Have you ever picked up a book, settled into your armchair to read with your favorite beverage in hand, and found yourself immersed in worlds you’d only half imagined?

Maybe that world was filled with sword fights, strange tea ceremonies, and the political intrigue of 17th century Japanese history as in James Clavell’s Shogun. Maybe that world was about ice axes, oxygen tanks, and true life and death decisions on Mount Everest as in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Or perhaps you followed Sir Richard Burton, the British adventurer, as he sought the source of the Nile River, disguised himself to enter the forbidden city of Mecca, and discovered and translated the Kama Sutra and Arabian Nights.

Ever since I was a child I’ve had an insatiable appetite for reading. I read everything from poetry and novels to biographies, essays, how-to guides and even comic books. But my favorite books have always been travelogues. I felt as though Paul Theroux took me with him as he rode the Iron Rooster through China and paddled his kayak around the Happy Isles of Oceania. Bruce Chatwin introduced me to Patagonia. Tim Cahill took me from the salt mines of Mali to the jungles of Borneo.

Other authors took me farther still. With the stories they shared and rich and specific details they provided, each author planted in me the seeds of curiosity to see new horizons, sample new foods, and learn new cultures. Years later I followed in their footsteps and saw with my very own eyes the foreign horizons they’d described. I machete chopped my way through similar jungles and tasted comparably exotic foodstuffs.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve long felt a burning curiosity to explore new places and do new things. I consider it part of the process of learning. Sometimes I learn vicariously through the experiences of others. Many times I travel on foot. Other times I use my mind to explore realms where my feet can’t take me. No matter how I do it, I consider it all part of filling in the map. That is charting new territory and converting unknowns into knowns.

From the time I was five years old I recall my dad encouraging me to put on my hiking boots, or adventure boots as he used to call them, so that we could explore the woods beyond our door in Connecticut. When I moved to California for middle school I continued those explorations in the wilderness beyond my door in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Sometimes I backpacked with my fellow boy scouts to the snowclad peaks above timberline. More often I’d disappear shortly after sunrise with only my dog to explore canyons, rivers and ridgetops up to ten miles from home before hiking back in the twilight.

By the time I graduated from high school I’d determined to be paid to explore, and I wanted the freedom to choose where I wanted to go. So I studied journalism in college and afterwards found work as a travel writer, writing for newspapers, magazines, and book publishers.

My travels took me from glaciated mountain tops in Alaska to mist-shrouded temple tops in the jungles of Guatemala. Similarly, on one quest in the mountains of Thailand’s Golden Triangle I shivered my way through a long winter night on the slatted bamboo floor of a villager’s hut above a fetid pig sty, only to relax in five-star sybaritic beachside luxury on St. John in the US Virgin Islands on another sojourn.

But after a few years I tired of writing about vacations in Barbados. I wanted to do something more spiritually meaningful. That decision led to adventures of a different sort as I began to explore the realms of spirit.

In that pursuit it was books that once again showed me the way. After my first out of body experience books like Robert Monroe’s Journeys Out of the Body and Sylvan Muldoon’s 1929 classic Projection of the Astral Body comforted me in my experiences and showed me that there remained uncharted worlds yet to explore.

Of course getting to those realms was a bit more complicated than buying a plane ticket, hiring Sherpas, and mastering how to self-arrest with an ice ax. So as I set out to learn how to visit nonphysical reality, books once again became my guides. And like hiking, meditation became a means of venturing into uncharted territory. And that too has been a process of converting unknowns into knowns.

Today I find myself on the verge of melding together my spiritual curiosity and my love of writing. I ask myself, why not take a journalist’s approach to exploring the realms of spirit? Why not do spiritual travel writing, if you will? Indeed, many of the posts you’ll read on this site might be loosely described as first-person spiritual journalism. Unlike the relatively crowded bookshelves of general travel writing, the spiritual adventure genre feels wide open.

You might say the genre was founded by Emmanuel Swedenborg, an 18th century scientist, statesman and visionary who wrote prolifically about heaven, hell, and the demons and angels he encountered in his astral voyages into realms beyond the physical.

Swedenborg wrote during the 1700s. To be sure the genre was continued by Muldoon and Monroe, while today modern explorers like Robert Bruce, William Buhlman, Bruce Moen and others are continuing the tradition. And as this site develops you’ll hear more about them and perhaps even directly from them. But nonphysical reality is a big place and it has room and adventure for all who care explore it. That’s my plan.

So if you’re interested, settle in beside your computer with your favorite beverage in hand, and prepare yourself to be immersed in worlds you’ve only half imagined. Who knows, perhaps you’ll soon find yourself exploring similar horizons with your very own eyes.