Guides Who Brought Me Home

As we met the Modern Stewards throughout this book, you encountered remarkable people whose lives demonstrate many of the principles behind Tsunami OS. They lead organizations, build companies, teach, heal, create, and serve in countless different ways. Their stories remind us that coherent flourishing is not an abstract idea. It is something that can be lived.

There is another group of people I would like to acknowledge - not because they are more important, but because they helped me become the person capable of writing these pages.

Over forty years, I have been fortunate to cross paths with physicians, therapists, spiritual teachers, naturopaths, meditation guides, astrologers, energetic healers, and friends whose wisdom arrived exactly when I needed it. Their approaches could hardly have been more different, yet the greatest of them shared something profound in common.

None of them asked me to become someone else. Each, in their own way, helped me come home to myself.

Looking back, I no longer believe that awakening follows a single path. It is deeply personal. The people who helped me may not be the people who help you, and that is exactly as it should be.

My encouragement is simply this: Remain open.

Life has an extraordinary way of introducing us to the guides we need when we are ready to meet them. Sometimes they arrive for decades.

Sometimes for a single conversation. Sometimes they teach through words. Sometimes simply through the way they live.

If we are paying attention, each leaves us a little closer to ourselves.

These are people who profoundly shaped my own journey: Jian Hsiu-Chu Traub My wife of forty wonderful years to-date, Jian Hsiu-Chu Traub, has been the quiet constant of my life.

Raised in a remote village in Taiwan, Jian grew up in a large, loving family with very humble beginnings. A former middle-school teacher, gifted craftswoman, chef, passionate gardener, and one of the wisest people I know, Jian has always been what I lovingly call "the flagpole to my flag."

Whenever my ambitions and responsibilities threatened to outrun my grounding, Jian has always gently brought me back - not by diminishing my dreams, but by reminding me what truly matters. Through countless ordinary moments over four decades together, she has quietly taught me humility, patience, active gratitude, and compassion for the realities each person carries. Much of whatever wisdom appears in these pages rests upon the extraordinary steadiness she has offered throughout our life together. She has never sought recognition for that gift. She has simply lived it. And I cannot imagine the person I would have become without her unwavering love, partnership, and gentle insistence that success means very little if we forget how to be fully human.

Dr. Shalika Shetty

Shalika, a Sydney-based pediatrician, integrated doctor, and one of my closest friends for the past decade, is also one of my greatest and most committed mirrors.

Shortly after we met, we co-founded Vortex together with other partners, with the shared belief that transformation is best experienced through adventure, community, and genuine human connection. Alongside that work, we recognized an equally important opportunity: to help each other uncover the childhood conditioning, unconscious beliefs, and inherited patterns that had quietly limited each of our capacity for joy, self-love, and coherent flourishing.

As a coach, Shalika also helps other medical professionals navigate the immense stress intrinsic in their profession, and guide them towards persistent resilience and well-being. As my dear friend, she has done something even more profound: Again and again, she has lovingly reflected back the places where I still struggled with unacknowledged or unconscious beliefs connected to self-worth, scarcity, external validation, or fear - not to criticize me, but to help me remember who I already was beneath those stories.

Her courage, compassion, and unwavering honesty have helped shape not only this book, but the person who wrote it.

Jian and Shalika remind me that some of our greatest guides never arrive through workshops, books, or professional relationships. Sometimes our deepest teachers are simply the people who love us enough to keep reflecting us back to ourselves. I am profoundly grateful to them - and to every guide who has helped me remember who I truly am.

Nestor Perez

When I first met Nestor through my brother David in San Francisco, I told him that I wasn't looking for enlightenment - I simply wanted twice as much energy because I was working far too hard.

Instead, I found a teacher, healer, and brother for life who gently and quietly transformed the foundations of my life.

For more than two decades, Nestor has helped me cultivate presence, compassion, forgiveness, and energetic well-being. Through him I

was introduced to the teachings of Geshe Sonam Rinchen, former head of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, whose sage influence quietly echoes throughout this book.

Much of what eventually became Joy Protocol, the Forgiveness Mantra, and many of the underlying principles of Tsunami OS were nourished through our work together.

His greatest gift, however, was never any particular technique. It was helping me discover that a quieter, more present way of living was always available. And that just being me - not my accomplishments, experiences, or relationships, was always enough.

Dr. Shashi Dubey

Sometimes life arranges introductions that could never have been planned.

I first met Guruji, Dr. Shashi Dubey, Founder-Chairman of The Indian School of Natural Spiritual Sciences and my Life and Divine Mentor, in Delhi Airport after returning from Bhutan. We stayed lightly connected for years before life gradually drew us into close friendship.

Guruji, an exponent of ancient wisdom, culture, tradition, and values, draws in his teaching on Vedic wisdom, Kundalini practice, Hindu mysticism, and influences from Sufi and Vajrayana traditions. Yet the lesson that has stayed with me most is beautifully simple:

The mind is guided by logic.

The soul is guided by ethics.

Through him I rediscovered something I had almost forgotten: Voice.

Not simply speech, but voice as a living bridge between ourselves and something much deeper. That rediscovery - and Guruji’s influence - continues to shape my life every day.

Depika Mistry

I met Depika through Mindvalley's early Awesomeness Fest community, and over the years she has become one of the people who consistently helps me see what I cannot yet see for myself.

She has an unusual ability to gently illuminate patterns that otherwise remain hidden, particularly around self-love, surrender, and the subtle ways responsibility can become identity.

Every time we work together I leave feeling lighter - not because life has become easier, but because I have remembered that it doesn't need to be carried alone.

Chris Tracy & Ariel Lee

Chris and Ariel embody something increasingly rare. Consistency.

For many years they have quietly held communities devoted to Open Awareness, presence, and awakening through retreats, workshops, and ongoing practice.

What has inspired me most is not simply their understanding of non- dual traditions. It is the way they live them.

Consistently, they help people loosen their grip on old stories and return to immediate experience, where so much healing naturally begins.

Paul Vincent

I have spent the least amount of time with Paul - yet some of my deepest shifts happened in his presence.

Paul combines the grounded discipline of an endurance athlete with the insight of a medicine man. His gift is helping people recognize the identities they have unconsciously built - and then discovering the freedom that exists beyond them.

He reminds me that profound transformation does not necessarily require years. Sometimes it requires only complete presence for exactly the right moment.