Mike Biles is one of the most emotionally evolved men I know. He exudes a quiet confidence as a successful entrepreneur whose company handles insurance claims
Mike Biles, author
for companies and individuals whose roofs have been damaged in storms.
As he goes about his work arranging construction crews and fighting insurance companies to make sure his clients get what they’re owed, you’d never know he’s also the author of the book The Spiritual Prescription for Transforming Relationships and holds a master’s degree in spiritual psychology.
He went through an existential crisis around age 30 that led to a period of searching and eventually to what he calls a “reawakening.” He continues to tend to his personal growth as an ongoing way of life. Now in his 50s, his path has led him to a happiness he never imagined in his younger days.
I sat down to talk with him.
What was the situation that led to your darkness?
It was several things: A series of bad broken relationships. Being what some people would call a dry drunk or a dry addict — somebody who’s sober, but not really dealing with their issues, their past traumas and grief.
That experience made me ask, “What is wrong with me? Why am I feeling this way?” But I thought it was physical, because I didn’t know anything about the mental, emotional, or spiritual side of life. I was pretty much all about the physical at that point.
I would call that period a mid-life crisis at age 30. I’d been more or less sober since 1986, but I was still really just not facing my inner self. I suffered from workaholism, over-exercising — addictions that played out in other ways that are healthier than drugs or alcohol, but were still ways of escaping from myself.
I went on the New Warrior Training Adventure. That was the big, egg cracking moment.
I felt extreme exhaustion. I thought I had chronic fatigue syndrome. I went to the doctor, and he asked me this stupid, five-question questionnaire to see whether or not I was depressed. He put me on Prozac immediately. I agreed to do that, and that was really a bad thing for me.
Two to three months on that and I was coming out of my skin and losing my mind. I was numbed-out, and not feeling any sense of wellness at all.
Do you remember emotionally how you felt?
Numb. And underlying the numbness was extreme fear.
About what?
I don’t know, I just had chronic anxiety that I didn’t even realize I was feeling until later. It was that kind of non-specific fear, which is probably fear of lots of things all melted together into one.
What did you do to address it?
Some therapy, which wasn’t very helpful. But it started to open me up a little bit. Looking back on it, I just don’t believe I had very good therapists.
I read a book about adult children of alcoholics and I identified myself in that book. That opened me up a little more.
I then had some friends who were trying to get me to do this program called the New Warrior Training Adventure, which was a personal growth weekend, a male initiation program run by the Mankind Project. I had pretty much been ignoring them for a couple years, and then everything started to collapse on me emotionally, so I finally said, “Okay.”
I went on the New Warrior Training Adventure. That was the big, egg cracking moment.
It was August, 1997. I think of it as my life before August, 1997, and my life after August, ’97. It was that profound for me.
Wow. What did you realize from that weekend?
A lot of things, but one of the big things was I wasn’t alone, as a man, going through what I was going through. When somebody would say, “Can anybody identify with what Mike’s going through?” 30 people would raise their hands.
So then I got involved with weekly circle meetings with that organization. I fired my therapists — I had two of them. I started doing other personal growth workshops, seminars, communication courses, and just a lot of personal development stuff. I was attending Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. I was in all the anonymouses for about a couple years, just trying to figure out where I best fit.
Where did you best fit?
In none of them, but I got something out of all of them. I learned a lot. For me, that period of time was about total immersion in my own reawakening.
Where was all this happening?
Between Austin and Santa Barbara, California. I was also doing a tremendous amount of spiritual seeking — going to different churches and experiencing different religions. Buddhist temples, Hindu temples. I was basically looking for answers in any place I could gather them.
I can’t say I settled on a spiritual belief system. I’ll say first that I don’t know. My experience is that my intention, when sourced out of love, has the power of creation — meaning that if I want to find peace and I’m willing to connect to unconditional loving, I will always arrive at peace.
The way out didn’t mean avoiding my pain. It meant going into it. That was a big thing I had to learn.
I believe there is a spark of life, an energy that runs within us all that is connecting us. We can deny it, block it, but if we just open up to it in a place of non-judgment, the experience of profound love and spiritual connection happens without effort. The experience of “God” is found in the experience of love.
Were you working during this period?
Prior to that, I’d been working in commercial real estate. But during a good bit of this time I wasn’t working. I was just living off of my savings.
Were you getting relief as you did all this exploration?
Yes. I started to feel happy. Not for long periods of time, but there would be moments when I wouldn’t be feeling fear and grief, so I knew it was working. So, that’s what drove me on, more, more, more. I knew that this was the way out.
The way out didn’t mean avoiding my pain. It meant going into it. That was a big thing I had to learn.
I wasn’t scared of people anymore. I wasn’t scared of their judgment. The world started to look like a much more beautiful place.
I learned I had to stop avoiding my pain and my fear, and actually go back into it. Sit with it, experience it, feel it, express it. The more I purged out my years of grief, the more happiness I had. The more sunshine came into my life.
What were you grieving?
Lots of things. Loss of past relationships, girlfriends, friendships with guys and unfulfilled dreams.
Like what?
Taking the wrong path in my life. Not being satisfied with my career choice. Not being happy with my family situation. Grieving the loss of the dream I had of having a loving, happy, nuclear family. The loss of the dream of having a father and mother who were mentally, emotionally healthy people.
Were you able to express your grief?
Yeah. That was one thing I learned on that men’s training, was that it’s okay for men to express their grief. To cry and sob and scream and yell, and let it out. To fully experience it, which is something I had never done.
Probably the single most important thing I did in healing myself was allowing myself to express all that pent-up emotional energy that was slowly weakening and killing me.
My experience is that fear will turn into grief in order to be expressed.
It’s like driving down a rutted, dirt road, and I keep trying to stay out of the ruts, but every once in a while I get sucked into them. Difference is, these days, I know I’m in them and that I’ve got to steer myself back up over the ruts.
I later went on to get a master’s degree in counseling and spiritual psychology, which was an intensive, two-year training program. And, I did research for about two years and wrote two books. One of them has been published. Gathering information for those books was a course in itself.
[Biles’ first book is The Spiritual Prescription for Transforming Relationships.]
What was the second book about?
Marriage and divorce in America. That was actually a master’s thesis project in book form.
How did your view of the world and your place in it change?
I started to feel more part of it than an outsider. I started to look at people differently. I started to see beauty in places that I didn’t see it before.
I wasn’t scared of people anymore. I wasn’t scared of their judgment. The world started to look like a much more beautiful place.
How did it feel once the heaviness lifted?
I felt like a whole new person. I had much more confidence in myself. I looked people in the eyes. I could express love toward people, something I couldn’t do before. I had real connections with people, strangers and old friends. The way I was relating and showing up in the world had changed dramatically.
Granted, this took several years of work, but with little wins all along the way. But to get where I started feeling really solid in myself, it took a couple years.
Do you still have struggles?
Yeah. From time to time I’ll start feeling sadness and grief well up, like after I’ve had some kind of fearful experience with a work situation or a relationship. I’ll start feeling myself being sucked back toward a depression, feeling like I’m holding onto something inside me, like grief. Only now I’m aware of it and it doesn’t stay because I’ve learned to let it out, let it go, and take time for myself to cry.
Sometimes I have to prompt myself by watching a tear-jerker movie or something like that when I’m by myself at home so I can just kind of open up the spigot. I would say, like a lot of people, especially a lot of men, my access to grieving gets locked up and locked down, and it usually takes something to break it open.
So I’ll go through three, four, five days of feeling funky and stuffing it down. And then I’ll realize where I am and I’ll take a day or so to intentionally bleed that off by crying, being alone and checking out of the world a little bit.
Those experiences have become fewer and fewer over the years to where I might have that experience twice a year now. It depends on what’s going on. I can also notice when old patterns rear up in relationships or I desire to seek certain types of people that are triggers for my old wounds.
It’s like driving down a rutted, dirt road, and I keep trying to stay out of the ruts, but every once in a while I get sucked into them. Difference is, these days, I know I’m in them and that I’ve got to steer myself back up over the ruts.
Most of the time I’m now driving outside the ruts, but that track is deep and worn, and it’s easy to fall back into.
Over the years, I’ve become pretty quickly aware of when I have been sucked back into one of my old ruts. I know what to do now, whereas before, it was just totally unconscious. I’d fall in the rut and just be driving in it, thinking that was the way it was, and the only way it could be. Now I know there’s a different way.
I know you go to the men’s group every week. Do you have any other regular practices that help provide hope?
Yeah, I’ve got a mission statement that I developed. My mission is to co-create a world of love and connection. And, I’ve realized that if I’m not living my mission, then I’m getting myself into a funk. How I live my mission is by working on connecting with other people and being kind, supportive, helpful, and staying focused on being a service to others. That has been a great way of me actually getting a lot of my needs met. So as a daily practice, that would be it.
I had the if/then syndrome. If I get this, then I’ll be happy … instead of just being happy with what I got, as a conscious choice.
I also exercise daily. I take time to be alone and meditate occasionally, a few times a week, and that for me just maybe means 10 minutes with my eyes closed, being still and working to not think. I’ve got a few little meditation mantras and exercises that I’ll do.
I also realized that in order for me to live a happy life, I had to have connected relationships and adventurous experiences. Those two things were big for me.
For me adventurous experiences can be anything from going to a new restaurant, to taking a different path down the sidewalk in my neighborhood or jumping on a surf board in Thailand. Something new, something that’s not part of my everyday, boring type of routine.
I found that doing that keeps me confident. It keeps me facing fears, and makes my life a lot bigger. It just expands my bubble or my container of life.
And I read books. I still read personal growth books. I almost always have one cracked open on my nightstand. Sometimes I have two or three that I’ll just peck at and read a page or two of every now and then. It keeps me on track.
I’d also say that my relationships with people are way different because now, nearly everybody that I surround myself with, is or has been in some form of personal recovery. So my relationships and my conversations with people are not superficial. They’re real, and juicy.
What are you grateful for?
For all that. The connections and the people in my life. For all the dogs in my life (laughs).
I think being in gratitude is a state of really being connected to love. Certainly, the best way to be at peace is to be in that realm of gratitude. It’s accepting things as they are, and living in the present moment.
The act of wanting, I found for me, because I was very type-A, wanting, wanting, wanting more and more, was what kept me in fear all the time.
Because I felt like I had to get it in order to be happy. I had the if/then syndrome. If I get this, then I’ll be happy. If I get that, then I’ll be happy, instead of just being happy with what I got, as a conscious choice.
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