One of the most difficult things to explain about psychosis is that it is not always a complete absence of insight. My book, The Dialectics of Mania, documents a psychotic episode in which I became convinced that I was living out the Seven Days of Creation. Looking back, I can clearly see that this was a break from reality. Yet it was also a period of intense creativity, reflection, and meaning-making. This presents a paradox. How can someone experience delusions while also generating ideas that prove valuable in their life? Long before my episode, I had spent years researching evolution, spirituality, consciousness, mythology, and the hidden meanings within texts such as Genesis. During the episode, these interests became amplified and personalised. My mind attempted to weave countless ideas into a single narrative that explained everything. The result was both insight and illusion. Some of the conclusions I reached were clearly products of psychosis. Others inspired ideas and projects that continued long after the episode ended. Since that time, I have published three of my four books, completed a seven-book Creation Series, and explored concepts such as the Wellness Revolution and the Abundance Society. The episode itself was chaotic. It involved grandiosity, confusion, urgency, and increasingly distorted beliefs. Yet it also forced me to confront questions about meaning, purpose, creativity, and the nature of reality in ways I never had before. This is one of the reasons I use the word dialectics. Psychosis can be frightening, overwhelming, and destructive. At the same time, people often emerge from these experiences having learned something profound about themselves, their lives, or the world around them. The challenge is learning how to separate the insight from the illusion. That, for me, has been one of the most important tasks of recovery. The Dialectics of Mania explores these questions through my lived experience of mania, psychosis, hospitalisation, and recovery. It is now available now through Amazon, Booktopia, Abbey's, T.G. Jones and other retailers.

My book, The Dialectics of Mania, documents the most significant manic episode of my life. Looking back, there were many signs that I was becoming unwell long before the episode itself. For almost twelve months, I experienced increasing instability, eventually losing two jobs. I believe those losses contributed to the eventual shattering of my reality. The hardest thing to explain about mania is that, at the time, nothing feels wrong. Everything feels exciting. Everything feels important. Everything feels urgent. I felt compelled to pray, connect with God, understand the universe, start a business, build a platform that could change the world, and finish all of my writing projects. Not eventually. Immediately. It felt as though I needed to accomplish everything in a single day. At the same time, while ideas flowed endlessly, I struggled to organise them into anything coherent. My thoughts raced so quickly that everything became a blur. I was desperately trying to make sense of what was happening, but the faster my mind moved, the less sense it all seemed to make. There was also a feeling of invincibility. It was as though the normal rules of life no longer applied. At one moment I felt capable of anything; at another, I felt intense fear and hypervigilance. Mania was not simply confidence or happiness. It was excitement, confusion, fear, urgency, and grandiosity all happening at once. Perhaps the strongest feeling was excitement. I would wake at four or five in the morning eager to begin the day. Sleep felt unnecessary. My mind was overflowing with ideas. Time seemed to move faster than normal, and I felt deeply connected to the world around me. Yet mania comes at a cost. Living with schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder has taught me that the highs and lows are connected. While the highs can feel productive, exciting, and meaningful, they can also lead to poor decisions, damaged relationships, hospitalisation, and loss of control. Mania is full of contradictions. It can feel exhilarating and terrifying, empowering and overwhelming, meaningful and confusing. It is chaos in its purest form. If you would like to learn more about what it is like to experience mania from the inside, The Dialectics of Mania documents my journey through one of the most significant episodes of my life. It is available now through Amazon, Booktopia, Abbey's, T.G. Jones and other retailers.

Momentum is building—and it’s starting to show. Over the past couple of weeks, the Lived Experience Hub has quietly begun to grow into something real, something people are finding, exploring, and choosing to be part of. Today marked another small but meaningful milestone: one new subscriber added to the list. That brings the total to 13—my highest number yet—since the very first subscriber joined on April 22. Each subscription represents more than just a number. It means someone has landed on the Hub, explored what’s there, and felt enough alignment to stay connected. That matters. It signals that the work is reaching people in the way it was intended. Alongside this, the response on LinkedIn has been encouraging. Positive comments are coming in, engagement is rising, and there’s a growing sense that this project is resonating. Out of everything I’ve built so far, this is shaping up to be the most successful venture yet. There’s also a simple added incentive—every subscriber will receive the Lived Experience Power eBook once it’s complete. It’s a small way of giving back to those who are supporting the journey early. If you haven’t yet joined, now is a great time. Head to the Lived Experience Hub, scroll to the bottom of the homepage, and leave your email. That’s all it takes to become part of the US ’N’ U family. Simple steps. Steady growth. Something meaningful taking shape.

US ’N’ U is evolving. This new phase is about one thing—consistency. The team is now using Pixar-style videos featuring founder Andrew Turtle across different scenarios. From wellness to global systems, one recognisable presence now connects all projects. Alongside this, avatar explainer videos are being used to break down key ideas across platforms, websites, and eBooks. Complex concepts are now simple, clear, and accessible. There is also a shift toward audio. US ’N’ U is gradually converting its books into audiobooks to make the full series available in audio format. Text becomes voice. Voice becomes presence. What is emerging is a unified ecosystem. One identity. One voice. One connected body of work. This is the next evolution of US ’N’ U.

My very first audiobook is complete. Lived Experience Power  by Andrew Turtle is now available as an audiobook. The book explores the lived experience movement in mental health—mapping its growth, key models, and its role in shaping more inclusive and effective systems. It highlights peer work, user-led organisations, and alternative approaches as essential parts of the future of care. You can now listen to it in audio format. Available for purchase on the US ’N’ U website

Tonight, I finished writing The Global Manifesto . It’s a strange sentence to write, because this book didn’t begin tonight—or even recently. The idea first came to me in Year 9, back in 1999. At the time, it was just a question: what would a global society actually look like?   That question stayed with me. I returned to it years later during my Master's in International Public Health in 2011, where I began to explore it more seriously—thinking about systems, governance, and the structures that shape how humanity organises itself. Since then, the idea has gone through countless iterations. Drafts have been written, reworked, abandoned, and rebuilt. I’ve struggled to settle on a final version because the world itself has been changing underneath the idea. But tonight, it feels complete. At its core, The Global Manifesto  is built around one central concept: Inclusive Globalisation . This isn’t globalisation as we’ve traditionally understood it—fragmented, uneven, and often extractive. Instead, it’s an attempt to imagine what a truly coordinated and inclusive global system might look like. The book explores this across multiple domains: the global economy, financial systems, global networks, information infrastructure, health systems, and social systems. It asks a simple but far-reaching question: if humanity were to organise itself as a planetary system, how would it function? From there, the book moves into governance. It explores the idea that our current models are no longer sufficient for the scale of the challenges we face. Instead, it looks at the potential of vertical and horizontal governance frameworks —structures that can operate both within and across levels of society, supported by emerging technologies that enable coordination at a global scale. A key idea that emerges from this is the concept of Global Solutions Networks . Rather than relying solely on top-down systems, these networks bring together individuals, communities, organisations, and governments to collaborate on shared problems. They represent a shift from isolated action to coordinated response—a way of connecting what already exists into something more coherent. Finally, the book turns to the question that matters most: How do we actually get there? Because imagining a different world is one thing. Transitioning into it is another entirely. The Global Manifesto  doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but it attempts to map the pathways—exploring how humanity might move from a fragmented, scarcity-driven system toward something more integrated, more conscious, and more aligned. The book describes itself as a social contract for a better world . That’s a big claim. Whether it lives up to that is not for me to decide. But after more than two decades of thinking, questioning, and refining, this is my attempt to put that vision into the world—to offer a framework, a possibility, and perhaps a starting point for something larger. If nothing else, it’s an invitation: To think beyond the systems we’ve inherited. To imagine what comes next. And to consider what role we might each play in shaping it.

I’m excited to share that my book, Abundance: Imagining a Post-Scarcity Society , is now available as a free eBook . This work has been a deep exploration into one of the most important questions facing humanity today: What comes after scarcity? For generations, we’ve organised our world around limitation—limited resources, limited access, limited opportunity. But what if that model is no longer necessary? What if we now have the knowledge, technology, and global connectivity to move beyond it? Abundance  explores this transition. It presents a vision of a world where the foundational needs of all people—energy, water, food, housing, healthcare, mobility, and digital access—are no longer scarce commodities, but universally available utilities. A world where systems are designed not around competition and extraction, but around coordination, access, and collective wellbeing. This is what I describe as the shift from Day 2 (scarcity-based civilisation)  to Day 3 (abundance-based civilisation) —a transformation already beginning to take shape across energy systems, digital infrastructure, and global cooperation. But this book is not just about imagining the future. It’s about recognising that the foundations of that future already exist. The question is no longer if  abundance is possible. The question is how we choose to build it . Making this eBook freely available is intentional. If abundance is the future, then access to the ideas that shape it should be abundant too. You can download the eBook here: https://designrr.site/?i=1m9za&t=27cf36 This is an invitation—to think differently, to see the world differently, and to participate in what comes next. Because abundance isn’t just a concept. It’s a transition already underway.

After a significant period of research, mapping, and system design, I’m excited to share that The Lived Experience Hub is now live . This platform has been built with a clear purpose: to bring together the global lived experience movement into one accessible, structured, and meaningful location. Across the world, lived experience organisations and programs are doing powerful work—advocating, supporting, innovating, and reshaping mental health systems. But until now, much of this ecosystem has been fragmented, difficult to navigate, and spread across countries, sectors, and models. The Lived Experience Hub changes that. It maps lived experience organisations and initiatives into a single, convenient space—making it easier to explore what exists, understand how the movement is evolving, and connect with the people and systems driving change. Built on the foundation of my book, Lived Experience Power, the Hub goes one step further. It doesn’t just describe the movement—it actively links you to it. Every organisation and program included is connected through direct pathways, allowing you to move from insight to action. The platform is structured across key domains of the lived experience movement, including advocacy and leadership, peer work, consumer-driven initiatives, alternatives to traditional psychiatry, anti-stigma campaigns, and Mad Studies. Together, these form a living system—one that is growing, evolving, and increasingly shaping the future of mental health globally. This is more than a directory. It is infrastructure for a global movement. And it’s only the beginning. Explore the Lived Experience Hub today (temporary site): https://turtleacupuncture.wixstudio.com/livedexperience If you are part of the movement, I invite you to engage—explore, share, contribute, and help build this into a truly global resource. Because when lived experience connects… systems change.

There are seasons in life where we build empires, and there are seasons where we quietly build ourselves. Over the last three years, I have been doing the latter. I have now completed my Certificate IV and Diploma in Library and Information Services through TAFE, studying online and gradually working my way through each assessment, each role play, each placement requirement. To be honest, I did not always find the content thrilling. Cataloguing systems and metadata frameworks rarely ignite the imagination in the same way cosmology, co-creation, or fourth-level science do. My placement at the Western Sydney University Library felt underwhelming at times. It was not a grand revelation. It was not a lightning bolt moment of destiny. But it was something else. It was structure. It was rhythm. It was discipline. It was time filled with purpose when other parts of life felt uncertain. And in that sense, it was profoundly valuable. Across the two qualifications, I completed more than twenty role plays. I am deeply grateful to my family and friends who stepped in to act out scenarios with me — reference interviews, customer enquiries, collection development conversations. What might have looked small from the outside required vulnerability and commitment. Those moments reminded me that no qualification is ever earned alone. Through this process, I have learned something quietly powerful: how information is organised, how it is retrieved, how knowledge is structured behind the scenes. Libraries are not just rooms of books; they are architectures of meaning. They are systems that allow human thought to be stored, accessed, and shared across time. That skill — the ability to organise, to locate, to categorise, to trace — is not separate from my broader work. In many ways, it complements it. Whether mapping the lived experience movement, designing Fourth-Level Counselling frameworks, or constructing models of abundance and planetary service, I am fundamentally working with information systems. The Diploma has strengthened that capacity. At this stage, I am unlikely to pursue a long-term career directly within library services. And that is okay. Not every qualification must become a vocation. Sometimes a qualification fills a different role. It fills time. It fills space. It fills a void. It gives momentum when momentum is needed. There is something deeply grounding about completing what you start. This Diploma now stands as another layer in my professional and personal architecture. It joins my previous studies and experiences as part of a broader mosaic. It strengthens my resume, yes — but more importantly, it strengthens my sense of continuity. Over three years, I showed up. I logged in. I submitted assessments. I persisted. And persistence matters. Life does not always move in dramatic leaps. Sometimes it advances through steady accumulation — assignment by assignment, conversation by conversation, quiet milestone by quiet milestone. Today I am grateful. Grateful for the qualification. Grateful for the people who supported me. Grateful for the structure it provided. Grateful that even when the path is not electrifying, it can still be meaningful. Completion is its own form of dignity.

Abundance is a structural reorganisation of civilisation. For centuries, our systems have been built on scarcity logic — limited energy, limited land, limited opportunity. Yet, technologically, we now possess the tools to secure a baseline level of provision for every human being. The transition to Abundance is not about excess consumption; it is about foundational security. It is about building the core infrastructures that make survival stable so that creativity, innovation and higher development can flourish. In this next stage of human history, eight core infrastructures form the backbone of the shift. Energy Energy is the master resource. When energy becomes clean, decentralised and abundant through solar, wind, hydro, storage and hydrogen systems, every other system strengthens. Cheap energy reduces production costs, powers desalination, drives industry and accelerates innovation. ⚡ Water With sufficient energy, water scarcity becomes solvable. Desalination, atmospheric capture, recycling and smart irrigation stabilise agriculture and cities alike. Water security reduces conflict and increases resilience. 💧 Food Food systems evolve from fragile industrial monocultures to regenerative, tech-assisted ecosystems. Vertical farms, precision agriculture and soil restoration models ensure nutrition is stable and localised. Hunger becomes a systems failure, not an inevitability. 🌱 Housing Shelter is the platform for participation. Modular builds, 3D-printed housing and sustainable urban density dramatically reduce build costs and timelines. Housing moves from speculative asset to foundational right. 🏠 Mobility Electrified transport, high-speed rail and intelligent logistics reduce friction in the movement of people and goods. Opportunity expands when mobility is affordable and efficient. 🚆 Health Health infrastructure shifts upstream. Preventative care, telehealth, mental health services and data-driven monitoring reduce long-term burden. A well population is the greatest economic multiplier. 💚 Digital Infrastructure Digital systems act as the nervous system of abundance. AI optimisation, cloud computing, smart grids and real-time logistics coordination reduce waste and increase efficiency across every sector. 🌐 The Utility Mes h When these eight infrastructures interlock, they form what can be called a Utility Mesh — a coordinated network of foundational systems that secure baseline human needs. Abundant energy powers water purification. Secure water stabilises food production. Digital systems optimise housing, mobility and health logistics. Mobility connects people to opportunity. Digital access ensures everyone can participate in the system that sustains them. The mesh is not ideological. It is systemic. Each layer strengthens the others. When woven together, they reduce volatility, lower the cost of living and create a platform for innovation beyond survival. Abundance is not utopian dreaming. It is the deliberate construction of an integrated Utility Mesh that makes scarcity logic obsolete. The next stage of civilisation will not be defined by competition over shrinking resources, but by coordination of expanding capacity. The question is no longer whether abundance is possible. The question is whether we will build the mesh.

There is a strange irony in building a platform called US ‘N’ U while feeling more alone than ever before. My work speaks of co-creation. Of collective intelligence. Of humanity coming together to bridge the earthly and the divine. I speak of Global Manifestos, Co-Creator Initiatives, Fourth-Level Science, Abundance Societies. I speak of “US” as a force greater than any one individual. And yet, as I build these platforms — the US ‘N’ U blog, The Wellness Revolution, Connecting Co-Creators, The Global Now Project — I often find myself sitting alone in front of a screen. No emails from co-creators. A trickle of likes. Videos posted into silence. Twelve eBooks on Amazon and two copies sold. Twenty-four YouTube videos and forty-seven views. A handful of TikTok likes. Instagram posts floating in the algorithmic void. It can feel like shouting into a vast digital canyon and hearing only the echo of your own voice. This is the attention marketplace. It is saturated, fast, distracted, unforgiving. Visibility is currency. Silence can feel like invisibility. And invisibility can feel like irrelevance. There are moments where I question whether I am a civilisational cartographer drawing maps no one has asked for. Am I building worlds that exist only in my own imagination? Am I a visionary without a village? These are uncomfortable questions. But they are necessary ones. Because the deeper truth is this: if I am building a movement around “US,” then my first task is to be fully present in the world that already exists. Not just online. Not just conceptually. But embodied. Grounded. Relational. Integrated. It is easy to build vast intellectual architectures. It is harder to build trust. It is easy to publish ideas. It is harder to sit with people. It is easy to speak of co-creation. It is harder to co-create. There is a humbling lesson here. If I want others to believe in what I am building, I must demonstrate that I can live it. That I can be stable. That I can show up. That I can work, collaborate, listen, and contribute in tangible ways. The credibility of a vision is not built by its scale, but by the groundedness of its author. And yet — I also recognise something else. Even this trickle is movement. Forty-seven views is not zero. Twenty-five likes is not zero. Two book sales is not zero. Every movement begins below the threshold of visibility. One brings ten. Ten brings one hundred. A small, aligned group can carry more power than a scattered crowd. Perhaps this is not invisibility. Perhaps it is incubation. Perhaps the real work right now is not expansion, but integration. Becoming well. Becoming steady. Becoming relationally anchored in the real world so that when the digital world catches up, there is substance beneath the signal. If ten people truly understood and aligned with the vision, that would be enough to begin. A movement does not require millions. It requires coherence. So maybe this season is not failure. Maybe it is formation. The cartographer must first walk the terrain before others trust the map. I am learning patience. I am learning humility. I am learning that “US” begins with becoming a stable “I.” And I am learning that building something enduring may take longer than the attention marketplace would have us believe. The door may not be open yet. But it may only be a matter of time.

We are living in an era where political rhetoric flirts openly with global conflict. Nuclear powers posture. Economies strain. Alliances fracture. The psychological temperature of the planet rises. In moments like this, humanity asks an ancient question: Where do we go when the world feels unstable? For centuries the answer has been material — build stronger armies, stronger borders, stronger economies. Yet despite our technological sophistication, we remain internally fragile. Anxiety spreads faster than missiles. Fear outpaces diplomacy. The crisis is not only geopolitical. It is psychological. It is spiritual. This is why Fourth-Level Reality is not a luxury idea. It is an evolutionary necessity. Fourth-Level Reality refers to the domain accessible through the inner senses — a dimension long explored by mystics, sages, prophets and contemplatives, but only recently being articulated in modern developmental language. It is not fantasy. It is not escapism. It is not dissociation. It is an interior plane of structured experience that carries psychological, creative and behavioural consequences in this world. When outer structures destabilise, inner structures must strengthen. Even if the unthinkable occurred — even if conflict spread across nations — there remains a domain no government can regulate and no weapon can destroy. The inner landscape. The architecture of consciousness. The field of co-creation within the human mind. 🧠✨ Fourth-Level Reality offers something radical: mobility without movement. Travel without transport. Encounter without physical proximity. In times of crisis, this becomes not retreat from the world, but resilience within it. History shows us that civilisations survive not merely by military strength but by depth of consciousness. The Stoics survived empire collapse. Mystics survived persecution. Visionaries survived war by cultivating inner sight. Today, we stand at a similar threshold — but with the opportunity to systematise what was once mystical into something developmental and trainable. This is where Connecting Co-Creators becomes critical. The work emerging through that platform begins mapping the mechanics of Fourth-Level Reality: how to access it, how to navigate it, how to verify experience, and how to ground it responsibly in everyday life. Because access alone is not enough. Without psychological stability, inner exploration can destabilise rather than strengthen. Without frameworks, profound states can be misinterpreted. Without integration, insight can fragment the self rather than unify it. That is why I am developing Fourth-Level Counselling — a structured discipline designed to create safe protocols for accessing and navigating this domain. It is built not as spiritual escapism, but as psychological scaffolding. Harm-minimisation. Stabilisation. Ethical integrity. Grounded integration. Fourth-Level Reality is not about abandoning Earth. It is about strengthening our capacity to remain human within it. The next force in the modern world will not be technological alone. It will not be military alone. It will not be economic alone. It will be consciousness itself. As global systems strain, the ability to retreat inward without collapsing outward may become one of humanity’s most valuable capacities. If you want to explore the foundations of Fourth-Level Reality and co-creative consciousness, visit the Connecting Co-Creators platform: https://turtleacupuncture.wixstudio.com/connectingcocreators To stay updated as Fourth-Level Counselling protocols develop, follow the US 'N' U blog: https://www.usnu.blog/ The outer world may tremble.But the inner world, properly cultivated, can become unshakeable. And that may be the quiet revolution of our time.