about Alistair
I bow my head to Mother Earth and love like-minded change makers to cocreate a planetary civilization within my lifetime.
I dance since childhood and meditation is one of my corner stones since the age of 17.
I coin myself an integral heretic and buddhist geek, strive to build regenerative business models as a dedicated social entrepreneur and weave complex multi-stakeholder surroundings together for big causes.
It took me a long and dedicated healing journey during my adult years to recover from PTSD, burning my left upper leg in early childhood.
I got a green thumb, yes, I truly hug trees and collect postcards, sacred art, indigenous jewelry and love to cook spicy Indian curries.
In case you believe in personality tests, I’m an ESFJ-“The Consul”-Type in the Myers-Briggs-Type-Indicator and a Manifesting Generator in the Human Design. I’m the guy aligning the team and turning on the buzz. I’m happy when my tribe is happy.
Welcome to dive through my biography below.
2000 - 2007
The Integral Vision
I started meditating at the age of 17 at the local Yoga school. But soon it was clear that I had to go deeper. Studying in Göttingen I dedicated my first years primarily to this goal. After a Kundalini awakening in 2001 I went to India to find an answer to what had happened to me. When I came back I stopped concentrative yogic practice and continued with awareness meditation until today.
Ken Wilber’s Opus Magnum “Sex, Ecology, Spirituality” which I read at the age of 25 clearly defined a turning point in my biography. Suddenly I had a map where I could easily draw lines and conclusions between my various interests and aspects of myself. Also, after eight years of straight meditation it became clear that other parts of my personal development were asking for due attention.
To put it bluntly – and yes I know to some readers that might sound unheard of – enlightenment is not the end, and to some extent not the goal of your spiritual quest.
It’s all about integrating Eastern approaches to radically free your spirit and Western approaches to heal your shadow, your unprocessed psychic material, your wounds, traumas, your childhood and collective societal programming.
Integral Spirituality, to quote another one of Wilber’s central books, is about first understanding, then experiencing that albeit you might experience tremendous peak experiences (Moksha, Satori), these again are just passing states of consciousness. There is nothing that saves you from doing the sobering, nitty gritty work in everyday life as an individual and within your personal surroundings to make the rubber hit the road.
Stripping the Gurus depicts how some of the world’s most renowned spiritual teachers have not had their shadow integrated.
Most definitely, if you are still drawn towards “just meditating”, your own shadow will time and again let you stumble over old conditionings despite yourself feeling free, open and grounded.
Some closing words on integral. It resembles any other theoretical approach of slicing reality into palpable pieces, that of course with such a complex map as the integral, you can easily get lost. Nevertheless and conceiving myself as a born heretic I’m a strong proponent of the integral map, simply and before most because it’s the most elegant, concise and complete map that I know of today. Working within an integral framework has greatly liberated and healed me. This is why I’d like to pass it on to you.
1986-1999
Ballet Dancer
There is that scene from my early childhood when a girl was dancing instead of reciting a poem as tradition wants at Sankt Nicholas’ Day. So starting at the age of 7 in my hometown of Würzburg I wanted to become a ballet dancer which culminated in moving to Berlin at the age of 12 to go to a ballet-boarding school shortly after the wall had fallen.
The first big dream of my life burst when I had to return to the boring small town in Bavaria at the age of 15. I continued to dance Ballet in the local theatre until 20. But in a way leaving Berlin and loosing my big dream left me bruised and torn yet ultimately took me on the inner path at an early age. I still enjoy dancing – mostly in Berlin clubs during day-time. Yes you read rightly so, day-time, at best on a sunny Sunday while the sun is shining, barefoot in the summer time.
1979 - 1986
Community Born Child
I was born September 10, 1979 at Leimen and spent most of the time of my early childhood in a small community on the remote countryside in the Bavarian Forest. The first years my playground was full of wild nature, I remember bumblebees, cats, the smell of the countryside. When I got into kindergarten we moved to Schweinfurt, a small industrial town, just opposite the former abandoned port at river Main, with a big scrap yard just across the street. I didn’t mind as a child and changed meadows for old trunks for playing hide and seek.
Just before I was about to go primary school, April 26, 1986 Tschernobyl happened. Watching the news got me scared to put it mildly. I remember myself discussing vividly about why the hell we are destroying the habitat we need to live in. I was raised in a gardener’s family so the web of life was not a mere philosophical figure that I learned as an adult but something that I experienced very concretely while helping out sowing, watering the plants, picking berries, making jam.
I recall my first childhood experience waking up when my father drove me to hospital. I was 2 years and 8 months old and burnt myself the upper left leg severely whilst playing in the kitchen and having boiling hot coffee melting with the polyester jumpsuit I was wearing.
I took me 14 years of dedication, time, money and effort to heal myself and break free from the many patterns that withheld me from channeling my true power to manifest. I have a huge respect for everyone one on the quest for healing, be it individually or for the various intergenerational, racial, cultural and colonial traumas many of us carry.
May we all heal. May we all contribute to making this gem of a planet more sane, green, just and beautiful for the many generations to come after us.