This testimonial comes from a student who began her work with me in 2021. As I say about all my students, Nina’s progress is a testament to her work. I am grateful to her and all my students who apply the teaching in their everyday lives and receive the benefits.
More testimonials for working with me can be found here:
Arriving at Rock Bottom
I’m sitting here on a park bench in gratitude after 5 ½ years of working with Jim, thinking about where to even start with my testimonial. Let’s start with what is here now:
Gratitude. Thank you, Jim.
Before I dive deeper into why I feel grateful, I feel like sharing a little bit about where I come from and when and why I started working with Jim.
My background, unfortunately, is trauma–like for so many of us–and I hit something that felt like rock bottom in 2018. I was in my early 20s at that time, and I lived in a little shared, slightly crappy apartment in the middle of Austria’s busy, noisy capital city. I was in a bad place – emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually (although I didn’t really knew anything about spirituality at that time). I went to parties and concerts, drank alcohol, and smoked a cigarette every now and then when out with friends. I was slightly overweight, and I even found myself taking a drug once.
How did I get here?
What Was Wrong With Me?
My trauma made me feel really bad, and I started questioning what was going on and what was wrong. I started researching and slowly began to understand that I grew up in a narcissistic, unsafe home. My father was an enraged, chain-smoking and obese alcoholic who abused me and my brother mentally, emotionally, and physically. My mother was a covert narcissist hiding under the seemingly innocent façade of the good, loving and caring mother. I still feel some anger writing this, but God, how liberating it is to see this more clearly and continue to do the work to get out of this trauma-swamp.
Strangely, in 2019, in the midst of all of this suffering and thanks to the Internet, I stumbled across spiritual texts and books during my research about trauma. I soon found myself at the spirituality & well-being section at the local bookstore, reaching for Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. In that book, I learned that I didn’t have to belief my thoughts.
A Spiritual Opening on a Bus
Later that year, I had a spiritual opening while sitting in a bus – I felt immensely connected to and a deep kind of appreciation and love for all the people on this bus. This spiritual high lasted for about a week.
After that, I tried to make sense of what happened and found Jim’s blog. I’m so glad I did before getting caught up in the magical-thinking-woo-woo spirituality that is out there. As this spiritual teacher with his zero-fluff teachings, he helped me understand some of my experiences and build a framework of understanding about spirituality, spiritual awakening, and spiritual inner work.
Joining in Spiritual Community
I started working with Jim in 2021 and joined one of his online communities. A year later, I started having online, one-on-one sessions.
The first years of working with Jim were a slow grind of untwisting defense mechanisms, starting to heal trauma, and becoming more vulnerable, transparent, and honest with myself, the community, and Jim.
They were marked by backslides, denial, pride, and moments where I truly messed up. I had to look at my behaviors and take ownership of my own suffering and how it affected and hurt people around me.
In those moments, I appreciated Jim’s kindness, which can be a very fierce kindness:
He is very direct in calling his students out on their ego crap.
To the ego, this doesn’t look like kindness at first, but in retrospect, I am immensely grateful for it. It is always coming from a place of deep love for his students. He truly cares about us realizing freedom. This love is a teaching in and of itself – to see and feel how little or how much we can allow ourselves to receive this kindness and love.
Experiencing More Health and Beauty in Life
Of course, there were also beautiful moments and smaller or bigger successes. With Jim’s help and encouragement, I finally took courage and ended a 5-year relationship that I didn’t really want to be in, started a new job, and moved to a small city in rural Austria, where my nervous system relaxed more. Furthermore, my body became healthier because I am surrounded by nature, better air, beautiful lakes, and healthy, local food from the market.
This is something I’ve learned from Jim: The importance of practical spirituality and our biology and how life-changing it feels to surrender to the reality of my body.
A healthier lifestyle gives me a more healthy and stable foundation to deal with the hard work of healing and letting go of ego.
Embracing Many Kinds of Spiritual Tools
I also started exercising, exploring friendships, business networking, dancing, singing, and exploring all kinds of different tools like:
- yoga nidra,
- breath work,
- coming back to awareness,
- journaling,
- working with my inner child/therapy,
- noticing my surroundings,
- writing poems,
- working on my posture,
- speaking from the belly,
- building things with Play-Doh,
- meaningful rituals, and so much more.
It’s amazing how everything can be a tool in surrender!
I appreciate Jim’s guidance to finally listen more to my own inner teacher and wisdom and think for myself. No spiritual teacher can ultimately know what is going on inside and what we need – only we can know.
Jim is always pointing his students towards themselves and their own wisdom.
In-person Transformational Work
I joined two in-person community gatherings in Bend, OR in 2025 and 2026, which had a big impact on me. The first one was still underpinned by a lack of transparency and true dedication to the work and getting to know myself. Still, I had a big release on day three which was followed by an experience that felt brand new:
I felt one with everything and everyone around me–myself, the other students, Jim, the tree outside the window, the couch,… My mind fell silent; my fears and desires were gone.
The next day, I still felt like I was looking at everything for the first time. I looked at my surroundings with awe, and the leaves of the tree in the back yard never looked greener and more vivid before.
But I wasn’t committed enough to really let those experiences continue to inform my day-to-day life back home and to keep doing my inner work. I distracted myself and went back to my familiar patterns.
I approached the second gathering in a different way with more preparation and determination to work on myself and know myself. In this gathering, I experienced how transformation gets easier and how the student-teacher-relationship with Jim improves. If we let go of some of our pride and admit where we are, now we have something to work with and we’re able to actually receive help.
That has been my experience lately, and Jim is more than happy to serve and help when we open up to him about where we are.
Deepening in Dedication to Spiritual Rebirth
At this point, I feel like I am starting to take this path of self-discovery and inner work seriously. So many other things have been coming and going lately, and I really am tired of trying to find satisfaction or happiness outside of me – it has been a constant source of disappointment and misery.
Also, looking at how I am the only one making myself suffer, I’m seeing how totally insane this is.
At the same time, I am surrendering to the fact that my inner child is currently about 4-5 years old (and having had trauma can make us feel like we’re not starting from zero but from minus something; it can feel frustrating, I know!). There is a lot I need to do and learn in order to grow up. Spiritual realization, growth, and learning coexist with duality and oneness.
Jim taught me that we cannot hide in a spiritual cave – we have to live our lives!
Being back home after the second gathering, I am working on continuing the momentum of the work I’ve done. I am finding ways and tools to keep doing the work here – often times on my own, knowing that I have an amazing spiritual teacher and spiritual friends/community members supporting me.
I know that I am not alone.
You don’t have to do this alone, either.
I whole-heartedly recommend reaching out to Jim to help speed up your spiritual awakening process, avoid some of the common pitfalls, and let some rays of light into your life sooner rather than later.
Nina S.
Austria
2021 to ongoing
