Bob Epperly

Hi, my name is Bob, and I’m here to support you in your unfolding process. In Trillium Awakening I feel I have found my spiritual home, a place where I am accepted as I am. This new freedom encourages me to be myself and enlivens my curiosity to know who I really am, to cast off old conversations about how I am supposed to be, making room for the authentic me. My life has been filled with many blessings, and I have a strong desire to give back and help others in their journeys.

I had a conventional life as a church going, family, and business man, until I was 50. At that time, I left my company of 30 years, and my wife and I moved to a new community where I had a new job and eventually became CEO. I started questioning my assumption that I could fill the emptiness I felt in my heart if I had enough success in business. Even as a CEO, I still had deep feelings of insufficiency and lack of self-worth. My life focus hadn’t worked. I knew I needed a new direction, but toward what? 

I didn’t know the answer, but I took a different direction by enrolling in Landmark Education’s The Forum, work that I did intensively for three years. Subsequently, I undertook several years of psychotherapy, completed a three-year program in psycho-spiritual training, and for 10 years was a member of a spiritual community focused on awakening Being. These experiences helped me change my focus from work and external accomplishment to life broadly and my feelings. I started to see there was never going to be enough external success to fill the emptiness I felt within me, and to focus on that emptiness and feelings of being unlovable. I started to feel deeply the pain of knowing that my business success had also taken me from my family too many times, and I began giving my family priority. I also renewed my interest in landscape photography, because I had always felt the presence of God in nature.

In 2012 while attending the Integral Spiritual Experience, a Ken Wilber event, I met Saniel Bonder and immediately felt the acceptance I had always longed for. I was in Saniel’s first Heart Team in 2013. During that time, with Saniel’s encouragement, I completed and published, Growing Up After Fifty: From Exxon Executive to Spiritual Seeker. In this book, I reveal the childhood experiences that had led me to feel inadequate and to conclude that I needed external success to offset those feelings.

When Trillium Awakening was formed, I continued along the path of self-discovery. My Whole Being Realization (WBR) came in 2015 and with it confidence that I was on the right track. Trillium has helped me feel the acceptance I have yearned for since childhood and also to relate more meaningfully with others, seeing and enjoying their Divinity.

If you choose to work with me, I’ll be an active listener and will hold you and your unfolding life in my heart, reflecting what I see and feel in your sharing. In these ways, I will walk with you on your path of self-discovery.

My coaching work is for educational and inspirational purposes only. The information and experiences I offer are in no way a substitute for diagnosis, advice, and/or treatment by a medical or mental health professional or counselor. If you believe that you have a health problem, please consult a licensed physician before beginning alternative modalities or coaching.

“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and  without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.”

Fr. Thomas Merton