Here is a little taste from the intro of my new book. Stay tuned for more …
In 1998, I went to Africa. In my wake across the Atlantic, I left a flotsam of failed relationships, addictions, dead dreams, phenomenal financial success and catastrophic financial failure. I had recently been homeless; everything I owned destroyed by fire a short time before. So that by the time I arrived in the heart of West Africa, I was an empty man – no sense of home, no identity, no purpose, and no material wealth. A being starving for something different, looking for answers to questions I didn’t even know I had been asking, seeking a different way to pattern my life that brought both the success and the happiness that had eluded me.
And it was there in Africa, in the tiny country of Burkina Faso, that I encountered a way of being that helped me recognize what belonged in that void that haunted me every minute of every day. It was there in Burkina that I reconnected with my purpose, with my heart, and with the drum.
It was both a blessing and a curse living in a village without running water or electricity. As is their custom, they welcomed me like their own. For two weeks, I ate what they ate, drummed with the tribal drummers, slept on the ground among the people, joked and cried with them and generally experienced first hand the spirituality, community and teachings of the Dagara people. In doing this, they helped me re-birth my genius into the world again. For that gift I am blessed and grateful.
My purpose in writing this book is to share what I learned during my stay in Burkina Faso. I will also share what I have learned in my fifteen years of putting those Dagara teachings into practice personally and how I have adapted those teachings to flow more easily with a Western mind without diminishing their effectiveness. The tools are deceptively simple, but phenomenally powerful and profound. These principles and truths will help you fill your own void, will help support you and celebrate you in discovering your own genius. They will help you see that deep within you resides a power to help you express this genius. The power that holds this magical place is the realization that you are intrinsically good and choose to create life-affirming situations in your life.
Blessings,
Toby
