Founder’s Bio

Please Allow me to introduce myself I am a man of Karmic Wealth and Taste,

I’ve been around a long long year and I  extol you not to let this incarnation go to waste

Please to meet you, hope you can guess my name

(Lest this seem even stranger then it regardless likely will, for those who don’t know, this is riff off of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ by the Rolling Stones)

Ok I’m not going to make guess ….

Hi, My name is Cholwa, and I am a man with a Vision, well two actually One is an end result and the other is of how to get there (or at least a significant contribution to such) This result Vision is of a sustainable Global Civilization that is grounded in a widespread embodied realization of our interconnectedness and that much more fully reflects the basic goodness of people then the one that is manifest now. It is a world where far more people are living from their Awakened HeartMind and the systems that shape human interaction with each other and the environment reflect and support this. I call the vision of how to get there the Alchemical Global Empowerment Matrix- Alchemical GEM for short or A GEM for even shorter. To be honest I have no idea how likely it is that the envisioned end result will be achieved but I am confident that by pursuing this vision I can both increase the probability of said result as well create massive benefit regardless of the direction the Global Civilization goes. It sure beats designer terminator genes or terminator robots and seems like a healthy outlet for my megalomaniacal tendencies 🙂

The Alchemical GEM is an integrally related set of projects. The Alchemical Hero Academy is the first project of the Alchemical GEM that I am focusing on to nurture to self-sustainability. I believe it to be the most leveraged of all aspects of the Alchemical GEM in respect to the development of its other aspects and in directly maximizing potentials towards the Alchemical GEM’s main objective. It is also special in that it becomes even more relevant in the case of the realization of less desirable outcomes. Its activity simultaneously maximizes the most positive outcomes while preparing to mitigate the intensity of the worst possible outcomes,

At this birthing stage of the Alchemical Hero Academy, I am the guy responsible for all the writing on this website. I am also the designer of the overall structure of Alchemical Hero Training and of the specific trainings be created at this time. Since I am not an expert in all aspects of all the various vectors of training that are planned I expect many of the training modules will be a collaborative effort. However my expertise is especially suited to the foundational trainings and earlier modules, so for the moment all the trainings will be design by and led by me. (With the obvious exception of any independent study options of course)

A Brief History of Me in relation to what make me qualified to design these trainings.

The roots of the place this vision has in my life start when I was quite young. When I was about 5 years old I began to be intensely aware of how pervasive suffering was. Concurrent with the awareness was the sense that this suffering was largely unnecessary. A further awareness was that much of the view of reality that the world was trying to indoctrinate me with was either plain wrong or very incomplete. I sensed this was the main source of the unnecessary suffering. I wasn’t clear what the truth was, only that I wasn’t being given it.

Of course, when I was 5 these where more felt impressions rather then clearly articulated thoughts but they did guide my attention and intention. I did intuit that spirituality was an important key. So at age 5 I began mimicking the Priests at my Church during mass. Much to the delight of my very devout mother. By the time I was old enough to be at our local library(and bookstores) unattended (9 years old) I was spending huge amounts of time there, especially in the occult (much to the vexation of my devout Catholic Mother) and religion sections, but my interests also included science, math, psychology, sociology, health, martial arts (with a special interest in the internal styles) business and finances . Basically anything that would help me explore reality and the potential of what being human could mean. I was intuitively confident that humans where vastly more powerful then most realized. I knew that the stories of psychic and magical powers were not to all fiction. I never developed a belief in any fixed limits.

My passion for these early interests has only intensified over the years and I have spent my whole life studying, learning and exploring the means of personal and global transformation. When I was 18 I was initiated into a Hermetic Lodge and began intensive study of Hermetics, Qabbalah (the hermetic variety rather then traditional Jewish Kabbalah), Western Ceremonial Magick, and Modern Neo-Pagan Practices. It was my primary focus for the next Six years of my life though my appetite remained omnivorous and my studies continued to include eastern systems as well as modern insights from various disciplines of psychology and science. I lead a lifestyle that allowed me to devote much time to these pursuits so my immersion was of a magnitude few are able to achieve.

I have had the great fortune to have a continuous stream of important teachers in my life beginning when I was 4 with my next door neighbor, Lily, whom I affectionately refer to as my magical grandmother. She had several beautiful gardens including a Bamboo grove and a house filled with mystical symbols, Buddha statues, rosaries and malas, gypsy charms, crystals and crystal ball. She had book like Dantes Divine Comedy and many theosophy books. She never formally taught me anything but she was very open minded and let me talk about the stuff I was reading at the Library and elsewhere) Even before I was 12 years old Lily would, speaking about me, tell people that “He not only knows more about his own religion (at the time Catholicism) then most know about there own, he knows more about other peoples religions then most know themselves”

Influential teachers (to many to name them all here) continued to appear but it wasn’t until I was 24 I met the Teacher I had prayed my whole life to meet, the one who could guide me to end of the path, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, A master of the Nyingma School of Vajrayana Buddhism. My heart exploded the moment I laid eyes upon him. On September 22nd 1992 I took refuge with him, which is the first step on the Buddhist path. For the next two years my spiritual practice slowly changed focus to my Buddhist Practice. By 1994 it became the central focus of my practice. As before my lifestyle choices allowed for an immersion few in the west have had the opportunity engage in. I have attended a large number of public teachings as well received close personal guidance from several great masters of the Nyingma Lineage. I have also had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time in retreat including over two years in continuous practice retreat doing practice 12 hours a day. Considering all this great fortune I am still far more screwed up then I one might expect. But none the less, my immersion in these pursuits has given me the opportunity for very deep exploration.

While Vajrayana Buddhism has been the meat of my personal alchemical practice it continues to be heavily seasoned from many diverse sources by my omnivorous appetite for exploring the skillful means of personal, systemic and global transformation.

My “Credentials”

I have very little in the way of certifications and diplomas (I did have certificates for Body Harmony and Rieki Master but I lost them along time ago). However, I do have a vast amount of learning and training both guided by teachers (highly skilled both in what I was learning from them and in teaching it) and self-directed . These include but not limited to :

  • Extensive training in Vajrayana Buddhism under the guidance of accomplished masters
    • I want to be clear that while I do incorporate insights that I have gained from this training, I am not authorized to teach within the context of the lineage I am apart of and what I do teach is not Buddhism.
  • Extensive Training in multiple systems of Western Esoterics
    • I am actually “authorized’ to teach from the point of view of some of these traditions. However, while I do incorporate insights gained from this training, what I am teaching is not these things.
  • Extensive Training in a wide variety of systems of and approaches to healing (Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual) including
    • Body Harmony
    • Many Styles of touch based “Energy” Healing such as Usui Reiki (thru Master level), Pranic Healing, Thereputic Touch
    • Bon (Ian indigenous Tibetan path) Sound Healing
    • Toning
    • Varous forms of Breathwork
    • Emotional Integration (Release)
    • Various forms of what I call Alchemical Linguistics – the use of language to support healing
  • A wide Variety of Meditation practices.

I have complete confidence in my ability to be of great benefit for those who work with me and in the efficacy of the array of theh trainings I am designing. This confidence is derived from my life long immersion and exploration of these topics and form my ability to intuitively grasp the internal structures and utility of systems, especially those of personal transformation and healing, even before I’ve studied or practiced them extensively. I also see large patterns of relationships between systems. Together these allow me see how large numbers of diverse systems of methodology fit together even if I am not deeply familiar with all of the systems involved in the envisioned integration. I can reliably envision potential and possibilities long before have acquired enough conscious competence to implement and actualize them. I have had enough of these intuitions and proceeded to gain the necessary competence to actualize them to trust in this capacity. I have also had numerous experiences of shocking my teachers by “inventing” methods that in fact already existed in the systems I was learning but had not been taught to me yet and were far ahead of where I was supposed to be in the normal sequential learning process. In the case with the trainings I am putting forth at this time, I am already skilled and get great results from the individual methods that inform these new expressions. So the question for me is not whether they will work but just awesomely amazing will the results end up being.