I want to share a story, not about me directly, but about a person who changed the course of my life forever. A person who turned an unaware 11 year old into a lifelong student of life itself. This story is about Sensei Kirk Ellis.

I have many memories and experiences I’ve gathered through being one of his many martial arts students, and deep conversations with Sensei. Some conversations were over the phone, others during moments in adulthood. I’ll share those stories in time. But this one, the first story, is a brief timeline from then to now which began when I was eleven years old.

First Contact
I started Kenju at age eleven. I wasn’t excelling in school-not because I was a bad kid, but because the light just hadn’t turned on yet. That changed when I walked into Sensei Ellis’s martial arts school, which was his own martial arts style he created called Kenju. Through Kenju and eventually black belt classes, I got to see and experience just how intense he was about teaching and having high standards. As an example, we were required to read philosophy and self-improvement books as part of our training.

One of these first books was The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. That book, and the discipline of martial arts itself began to wake up my mind. My mind started to open, I slowly became more aware of myself and the world I lived in. I had a very long road, which I am still on. At some point, my mother suggested I quit. She didn’t mean it in a bad way, I was still very young and it was just time to move on she thought. But the seed had been planted.

A Quiet Thread
I kept in touch with Sensei over the years. He also was a fireman and later became the County Fire Chief where we lived. I had a paper route back then and would deliver papers to the fire station. Sometimes I’d see him and we’d talk for a few minutes. Even those brief conversations were very inspiring.

Then came high school, college, and life. I went away to study music. We lost touch, mostly because of me. I got married young which ended quickly, it didn’t end well. But I was blessed with a great son. Now at 23 years old and divorced, I found myself wondering: How did I get here? I felt like a failure in life. I wanted to start new and return to music. First I needed to figure out who I really was, and not to ever make those types of mistakes again about myself and life.

The Search
That’s when I began searching, really searching. Learning what truth is, and what reality is, was my mission. I needed to learn this before I started down the path of life again. I visited every kind of church, spiritual center, and philosophy group I could find, from traditional churches, to tent revivals and to Buddhist chanting. I wasn’t looking for a particular religion. I was looking meaning and truth.

What I found was disheartening. Most places seemed more interested in building membership or their image than really connecting with people and helping people grow. Even the Buddhist circles, which were closest to what I sought, felt distracted by institutional goals. At this point in my life I realized that the message and these faiths may be pure and true, but the vehicle for learning and growing in those belief systems were inherently flawed, not because of their foundations, but because humans, I feel are naturally flawed. So when you take a great belief system and introduce humans into it, it will naturally become flawed. Everywhere I turned, I hit a wall. I was about to give up. Then something told me: Go back to where it started. Talk to Sensei, he knew me and I always felt he was wise and could help me on my path.

The Return
I was living in Los Angeles at the time. Sensei was in Madera. I made the drive to see him. I’ll never forget that day. Talking to him was like sitting with the oracle. Everything he said cut straight to the core. He knew me, not just who I had been, but who I was now. He seemed to understand what I was feeling and what I was searching for. That conversation and face to face meeting changed everything.

At the end of our meeting, he handed me a copy of The Human Equation Tapes. I didn’t know what they were or how these would make any difference, but I knew if he wanted me to do something in my journey, then I knew I had to do it. I didn’t have enough money with me at the time, but he said take them, and start my journey forward. “Pay me later,” he said, and I did.

The Transformation
From the moment I got back to L.A., I listened to these tapes nonstop, everyday and all day. At first, I was listening with the standard of truth I was seeking, just like I’d been with all the other spiritual teachings. But Sensei didn’t talk about external fixes, or about all the affects. He spoke directly to the inner core of who we are as human beings. No fluff. No jargon. No sales pitches. Just truth. That truth opened my mind. It aligned perfectly with my obsession to find a pure way to find truth, to understand life and myself. For the first time, I felt like I was really learning how to think with clarity, and how to program my mind.

As I started listening to the tapes and what Sensei was saying, it all started to come together. This is what I was looking for, this is how I needed to be. To truly understand myself, to see myself honestly, with all the flaws and aspects of how I fit into this world. But also to accept myself, knowing that I could change myself, and to start changing, and to start learning and growing.

I liked what Sensei was saying, to keep growing, even beyond what the tapes had to offer. So listening and incorporating these concepts into my belief system became my goal. That’s all I did, while walking, while at work, in the morning and at night. Constantly, I listened to the tapes, wrote down concepts that struck a cord, and carried them with me. I thought deeply about what Sensei Ellis said, about life, about thoughts, and about the human experience I was living.

Within six months my life had completely transformed. Every interaction, every conversation became a moment in time, a deep meaningful experience. It was like going from back and white to vivid 4k color. I developed a new sense of personal awareness, almost like a constant out-of-body experience, people today refer to this as a flow-state. I could see myself, and my thoughts in real-time. I saw my emotions clearly, both good and bad. I felt separate from them, so they could not influence my mental balance. It was as if I could touch them, hold them, and most importantly choose how they interact with my life. It was like I had all the time in the world to think, speak, respond and interact with others, with clarity and purpose. I felt five steps ahead of everything, but I used this to choose the best outcome of each interaction with people. To try and make each person feel validated and respected.

Every moment and personal encounter I had became more meaningful. I could see their strengths, their insecurities, their hopes, their pain within a second. But I respected each person I met and knew they had knowledge that I did not have. I wanted to learn from them, and to share that moment in time, in a meaningful way. I felt I was truly experiencing each moment as a reality. I strived to treat everyone I met, as if they were the most important person in the world. Each interaction felt so rewarding. This was all taught to me through my experience with the Human Equation Tapes.

Six months after that meeting with Sensei, my life completely accelerated forward, I had a new life, a new career at one of the largest law firms in the world. I was surrounded by brilliant people who mentored me, kept pushing me and kept challenging me to grow. It was exciting. When you feel and experience so much with every single moment and event, you are also processing so much more information. It was like riding the most awesome roller coaster in the world that you could not get off, it seemed that it would never end. The saying, be careful for what you wish for, now had a new meaning. All of this, every step, was because of Sensei Ellis who gave his time to me, to show me a path, to show me how to find the answers, and my true self.

The Long View
As time passed, I got too comfortable and my desire to learn drifted. At a certain point I felt the insight ability I had was lost. What I had experienced, were now just memories of living with a deep sense of self awareness and understanding. Even at this point, I still felt so lucky and happy. I was still experiencing success, along with life’s expected failures. Sensei taught me to have goals, to always believe in myself, and accept myself for who I am, even when I fall short.

Since then, with everything that’s happened, I’ve been so blessed with a wonderful family. Yes I would say the most wonderful family, and two amazing Daughters I could have ever dreamed of. It is another dream that has come true. I’ve been so lucky to have unique opportunities, and several careers across different lifes. Each one was, and would be a dream come true, for anyone. I’ve often asked myself, Why me? Why was I so lucky to have been in the right place and the right time. I have been helped by so many talented and brilliant people, and to have met someone like Sensei Ellis? To have been given so much from so many, once in a lifetime experiences. I still don’t know the answer. But I do know this: Whenever I drifted away from the tapes, I felt it. That disconnection. My mind was no longer at that level, I felt like I was stuck in the same mental spot on the mountain. Whenever I returned to the tapes, clarity started coming back. It was like remembering who I was, but what I also was missing out on because my life got too comfortable.

Over the years, I’ve been in and out of touch with Sensei. Sometimes I was lucky enough to see him in person. Sometimes I only had five minutes on the phone. But those moments, I knew were so important because life is so temporary and I needed to absorb as much as I could. As this endeavor continues I’ll write more about some of the insights that he shared with me.

The Tapes Come Home
Over the course of decades, I had asked Sensei why he stopped The Human Equation Tapes. I’d tell him how much they changed my life. How much they could help others who were in a similar point in their life. His response was that he had moved on. His philosophy had grown so far beyond that, he was focusing on moving forward and he wanted people to be exposed to his new ideas and concepts. He was writing new books, thinking about new ideas. As an example, I asked as we were walking across a busy street, when does he mediate? I said that I meditate in the morning and try in the evening but I wanted to know when is the best time to meditate. His response blew my mind, he said, “I’m meditating right now.” He said he is always mediating, concurrently to whatever he is also doing. He was always in a constant state of meditation. It was then that I realized, he is on a whole different level. I needed to stop talking and just listen.

Many years later, when we were talking on the phone, I again asked about the tapes, to see if he would have them back in circulation, he told me that he didn’t have the tapes anymore, they were lost, they are gone, that they are no more. That’s when I said, I have a copy of the tapes from when we met that day almost forty years ago. I had also digitized that copy back in 1999 so I could preserve them, and still listen to them before the physical tapes finally gave out. I asked if I could license them and restore the audio to share them with the world. To my shock and surprise, he told me, he’s giving them to me, to own, to bring them into today’s platforms. He asked for nothing. No conditions. He said, they’re yours. Take them and make them whatever they need to be. I was at a loss for words. We took care of the legal formalities and then it was off to another, once in a life time experience, and blessing. I was given the green light to restore these recordings, to create a platform for these tapes and concepts so they could be available for anyone with cellphone or computer.

A New Chapter

After 40 years of listening, learning, and living with these recordings, they now exist on a platform that can be shared with the world. The audio has been forensically restored from their original 1985 cassette tape recordings. Edited as excerpts and full cassette tapes for today’s social media listening habits. These excerpts have being uploaded and there are more to come. I work regularly on these platforms in my personal time and will be uploading more excerpts. The full excerpts are also all available to listen for free.

These are not tapes to just listen to once, or from the beginning to the end. They’re like a great book, to be revisited from any starting place in the audio. And with each listen, you can experience what you want from them, and if you choose, you can add whichever excerpts into your life you like. After time, the tapes will take on a new meaning and will get deeper with their application. You don’t have to outgrow them, you can grow with them.

As Sensei said, the tapes stay the same, it’s your view of yourself and your view of the world that has changed. So now, these same tapes will mean something completely different to you. You will have a new understanding about yourself, a new understanding about these concepts, and you will gain insight and a deeper meaning in your life, and of life. The tapes will keep changing their meaning as you continue to grow.

I’ll also be sharing a few personal stories about Sensei and the teachings he shared with me, as I was going through different times in my life. If you’re someone with a desire to know who you truly are… I hope these teachings find you, the way they found me.

One important concept I must add, that I learned later in life, the hard way. You have to really desire to grow and to change, and you have to really desire to grow beyond your present self. It does not matter what personal growth system you choose, the tapes, or any other belief system. Without a real burning desire to grow beyond your present self, without a need to seek more from life, to really commit to becoming a student of life, the path you choose is just an experience you’ll only feel good about, at that moment.

After decades of trying to get back where I used to be mentally, listening to the tapes, meditating, carrying my daily notes with me, I realized that the burning desire I had when life felt so meaningless, was missing. I was too comfortable in life. I still have the desire to grow, but I realize I have not actually flipped the switch mentally. To really test myself again with life. I’m trying still and hopefully though this new Human Equation Tapes platform, that may still happen.

If Sensei’s teachings have connected with you, I’d love to hear your story. This site was created to keep the Human Equation Tapes, and his teachings alive—for all of us still learning how to live the Human Equation.

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