You know what I’ve learned after 67 years on this spinning planet, including decades of religious trauma and eleven years of recovery? There’s an easier way to be than what most of us were taught. I call it my Theory of Being, and I believe it’s revolutionary enough to change lives—if you’re courageous enough to put it into practice.

 Let me tell you how a Renaissance Redneck discovered wholeness

Picture this: a kid from the Tennessee hills who couldn’t afford shoes, becomes the first in his family to graduate high school and college, climbs his way to the top of the Christian music world, serves celebrities in megachurch pulpits, and then—plot twist—discovers that everything he’d been taught about being “good” and “perfect” was actually keeping him fragmented and miserable.

That’s my story. By 2005, I was the Music and Arts Pastor at two of America’s most influential megachurches, with attendees including Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus, Alan Jackson, Hayley Williams, and members of Paramore. I had “made it” by every evangelical measure. But I was dying inside—literally fragmenting from decades of religious dogma and legalism that insisted I deny parts of myself to be acceptable to God.

The breaking point led to a PTSD diagnosis from religious trauma. Yeah, that’s a real thing, and it nearly killed me. The cost of my awakening? Shunning from my religious community, loss of most friendships, and family ruptures. But here’s what I discovered in those ashes: sometimes you have to lose everything to find out who you really are.

 The four essentials that changed everything

My Theory of Being is deceptively simple: We have four aspects of being—Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual. For each aspect, we can identify one essential word that describes our healthiest expression. The magic happens when we cultivate people, places, memories, and events that integrate all four essentials simultaneously.

For example, my four essentials are Sensuality, Curiosity, Communion, Freedom. Let me break this down for you:

Sensuality is my physical essential. Not just sex (though that’s part of it), but the full engagement of my senses with the world. After fifty years of suppressing my “gnawing hungers” and “incessant desires” because of a prudish religious upbringing, I’ve reclaimed my birthright as a sensual being. Today in Barcelona, I paint watercolors, snap nude photo sessions, savor cortados, make love with Gina on our terrace under Mediterranean stars, enjoy nude beaches, and yes—at 67, I explore tantric massage therapy without apology. Every orgasm, I’ve discovered, has the potential to be a whole-being experience when you stop fragmenting body from spirit.

Curiosity drives my mental essential. I’m that kid who asked too many dangerous questions about biblical literalism and got in trouble for it. Now I range freely across philosophy, psychology, art, erotica, and culture without institutional constraints. My voracious reading, my embrace of psychedelics for consciousness exploration, my willingness to challenge everything I was taught—that’s curiosity unleashed from the chains of dogma.

Communion represents my emotional essential—what I call intimacy or deep connection. This isn’t performance-based relationship where I pretend to be someone I’m not to gain approval. It’s the vulnerable, authentic intimacy I share with Gina, my anam cara. It’s the mentoring relationships I had for ten years at Merridees Bakery in Franklin. It’s the ability to listen deeply, empathize profoundly, and connect soul to soul.

Freedom is my spiritual essential, and let me tell you—for most of the first half of my life, my spirit felt chained to career, religion, spouse, and other people’s approval. My spiritual life was censored, regulated, and governed by the rules and demands of pastors, parents, family, teachers, and church leaders. Rules and traditional paths stifle free spirits like me. We prefer to live unconventionally, and we have an aversion to being boxed in or tied down.

 Here’s the revolutionary part

Most institutions—especially religion—fragment us. They say the body and mind are profane, so deny them. They claim only the soul and spirit are sacred and redeemed. But my Theory of Being posits that all four aspects of our being are excellent and essential to wholeness.

When I simultaneously employ all four essentials—running through Turó Park in Barcelona, meditating afterward, making love with Gina during siesta, cooking dinner together, reading philosophy, painting watercolors, spending time with like-minded people—that’s why I enjoy these things so much. They’re life-giving because they activate my whole self, not just approved fragments.

The goal isn’t goodness or perfection—I gave up on that decades ago. The goal is wholeness. And here’s what I’ve discovered: it’s much easier to BE when you pursue wholeness rather than trying to be good according to someone else’s standards.

 The practical magic of integration

I’ve developed what I call The Quest—a rite of passage for people seeking authentic self-expression in life’s second half. It’s about identifying your own four essentials (they’ll be different from mine), then ruthlessly reorganizing your life around people, places, and experiences that trigger all four simultaneously.

Take my daily life in Barcelona as an example. This isn’t just geographic relocation—it’s cultural healing. Spain’s open-minded views about sexuality and psychedelics, the leisurely pace (nothing starts before 8 PM!), the celebration of sensuality, the café culture that encourages deep conversation—all of this creates an environment where my essentials can flourish without apology.

 Why psychedelics became my most reliable spiritual teacher

Here’s something that might shock my former evangelical friends: the little brown mushroom has taught me more about God, consciousness, and healing than fifty years of sermons ever did. After seven decades of avoiding drugs of any kind (hard to believe for a kid who grew up in the seventies, I know), I discovered that psilocybin provides direct, unmediated access to mystical experience that requires no institutional validation.

The psychedelic experiences haven’t added anything to my consciousness—they’ve removed the barriers that prevented me from seeing what was already there. They’ve literally rewired my brain’s trauma responses, addressing my religious PTSD at its neurological roots. I’ve had more joy and peace in the last eight years than in my entire previous life.

That’s why Gina and I made the first significant legacy gift to Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. This isn’t about getting high—it’s about getting whole.

 The table where all parts of me can feast

I often use the metaphor of a table to describe integration. For too many years, different aspects of myself had to eat in separate rooms—my curiosity in the study, my sensuality in the closet, my need for freedom in secret, my desire for communion behind a performance mask.

Now, at 67, all parts of me gather at the same table. The table provides nourishment for my body, enlargement for my mind through conversation, space for my soul to commune with Gina and others, and freedom for my spirit to explore without constraint. When sensuality, curiosity, intimacy, and freedom are invited to the same table, what emerges isn’t compromise but integration, not balance but wholeness.

 Why this matters for your life

If you’re reading this and thinking, “This sounds too good to be true” or “I could never be that free,” let me remind you of something: I was raised old-time Pentecostal, became Southern Baptist, and spent decades leading worship in a pulpit that taught sexual purity and biblical inerrancy. If this Tennessee hillbilly can find his way to wholeness, so can you.

The Theory of Being isn’t about abandoning all structure or becoming hedonistic. It’s about identifying what makes you most authentically alive and then having the courage to organize your life around those essentials. It’s about pursuing wholeness rather than goodness, integration rather than fragmentation, and authenticity rather than approval.

 Here’s your assignment—if you’re brave (or desperate) enough

Take some time to identify your own four essentials. Start with ten words for each aspect—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—then narrow each down to one word that makes you feel most alive, most like yourself. Don’t worry about getting it perfect at first. As you explore this idea, you’ll know intuitively when you’ve chosen the right word. If in doubt, have someone you trust implicitly and knows you best to help narrow them down.

Then ask yourself: What percentage of my life currently involves people, places, memories, and events that activate all four essentials simultaneously? If it’s less than 50%, you’ve got work to do.

This could be the most crucial task you accomplish in your life. Because here’s what I’ve learned from my journey from Tennessee poverty to megachurch success and then to Barcelona healing: the magic was never actually gone. It was just buried under layer after layer of other people’s definitions of what constitutes acceptable ways of being human.

At 67, I am sensual without apology, curious without constraint, communal without performance, free without isolation. I am a highly sensitive, complicated, multi-layered person who is no longer misunderstood because I no longer need anyone else’s understanding to validate my existence.

That’s what wholeness looks like. That’s my Theory of Being. And it can change your life if you let it.