I was born on July 5, 1950, in Puerto Varas, Chile, unwanted, passed between hands, a child without a home. My mother was ill, and my father was a man of fear and fury. I learned to survive in silence, to protect my older brother, and to flee when necessary. At six, a severe illness locked me alone in a dark room for three months, and in that stillness, I left my body. I watched myself from above, through what felt like a glass ceiling, and touched a reality no one around me was willing to see. That “activity” never stopped. It followed me for life.
At fifteen, my father delivered me to the Chilean Naval Academy. I did not choose it. It was incarceration under another name. I buried myself in mechanical engineering, navigation, ballistics, and rowing. At eighteen, I won a national gold medal in the Shell 8 and represented the Academy in the South American Rowing Championships. At nineteen, I collapsed. On June 13, 1970, Australia adopted me with full rights and open doors. For the first time, I saw the possibility of building my own path. A path without chains.
I was born into rejection, not metaphorically, literally. I questioned everything: authority, morality, religion, the shape of love itself. I didn’t rebel to destroy. I rebelled to understand. Illness came early, not just physical, but existential. I separated from my body and entered other dimensions. I felt the presence of something vast and intimate. I called it “I Am.” It spoke to me. It guided me. It never left.
I arrived in Australia with nothing but the weight of my past and a hunger I couldn’t name. Trauma doesn’t vanish with geography; it lingers in the bones. I faced racism, isolation, and the ache of being foreign in every sense. I rebuilt four times and fell four times. Within two years, I adapted, and my talents were rewarded. I started to write, not for others, but for myself. To make sense of the chaos. To reclaim the narrative others had written for me.
Australia gave me room to breathe, but it was silence that gave me room to listen. I began to experience what others called mystical. I didn’t seek it. It found me. I studied Rumi, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, and A Course in Miracles. I saw my own journey reflected in theirs. Religion had failed me. Institutions had betrayed me. But the divine never left. I began to teach, not doctrines, but awareness. Not answers, but questions. This was not a career. It was a calling.
I never set out to be a teacher. I set out to survive, and survival, done consciously, becomes a form of teaching. People came to me not for answers, but for presence. I taught in living rooms, churches, parks, and quiet corners of the world. I didn’t fix people. I witnessed them. I became a mirror, not polished, not perfect, but honest. Some called me a mystic. Some called me a fraud. I wasn’t building a brand. I was building bridges between the wound and the wisdom. This is not a profession. It is a devotion.
I felt mortality’s breath early, through illness, violence, and the quiet despair that visits a soul silenced too long. I sat with the dying and listened to their final truths. I saw how death strips away every mask. I taught people to die before they died—to release false identities, to embrace the unknown not as a void, but as a doorway. Death became my ally. Not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted to live without illusion.
There was a moment when the universe winked at me. I was 43. I had gone looking for silence, the kind that dissolves thought, and found instead a reflection of myself in the most human, most divine of distractions. My life has been a series of revelations, some painful, some liberating. I’ve spent days not knowing where or who I was. Today, my purpose is clear: to help others discover their own evolution. Not because I have all the answers, but because I know what it means to search without finding them. Fear builds doors. Truth dissolves them.
To my youngest daughter, who is spiritually advanced, grounded, and accepting of who I am. To my uncle Héctor Orfanos, 91 years old, who listened. To my father’s cousin and his wife, who offered the moral and spiritual support I never received from my parents. To my own body and intellect, which, despite trauma and adversity, remained flexible, curious, and brave enough to explore. To the universe and to divinity, whose intensity led me to study the Bible and A Course in Miracles, 365 lessons over 14 months. That book, received through an inner voice by psychologist Helen Schucman, helped clarify much. I recommend it.