flow scales from personal breakthroughs to collective impact through two complementary versions: We-Flow for Individuals for personal evolution, and We-Flow for Organizations designed for businesses of all sizes.

We-Flow for Individuals cultivates emotional awareness, authentic connection, and purposeful action, helping people integrate insights into daily life while developing clarity, resilience, confidence, creativity, and a grounded sense of fulfillment.

We-Flow for Organizations builds on these individual transformations, equipping teams with a turn-key toolbox of 50 micro-practices across seven intervention layers. This integration of personal and collective growth accelerates development, boosts engagement, prevents burnout, and enhances talent retention; ultimately leading to profitable, high-performing ecosystems.

Why We-Flow Matters in Business Today

Conventional business culture often sacrifices human connection at the altar of productivity. The result is stress, disconnection, disengagement, and ultimately loss of effectiveness. The assumption is that employees need to be directed or focused towards a task or role, and that bringing in their “whole selves” would introduce dissonance, distraction and chaos.

We-Flow challenges that assumption. The core premise: effectiveness and joy are not opposites. In fact, they reinforce each other. A group or team in flow produces more. Not by squeezing harder, but by tapping into collective intelligence.

Indeed, Stéphane told me that when people are introduced to We-Flow-enabled cultures during client companies’ onboarding days, they often shed tears and say it’s the opposite of their previous negative experiences.

For purpose-driven leaders, changemakers, and organizations looking for coherence, this is game-changing. As one leader put it: “We aren’t just looking for productivity; we want coherence, flow, and real human connection.” That is exactly what We-Flow delivers.

My Personal Takeaways

From my immersion, here’s what I took away:

1. Attunement can be trained. Stéphane’s intuitive sense of what each participant needed wasn’t magic, it was practice. And it’s something We-Flow trains into groups.

2. Playfulness is serious business. Bringing humor and levity wasn’t just tolerated; it was welcomed as a core ingredient for flow.

3. The effects ripple outward. The immersion didn’t end at the closing circle. My creativity, relationships, and opportunities literally exploded in the weeks after. The practice seems to unlock resources far beyond the session.

Some We-Flow Wins and Case Studies

InclusionTree (Australia)

One company, InclusionTree, runs fully on We-Flow principles. Their HR director reported that her intuition has become slightly “superhuman.” Colleagues remarked on her uncanny ability to read situations and respond with precision, even sensing what people may be going through at a distance. InclusionTree is now training additional facilitators internally and even considering providing We-Flow training services to other partner organizations as there is a demand. They’ve become a recognized leader in their niche industry. Not just because of technical expertise, but because of cultural practices that create agility and innovation.

Revenue Impact

For individuals, We-Flow training consistently generates measurable business results. Participants in 4–6 month We-Flow courses typically observe an average of €2,000 in new revenue directly attributable to the practices and follow-up support. Many report much higher returns.

Small Teams & Meetings

Small business teams who adopt We-Flow practices — such as beginning with a “landing round”, enabling human connection, reframing meetings as opportunities for collective flow, etc. — report dramatic shifts. Meetings get shorter. Misunderstandings resolve faster. Important work is directly done during meetings, and more time is freed in-between meetings. People feel energized instead of drained.

The Future of We-Flow

We-Flow is not just a workshop, it’s an evolving ecosystem. Today it spans:

• Immersion Weekends (Amsterdam, Online, and beyond)

• Stewardship Programs –6-month trainings for people to bring We-Flow into their personal lives and organizations

• B2B Consulting – embedding We-Flow into corporate cultures

• FlowAI – an emerging project to digitize We-Flow, making it accessible on-demand

The vision is bold: to integrate purpose, livelihood, and joy into the very structure of business life. Not as a feel-good add-on, but as a core operating system.

Conclusion – An Invitation

My own We-Flow immersion blew my mind. It showed me that the dream I carried when I first came across Circling and Authentic Relating in 2016 (9 years ago!) was not only possible, it was real. That dream is to take we-space practices out of the exclusive arena of personal development, and bring them to every corner of the world and every sphere of human activity.

We-Flow is not just another training, it’s a different way of being together. One where effectiveness and joy multiply each other. One where “we get shit done”, but in connection.

The business world is hungry for this. Leaders know the old models aren’t working. Employees are craving meaning and connection. The time is ripe for practices that integrate human depth with business effectiveness.

Continue reading Part 2…

Continue reading We-Flow, Part 2: Moving Towards Effortless Manifestation.

👉 For a list of upcoming We-Flow events, see here. There are also regularly scheduled free “taster events”.

(Note to long-time readers: the first part will be familiar—feel free to skim.)

I’ve spent the last forty years in what I sometimes call “the 40-year war against myself and against the world, trying to make a buck and get a little love, mostly unsuccessfully.” It’s been a jagged, unpredictable path, but it has brought me here—to 65, on the cusp of starting yet another career, this time in AI.

Where I’m Coming From

I’m a leading figure in the Authentic Relating (AR) movement, having written the most popular book on the practice of Circling. I met Sophie through the movement about 1 1/2 years ago, and now we are married. Sold everything and moved to Germany. We now lead a weekly circle at our house as well as online programs, and when it works, these groups are phenomenal. We have wildly complementary skills and leadership styles. It’s a tumultuous, deeply fulfilling relationship. I adore her—most of the time. She adores me too. I’m a very lucky man.

This relationship is the end-point of the forty-year journey with several decisive inflection points. The last came in 2016 (10 years ago), when I discovered Circling at the Boulder Integral Center. That discovery led to writing the Circling Guide, which opened doors for me around the world. Later came my failed but highly developmental attempt to start an AR-sourced intentional community in Mexico, and then meeting Sophie a year ago. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” they say.

I’m not sure how much fun I’m having lately—it’s a lot of drama—but it’s certainly alive.

Money, Family, and Triggers

My life has two primary arcs. Before age 37: wealthy but miserable. After 37: mostly broke but, often, happy. I became a writer, started communities, and met the love of my life. But none of it has been smooth.

Over time I developed a theory I call karma acceleration: as you differentiate and develop, you inevitably leave some people behind. It’s hard enough in normal circumstances; harder still for someone like me, who’s intensely triggered when ignored, condescended to, or simply unseen.

I can rationally understand that I dance to my own drum, that people’s lives diverge, that “no prophet is recognized in his hometown.” But emotionally it hurts that for all my 10-year effort, my monthly royalties barely cover my car insurance. Under all of my hurt sits the cultural equation I’ve internalized: existential worth = income.

Financial Envy and Hard Realities

Fast forward to last summer. Thank God for my small pension, or I’d be on the street. My wife isn’t happy about this, and who can blame her? Three years ago, I lost all my savings and credit in a crypto scam. I’m generally capable with finances but have atrocious investment judgment. If I’d put $1000 into Microsoft in 1990 and held it, I’d be retiring comfortably. Same with Bitcoin. It’s not a noble emotion, but financial envy is real.

The AI Awakening

And then came AI. I realized—or imagined—that in this pivotal moment in human history, anyone with a brain can make money in AI if they’re tech-savvy and entrepreneurial. Pre-retirement, I ran a marketing agency that had some impact, and created successful online courses. I’m late to the game, sure, but I’m healthy, smart, and married to a brilliant and beautiful woman. Maybe all prior disasters happened for a reason. Maybe God’s plan is better, than any plan I could have invented for myself.

But one nagging question remains: am I getting more neurotic with age, or was I always this way and just didn’t notice?

Me, AI Entrepreneur??? Who am I kidding?

So I dove in. Over the last five months, I’ve started the equivalent of a Master’s in AI, geared toward entrepreneurship. I can’t tell you how many business ideas I explored with the help of AI. I founded an AI Agency and began offering “AI-savvy virtual assistant services” for $25/hour. After five months? Zero clients.

Maybe it’s because I spent more time at AR and entrepreneur conferences pursuing my hobbies, than studying or reaching out to potential clients. Maybe it’s because starting a business is tough, and there is always a learning curve.

Or maybe I’ve simply gone off the rails. Nikola Tesla at least ran a major company before going broke. I’ve only had ideas.

Still, a few real opportunities have emerged recently. My writing has taken off, both in quality and in speed, with the help of AI (I have another article about that in production by the way, of how the Human / AI collaboration creates much better writing than either of us working alone). Given my background as a writer, with three self-published books and extensive blogging (mostly for fun up until now), why not simply be paid for my writing? I had a lot of fun at a We-Flow event recently, and even more fun writing about it.

Is it possible that my livelihood also be my passion? If not, I am in trouble. Because at my age, I am not looking for job, exactly. I am looking for a life-legacy project.

But how long will that take? Balancing vision and overall well-being with immediate financial needs is tricky. My men’s group, which I started six years ago and has been profound from day one, recently gave me some hard but useful feedback: I’m not fully in reality. Borrowing money to fund my lifestyle isn’t “adult.” They’re right. Some of what I’m pursuing is perhaps fantasy. The problem of course, is that I won’t know until I’ve tried.

Intellectual Aristocracy

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo

This brings me to what I call “intellectual aristocracy.” These are the people who lead culture not through wealth—whether earned, inherited, or lucky—but through ideas. You can be both wealthy and part of the intellectual aristocracy (Jean-Paul Sartre, for example). He was a financially successful philosopher (which is quite a coup), and his lifelong love affair with Simone de Beauvoir was legendary. As a lover of women, I can relate—and, yes, envy him a bit.

My AR peers dislike the term “intellectual aristocracy.” They find it elitist. They’re probably right. But I’m keeping it. For me, it’s not about making cultural waves through sheer talent or power. Plenty of brilliant artists, businessmen and politicians are complete assholes. Intellectual aristocracy is about a quality of life: where love, connection, joy, and impact dominate consciousness. Where you “don’t sweat the small stuff”. Where you realize that hurt, disappointment and failure are part of every life. Where you don’t waste any emotional energy in envy towards others who are more
”successful” than you.

The question is: how much neurosis (or developmental trauma) can an intellectual aristocrat sustain before they regress to the lowest common denominator of humankind, clinging to adaptive strategies, striving only to maintain survival, stability and self-importance in lives of quiet desperation?

Closing

I don’t have neat answers. Career reinvention at 65 is volatile, raw, and risky.

This is the experiment. And if you’re reading this, perhaps you’re running your own version too.

An invitation to explore Authentic Relating

If you are interested in exploring Authentic Relating and the challenges of being human in a small, intimate container, check out Sophie’s and mine Authentic Relating in Community. The next cohort starts October 28

Updates to my Substack

I made a major update to my substack yesterday, organizing it into categories. Reason being, that my writing covers a lot of topics and you may not be interested in all of them. From now, you will have an option to unsubscribe from any category.

My primary interest remains the application of we-space practices (including Circling and Authentic Relating) to real-world problems, which includes my development as an AR leader and entrepreneur. This is the topic of this post, which I am putting in category The Business of AR.

The second category I am calling “Stories and Ramblings” which is my creative writing, in my usual funny / vulnerable style. It includes most recent post, When I was a child, I was happy.

I have also categories Marriage and Eros (on my turbulent but deeply connected marriage), Comic Relief, and Relational AI (currently empty, as I am just starting out).

Is Circling and Authentic Relating enough?

There’s the rub (to quote my great predecessor, Shakespeare 😊).

A bit of context on this. As a self-described “Authentic Relating and Circling Evangelist”, my desire is to say “Yes, it’s enough. All problems will surface in the interpersonal we-space, and there is an opportunity to resolve them there”. However, even though that answer is technically correct, the truth is more nuanced.

The keyword here is “opportunity”. Just because opportunity exists, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

And furthermore, just because it’s working for me (or appearing to work), doesn’t mean it will work for everybody.

A few days ago, I had a very interesting talk with my good friend Jason Zwolak, who is one of the founders of Authentic Montreal and its online version, Authentic Relating Go. What he told me absolutely floored me. So much so, that we agreed to make a podcast on this question exactly.

In the meantime, however, I want to say the following:

The direction I am taking currently, the big insight I had in the post Monetizing Authentic Relating, is that once you start to create “I -Thou” relationships with everyone around you [Martin Buber], and solicit feedback from the people around you on how well you are doing this, there is absolutely no way for you to NOT be affected. Even if you do nothing but bring that style of relating into your business networking (as in LinkedIn), you will win, as you will stand out from all the spammy marketers. The key here, is communicating that you actually care (and hope that it’s true). This would be level 1.

But what about level 2 - such as regular attendance at powerfully-held circles, such as S. and I frequently do at Relateful.com circles? And/or leading your own groups?

I - Thou relationships emerge in the we-space, such as inside a skillfully held Circling container. My thesis is the more you do this, the faster will be your development.

Results however, will vary, especially as you gain skill. I have already written about this in Trauma is good for you. I can see, looking back, that I was a bit naive when I had those insights, which was almost a year ago.

What is YOUR opinion on this? Drop me a comment here, if you like.

Anyway, these are some of most juicy jokes I have saved over the years. Enjoy. And if you like, comment and share.

Note: the captions are mine. Some of these are targeted to writers and coffee-addicts. Which is pretty much the same thing, in my book.

Context

This is a story I wrote during a We-flow immersion in Amsterdam which was an extraordinary experience. I like this story because I value conciseness, but rarely achieve it. This is the story of my life in 600 words. An exercise which I heartily recommend.

I hope you enjoy. If you do, please comment.

Act 1

When I was a child, I was happy. Surrounded by a large loving family, and living in a very exciting place and time (Italy), I believed that love and happiness and infinite manifestation was my birthright. I believed that the world was my oyster, and that I could have anything which I dreamed to be possible. This idea was my father’s supreme gift to me.

But there was a shadow in the picture, and that was my father’s bipolarity. My sisters and mother were affected, but I was okay. Nobody knew this at the time, that I was also Asperger’s (a form of autism). I was alone in my private world, and I was happy there. I lived in the domain of things and ideas. It was very rich and I lacked for nothing. When my parents separated at the age of 16, I barely noticed.

Act 2

I discovered women and my overpowering attraction to them. I was useless with them, apparently. The key to happiness was right there in front of me, but beyond my reach.

My happiness evaporated. I was left only with my friends, who were few and far between, and the intoxicating power of ideas. Later on I discovered I could write. This was a paltry substitute for the love of women. My longing for deep sexual loving tortured me day and night.

Act 3

I had my first girlfriend, and it did not go well. My second and third girlfriends were not great either. The 4th and 5th (which occurred simultaneously) almost destroyed me. But I learned a great deal.

Act 4

After recovering from girlfriends #4 and 5, I got married for the first time. I became a step-dad and we created a commune in Philadelphia that was very successful initially. There was love there, and manifestation.

For a while I was in heaven. But my unconsciousness and the cruelty of the world caught up with me. Overcome with financial and relational problems, the commune shut down and my marriage dissolved.

Act 5

Improbably given my autism, I discovered in myself gifts in emotional communication, empathy, and a super-power in vulnerability. I wrote books and became a leading figure in the Authentic Relating movement. There was a kind of desperation there, because hardly anything I had done before had worked. I was successful early on in making money, but it did not really help. It actually became a kind of obsession. And then, even money evaporated.

Act 6

I met S. and fell in love, a bit over a year ago. She is the love of my life. After an intoxicating and turbulent start, we got married last February. My mother worried, others told me it would never work. Given my history, I could definitely see their point of view. But they were wrong. It’s been difficult, and I have written about this. We are still together, as much in love as we were at the beginning. And much wiser.

Act 7

I still believe that love and happiness and infinite manifestation are always available. I never stopped believing it, and I never stopped chasing the dream.

If I had known, however, that it would take 40 years... of course I would have done things differently. I would have avoided many mistakes caused by my ignorance, selfishness and stupidity.

But I didn’t know.

“Don’t die with your music still in you” -- Wayne Dyer

What’s next?

I am currently seeing an explosion of opportunities. What’s very unique about this time of life is that the dream that I had when I discovered Authentic Relating and Circling 7 years ago, is becoming real. That dream is to take we-space practices such AR and Circling, out of the exclusive domain of personal development, and into the domain of a new world operating system. I have found a job.

I will share details later, if you like. Just stay tuned to this channel.

What is YOUR dream? How long have you carried it, and how is it going for you?

In my prior post, Monetizing Authentic Relating, I shared my recent AR leadership journey and the real ”aha” insight that I can (and should) bring AR into my personal and professional networking, using an idea I call “Authentic Relating in the wild”. In this article I go one deeper, and talk about the miracle that is currently occurring to me. This includes what’s happening inside our AR peer group, our Intentional Community (IC) project, my marriage, and overall explosion of opportunities in the AR space which followed Sophie’s and my time at the Transformational Connection Festival.

About five years ago, my life really hit the skids

About the time that Covid hit (2020), I started feeling that I was living inside what I call “a lunatic circus”. Also known as “the mega-epic shit-show”. Here is that story.

The year before, I had lost all my passive income in the catastrophic failure of my web hosting business. I had moved to Asheville NC, attempting unsuccessfully (and for the third time) to build community there. Then Covid hit and the whole world lost its mind. Somehow I was able to pull in enough money to finance a pickup and camper shell which I called “the micro-RV”, and imagined that I would live in it. This lasted 3 weeks. I ended up wintering at my sister's place in Boston for 3 months, followed by about 2 years of community adventures which landed me in a very relationally dysfunctional political commune in Wyoming. I wrote about that in the introduction to Relational Power, because despite all challenges, Wyoming was an extraordinary experience. I learned a lot and the natural beauty of the place deeply affected me. But the loneliness I felt there was profound.

In late 2022 I left the commune (which by then had shut-down anyway) and started another round of adventures. Just as I was writing Relational Power – a very high experience – I discovered I had lost a large amount of money in a crypto fraud. I lost not just all my savings, but my credit as well. To make matters worse, I led a social media campaign whose successful outcome was to end the career of this particular scammer. But our group fell apart and one of my colleagues turned against me.

And then, right in the middle of this action (and maybe the cause of it), I had a small embolic stroke which caused me several months of partial memory loss and killed my tennis game. This turned into quite a profound experience, as I was wondering for a while whether my career was over. I had some times of profound inner peace as I accepted that possibility; but overall it scared the shit out of me.

But I kept on trucking…

I call myself a “crazy fuck” because I am quite far out on the neuro-diversity spectrum. But paradoxically, my neuro-diversity makes me quite resilient, from the fact that my autism makes it so that I don’t care that much what other people think of me. After I recovered from my stroke I moved to Mexico and then spent a year in an unsuccessful (but glorious) attempt to create an AR-inspired Intentional Community (IC) in a residential hotel in Mexico. But the “lunatic circus” amplified.

What I call “the lunatic circus” is when people around me get heavily triggered and behave in incomprehensible ways, appearing to me to have lost their minds. Typically, they then do one of two things which are guaranteed to put me into a tail-spin: they terminate the relationship in anger and blame, or (almost as bad) they terminate the relationship with no communication at all. This is a direct hit on my core wound: that I am too far outside the mainstream to get any attention or have any real friends, and am doomed to die alone, sick and broke in the gutter. It’s essentially the belief that I am crazy or fundamentally delusional. Most of my birth family appear to hold this belief, by the way. This belief (let’s be generous to me and call it a projection) would not hurt so much if I did not suspect that it was true. I am, of course, one of the inmates of the lunatic circus. Maybe it’s me who is the real crazy one.

What I eventually realized is that this phenomenon of receiving negative projections and people distancing is predictable once you hit the deeper levels of relational awareness and start upping your game. I wrote about this in Trauma is good for you: Authentic Relating and "karma acceleration". Fundamentally, the purpose of relationship is to mirror you in both your greatness and your dysfunction. Nowadays, when people mirror my dysfunction, I try and take it as a gift. An opportunity for self-reflection and deepening presence. I have also learned that “karma acceleration” happens even more when there is a lot at stake – as in an Intentional Community, business venture, or any important relationship, especially sexual relationship. Yay for me, for being in the game.

So here is the upside to “karma acceleration”: MANIFESTATION

If you are reading this and feel, as I do sometimes, “beaten down by the world”, that nobody understands you, that your friends don’t get you (let alone your family), that nothing you do works out or generates any kind of impact: – I am here (hopefully) to give you some inspiration: This too shall pass.

Note here: your inner critic is your friend. My inner critic sometimes speaks very articulately. He recognizes that my fundamental problem is that the world has not yet hailed me for the genius which I think I am and rolled out the red carpet for me. He tells me I have to work to be successful (like all the rest) and get with business reality.

Bottom-line: nobody cares about my feelings. That’s business and relational reality.

The good news is that I hit the low point 2 ½ years ago

It turns out the low point was January 2013. Since then there have been multiple, incremental miracles.

The first miracle was having immediate outrageous success in AR leadership in Mexico. I also started leading professional (paid) online programs which I filled from my newsletter and were quite impactful. I led AR programs on the ground in Mexico as well that were fantastic. I felt like I was firing on all cylinders, for the first time in years. Then I met Sophie, partnered with her, and convinced the Global Eco-Village Network to produce AR programs for us. We are soon starting the 5th ARC cohort. Also over the last year, I fell in love and got married, in a very turbulent relationship which I wrote about in Couples in the trenches. We stuck with it and are now in a very sweet space together. I seem to be now in powerful manifestation, which I will fill you in on in my next post relating to our AR peer group, our search for an IC, my idea to form a membership association for the AR community, our opening an event space in Berlin, and Sophie’s new website.

The Authentic Relating journey is edgy. It can be lonely, scary, dangerous. But it is still, hands-down, the best game I know to play

I only recently realized the deep loneliness, the trauma and the fear, of these last 5 years, of which the last 2 ⅓ years really “took the prize”. COVID really hit me where it hurts. The world is a very troubled place right now, with right-wing movements taking over everywhere and a certifiable lunatic taking the presidency of the nation I love, the nation which originated democracy in the gathering of some of the most extraordinary men who were ever born.

I do believe, however: this too shall pass. I look to the future, “eyes on the prize”.

Jesus said it well: “the meek shall inherit the earth”. “Meek” does not mean “depressed”. It means humble. It speaks to those of us who are playing a different game. A game of heartfulness, rather than a game of power-over and control.