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]