The tragedy of September 11, 2001 left us each trying to fill a uniquely unfamiliar void in our spirit with something that will make us whole again. Somehow we need to feel the experience in a way that following the news coverage just doesn?t accomplish. Brian W. Vaszily found a way, and shares it with us in this brilliant anthology of thoughts, feelings, desires and dreams that were cut short on that terrible Tuesday. Through imagined characters he does what no news story or survivor?s account can?he brings us into the lives of the departed?people so much like our friends, our families, and ourselves?as their final minutes play out. This uplifting work gently guides the reader beyond the tragedy of stone and steel to reaffirm what is truly important about being alive.
Brian Vaszily's dedication to discovering and teaching the most positively transformative experiences available to humankind, sparked by a series of his own experiences and revelations including a conversation with his dead father in a parking lot in 2002, has earned him acclaim and a rapidly growing following worldwide. His unique work draws from the great spiritual and holistic traditions, research in neuroscience, nature, psychology, nutrition, and other sciences, the arts such as music, film, and painting, his own work as a business and life coach, and a series of revelations stemming from his unusual and often very challenging personal life.
Brian grew up in a rough Chicago neighborhood where he lost friends to gangs and drugs. His father was a brilliant and fascinating man who spoke seven languages fluently and had been in secret intelligence in Germany and elsewhere in Europe for the U.S. Army during World War II, but he was also severely alcoholic for a time and severely abusive for most of Brian's formative years. His father spent ten years dying, including the final six months of his life in hospitals suffering excessively and unnecessarily due to an incompetent healthcare system.
While there were many challenges in Brian's youth, there were also many gifts, particularly Brian's mother, whose wisdom, love, and resolve saved his life. Some other remarkable gifts came in small packages. For example, in the 4th grade, Brian won an Illinois short story contest for youths where the poet Gwendolyn Brooks personally congratulated him and told him, "You've really got a knack for this young man, keep working at it." In the 7th grade, Brian wrote a long paper on the accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin, and the most influential schoolteacher of his life, Ms. Lillian McCabe, returned it to him with a top grade and a note on a card that read, "We expect great things of you, too, Brian" - a card he still has and cherishes today.
The same day his father finally died, when Brian was 20, Brian had to attend a job interview as a mail clerk at a law firm because weeks before, he and his girlfriend had learned she was pregnant, and he needed an income to support them. Brian broke down crying in the interview and tried to explain the situation; the lawyer responded that Brian was "clearly not fit for the job" and asked him to leave.
On August 9, 1990, Brian's father died. On December 1, 1990, Brian and his girlfriend married. On January 30, 1991, Brian turned 21. On February 28, 1991, their son was born. By the autumn of 1991, Brian and his wife were attending college full-time, Brian was also working several minimum wage jobs nearly full-time while she worked part-time, and they were raising their son. They also lived off of excessive student loans, food stamps, and for a time, welfare.
They both graduated college in 1994, and divorced three years later. Several years later, though still too young, Brian married again, and he and his second wife would stay married seven years while co-raising each of their children from previous marriages. During this time Brian and his wife experienced many gifts but also more challenges, including bankruptcy and the deaths of several too-young family members, but Brian also worked his way up in the corporate and then dotcom business worlds, becoming highly respected in certain niches for guiding Internet businesses to massive success. As for so many people, the events of 9/11 had a profound impact on Brian, and he authored a short novel, Beyond Stone and Steel: A Memorial to the September 11, 2001 Victims, that, though published by a very small press, was received with wide critical acclaim for being a uniquely uplifting work related to the tragedy.
In the early 2000s, Brian first experienced a range of profound experiences that led to big questions, extensive research and hands-on work, and revelations, which he would in turn create into the Intense Experiences program, website, and brand. These profound experiences include the 2002 conversation with his dead father in a parking lot that is chronicled at the start of his "magnum opus," The 9 Intense Experiences: An Action Plan to Change Your Life Forever, a book that provides readers the nine most powerfully and positively transformative experiences of all.
In the seven-plus years since its inception, Brian Vaszily's website, IntenseExperiences.com, has become one of the most popular and respected websites in the world for personal transformation. Brian is also the founder of the new 1World1Book.com, the online book club bringing readers together worldwide to discuss one great new book every two months and help charities in the process.
Brian Vaszily is still based where he was born and raised, Chicago, IL. He provides workshops, lectures, and coaching to people and organizations throughout the world, creates new articles and more for the weekly free newsletter at IntenseExperiences.com, and is beginning work on a theatrical production of The 9 Intense Experiences.
He is very close to his friends and family, including his 92-year-old grandmother, sister, mother, and his son, who is now 20 years old and a college student. True to his work, on any given day Brian may be found dancing, meditating, building a sandcastle or snow fort, exploring some new natural area or cafe or cemetery, drumming, getting lost intentionally, playing board games, doing bad karaoke (but good at songs by The Stray Cats and Kenny Rogers), playing tennis or volleyball or basketball, visiting out-of-the-way museums and galleries, stretching, watching everything from unknown documentaries to baseball to Modern Family, doing nothing under a tree, attending some live musical or comedy act, eating olives, pressing elevator buttons, praying in sacred places, reading everything from scholarly journals and spiritual texts to Cormac McCarthy novels and the comics, pondering, or running around at home in his underwear banging pots and pans which, as you will discover in The 9 Intense Experiences, is -- no matter who you are or how you feel about it now -- one of the healthiest and most mentally, emotionally, and spiritually transformative things you can do.
