I write under the name of Gabriel I Cohen. I practice under my birth name, Gary Kogan.
When I was eighteen I was initiated into a Hawaiian Ta Huna (this is usually mistakenly called Ka Huna) tradition. Like most 18 year-olds I had no idea of the value of what I was learning. I was told not to talk about it to anyone. I didn’t until a few months ago when it suddenly felt like the right thing to do.
That was forty-five years ago (as of winter 2018.)
Since that time I became a family therapist, married, earned a PhD, raised a son. In short, I’m on the other side of my life looking back.
It is only looking back that I see how deeply my life was transformed that day in 1973.
I grew up in a middle-class family that worked hard to appear normal. In that family I experienced every form of abuse. The parent who abused me went to psych hospital from time to time. But I was the only one who went for therapy – impossibly bad therapy – a psychoanalyst who just listened and never answered a direct question.
I was supposed to have compassion for that abusive parent, but at one point I realized that no one had compassion for me. When they weren’t in hospital it was against the rules to mention their illness.
So I left home one month shy of my fifteenth birthday. My spiritual teachers, the one who initiated me, and a South Indian swami saved my life.
I left my parental home just shy of my 15th birthday and stayed away except for my first year of college. I was never on the street, however, I managed to rent or share apartments. Even in retrospect leaving that house was the safest option. I’m not here to write my own story, but will probably give more information as I write my own healing journey.
As something of a social scientist, I earned a PhD later in life analyzing social science research on the effects of bullying, I can describe my experiences as entirely logical and consistent with human cognition. Another part of me believes in a deep mystical universe – almost magic.
I describe my journey and the method I developed to help others find the healing resources that are inside all of us.