I travelled extensively, studied with various teachers and masters and learned an approach to living that began to fill some of the gaps in my education. Some of the mystery and enigma lifted, to be replaced by

an even greater enigma and mystery, but one that lead somewhere, one with a purpose and a cohesive pattern that revealed itself to me over many years. The great questions that plagued me when I began my quest were answered, not necessarily in the ways that I had imagined but in ways that were true to the nature of the question.

My own children were raised in a way that allowed them access to a complete panorama of what was available. They developed and prospered. My son is an engineering consultant who travels around the world inspecting and certifying high specification installations such as power stations, dams, high pressure pipe work and civil engineering projects. He arranges his time so that between professional commitments he can spend months at various monasteries and temples in the Far East practicing meditation and the martial arts.

My daughter became an elected member of the UK’s youth parliament. From there she was invited onto the UN Global Young Leaders programme which identifies young people likely to take on future leadership roles. She graduated with first class honours in Philosophy and Theology at BA and MA level from one of the world’s leading universities. She is currently a counsellor and teacher.

They both lead extremely fulfilled and rewarding lives and are highly regarded by their peers, colleagues and teachers. They travel extensively and have networks of friends that extend across the globe. I believe that they are destined to achieve greatness within their chosen fields and become people of tremendous account within their lifetimes and on their own merit.

For many years I was a lecturer and found that after classes a queue of young people formed who wanted insight to their problems and the difficulties that they faced. For whatever reason they felt safe to do so. I helped as best I could, offering perceptions and counsel where it was appropriate and directing them to where they could get what they were after when I could not. At the end of each academic year the student’s voted for a ‘best lecturer’ award and I was privileged to receive it every year that I worked in the college.

Some years later, I was working with severely damaged children and young people. These were individuals from the most challenging circumstances, from unspeakable domestic situations to war zones. Victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and, as is often the way of it, perpetrators themselves of these same abuses. Certain things became apparent to me in terms of what was missing from these young people’s lives. Not only the basic necessities of care, a nurturing environment and love but a more fundamental absence asserted itself, mainly because I recognised it from my own experience when I too was a young person from an extremely dysfunctional setting. These young people knew very little of the bigger questions that underpin all our lives, they lacked a rational axis. Questions such as, ‘who am I?’, ‘what’s the meaning of life?’, ‘what’s it all about?’ that I found myself burdened with and unable to find satisfactory answers to at their age were simply unknown to them as their lives had been submerged in ongoing battles for survival. I found there were huge reservoirs of anger, resentment and confusion in them allied with an overwhelming sense of entitlement. They were vulnerable, lost and unable to hold their own in an overwhelmingly hostile world. They were capable of extreme violence, aggression and displays of spiteful and hurtful behaviour to one another and anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Working with them I was able to achieve some remarkable results and help to turn some of these young people’s lives around. Young people who had been described to me as ‘tomorrow’s headlines’ were given a sense of purpose, direction and fulfilment. I also watched helplessly as some of them crashed and burned, impervious to offers of assistance and too damaged to trust anyone or anything.

I thought deeply about this gap in perception and wanted to pass something along while being rational enough to realise that even if they were open to it I could not physically sit down with each person who was looking for some kind of objective truth. I realised there were people just like me who had been and still were completely confused and bewildered, unable to find that deep and meaningful sustenance that something within each of us craves. A sense of belonging, of agency, and of being an integrated part of something far greater. I had the benefit of a unique education, as well as pursuing enlightenment in its diverse manifestations I also obtained degrees to Masters level in Philosophy and History, I needed to know that I was covering as many bases as possible.

Something simple but not simplistic that addressed the fundamental questions without patronising the reader and without throwing answers of convenience before them in a devalued way. Let’s face it, you don’t value what you don’t pay for and the development journey exacts a tribute with each step taken along it. For all those people who stood in that same patch of fertile but dormant ground that I and many others have occupied I wanted to pass something useful along. I wrote seven books collectively titled The Mechanics of Happiness – engineering a positive approach to your life that represent my best effort to surround those questions with irresistible perceptions, with concepts that open rather than close the reader down and make the whole process less daunting and more practical. I set out with the objective of writing a user’s manual which was an independent springboard into the search for truth and meaning and a safety net too. I believe that this is the first step toward making that vision a reality.

My only fealty lies with the universe. I owe a profound debt to the universe which has sustained and provided for me, to the teachers I have been privileged to meet and the remarkable carousel that my life thus far has been. An odyssey that does not end is the greatest motive for a life well lived; a goal that can never be achieved in this lifetime is a gift whose returns are immortal and unceasing. There are those of you for whom these words will be a quickening, a pinprick of light in a seeming darkness, it is for you that these words are written it is for you that The Mechanics of Happiness offers a resistance against the seeming tide of indifference.