Christopher Casillas In His Own Words

I was born in 1987 to teenage parents living in Superior, Arizona. Both my mother’s people and father’s people trace their roots back to Mexico and to the Iberian peninsula before that. My maternal great-great grandfather worked in Superior’s copper smelter, as did my maternal and paternal great-grandfathers and grandfathers. My grandmothers were enterprising homemakers and raised large families. I grew up living with my parents and grandparents and received the blessings of being raised in a safe, healthy, loving, environment.

At the age of six I was initiated into the role of being a community helper by my grandparents. They demonstrated and involved me in a kind of care that extended beyond our home to our neighborhood. That continued in my teenage years when we moved from Superior to Mesa, Arizona. We all volunteered at our church and local food bank. I felt my parents set a high bar and I wanted to gain experience that would help me become a good father in the future. To support that wish, I volunteered as a Sunday school teacher and youth group leader at my church, and traded mowing lawns door to door for work as a daycare teacher. I graduated high-school at 17 and was inspired by my aunt and uncle to pursue missionary work.

That desire lead me to Hawaii to enroll in Youth With A Mission’s Discipleship Training School. There I had the opportunity to have some wild adventures on the land while deepening my Christian faith and resolve to be a blessing to others. After four months on the big island, I was sent with a group to do a two month mission trip to Thailand. Aside from short trips across Arizona’s southern boarder, this was my first real experience out of the United States. I was sure that I wanted to dedicate my life to being a full time missionary. It was there that I met Pastor Boonphat, founder of New Life Ministries and our on-the-ground contact in Thailand. Hearing how much I wanted to be a good father, and being a family man himself, he gave me some well received advice. “If you want to raise a family, you should first go back home and learn how to make money - then become a full-time missionary. Otherwise you’ll be living hand to mouth and you won’t be able to give your family the stability they need.” I heeded his words.

Returning home from Thailand at age 18, it was time to start the “make money” project. I first tried working as a bank teller but the monotony of the job ate at me. Later, I found out about a sales job at a call center that I decided to try out because it was within bike riding distance and I didn’t have a reliable vehicle. I was the top producing employee in two months. This got me asking “can I get paid more to do this somewhere else?” As providence would have it, I secured my first corporate sales job with Citrix Online soon after I turned 19. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt when I got the call offering me the job. High salary and bonuses, benefits, and an all expenses paid trip to Santa Barbara for training! I was the youngest employee there, and after my first year, became the top performing new hire in the company, in part because I took the high quality training seriously. After two years of success at the company, an opportunity opened up for me to join a new venture with the founders and core management team behind Citrix Online. Shortly after my 21st birthday, I moved to Santa Barbara, California to start a new chapter at a then 30 person company called Appfolio.

I had the good fortune of being mentored by the CEO and VP of sales which skyrocketed my capabilities. After 3.5 years of success in my role as a sales person, I set my sites on a goal of quitting to become a traveling nomad. By this time I had become disillusioned with the Christian faith and subscribed to an atheistic “Life is about having fun” paradigm. My travel plans were interrupted by a phone call I received saying that the new Dallas sales office was severely struggling, they fired the sales director, and they needed me to move to Texas in three days to replace the leader and get the team on track. Feeling well equipped because of all who taught me leading up to that point, I accepted the challenge.

Being a first time leader of a struggling team of sixteen at age 25 meant I had to throw myself into the work. I spent many long nights in the office doing what was necessary to turn the team around. In six months time we doubled our sales conversion rates and halved our sales cycle time. I loved being a leader and was well rewarded for it in multiple ways, I even met my future wife, Amanda there! I didn’t let go of my dream of being a traveling nomad, so after a little over a year and half in that role, I quit to do just that. I remember breaking the news to the CEO who said “I hope I’m the first person you call when you come back.”

I traveled around the Iberian Peninsula and to various other European countries. I had a lot of fun, in alignment with my subscribed paradigm. I remember about four months into it, looking out the window of the apartment I was renting in Bucharest asking “Is this it? What’s the point?” “Just have fun” was reaching its limit. I came back to Superior after a total of six months on the road. It was an opportunity to sit with the questions, but instead, feeling restless, I gave the CEO a call. There was another team that was struggling in Dallas and they needed my help. I accepted and back again to Dallas I went. Before starting the new job I took a friend’s advice and did a 10 day silent meditation Vipassana retreat. There I experienced something that confronted my atheism and was irreconcilable with my worldview at the time. Seeds were planted. After a year leading that team we had done it again - doubled conversion rates and halved our sales cycle time. Performance was up, and there was another team executive leadership wanted me to attend to. At age 28 I was back in Santa Barbara, this time as a director of multiple teams facing new challenges.

This new role stretched me in good ways. In a way I realized that my job wasn’t just to “teach people how to fish” it was also to teach them how to replenish the fisheries. I had to not only work on the level of Causes, but also on the level of Conditions. Much of my past success was due to learning good principles and mindsets and putting them into practice. I noted that the best principles and mindsets had the broadest applicability, and that the truth was always the right answer. I became driven to know the truth, and to find the most universally applicable principles. Meanwhile, our team implemented the first human development program in the company which is still running today six years later. Life in Santa Barbara was almost too perfect. Good results followed at work while questing for truth beckoned old questions. “Is this it? What’s the point?” The doors to the mysteries began to crack open as I found the 7 Hermetic Principles and read The Power Path: The Shaman's Way to Success in Business and Life.

One evening I was walking along the bluffs of the Douglas Family Preserve when a question struck me like lightening. “What if you could help in a more meaningful way?” It was as if I remembered in that instant that I was not put on the Earth to help a tech company be a better tech company. I remembered that beyond just having fun, my life is also about being helpful. I knew I needed to get out of the corporate container and direct my life towards meaningful service. It took guts and turning down a VP promotion, but after almost 2.5 years as the director of business development, I quit my job and stepped into the void of the unknown.

In tandem with this transition I moved back to Dallas to rekindle my relationship with Amanda, It was a new beginning in many ways. Not too long after being free of the nine to five I was rattled by something unexpected. I can recall reading the news and learning of a mass shooting that occurred in Texas. My reaction was “oh no…what else is in the news?” I noticed my reaction and had a time out with myself. “Don’t you want to be father? Is this the kind of world you want to raise your kids in? What if everyone has the same reaction you just did?” That was it for me. I needed to understand why this was happening in our society. I knew it wasn’t an easy answer. Growing up in rural Arizona, guns were part of life, and it was clear to me that their presence did not engender genocidal desires. I thought that if I could get to the root of the issue, I could do something about it while contributing to a better world for my future family. Before I could act, I needed to understand.

While I went deep into studying the root cause of mass shootings, I also went deeper into the mysteries. While exploring esoterica, I was also accepted into a one year training program with the author of The Power Path book. This exposure gave me new eyes for seeing what the world is and how it functions. Initially, I had less luck in getting answers to the mass shooting question. I read academic papers and books, I spoke with authors and speakers on the subject. I wasn’t finding sufficient answers. It took some time to realize how interconnected this problem really was. A sick culture produces sick people who do sick things. So why do we have a sick culture? This brought me back to the industrial revolution, back to the enclosure acts, and back to colonization. I saw that these kinds of domestication and control patterns were out of right relationship and created maladaptive ripple effects leading to the sick society we have today. Not only is colonization behind the problem of mass shootings, it’s behind the meta-crisis at large. To move towards right relationship, towards healing our sick society, we have to move away from the patterns of colonization. Taking Bucky’s advice, I didn’t want to spend time decolonizing, I wanted to do the work of relocalizing.

My spiritual and practical studies found a point of harmony in the regenerative epistemology of Carol Sanford and the Regenesis Institute. For the first time, I was exposed to the notion of living systems while being confronted with just how colonized my mind had been. One evening while visiting my father in Superior, I had an intense somatic experience. Coyotes yelped as my body felt electrified and I heard a call. The message was clear. Move back to Superior and do your re-localization work here. This same experience repeated itself once more before I left back to Texas -just to be sure I didn’t miss the message. I knew that the work I would do there would have ripple effects beyond Superior to at least the edges of the Sonoran Desert. In the Fall of 2019, along with some friends, we co-founded a nonprofit, Regenerating Sonora, as a container to do this needed re-localization work.

By Spring of 2020, at 32 years old, I moved back home to Superior. Almost three years have passed and I recently turned 35. It’s a joy to reflect on the journey. I’m happily married, and engaged in meaningful work. The mysteries are bringing me into closer kinship with the ancient sages. I’m surrounded by family and great friends in the work who are supportive and help me to step up my game. It’s possible that the work we’re engaged in now can be of benefit to others around the world. I’ve come full circle not just in where I live, but also in being a community helper. I found out that I can be a missionary here at home. I learned that adorning is better than converting. Regardless of being a father or not, I’ll share this message with future generations: Have fun, Be helpful, Stay curious.

**Work**

Regenerating Sonora, Inc.

Dojos Of Development

Center for Shamanic Education and Exchange