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Who Am I?  Background:

This is a real deep look at who I am and what I believe… 

It’s pretty long and I didn’t hold back!!!

My name is Thomas Bowman Jr..  I grew up in Pennsylvania just north west of Philadelphia.  I am currently 38 years old(2012).  My upbringing was one of strict Baptist Christian beliefs which when I hit 18 I put behind me.  I spent my first 9 years of school in a strict Christian school environment and the last 3 up till graduation in a public school setting.  I graduated from Conestoga Sr High School in 1991.

I attended college for almost a year before I decided it wasn’t for me.  I then bounced from job to job trying to find myself.  I tried everything from flipping pizza’s to construction labor.  I spent a full year cutting grass commercially which I hope to never do again!  At around the age of 22 I got a job with a master plumber.  This was my first real serious job learning experience.  I had for several years worked on construction related jobs, but this was different.

The very first week of work I learned how to break a toilet and take 8 stitches!  From the first day this plumbing company started to teach and show me things I never expected to learn or do so fast.  The very first day they set me up with a turbo torch and some copper pipe and fittings.  They had me prep water heater connection pipes for water heater replacement jobs that we were soon to do.  For hours I heated metal up well past the soldering point burning myself, the table, and filling the area with lots of smoke.

I look back on those days and chuckle…  How far the path of life has taken me!

Today I consider myself a master jack of the trades.  I have a talent for fixing just about anything.  My friends call me “Jack” for that very reason.  I currently live in Daytona Beach Florida.  However I ran a handyman service out of the Main Line PA. area for more than a decade.  I seem to have a talent for problem solving.  When I go to work on a project I can see the parts and how they interact with one another creating a working thing.  So i find it easy to fix and repair things!  I still run a handyman service, but the economy isn’t what it used to be.

Two years ago I lost my home, business, and all the things that I thought were important.  I held on so tight to what I had left that it almost cost me my health and happiness.  I had 2 guys working for me at the peak of my handyman service.  I had come to a point in my career where the only way I could have lost was to lose everything due to a health or economic disaster.

Today I am a different man in that I have changed so many things about the person I am inside.  Please read on, in all things and experiences there are lessons which can teach us and help others leaving both parties changed forever!

A day came in 2009 when I found that no matter how hard I was trying that my ship was going to founder!  I spent a  year plus in a chapter 13 trying to protect my assets and to keep my guys, my employees, my friends working!  But a day came when I felt in my heart that I was truly going to lose it all.

There is a moment that I came to where I finally let go of the idea that I wasn’t just a handyman, an employer, and a property owner!  But getting to that place was terrifying and quite painful.  I actually found myself in a place where outside of being the business owner, property owner, and employer.  I didn’t know who I was at all!  For the first time since my childhood I found myself praying of all things!

Now to back up for a minute, I should tell you a little more!  At the age of 19 I had a moment that I call my teenage defining moment.  A defining moment is just that.  It’s a time in life where you make a few distinctions about yourself, your life, and what the world is to you!  I will need to reflect on this moment to tell you about that second moment, my adult defining moment.  This adult defining moment occurred for me when I was 36, just a few years ago!

My teenage defining moment occurred after several years of trying and painful life experiences that led me to lose my Grandmother.  I called her Nanny!  She represented to me “unconditional love”.  For no matter how bad I screwed up, she just loved me anyway.  I found myself one afternoon in the poring rain standing at her grave side.  In this moment I found myself broken and lost for meaning in my life as I did during the second defining moment of my life.  More about that in a minute.

For about 6 months I watch a woman that I loved very much die of a horrible cancer that just ate her away.  The 2 years before that showed me disaster after disaster leading me to a moment where I had had enough.  I have discovered a stronger me through many tough and amazing moments.  All of which have led me down a path that has changed me and left me empowered to chase dreams that I left behind so many years ago!

So I found myself one afternoon standing in the rain at the grave of the person that had showed me what unconditional love was.  I was distraught and angry…AT GOD!  My childhood was one of faith and belief.  But I had found as I was becoming a young man all of these horrors of life.  And I honestly lost my faith completely!

For several years my focus seemed to be about loss, suffering, and death!  So I found myself feeling like God had betrayed me too!  So standing at my grandmothers grave I made 3 distinctions that I want to share with you.  I’m sharing this because I so much want to make a difference and by the end of all of this you will know why!

I made 3 distinctions that rainy afternoon.

First, I decided that the boy in me would never shed another tear again!  And in that moment my tears dried up and anger and determination set in.  For the next 19 tears I didn’t't shed a tear!

The second distinction was one about connection.  I decided that it just wasn’t for me!  I decided that I would never get close to anyone again!  For in that moment all I could feel was this pain of loss and regret.  Part of me died that day and really with all honesty didn’t wake up until just about 2 years ago!  Sometimes our perceptions to an event or events can cause an effect that leaves us worse off than it should have.

The third distinction I made was a biggie!  My youth had shown me and told me repeatedly that life was about “free will”!  So I found myself saying that if that was true I wanted God to get out of my life for good!  That day I closed several doors and started on a path that would ultimately lead me to my living room some odd 19 years later (age 36).  This is where the story really starts to shape up!

As a recap..  That day I started to become a certain character, a certain man!  A man that I defined out of loss, pain, and regret. I started to create a life that was built in defense of my fears rather than out of my dreams!  That man is exactly the person that the hurt little boy in me needed to create in order to find myself where I am today!  By the way…  Today I find myself at peace with God and myself!  I have begun a new me searching for purpose and meaning in all that I do.  On Christmas this year as a sign to God or Spirit or higher self…  Whatever you want to call the infinite.  I became a pastor.  Now you should know that with all of my religious upbringing and hate for religion, I really never saw all this happening.

For those 19 years where I turned my back on God and went my own way.  I really in my heart of heart held a lot of anger and border line hate for religion and well “Pastors”!  Now don’t write me off just yet!  I didn’t become a Pastor for a title or for any reason other than this.  During my second defining moment and for the first time in my life, I got an answer to my prayers!  It took almost 2 years of Spiritual lessons to bring me to the point where I took that step of faith!

That step I took on Christmas 2011 was more of a symbolic moment between God and myself that I chose to share with you.  I really don’t ever want to be called Pastor, or feel like I am anything of the sort.  In my mind I have a lot of baggage that stems from what I believe a pastor or religion to be.  So let me just say this!  I am Spiritual and not religious!  I do not define God or Source in anyway.  I try not to judge others or try to get them to change their beliefs.  I only know what I have found to be true for me…  God, Source, the Intangible Creator is everywhere and in everything.  And He, She, or it is full of love…

That being said…  I didn’t want to lose you with all the Pastor, God stuff!  So hang in there!  Life reveals to us amazing things…

So those 19 years where I was becoming a certain character(after my first and before my second defining moment), becoming the man that I found myself to be at the age of 36.  I swear that God or what ever you want to call it, was invisible!  Over those years I learned many things!  I became a great handyman and a really tough dude!  As I started to tell you in the beginning…  My Friends call me “Jack”!  They call me that because of the phrase “Jack of the Trades”.  So I named my handyman company that too…  “True Jack Of Trades”.

I started my own business at around the age of 24 after working for a master plumber for over a year and then working for a HVAC company for a year.  Somewhere in all of that I also worked for an irrigation company and a landscaper.

So why did I start my own company?

Somewhere during those 4 years of hard work I came across this person that changed my life forever!  This individual was the first person I can remember in my life that was sunshine to me!  What do I mean by sunshine?

There are 3 ways that you can be in life!

First, you can be like darkness and suck the life out of yourself and the world around you!  You can tell yourself how ugly and stupid you are.  You can bitch and complain about life and the lack of opportunities. Or…

Second, you can be nothing!  You can just go with the flow and fit in.  Blend!  Or…

Third, and this is the one that will change everything for you as it did me!  You can be like sunshine!  What I mean is that if with every thought, feeling, and action you take you cause the world around you to grow greener.  You will find that everything within you and around you will bloom!  If with every person you meet your intention is to leave them better off than when you found them.  You will have increased the value of the world and you will have changed in the process!

I hope you heard what I just said!  If not please re-read it…  It is the foundation of the many lessons that I wish to convey to you.  Helping you to understand me and hopefully find a deeper meaning for your own path and journey in life.

So I had a moment where everything changed for me!  Since then I have found more answers than the questions I have to ask.  In all truth, the opposite was true for me for so many years.  There was a time when I had more questions than answers.

A flash of intuition came over me one afternoon…  Since it directly relates here it is!

I found myself daydreaming about the sun.  You know that big shinny thing in the sky!  I asked myself in reflection of the person I was being in life.  If the sun could be a certain way or speak.  What would it say?  Would it be…  They are so ungrateful for all that I do for them.  Or would it be…  Look what I have created!  Look how it all blooms for me!  I AM THE SUN!  You see there are lessons all around us all the time if we are just quite inside ourselves and listen!

How are you being to yourself?  Inside of your heart are you sunshine or rain…”TO YOU”!  Do you say to yourself that you aren’t enough or that you are too fat or too stupid or too ugly or too…  Or are you like the sun knowing that you can cause change just by consciously deciding who you are and how you be!  What I just said is profound…  It all starts inside of each of us.  In your heart you are a certain way to yourself first and then to those around you!

You can truly cause the world around you and yourself to bloom and grow stronger by the person you are being!

Think about that for a moment…

Because the second part of that intuition was just as deep!  But first I will need to tell you a story…  And before that I need to finish the story from above!  You see the guy that I met was the first person in my life to tell me that I could do, be, and have anything that I could dream if only I would dream it!  Now at the time I really didn’t truly know what he was talking about, but he was unique in that he seemed so alive and so full of joy!

This guy gave me some information that change my life and ultimately caused me to start my own business.  He told me about a life coach named, Tony Robbins!  Yeah, you know who I mean…  And if you don’t you should look him up online!  Anyway, after listening to some of the materials that Tony put out on audiobook I started my own business.  For years I listened to self improvement audios by the hundreds!

So let me tell you about that second defining moment!

Two years ago as I said earlier, I found myself in my living room.  I was lost for purpose and was losing everything.  Sometimes our perceptions and how we color our experience of life becomes a prison cell!

I found myself that day yelling at GOD for all of my troubles and soon to be losses!  What happened next I truly can’t tell you was real, but in my heart it meant everything…TO ME!  For the first time in my adult life I got an answer from God!  In that moment(age 36) I found myself standing at the grave of my Grandmother some odd 19 years earlier!  I can’t tell you just how sobering of a moment it was for me…  And I will tell you that I was drinking that evening.  But truth be told…  Something happened that evening that had never happened before.  I got an answer from what I have come to call SOURCE!

Now don’t let me lose you hear, because the story is just getting interesting!  I just told you that in a moment I was swept back in time to my first defining moment where I told GOD to get out of my life!  A moment earlier I was 36 in my living room drinking and blaming God for my troubles.  Blaming God because I was losing my home and business.  Now I found myself reliving or watching myself in that first defining moment, nineteen years earlier!

Instantly understood that I made a choice to exclude a huge part of myself in my walk of life.  My Spiritual self!  God granted my wish all those years earlier and allowed me to walk the path of my life as I had wished until I came to a place where I wished differently!

So why would I tell you this?  I’m telling you this because in that moment where I sincerely (even though in anger) asked God why.  I got an answer…  It’s been two years and I can honestly say that I get answers consistently from Source.  Now don’t write me off yet.  There’s so much more to tell!

I am seriously a fairly stable person, or so I’d like to think!  I’ve run a business, managed people, and been so many things in life.  Today I enjoy a level of peace and satisfaction that I so much wish to share with ever person I meet!  I try to be sunshine and to appreciate myself, the world, and all those I meet!  What do I mean by appreciate?

To increase the value of!  In my heart I no longer compete or struggle with the world around or within me!  Think about it!  Have you defined what you believe the world to be and then gone about struggling with the image that you created the world to be?  In our hearts, me included.  I have found that we create our own version of reality first in our hearts and then we bare witness to it in our perception!  Did that make any sense?

There are three parts that I see…  Three parts of what creates our reality!

First, how we see ourselves in our heart of hearts!

Second, how we see the world!

Third, how we think the world sees US in return!

I hope you are hearing me…  I wish so much to be sunshine to you in this moment!  It is the person, the man that I chose to become somewhere between that moment in my living room and this day that I am writing to you!  I’ve discovered that we get exactly what we create in our hearts!  For so many years I told myself so many terrible things and my reality revealed that to me.  I told myself that life was a battle, a struggle.  And my reality revealed that to me!

Today, I choose to consciously create the possibility of tomorrow!  I choose to be sunshine rather than rain or darkness.  “Light up the Darkness”!  You know it all starts within the individual!  It all starts within YOU!

So I guess I will tell you that second part of my intuition about the sun.  You see I really believe that answers are all around us if only we would start to look for them.  You can find happiness, love, peace, and joy!  Just create it within yourself first and your reality will reveal it to you!

So as I was saying before…  If the sun could say something I bet it would be, “LOOK WHAT I HAVE CREATED, LOOK HOW IT ALL BLOOMS FOR ME.  I AM THE SUN”!  The second part of what I thought the sun to say would be…  “I EVEN SHINE DOWN UPON THEM AT NIGHT”!  Think about this…

I even shine down upon them at night!  Long after the sun has set for the evening, it still shines down upon us via the moon!  The main point is that if you are sunshine and cause the things around you to grow and bloom.  If you appreciate the world and yourself, you will find that the value of these things is increased.  It is increased through your own personal intent and conscious choice to do so!

Did you get that?

If you are sunshine or a light to the world around you.  Long after you have left that strangers side, friends side, child’s side…  You will find that you are still shinning upon them in their minds and experience of life!

That is what that guy did for me so many years ago…  To him he was just excited about a program he was taking called, Personal Power 2.  His excitement for changing his own life caused him to be sunshine to me.  His enthusiasm caused me to take a look at that program and it changed my life forever.  You know he doesn’t even have a clue of the difference that he made in my life!  In truth I don’t even know his name at this point.  But I can tell you that the few pieces of advice that he gave me that day really changed the person that I have become!

“I even shine down upon them at night, long after I have set for the day”!

So who are you?  Are you like the sun…

Well I can honestly say that the last 2 years have been full of Spiritual enlightenment and has led me on a journey that I could write a book about!  I started a new career and have started to excel at it.  I currently run a handyman service, painting service, webmaster service, and do online affiliate marketing!  I love all that has come out of what I thought to be a disaster and the end.  Turns out it was an end to a life that was nothing but stressful and leading to a life without fulfillment!

Today I am almost a Reiki Master, I have over 30 websites, I trade for rent from a retired school teacher, I have regained my life and my passion for living!  I hope that you found this letter useful and that it leaves you just a little GREENER than before you started it!

Soon I am going on a WWOOFing adventure across the USA and ending up in Hawaii!  I have changed everything in my life to find more passion and light!  Look for my video log of my journey and what I discover along the way!

NAMASTE!

Find your passion!