Our Stories

Hi! Garin here.

Until the age of 20, my childhood profoundly shaped who I was. I grew up in Southern California.  As a child, my sisters and I were blessed to backpack and camp every summer. We also had lovely desert hills where I roamed, often discovering amazing wildlife and beauty on those journeys.  Those experiences had a profound effect on me.  I grew to understand that nature was not outside myself but within.  I also saw how beautiful, wondrous, and ordered nature is.  Through my many experiences, I came to see that nature doesn’t need humans, but humans need nature. 

Yet, my childhood was fraught with anxiety.  Around the age of ten, I began to lose confidence in myself.  I was very sensitive.  I was bullied, and I had no choice in what to learn in school.  Rather than school being exciting and engaging, it bored me, and I didn’t like being told what I could or couldn’t learn.  I didn’t like authority, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I learned to shut down as I didn’t know how to speak out.  Somewhere inside, I didn't like what was happening to me, but I covered up this ache by attaching myself to religious beliefs and reading.  I was also ignorant of myself and all the issues in society that were happening.  I knew there was poverty, wars, racism, sexism, hierarchy, and environmental destruction happening, but I didn’t really understand why.  What truly changed my whole trajectory were three events.

First. I was in a high school church group. We went to Mexicali, Mexico, to help a local village build a church. When we arrived on this old dirt street, the villagers came out to greet us. They had very little. Yet, they invited us into their homes and offered us food and water. They were open and giving. My profound realization was that these people, who had so little, were happier than people I knew. I lived in an upper-middle-class neighborhood where most people could have many things they wanted. Yet, I now realize this was not what created happiness.

Second. As I entered college, I was in a battle for control.   I continued down a path of anxiety and conflict, trying so hard to navigate my life, and sailed down the razor's edge of conformity and anarchy.  Until one day, I listened.  I guess I had no choice as I was slipping off that edge. I couldn’t keep going down this path, which was exhausting and filling me with such emptiness. I was a mess because I had created false ways of being in the world. I hated feeling domesticated.  I hated that I was living a life that didn’t feel authentic, rich, or wild.  I was living in my own dream fantasies, much of which were hellish. I felt like I had nowhere to go, and I finally surrendered. I stopped fighting, gave up, and finally listened.  There was no trying to let go.  I was done.  

The summer after my sophomore year at the University of Oregon, I decided to go on a slow walk as I realized I needed to be alone. I found myself on a bluff looking out over a meandering river. Clouds flowed gently across a deep blue sky. The river mirrored the sky, meandering slowly and steadily. Time stood still.  All of a sudden, I felt utterly absorbed by the present. My thoughts disappeared as my ego melted away, and my presence removed all barriers. Wholeness entered.  There was no self. I was all that is and was and would ever be. There was no division anywhere.

I let go of my tiller.  I was clear. I understood entirely that control was an illusion.  I saw that I had been playing out self-perpetuated roles.  I saw that my own thinking created the hell I was living. I noticed that the business of my life kept me in numbness and from feeling alive.  I saw that we felt lost and dissected from nature because of ignorance. I saw that I was living in a dream and now waking up.  I directly experienced what was always around me...presence, complete presence with no beginning or end, no definitions, no identifications, no beliefs, no inside or outside, no thoughts, but simply complete and utter wholeness - holiness.  I knew directly that I was completely okay and beautiful and perfect.  I knew nobody could dictate my life unless I gave them the power to do so. I had let go of my tiller.  I realized that this essence was within all things.

Letting go of my tiller, I finally stopped moving in any direction. I paused and dug into the moment.  I saw that everything I thought I was, was not, and that I was in everything around me.  From then on, I began to dig into myself.   I started to see how everything I perceived, everything that I did, had to do with my own mind. Every action had a basis in my thinking and perceptions and a consequence reverberating outward. I began to see that what I assumed to be real was simply me buying into a collective cultural ideology built and constructed by how I was educated.   And I noticed that there was no beginning or end, that the center was everywhere, and that all was included in myself.  I experienced that all was love in an immeasurable Wholeness, and this truth flowed in the Now.

Third. I did a vision quest on Mt. Tamalpais in Northern California during graduate school. Before we went out to be by ourselves for three days and nights, we were asked to come up with a question for our quest. I wondered what I was going to do with my life. What was I here for? After a ceremony, we all walked off to our own isolated spots. I found this wonderful place in a meadow. I sat down and waited. And waited. Nothing happened until the third morning. That morning, a cascade of billowing fog sheets rolled over the hills. The moisture was intoxicating. Slowly, the sun rose above the horizon, and everything shimmered with light. I began to notice that love was everywhere, in the trees. meadows, ocean, air, soil, and in me. I realized that my life’s mission was to lead by love and do what I could to help point out to anybody who wanted to listen- that love was inside us and that all was imbued in wholeness.

My life took on a new trajectory from these three experiences and many more. I have been a counselor, a teacher, and a writer. I have explored the beauty of many wild places. I have experienced heartaches and loss. I have made many mistakes. I am blessed to have a fantastic son. All my experiences have been teachers that have led me onward to Love University.