There are many that will never see this. I have done it, like everything else, intentionally. 


It is my hope, that if you are reading this, no matter where you are in your journey, that you can feel me talking to you right now.


And as I am wont to say, this is not “woo-woo” nonsense, rather, this is just me talking to the few of you that will see this, and even to the fewer that will actually understand.


If you are reading this, you may not yet believe it, but you are doing something that so many claim to want to do, but for reasons too many to list, they never actually do it.


But here you are doing it.


The things we don’t say. 


The things we keep hidden away, deep inside—or at least where we think it’s deep inside. 


Feelings and thoughts. Hopes and dreams. Wants and needs. Doubt and confidence. 


We don’t realize that so many of our reactions, so many of the things that we encounter in our lives, are the very foundation and needed knowledge of our own personal self that no one ever told us about. No one ever taught us to pay attention to ourselves, and the mirror that is our life, in ways that lead to our own liberation instead of our own isolation. No one told us or taught us that our feelings—our very responses to life—are the living indications of how we feel about ourselves.


But we’ve learned how to keep those feelings buried. We’ve learned how to suppress, to hide, to run from, and to ignore the very feelings aching for acknowledgment and acceptance. Instead, anger hides the fear behind the noise and chaos of those very same emotions—emotions we know so well because we have learned to deny the need for an embrace.


For me, the inner travels within my own intellect, the too-infrequent conscious navigation of my fears and doubts, and the internal quest for something I could not name—a journey to a peace I wasn’t sure even existed—all expressed themselves as the things we don’t speak of. 


“Man up,” “he who gets emotional loses,” “tears are for the weak,” “never let ‘em see you sweat,” and a litany of lessons about never allowing the emotions any real space in life; better anger than tears. Better a fight than an apology.


These emotions were all conditioned and reconditioned, evaluated and reevaluated, expressed incompletely or not expressed at all, or allowed a guarded peek into the light of consciousness through the filter of alcohol.


And fear.


Yes, this is what I knew. This is what I called “normal.” This was my “chosen” path of safety.


It seemed to be all I knew.


I lived through the juxtaposition of my own emotional journey against “hated behaviors” I allowed “out there.” I shared space with people in things I wanted to call a relationship, a marriage, or a friendship—but they were still grounded in a world of fear. 


The fear that I was a fraud and would be unceremoniously discovered.

you deserve joy.

No one had taught me that if I wanted to know how I felt about myself, truly, all I had to do was pay attention to how I responded to any given moment. Not as mere observation, but as an active, real-time decision. The things I said to myself and others—and the things I didn’t say that I wanted to—were grand instruments of my personal freedom and yet, I had no idea what it all meant, and because of that, they were misunderstood and wholly missed, because no one had taught me how to know “me.”


Me.


You see, when I began all of this those many years ago, I didn’t believe that I was anyone to be talking about being whole. About being lovable.


About being happy.


When I finally accepted that I was going to do this, I knew that I was going to be talking to people “like me.” It wasn’t about desperation in the traditional sense by the time I was deep into the creation. Instead, it was a realization that if I was going to do this, what would I say to the little boy that my father had beaten with the extension cord? What would I tell him? What could I possibly tell this little boy that no longer trusted as he once had? What was I going to say to someone, no matter the age, who thought that love was violence and emotional degradation?


What could I do, or say, that would let him know that I had known the hell, much like his, and that here I was, right before him as a living testament to what’s possible?
 
  Would he have believed me? Would he have trusted me in that moment?
 
  Truth is, the answer brought real tears to my eyes, and still does sometimes.


I would not have believed. I would not have trusted. I would not have truly heard. I would have closed down and would have done all that I could to make sure that no one else was going to hurt me, and yet at the same time, expecting that my life was going to be all that I had experienced to that point.
 
  So no, he would not have believed.

What were forgiveness, compassion, adoration, and patience? Especially for myself. How do I allow such notions, such concepts to actually exist in my world? It all seemed so foreign. So much so that in my darkest hours, I questioned whether I should be allowed on this planet, living a life at all.


And on November 2, 1994, I and that little boy tried to answer that question in a permanent way.


But I learned. And I continue to learn with every breath.


And in the creation of these works, in that moment of my adult learning and acceptance of that truth, as me, as that “little boy”, in that moment of absolute understanding, after all that had been experienced, I decided to just, be. To just “hang out” and show him, and be, and love and live my life in such a way that he could have made up his own mind and decided to live and soar and find his peace.
 
  And he did.


He really did. 


You already know that the little boy was, and in so many ways, still is, me.


The things you experience here—on this website, in the workbooks, and in the workshop—are about the honesty and courage to look within in ways that are simply too frightening for many. These are my personal experiences. These are the personal experiences of my beloved wife and partner, Sharon. These are things we have personally gone through.


No theory. No bullshit.


Instead…


Life anew. Life seen.


Life and love lived wholly.


Through the confusion, the fear, the doubt, the cycles, the ups and downs, I have recognized one thing: We haven’t known how to harness, focus, or apply the knowledge of ourselves as the living journey of understanding Self. I know how that might sound. 


I get it.


But that’s what this is all about. And no matter how confrontational or aggressive the work here may seem, it is done with compassion and care for those of us that reached a point of decision that can change the path of life itself.


We all must learn who we are.


Because to love in ways we can’t even intellectually appreciate right now requires a knowledge of self that many of us simply don’t have.


I didn’t have it.


Ask yourself the question and honestly answer, “do I have the peace that I want, to the degree that I would like to have it?”


If your answer is “yes,” then there is really nothing here that Sharon and I can share with you. But if your answer is “no,” then know that it can be done. 


This is how Sharon and I got here. 


This is how we continue the journey.


This is all about an honest appraisal of ourselves and the journey of how we got here. An honest navigation of lives that are now well-lived.


It is our hope that you will now be able to live your own in a whole new way.


It’s your turn.


You are free to choose.


What shall you do?
 
 — Sharon and Chase Murphy


PS - Today, if I could meet that little boy once more, I would sit with him and wait for him to allow me to give him a hug. The man that I am now, who was once that little boy, knows how much a hug means. And though I can’t hug you, as confrontational and hard and seemingly aggressive the work may be, consider it a hug from one that knows what a hug can truly mean.


And who do you need to hug?