Nothing is Nothing (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780944164242)

Eligio Stephen (Steve) Gallegos Ph.D. was born the state of New Mexico in the southwestern United States in 1934. Of Native American, English and Irish descent, Steve was raised in the local Hispanic culture speaking both English and Spanish. A gifted craftsman he was involved in woodcarving, leatherwork, silverwork, and drawing and painting from an early age and greatly disliked the confinement and regimentation of school even though he was a relatively intellectually gifted student. After joining the US Air Force in 1953, Steve was sent to a military school to learn the Russian language and then went to Austria and Germany for a period of three years. On his return to the United States in 1957 he attended the University of Wisconsin (BA), New Mexico State University (MA), and then completed his PhD, in Psychology, at Florida State University, in 1966. He accepted a faculty position at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and was quickly was promoted to full professor and became Chairman of the Department of Psychology. After fourteen years Steve left that position in order to undertake a residency in psychotherapy in the State of Oregon and became a practicing psychotherapist in Oregon and later in Massachusetts. While in Oregon, Steve underwent a spiritual experience that changed him profoundly. This experience is described in The Personal Totem Pole Process (ISBN 9780944164099). He describes the experience as "spontaneously meeting the alivenesses that were rooted in my energy centers and that presented themselves primarily as animals, but they had to be approached through the knowing of the deep imagination. I realized that the teacher I had sought for my entire life was in fact deep within my imagination and had always been there." Since then, introducing people to their own inner animals and the rediscovery of the wisdom of the imagination, has been his path in life. At present he is primarily engaged in offering workshops and in training others in the exploration of the deep imagination in the United States, Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Portugal, and Australia. Steve is an honorary member of the Danish Society for Psychic Research and the Danish Psychological Society for Clinical Hypnosis. He is a founding member of The International Institute for Visualization Research, a non-profit dedicated to expanding the use and understanding of the Deep Imagination in psychotherapy and personal development.