This page presents what my dear friend, Sam Keen, calls personal mythology. My personal sense of calling, that which gives me joy and provides meaning in my life, is often related to critical thinking and challenging commonly accepted truths and unquestioned beliefs. As this page portrays, my journey has led me to challenge, confront and face intellectual, spiritual, interpersonal, physical, emotional and other boundaries.

As a paratrooper in the Israeli Army, I experienced and challenged the boundaries of space and gravity.		As a lieutenant and combat officer, I have stood on the boundary of life and death.
As an oceanographer and a deep-sea diver, I passed through the boundary between air and water.		After my military service I checked out the life of a sailor on a large ship. It was a fascinating anthropological journey into the life of sailors that landed me with a broken nose among other things.

As a young officer I served on a remote and small island in the Red Sea. Wondering about the boundaries between day and night, to the dismay of my soldiers, I experimented with reversing the daily routines, sleep during the day, eat breakfast at sunset, lunch at midnight and dinner at sunrise.

My time attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem, studying chemistry and oceanography, was one of my most profound and powerful spiritual awakenings, as Jerusalem embodied the convergence of three major spiritual traditions.

My motorcycle gave me a sense of freedom and abundance.

Sailing in my one-person sailboat, negotiating the water and wind while gliding on the surface of the sea was another boundry-less-ness experience.

In Jerusalem I lived in an old beautiful house in the Coptic Church compound. One Christmas Eve, I was mysteriously drawn to my motorcycle. Randomly driving beneath the stars, I surprisingly found myself... where else?... but, Beth-Lechem.

As a young oceanographer I was intrigued with the idea of growing protein (fish) in the oceans, which covers more than 75% of our planet. I built this 'research' raft with fish-cages in Dahab at the Red Sea.

As a fish researcher in East Africa, I had many failed and humbling attempts to alleviate suffering and starvation by developing small family-sized fishponds, where the fish were entirely fed by agricultural and kitchen waste.

I have learned a lot about different attitudes towards life and death by spending time in remote areas of the Somali desert, watching tribesmen polluting the only source of water in the desert area with seeming disregard for the lives of their children or the quickly approaching destruction of the community.

Driving Safaris in Kenya and Tanzania drove home the inter-connectedness of life and death. To this day, I vividly remember the thousands of zebras and wildebeests that did not make it to the next water hole.

In my early 30s I shifted my career 'slightly' from oceanography and limnology to psychology. As a young psychologist, I questioned "I want you", the boundary between men and women when it comes to warfare, and challenged the commonly held belief that unlike women, men are inherently warlike.

In a paper The Love of Hating, I have challenged the faulty "liberal" belief that war has no appeal and is only a necessary evil of last resort, and I explored the conscious and unconscious appeals of war.

Another boundary to be experienced was the Napali coast in Kauai, Hawaii where my son and I went on a challenging 17 mile kayak trip by the cusp of the mammoth mountains sloping into the blue water.

In the mid 1990s I started to dispute the whole notion of the depravity of dual relationships and my writing and teaching emphasized the importance of healthy connections and community. In 2002 I co-authored this break-through book on dual relationships.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA Books) published my book on boundaries that invites therapists to be more flexible in regard to issues, such as touch, multiple relationships, gifts, home visits, self-disclosure, and bartering. This publication signifies that the field of psychology has finally embraced a more humane, flexible and context-based view of therapeutic boundaries.

In 2007 I explored the altitude boundaries of air or lack of, by climbing the awesome 19,300 feet of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with my oldest son. It also re-affirmed the boundless connection between father and son, as we both summated.

Backpacking on the vast glaciers of Alaska in October was my next challenge: this time the boundaries were of subfreezing temperatures and un-imaginable windchill factor.

As my oldest son turned 17, it was time for me to re-visit the depth of the ocean and the boundaries of air & water as we both got our scuba certifications, and I got to go back and dive again into the beautiful, clear blue water of the Red-Sea in Israel.

As the new millennium got into gear, I noticed a new boundary of the digital-technical divide between us, the older generation of Digital Immigrants, and our children, who are "Digital Natives". I have joined forces with my digital native daughter (26) to author an article, power point presentation, and online course.

When I was invited to present on the digital divide in Singapore in 2009, I decided to do some jungle trekking in the tropical forest in Malaysia. Daring the monsoons in a remote jungle area gave me a new sense of what rain can be. Despite my efforts, the leeches seemed to refuse to penetrate the boundary of my skin.

In 2009, I was nominated as an American Psychological Association (APA) Fellow (Div. 42) for my contribution to the field. This award signifies the final arrival of much-needed changes in professional ethics from rigid and fear-based to more humane and care-based. Thankfully, these context-based, compassionate approaches are becoming mainstream.

In 2010 our online continuing education program has expanded to include over 100 online courses. Every year, thousands of psychotherapists, counselors, MFTs, nurses and lay people have been benefiting from our innovative and unique offerings.

Modern Internet technologies and social media have drawn me to explore the boundaries involved in "digital ethics," which include issues of clients Googling therapists, therapists Googling clients, use of e-mail in therapy, telehealth, and clients as Facebook friends.

Summating Kilimanjaro - The Roof Of The World

Having finished my latest (fourth) book on Boundaries in Psychotherapy in early 2007, the perennial question, "What's next for me?" returned. I had been searching for what gives me joy and meaning at this stage of my life.

As is apparent to those who are close to me, the questions about my joy, calling and meaning are often closely related to critical thinking and challenges around boundaries issues. The question of meaning is also closely related to my relationships to colleagues, clients, friends and family.

My history seems to indicate that my various challenges at different times in my life have revolved around the question of what boundary I should consider crossing next.

Watching the movie Motorcycle Diaries threw me deeper into an "existential funk" and further into questioning my calling. Upon reflection (see sacrifice paper) I came up with two responses: The first is to go (part time) back to my old stomping grounds in Africa and see how I can apply myself for the good of humanity. Secondly, to challenge the boundary of air and oxygen by daring to climb with my son, age 14, and our very close family friend Sarah, 24, the awesome 19,300 feet of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, also known as the “Roof of Africa.”

Climbing Kilimanjaro with my older son has a special meaning - it is a metaphor for our lives as it involves:

• Envisioning the goal: Quite a high goal in this case. Kilimanjaro is the tallest free-standing mountain and the largest volcano in the world.
• Understanding or constructing the meaning of the challenge and the metaphor or symbolism of the journey: Kilimanjaro provides several metaphors and symbols for us to ponder. It was created by fire and is crowned with ice. Perhaps the most awesome metaphor for the perspective that the mountain provides is that one can see the curvature of the world from the top.
• Evaluating the Goal: Appraising its merit, meaning and how attainable it is.
• Planning how to reach it: Big steps, small steps, sequence and much more.
• Considering different options and outcomes: My son and I remind ourselves repeatedly that "Life is a series of plan Bs"
• Training: While physical training is obviously important, emotional, relational and spiritual aspects of the training are much more important.
• Executing:  This phase involves doing our super best to reach the peak and, at the same time, surrendering and being present to how things will unfold.

Pondering on Kilimanjaro, Death and Preciousness of Life Many people have asked me whether the Kilimanjaro trip, jumping from planes, scuba diving, backpacking on glaciers, etc., are exercises in defying death. My wife, at times, has described me as cautiously death defying. Reflecting on this question, what seems to emerge is that I clearly do not attempt to thumb my nose in defiance of death. In fact the opposite is true. I carry a bone-deep awareness that death cannot be outrun or conquered. Most of my life I have held death very close to my heart and my consciousness, and I have had the opportunity to be very intimate with death. In fact, I have been there; my body/life literally eking out all life sustaining juices from the last heartbeat of a heart that has stopped. I think choosing those activities that may appear to be "death defying" is part of my intimate relationship to death. Having already stepped over the threshold, I refuse to be enslaved by death and its emissary, fear. I choose a life fully lived. I know that "death happens" because historically, my relationship to death has been punctuated by events, such as: As a young 20 year old officer, I witnessed my first soldier dying from a single bullet to his heart. As I traveled through East Africa, I witnessed the bodies of hundreds of migrating Wildebeests and Zebras who collapsed en route to the next water hole. The image of their, once beautiful, powerful, animal bodies rendered lifeless cannot be erased from my memory.  Also, in East Africa, I remember spending time in the Somali desert, watching tribesmen polluting the only source of water in the area with seeming disregard for the lives of their children or the quickly approaching destruction of the community. Death was all around me during the 1973 war. There were bodies of animals, as well as soldiers, from both sides. I faced my own death straight in the eye when I was wounded and evacuated under intense fire in the last waning minutes of this war. Before I was wounded one of my buddies and I took our time crossing the heavily bombed bridge across the Suez Canal during the '73 war. We slowed ourselves down by making death wreaths to place on each other when we were killed, believing our death was eminent. Although from my vantage point today I see this as a rash decision, at that time we were trying to ignore death in order to use our last moments to connect with each other and to celebrate and commemorate each others lives. My mother kept the concept of death alive for us as children when she continued to remind us that "Trees Die Erect!" She refused to slow down and retire. She was conscious and deliberate in her conviction. I saw her live and die by this statement, which we engraved on her grave stone. At the age of 50, I suffered a heart attack and a cardiac arrest. I was clinically dead for 45 seconds. (I am still so disappointed that I did not see any white light or other near/post death visions). My heart attack and my one more brush with death did not stop me from continuing to play my favorite sport of basketball, traveling, hiking, climbing and pursuing many other exciting challenges, such as summiting Kilimanjaro, backpacking onto the glaciers in Alaska, revisiting scuba diving, and jungle trekking in Malaysia. Before I went backpacking in Alaska, I asked my family over dinner whether it was time for me to walk on the ice, as the old Eskimo legend is told, and feed myself to the bears so my sons can hunt the bear to feed the tribe.  In other words, I know death; I hold it close to my consciousness. While I did take calculated risks as I jumped from planes as a paratrooper, rode my motorcycle in the desert, was in battle, drove safaris in Africa, backpacked and camped on glaciers, and dove to the bottom of the oceans, none of this was in the spirit of defying death. It has been, instead, in the spirit of being more "in life" and to remain freshly thrilled by all of its possibilities. I know death is nearby and that I, like anyone else, can die any minute. We all live in the shadow of death, and I often glance at the obituaries in our local paper to remind me of that. I use my relationship with this deep experience as a reminder to live life fully with all its richness and its suffering; I want to live it with all my energy, and I want to live it now. People who know me have often heard me say, "Life is too short". The Kilimanjaro trip was embarked upon in the spirit of that statement and is about living life in its fullest. For a radio interview on What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.

We left for our trip on June 13th, 2007 and took the Rongai (northern) Route over seven days. If you are curious about how such an expedition is organized, you can go to Zara Tours and find out. We followed the climb by going on Safari at the spectacular Serengeti and the Ngoro Ngoro game reserves.

Zara Tours, the company we chose to take us up the mountain and on the Safari, was instrumental in the success of the trip. They were very organized, knowledgeable, responsive, and extremely helpful from the day we contacted them to the day they dropped us off at the airport to fly back home. I, for one, have no doubt that I would not have made it to the top without the assistance, guidance and care of our highly experienced guide, Bruce and his assistant, Living. Needless to say, I am grateful to them and highly recommend them.

For the e-message I posted online as soon as we came down from the mountain 6/22/07, click here.

From the Desert to the Alaska Glaciers

Early in 2008 I was invited to give a keynote address at the Social Workers and Counselors annual convention in Anchorage, Alaska. It seemed like an opportunity not only to help psychotherapists in Alaska legitimize what they already know about flexible therapeutic boundaries but also for me to dare new types of boundaries.

My entire life I have been drawn to the deserts and truly loved the extreme (dry) heat.

As a young man I spent a lot of time in the desert, enjoying the dry heat and powerful, arid landscape.

In 2006 we celebrated the Bar-Mitzvah of my oldest son and had a rite of passage in the Negev Desert in Israel, where I got to enjoy jogging at 120° F.

With the invitation to give the keynotes at the Alaska Social Worker annual conference in Anchorage came the opportunity to face or dare new types of challenges and boundaries; the challenging boundaries of extreme, life threatening cold. In my life I have neither gone downhill skiing nor cross-country skiing, nor spent much time in cold weather. The first encounter with the cold was kayaking in the beautiful and freezing October water off the tiny town of Wittier below the spectacular glacier-covered Chugach Mountains. It was cold and windy and the water was crystal clear, icy, and often choppy. I was told that the survival time in these frigid waters is only a few minutes. There are two popular sayings in Alaska that make perfect sense while kayaking: "The weather in Wittier is shittier" and "If you do not like the weather in Alaska, wait five minutes."

Then came the ultimate, thrilling climax of the trip, trekking-backpacking on the glacier. The idea of hiking and setting up tents on the glacier was as alluring as it was frightening. My guide (from AMS) and I backpacked onto the glacier at Matanuska Glacier. Within minutes of trekking onto the glacier we saw fresh huge footprints of a black bear, which was as close as I got to do what my children describe as "nosy-nosy with a polar bear." Glaciers are like nothing else . . .absolutely stunning to the senses with their almost other-worldly, magnificent, frigid beauty. Unaccustomed to cold or the glacier environment, sleeping in a light tent on the glacier was as much of an emotional and even spiritual challenge as it was physical. As the temperature drops into the low teens, there are deep resounding cracks and the glacier radiates white light. One feels the millions of tons of ice emitting deep history and, of course, ice-age cold. Learning ice-climbing, self-arrest and glacier surviving techniques was actually fun and exhilarating. Learning what the climbers in the powerful film Into The Void could have done differently was highly educational. Learning how to get oneself up (and out) of a crevasse was reassuring.

Jungle trekking in the rainforest in Malaysia

With the invitation to present in Singapore on Internet Addiction came the opportunity of jungle trekking in the nearby Malaysian rain-forest. A three hour boat ride up the river brought me to the small and remote town in Taman Negra. The night walk was fascinating, filled with jungle night sounds and a clear view of dozens of small nocturnal creatures such as spiders, bats, and zillions of noisy and equally colorful insects. The famous canopy bridge was not accessible due to the heavy monsoon rains and floods, but I had the opportunity to visit the remote settlement of the aboriginal people, who still live as they did hundreds of years ago, hunting with poison arrows and starting fires manually.

Before my trip my boys reminded me that "leaches suck." Indeed they do. They also are known for their medicinal benefits. They did not seem to like me, my heat, or my skin but were happy to suck on my experienced guide, Tom. Here are the leaches and their three steps in action:

I am savoring the amazing experiences of this trip while opening to the possibility of the next boundary-challenging opportunity. What will it be?

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