From My Heart

“Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own.” — Marcus Aurelius

This book wasn’t born from comfort. It rose from a long hunt for wholeness—through love, loss, betrayal, and, at last, a fire that burned away everything but the truth. I died in every way but the physical to write it. From the silence that followed came clarity; from that clarity, this map: my reckoning, my offering, my refusal to let others write my story for me.

It surfaced from fragmentation and longing until something ancient stirred:

Ater Draco Borealis — Shadow Dragon of the Northern Lights.

Ater: the descent into darkness that cannot be bypassed. Draco: the serpentine force weaving shadow into wisdom. Borealis: the light of the dawn—echoing my mother’s name, Áróra.

I didn’t choose this name; it chose me—etched by wound and fire. Not a doctrine, a guidepost—aimed at three questions that have tracked me all my life:

My roots are Icelandic stone and sea—golden sands and mountainous fjords. My blood runs from the Westfjords, and Reykjavík is my upbringing and home. Diagnosed with Tourette’s at seven, I mastered systems while feeling estranged from my own body. Bullied, abused, abandoned—I internalized the pattern and abandoned my own self, a fracture in integrity I would spend years repairing. Yet lifelines appeared: weightlifting to regulate my nervous system, music to say what words could not, and Dungeons & Dragons as medicine for imagination and belonging. These were not hobbies. They were survival.

Fatherhood opened a deeper portal. A thirteen-year partnership ended in 2017, and the years that followed (2018–2024) became a crucible: psychedelics and spiritual openings, flawed forays into kink and tantra, profound truths and equally profound blind spots. Many spaces promised healing yet forbade grief or rage. Naming the shadow threatened the fantasy—and clarified why consent, accountability, and non-harm must be the ground of any awakening.

Late in the spiral, language arrived for the pattern: ADHD (2022) and autism (2024). But the breaking had been building quietly for years—a decade of overextension masked by functionality, where prescriptions and coping strategies blurred. Post-COVID heart issues in 2022 reshaped my limits, yet still I kept going. A high-stakes promotion in October 2023 became a final grasp for external validation, followed weeks later by a major shift in ADHD medication while I was still recovering. In February 2024, the unrelenting pressure converged, tipping me into a complete breakdown—a shimmering psychosis braided with rage and betrayal. I made mistakes. I hurt people. Intention did not spare impact. By late summer I stepped into sobering silence to rebuild from clean ground.

The writing began in December 2024 as slow repair. Edit by edit, breath by breath, by May 2025 I began to re-enter life. What started as a facilitation framework became an account of turning toward truth—less a system, more a mirror—and, finally, a narrative inversion that healed me as it became this book.

While the details are mine, the patterns are not. Most of us will, at some point, face the breaking of a story we thought was ours to keep.

I am still healing. Messy. Fallible. Human. Like the Dragon in these pages, I’ve been forged where wound and wisdom, fracture and fire, become inseparable— a single filament in the vast weave that binds us all.

It is September 2025. This work is soft-launched and evolving—a living text that will iterate with feedback, shaped by dialogue between author, book, and community.

How I Work: Tools, Skepticism, and the Ethical Frame

I live between worlds: technical and poetic, scientific and symbolic—layers that often contradict and, just as often, complete each other. I’m skeptical of astrology, and yet I’ve watched rare events cluster in ways statistics can describe and life insists we feel. My background in machine learning (since 2005) taught me that patterns both illuminate and deceive; it also shaped how I use modern tools—including AI—as scaffolding for clarity. The insights and responsibility remain human. Bias is not only a machine’s flaw—it’s a human condition.

At the heart, the map is simple:

In an Entangled Firmament, nothing happens “to me, alone.” Actions ripple through bodies, relationships, and culture; those ripples—not our self-story—define consequence. That is why ethics isn’t an overlay but a result of reality: in a connected field, impact outranks intention.

Practically, that means consent (enthusiastic, informed, revocable), clear boundaries, aftercare, and the humility to stop, repair, and learn when harm appears. High-intensity work calls for slow pacing, capacity-based choice, and qualified support (medical/therapeutic) when indicated. Your sovereignty sets tempo; no framework or facilitator outranks your safety. This book offers harm-reduction maps and practices, not permission slips. Walk the Spiral Path as a citizen of a living web; every step writes to the field.

This is not a final word. It is a spiral map—a mirror and a fire; a guide I once needed, now offered to you.

To Those Along the Way

To those I’ve hurt, and those who’ve hurt me:

Thank you. I love you.

It could not have unfolded any other way.

May our scars heal together.

To My Sons

My noble primary stones of the sea. My helpers. My deepest treasures. My dragon-blooded kin.

I love you infinitely. I am always here.

As the pattern within my heart beats within the light of yours.

A Reckoning, Not Redemption

This is more than my story; it’s a map drawn from wounds for anyone in similar terrain. This book is not my redemption. It is my reckoning—and my offering. May it help you hold paradox, listen to your body, and awaken the Dragon within—then live that power with ethical clarity in a participatory world.

The Dragon calls from within. The Spiral begins.