Is The Celestial Bar autobiographical? 

 About 80% of the book is autobiographical from the nightmare which starts the book, to almost losing my life to a bomb and a gun, to my floating houseboat restaurant sinking in Key West, to still being a recovering Catholic, to all the main characters at the Celestial Bar being my guides/angels, and to the end of the book which was the scary conclusion of my nightmare as I saw myself as my own nemesis.

 As far as the other stuff: I’m not a great shortstop but I play a decent second base. I do have a broken “fingy” from softball in fact I’ve broken that finger and one other twice. I’ve never composed any music, but I can play the piano (though I need lots of practice).

So did you study a particular spiritual discipline or have a mentor?

Not really. I have a tendency to discover things on my own and even go places without ever reading about them. I kind of like being a clean slate. I don’t like to belong to or follow any one person, idea, organization, or religion. When I was in college I even despised belonging to fraternities, except going to “rushes” for the free beer.  I’m not really a rebel but to be honest at the age of twelve I didn’t even want to join the Boy Scouts because it was too regimented. But I did read a few books that got me excited about all of this spiritual/metaphysical stuff like Illusions, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and 2150 to name just a few.