About the Author
John Mace PhD
John Mace resides in an outer suburb Fremantle near Perth in Western Australia where for the past 25 years he has devoted his time to his research and the development of the Mace Energy Method. At the age of 82 he show no signs of retirement and to this day he trains practitioners in his academy, gives sessions, and maintains contact with MEM Practitioners all over the world seven days a week.
John began his first career as a junior deckhand out of the port of Fremantle in 1943 at the age of 15, as did his father at the same age. One of six children, his father was away at sea more than he was at home. When he first went off to sea he had no idea what a logarithm was and had never even heard of spherical trigonometry, which, before the advent of satellite navigation, were both essential in celestial navigation. By asking questions of those who knew and by delving into textbooks, he learned the art of self-education, and by the age of 27 was a fully qualified Master Mariner.
He received his first command at the comparatively young age of 29, as a result of his initiative as chief officer in taking over when he found the captain totally incapacitated from alcohol just before sailing. John simply thought it was the logical and responsible to do!
In his early years, John was affected by the claustrophobic ambience of his grandparents’ fundamental Christianity. Being unable to reconcile what he felt and thought with what he was expected to believe and practice, he rebelled – and shunned not only religion, but with it the spiritual side of life. The year 1959 was the turning point. One evening while visiting his parents and family in Fremantle while on leave, John’s older brother introduced him to the ideas on time expounded by Count Alfred Korzybski
When confronted with the truth of Korzybski’s explanation of time, his world turned upside down.
With the sudden reality shift concerning time came another reality shift, and it was a profound and life changing experience. He describes his experience as a vast emptiness, a vast nothingness, of purposelessness. As soon as the sense of purposelessness emerged, the utter futility of just ‘being’ sent him crashing back into earthly existence, leaving him aware of his body again, which was still sitting in a chair in the lounge room. Another significant factor John realised after the experience was that he had experienced the complete absence of time, memory and emotion.
This change of direction coincided with shore-based employment as a harbour pilot, which enabled John to pursue his newfound interest. He investigated many alternative therapies and modalities and trained as a counsellor, but after 25 years of relying on the writings and research of others, he knew he hadn’t found the answers he sought. The rainbow remained, but its pot of gold eluded him.
His spiritual experiences made it clear to him that the high aesthetic qualities such as happiness, enthusiasm, love and honesty are inherently normal in all sentient beings.
Conversely, the myriad negative emotions such as depression, fear, loneliness, hate and self-doubts, which plague so many, are not normal.
While emphasising scientific explanations devoid of any religious connotations, the goal of his search became to find ways to allow people to realise and use their inherent potential as sentient beings. The simplicity of spiritual awareness made John realise that if life itself is simple and uncomplicated, the real ‘cures’ for unhappiness must also be simple and uncomplicated. The assumption and belief that life is complicated and requires complicated solutions has proven to be a fallacy.
The year 1984 saw John forsake his maritime career, commence working as a counsellor and begin a full-time search for the elusive answers to the questions of life. Not having the ‘benefit’ of formal psychology training left John a free thinker in the fullest sense of the word – not hidebound by conventional ideas, religious or otherwise. His philosophy of learning parodies that of Descartes: ‘I am! Therefore I can think and reason!’ But despite all his reading and investigation of alternative modalities, the answers he sought were not there. The pot of gold was as elusive as ever.
John’s freedom of thought eventually provided its reward, and after another 20-plus years, he found his pot of gold. Although, as with any successful therapy, the practice of the Mace Energy Method has evolved over the years since John first began training students in 1998, the following extract from his original training manual still holds true today. In June 2004 the main pieces of the jigsaw of life were in place, but valuable refinements since then have made the procedures simpler and more efficient. John has written two other books, although both now out of print, “How to turn upsets into Energy” and a second with a
rather Freudian title, “The hidden power of the alter ego”. “Energy Over Mind” is an updated and expanded account of that earlier work and ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’ self published in 2007