As a neurodivergent kid, I was gifted and troubled.

I was bullied at school, misunderstood, sensitive, curious, intelligent, impressionable and creative.

I learnt - through years of experience - the pain and problems that stem from being myself and not being myself.

In an exaggerated sense, you could say I've spent half my time developing coping strategies to manage this pain, and half my time dismantling them. Coping strategies like avoidance, belligerence, apathy and aggression, and withdrawal.

The cost of this has been simple and horrible, disconnection from Truth and Life.

My journey of renewal and Higher Calling started from a very young age.

I recall as a boy of 11 having a calling to welcome Christ into my life. I said no because I was put off by some actions and vibes coming from 'Christians' and 'The Church'.

This is my first memory of turning away from something meant for me. It was a fork in the road and marked the beginning of an education in all things un-godly. By turning away from this Calling, by default I chose to immerse myself in Empire and all its poisonous alternatives.

What followed were decades of suffering, addiction, uncertainty and dysfunction. I essentially became alcoholic, sexually distorted, dissociated, anti-social, and a shitty brother, friend and son.

I didn't know it at the time, but the need for renewal was there. It was coming for me. I just hadn't had enough pain yet to choose it.

Basically, I started a habit of ignoring what I knew to be true and good, in favour of what was fun and thrilling.

I had lost touch with my natural, authentic impulse and was running off unbalanced, programmed urges.

I wouldn't say I was bad, just deviant. In the sense that I had deviated from my own inner sense of true knowing and acting on that truth. It led me to mistrust myself and make good decision making even harder.

in the year 2000 I developed chronic fatigue as an otherwise healthy 19 year old and I see now that my off-the-mark choices had taken a toll and my body was trying to course-correct me.

I think it's interesting that going the wrong direction, thinking it is the right direction led me to mistrust my discernment which led me to seek harder for the right direction in more wrong places.

The pressure was building.

After three aborted starts, I made it through University and left as a barely qualified primary school teacher. I travelled overseas to teach English and got my first taste of intentional change.

I was in Korea when I finally saw in myself enough dysfunction to want to make change. I went from an overweight alcoholic to fit, 'healthy' and wealthy.

Unfortunately, no enduring change had been made.

Once I got home I received and ignored my next natural, authentic impulse to start working towards being a writer and internet movie critic.

I went back overseas instead - to Japan this time - and once the initial thrill wore off, alcohol was there again to soothe my loneliness and isolation. I added Anorexia/Bulimia to my alcoholism and came back an emaciated version of myself.

I've learnt that abiding change is transformational and graceful. Mechanical, Intentional change can work for a time. But without deeper reckonings, it will remain temporary.

After coming back to Australia again and settling into work as a science educator with CSIRO, with my alcoholism reaching a peak of dysfunction, the stage was being set for something big. I started noticing a new impulse within me...

And this time, I listened.

When I was about 30 I felt strongly an impulse to leave my science job and go on a journey to discover something I only knew was called soul. I felt a natural impulse to... something more. More than the identity I had constructed. More than the scientific, logic-based world view I inhabited.

I knew had to leave comfortable and normal and give myself a chance to discover and become something new. I didn't know at the time, but this marked the start of what my friend ended up calling my 'Soul Safari'.

I spent the next 8 years roaming around Australia and cultivating some additional skills in intuition and discernment as I navigated an intense period of self-discovery, experimentation and renewal.

This period was wild. I have so many adventures and stories I could tell. But I'll save this long and entertaining to tell it another day and fast forward to near the end of this 8 year period.

Towards the end of this period, I ended up through one miracle after another living in Brisbane.

I was getting ready to get a proper career going again and was signed up to do a business training course. One day I mentioned to one of my classmates that I really wanted to help people get back to the present moment. He asked if i had any training in Gestalt Therapy. I didn't but after looking into it I was intrigued.

I decided to go back to formal education and enroll in a masters degree.

I spent two years loving my study of Gestalt Therapy. I was learning a lot about change, going through it finally with the help of some supportive, consistent intention and witnessing and thinking I'd settled down and was on track for a predictable future when the calling of impulse came knocking in the biggest way yet.

I was nearly 40 when I faced this new crossroads. At the end of my second year, after loving my first two, for no discernable reason, I had an instinct to press pause on my studies. I had no alternative and I didn't know what else I would do.

One day, in the midst of this period of stress and uncertainty. I heard a voice telling me to 'deepen my walk with God'. I knew this was the answer my impulse had been drawing me toward.

Like before, I tried to choose something else - anything else - than what I knew was the right thing. But Life conspired to unfold some wonderfully calamitous pain and events. Eventually I got the message and I followed this strange direction.

6 or so months later I was homeless, partnerless, unemployed and living in a tent...but the Grace of God had come knocking and that had changed everything. I had found myself by another set of miracles in a country town with 7 churches and realised it was time to heal an old wound.

I met a men who read some scriptures to me and being moved, I did what I'd been called to do all those years ago and welcome The Messiah, Yeshua, aka Jesus into my life.

I sure didn't see that one coming.

In the years that followed, I could and perhaps will share so many more stories from this period.

I mention this particular story not just because it is a pivotal story of following the natural, authentic impulse but because it brings up the topic of Faith.

At the core of it, when it comes to expressing ourselves in the world, we are asked to trust that it's going to work out roughly for the best. When our bodies and minds come to doubt, there is a gulf of healing and daring we must cross to regain the confidence and capacity to do it anyway.

I've come to see that following our authentic, natural impulse is an act of faith.

Following this one impulse changed a lot for me. I met my wife as I followed an impulse to stop at a park one afternoon and after praying to meet someone who could help me bring my work to the world.

Our journey combined is a story of one natural next after another.

We are learning this path as we walk it. Two souls, battered and bruised learning / remembering how to be free and faithful.

I feel like I see the path for what it is. An ever unfolding invitation into Truth and Daring.

This has been, and still is, my Soul Safari.