John Selby
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John Selby

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When I was ten, living way out in nowhere on a cattle ranch, my grandmother gave me a portable electric typewriter - the first year Smith Corona sold them. And just like that, I was hooked. Now that I'm hitting seventy, with fifty books in print in a bunch of languages, the flow of my life seems to have been a fanciful leap from my country origins. Born into the fourth generation of cattle ranchers in California and Arizona, I actually did the work of a cowboy while growing up - and it was not glamorous at all. At sixteen, in 1960, I went to South Africa for a year as an exchange student - that was a trip! And two years later I was eager to head east to Princeton. From then on it was non-stop change ... government-funded EEG mind/psychedelic research in the late sixties ... meditation and mind-brain exploration and research plus working as a therapist in the seventies ... several year-long journeys south into Indian realms in Mexico and Guatemala (where I felt most at home). In the eighties, frustrated with American politics and materialism, I moved my base of operations to Europe, working as a therapist, educator and writer in West Berlin where people were seriously eager to plunge into the new meditation and mind-management methods I'd been developing. Also while in Europe (after a number of fulfilling and enlightening but not-quite-right relationships) I finally found the love of my life in Switzerland ... After securing a 24-book 'self-help library' contract for the German market, off we went to Hawaii to start a family (most fulfilling of all) and go deeper into mind-brain explorations. In the late '80s this culminated in the creation of the early online BrightMind Network, and the very beginnings of what would come to be called The WizeWell Process. But - ever since I wrote my first novel at 19, my primary love was always writing fiction. For many years I wrote radical stuff that didn't get published. After my Guatemalan adventure in 1979-80, I wrote Powerpoint for Warner Books - but my editor tried to stuff me into her popular occult-horror genre, and I revolted. I had a similar experience after studying in the early AFI program - I was writing spiritual-awakening screenplays, and they just weren't selling. My fiction/mythic novels and screenplays continued mostly underground while I wrote non-fiction books related to my ongoing therapy work. Those twenty years of near-wilderness island living (we built our own house on Kauai way out in the jungle) were deep incubative times for me - experimenting both with fiction and also music composition, then audio and video-guidance programs for meditation and personal growth. This was also a time of deep Hawaiian hula studies, and the evolution of the 4 stories that would finally emerge, just recently, as the Jack Hadley suspense series. I also wrote 3 new 'healer' screenplays which didn't take off in Hollywood, mostly because I refused to move there and push and modify my stuff (basic personality fault). Our boys grew up and went to college in California at Santa Cruz, and after almost 20 years in paradise, Birgitta and I moved 8 years ago to Santa Cruz - where finally the times seemed right for my 'cognitive shifting' and innovation-activation training to be well received. During the last decade I'd been finalizing my life work developing short-form awareness-expansion techniques and Focus Phrase methods for quickly quieting the mind and shifting into present-moment engagement and enjoyment. The apps available at www.mindfullyhigh.com and www.mindfullyhere.today have emerged from this recent phase. I feel fulfilled on that front now - and have formally parted ways with Silicon Valley buffs. Quite a number of related non-fiction books emerged along the way - and now Birgitta and I are also helping ghostwrite and edit and publish books of friends with valuable things to say. My most recent novel, THE JADE PHALLUS, is just now available on Amazon. And I'm working on THE SECOND CHAKRA and MAHEE SPEAKS as my next book projects. Feel free to learn more at http://www.johnselby.com. My current BLOGS on various topics are also posted there - but I don't do Facebook and such. Oh - also, having come out of the cannabis closet finally, I'm currently engaged in teaching people how to get high mindfully and responsibly, in order to maximize the positive benefits of cannabis in our culture (and minimize the negatives). http://www.mindfullyhigh.com will take you into that dimension of my work. At those author sites you can communicate with me if you wish - I do highly value reader inputs! http://www.johnselby.com
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    • By: John Selby
    • Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
    • Release date: 01-14-08
    • Language: English
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