Ari StathopouosAri Stathopoulos was born and raised in Melbourne. His parents emigrated to Australia in the sixties looking for a better life than the one they left behind, hoping to find some kind of cultural middle ground that made sense to them. Growing up in a orld of clashing cultures, diverse ideologies and conflicting community values, Ari struggled to find a balance between choice and obligation. He continued to muddle through life with a foot in both camps, as it were, but in doing so, he neglected the opportunity to consciously define himself through informed choices.  Determined to unravel himself from a sense of overwhelming and seemingly irreversible sense of mediocrity, he rebelled in every direction and eventually discovered that it was not the differences of his worlds that challenged him, rather, it was the similarities, that as a younger man with a basic and conventional education, he would be unable to distinguish clearly. Similarities such as rudimentary belief systems, superficial values, stifling behavioral constraints, antiquated moralities and systemic hypocrisy, all leading to an artificial kind of happiness inevitability (that had been taught into his psyche) by choosing - expectation and obligation over freedom and possibilities. Unable to properly reconcile these way of being observations with a different kind of life that he instinctively knew was available, but remained unable to acquire, he became even more unsettled in adulthood. He had always struggled with the conformist community mindset and as an adult, felt increasingly rejected by mainstream society for his perpendicular views regarding even the most elementary ‘way of life’ domains - from the conventional idea of personal success  to the role of religion and even to the purpose of marriage in relationships. Challenged by conflicting realities that appeared elusive to others in his community, and paralyzed by inexplicable forces thwarting professional success and personal happiness, Ari became confronted by a magnified sense of inadequacy. He wondered if he was destined to remain invisible. Impossible to distinguish as uniquely valuable or noteworthy in both his professional and personal lives. He even wondered if he would find a life-partner relationship that made sense.  Frustrated by the collision between his predicament and his instincts, Ari began dissecting and inspecting his life through a microscope as it were. He looked at every aspect of his being from his sense of identity to his career choices. He examined his beliefs, his values and his behaviours as part of a critical way of being credibility reassessment journey. A journey that directed him to consciously re-define his reasons for being. In doing so, he discovered that he had unwittingly subscribed to a way of life framework that obliquely directed him away from real Personal Happiness and Emotional Freedom and confined him instead to a paradox of incongruous, rudimentary, counterproductive and even disrespectful and destructive belief and value system dogma, that he unwittingly subscribed to - when he was far too young to make informed and critical choices about such matters - for himself.  He realised that his way of life was merely the result of fiction emerging from having holistically agreed to rudimentary ‘way of life’ constraints and erroneous ‘way of being’ principles that cannot easily be determined as such, without a nudge in awareness. Importantly, he also realised that the vast majority of good people quietly suffer a similar plight, whilst pretending the contrary, not even realising that they are pretending. Moreover, they are also protesting in ways that do not even materialise for them when in trapped by this state of being; ways that people with a greater awareness and larger perspective instantly tune into.  It was at about that time, as an outcome of a sudden, unexpected realisations, that Ari drafted the key principle of his work: 
“Sometimes, to acquire what appears unattainable, we must unlearn who we think we are, so that we can relearn who we can become" - and it was in those moments that the world and his place in it - began to make sense for him.  Read More Read Less