Ziv: Hello, I’m Ziv, and this is “On the Journey”. Every Week “On The Journey” explores the intersections of wellness, spiritual inquiry, mental health, personal growth and purposeful living through the eyes of the people we interview.

Zane, I’d love to hear about your journey.

Zane: Hi Ziv. Thank you for having me. I’m humbled to be here. For everyone who would be watching this my name is Zane and my full name is Zane Pier. And I am from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. Presently, I actually identify as a Pneumatologist and I’m actually the founder of the International Institute of Pneumatology, as well as another entity called the Authors and Master Coaches of Pneumatology, which is where I actually function as a coach with capacity of a three master coach.

Just to get some context of that word very briefly because they do the knowledge and it could be a little bit a detailed. But just to give some context, well, prior to actually stepping into the Pneumatology, I grew up in a very religious home, particularly in what everybody would know as Westernized evangelicalism, particularly Pentecostal. I grew up in that arena and I was pretty much taught in that atmosphere.

For about 32 years, and I was actually one of those persons that was very inquisitive, [and] curious. I grew up in that and I was one of those persons that really, not like the average person that would go to church and be satisfied what they actually taught us, the Bible, from a very young age, and so I was one of those that actually wanted to experience what I saw in the Bible, but wasn’t too sure like how that worked.

And for 32 years I, good safely with all authority, talked about 15 years out of that period of time. I was one of those that actively took what I was taught within that arena and I put it to the test. Not to put it to the test as to prove it at that point in time but whatever I was taught, I applied with diligence, with the hope or the expectation of actually experiencing what the claims were, that if you do this you’ll experience this, if you do this you have this relationship with God and so on and so on. Coming to the end of that was actually in 2014.

Now, there’s a lot of details here that I’m not going to be mentioning but just to give a general idea, in 2014 after applying myself to that with no results, I had some significant life events which will, persons that were close to me particularly at that point in time, one in particular that was very significant to me was my father. He died. And that was one, well it is not only him, but two other persons that died not too long after, family members also.

And at that point in time, everything that I had been taught, I actually applied. Because we’ve been taught about the supernatural things about God and God will be a healer and all of these things and I actually applied it on to no avail. And I say to no avail, I mean, I applied everything that I had been taught to see what the claims were, to see if they would actually bring any change, and that was nothing at all. I in late 2014, I pretty much came to the city point of leaving Christianity. It was simply not.

It was disappointed, to say the least, I was disappointed. It was disappointing, to say the least. And at the end of 2014 I actually took a trip to lecture, to be gone for about a month and I went to Colombia. And in Colombia, I actually experience something that will actually impacted me tremendously with two things in particular.

A few things took place in Colombia, but mainly I went across there and I actually experienced some of the things that I had been told that comes with, sort of, in this God or sort of functioning as a Christian. And I encountered a group of people that actually showed a difference, right? And I actually had witnessed some supernatural things. And that’s in particular put me in a position where I began to question everything that I had been taught about Christianity.

Within that period of time it pretty much, I mean, given the short version doesn’t give justice to this entire story that I’m giving here, but I actually came to the point where I realized that maybe what I had been taught was a lie, wasn’t true, right? Another thing that actually stood out to me in that period of time, no, it was pretty much put me in a mental conundrum, because if what I had been taught wasn’t true, then

And therefore, if it wasn’t true, then that left me in a conundrum with regards to the identity that I had built for myself.

Within that period of time I came to the realization that it was something that was very significant to me within that time and the timing of everything that took place, I would actually get up early this morning in Colombia and just sit by the window and it’s within that time of questioning that it occurred to me that I was just outside by the windows and just observe the people, their behaviours, the culture, how they interacted, what was in on, what wasn’t in on. And it occurred to me that the way that people interacted with each other, the display of their culture was significantly different from the culture that I am accustomed to in Trinidad and Tobago.

And it occurred to me that if none of these people leave their land, they would really believe that what they know is what life is and then norm is what life is made of. And then I realized that everybody, even though most listeners may not come to that or come to the realization that

And that caused me to question, what about my norm? Is my norm in the spectrum of norms that exist in the world where there’s my norm for. Is my norm favorable or advantages norm? Is it on the lower side of the spectrum?

So for example, here in Trinidad and Tobago vehicles such like ,and it’s just an example, vehicles like Mercedes Benz. Vehicles that are considered high end vehicles whilst the European side, they are countries that actually use Mercedes-Benz as taxis. So that causes me to question so where is my norm? So I came back to Trinidad in January of 2015 and, as I said, having experienced what I experienced caused me to question what I thought I knew.

And so what I decided to do was to actually take a very, before I leave Christianity completely, because it was pretty much of a question, is what I’m doing functional? Or is it dysfunctional? And if it is not functioning then it is not truth, and therefore it should not be something that I should be wasting time with. So before I left, I actually decided I’ll keep this one last straw, and in this case, for the very first time that I know of personally, as well as in my life, I decided to take a pretty much a pragmatic or a scientific approach to Christianity.

That means that I would actually have to change the perspective that I would approach this book, this Bible, and identify particularly what is the perspective that through which the texts were written and then I couple that with rigorous experiments, a rigorous experimental testing. All right, so what  in particular I was looking for was what I now identify as Pneumatology, which is really identifying the spiritual mechanics of all things. The spiritual physics of human beings, God, the universe, creation, what was it?

Because we are actually speaking about this and everything in life has some mechanics, there is everything manifests the principle, some sort of fundamental law. And so I really set out to find identify what is the fundamental law of this scriptures. And I mean, the Bible in itself has a long history. So it’s unfathomable for me to think that a people that would follow this book for so long, for millenniums, would actually be following in blindly. And especially because of the events that took place with the people that actually followed this, so there must be something.

Within the first two years in particular that as 2014 and 2016, what I didn’t mention earlier on is that before stepping into this I have been a translator for 18 to 19 years. So what I decided to do was to apply the silence of translation to the text and so I began. Languages may or may vary, but the sense of translation remains the same. So what I really need to understand was to identify the philosophy of the language, the mechanics of the language. To be able to understand the perspective of the translators, as well as to understand what the text intends to see.

Because of mental conundrum that I found myself in, I literally took a professional break. Made other arrangements, and I went behind this 10 hours a day like analyzing the original text of the Old Testament, detect the new testament, to be able to identify, firstly, if what we were taught is there, all right. So basically what came out of that is I actually found what I was really looking for might actually identify that the principle or the fundamental law of all things, of the human spirit, and spirit in creation was really the principle out of self-existence.

So that in particular brought some context as to how, energetically, how things work, how the human spirit works, how creation looks, and so what I do is actually train people or in coaching in particular, because we are in the context of coaching and training people to be self-existent, and one of the things that actually came out of that is that we realized that the entire Bible was actually about the human condition.

Which I identify as identity co-dependency, where one uses external things to be able to compare himself to external things, to be able to identify who they are, what they are, the potential of their limitations. And so what we identified was that this spirit is meant to be self-existent.

And so I teach people to live from the inside out and not use external things to be able to live. That is applied in spirituality, life, and relationships also, it revolutionized relationships as well as other areas such as business in the organization and so on.

Ziv: I think, I don’t think I know. It’s my first interview where I didn’t ask any questions because I was so fascinated and it just wanted to hear more and I didn’t want to disturb you with questions.

Zane: I must apologize. I didn’t really know that.

Ziv: No, that’s wonderful. So we really need to finish really soon. So I will ask you one question.

Can you choose one specific example of one thing, one exercise or one tool or one thing you use that you specifically doing with someone who needs your training, help, guidance? What would it be?

Zane: Particular tool?

Ziv: Yeah particular like OK, for others, like to call it a regular coach, you would say, hey, let’s we practice mindfulness. OK, let’s say we see it and we breathe and we observe and we observe life or breathing or if you do for you when you work with someone, when you coach someone what one way.

Zane: All right, well, basically, if I’m actually coaching someone in that area with regards to any circumstance or situation that would be dealing with

The priority basically is to firstly, remove the attachments, the reference points, the external reference points that you are using to try to understand the situation. And reorientate that to understanding your spirit, your energy, and to see its self existentially, which means we identify it as an independent problem so that it can be assessed, understand what’s taking place, and then make decisions from that.

In summary, it’s just the elimination of external reference points.

Ziv: Thank you so much for this interview. I think we will need to talk again to you more. It was very, very interesting. So many questions I really want to ask you about but our time is up. Thank you a lot for your time and knowledge and experience.

Zane: No problem. No problem. A pleasure to be here also.