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.		As a fish researcher in Africa, I encountered the human-made boundaries of civilization in remote parts of East and Central Africa.

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 and apprehension of my soldiers, I experimented (by orders) that we reverse the daily routines, sleep during the day, eat breakfast at sunset, lunch at midnight and dinner at sunrise.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Later on in my career in psychology, I disputed the whole notion of the depravity of dual relationships.

Most recently I challenged the rigid boundaries that the therapists have drawn between therapists and clients and and invite more flexibility in regard to issues, such as touch, gifts, home visits, self-disclosure or bartering.

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 have 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 issue. 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 the Kilimanjaro with my older son has a special meaning as 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:   The Kilimanjaro provides several metaphors and symbols for us to ponder.  It was created by fire and is crowned with ice and it is called the "Roof of Africa." Perhaps the most awesome metaphor for the vista and 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 B's"
• 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 is an exercise 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 desert 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 eyes 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, I also see that even then, we were trying to ignore deaths in order to use 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). 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, 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". This Kilimanjaro trip is embarked upon in the spirit of that statement and is about living life in its fullest.

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 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.

From the Desert to The Alaska's 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 arid power.

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 present in Alaska 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.  So I planned a trip to experience the true and extreme cold weather, icy water, and truly awesome, harshly stark, enveloping beauty of glacier living. Planning a kayak and glacier trip in October was close to impossible as so many of the outdoor activities are shutting down in Alaska by the end of September, due to dangerously variant weather conditions.

The first encounter with the cold was kayaking in the freezing October water off the tiny town of Wittier. We kayaked up the beautiful Passage Canal below the spectacular glacier-covered Chugach Mountains. It was cold and windy and the water was crystal clear, icy, and often choppy. My enthusiastic and experienced guide, Alan, reiterated the deadly danger of falling into the freezing water.  Although we wore "dry suits" to increase our chances of survival, I was told that the survival time in these frigid waters is only a few minutes. Also, a day with moderate weather conditions can rapidly become "white-out" blizzard conditions in a matter of 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."

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Then came the ultimate, thrilling climax of the trip, tracking-backpacking on the glacier.  The idea of hiking and setting up tents on the glacier (developed with the wonderful help of my guiding company, AMS), was as alluring as it was frightening.  Due to a heavy snow storm we had to scratch "Plan A", flying into Denali and camping on the slopes of Mt. McKinley. Instead, my guide and I backpacked onto the glacier at Matanuska Glacier.  Within minutes of tracking 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."

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Glaciers are like nothing else . . .absolutely stunning to the senses with their almost other-worldly, magnificent, frigid beauty.

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Sleeping in a light tent on the glacier was as much of an emotional and even spiritual challenge as it was physical. Unaccustomed to cold or the glacier environment, I had to master fears and anxieties of the unknown while continuing to hold my sense of mortality in front of me.  Learning about the sounds and movement of the glacier was truly illuminating. 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.  Sleeping with a sleeping bag of -15° F was barely warm enough and still required multi-insulating layers of clothing. Touching the glacier without protective covering would literally result in searing the skin.

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Learning ice-climbing, self-arrest and glacier surviving techniques was actually fun and exhilarating.  Learning about the technologies was fascinating.  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.

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