My Journey

My name is Camron, but I prefer Shiva.

Tree of Perception did not begin as a company, website, nonprofit, or even a clearly defined project.

It began as a question.

When I was a young boy, nobody really taught me about God. My father was openly skeptical. He would make fun of what he called “Godsters.” The way he saw it, people used God as a way to avoid responsibility for their own lives — if God did everything, then they never had to take accountability themselves.

I didn’t know what to believe.

But one night, as a kid, I put my hands together and prayed.

“God, if you are really out there, teach me about you.”

Then life simply continued.

There was no immediate revelation. But as I grew older I experienced déjà vu often. In high school I began thinking more deeply about what that feeling meant to me. At times it felt like a realization that something I had previously imagined or thought about had somehow become part of my lived reality.

That reminded me of the prayer I had made as a child.

Maybe I had asked a question and then spent years living inside the answer without realizing it.

When I tried to explain this realization to my mother, she introduced me to the movie The Secret. Whatever someone thinks of that film, its central idea connected strongly with me at that point in my life: our thoughts matter.

What we focus on matters. What we believe about ourselves matters. The possibilities we allow ourselves to imagine matter.

Thoughts influence actions. Actions become patterns. Patterns influence relationships, circumstances, creations, mistakes, opportunities, and sometimes realities.

This began my fascination with the relationship between perception and reality. That fascination became one of the seeds of Tree of Perception.

Learning to look differently

Other experiences changed the way I understood life.

The Landmark Forum challenged my perception of the stories people construct around events — the interpretations, identities, explanations, and meanings we create and then sometimes begin living inside.

The Flower of Life opened another door for me. I began thinking about pattern, repetition, nature, geometry, consciousness, connection, and the possibility that things which appear separate might be parts of larger systems.

A phrase became important to me:

“realize, real lies, real eyes”

Perception fascinated me. Two people can occupy the same moment and experience very different realities.

What did you see? What did I see? What happened? What do we believe happened? What are we carrying into the moment from everything that happened before? What changes when we actually talk about those differences?

Tree of Perception became part philosophy, part creative experiment, part social experiment, part educational experiment, part community experiment.

It is not intended to tell people what to think. It is intended to create a place where people can share what they think, what they have experienced, what they desire, what they fear, what they believe, what they have learned, and what they still do not understand.

And then learn together.

Sometimes that happens over coffee. But not only over coffee.

Sometimes it happens fixing a computer. Sometimes while walking. Sometimes while working on a project. Sometimes when somebody says something they have never said aloud before. Sometimes it is simply a conversation.

The conversation itself matters.

When belief collides with life

There was a period when I believed very strongly that I had discovered something I needed to share with everyone. I believed in the power of thought, intention, and possibility very deeply.

That belief did not simply make my life better. In some ways, the mission and the way I pursued it contributed to the destruction of the life I thought I was building.

That is important to admit. Ideas can inspire us, but believing strongly does not make us immune to reality.

I fell deeply in love. I became a father to two beautiful daughters: Brooklynn, also called B-Khari, who is 14 as I write this in October 2026, and Paige, who is 11.

Their mother and I went through a painful relationship. I experienced betrayal, broken trust, conflict, poor decisions, and major disagreements around accountability. I felt betrayed and struggled with what I experienced as infidelity in the relationship. This is my account of that pain, not the whole of another person’s story.

I often felt that attempts at transparency and maintaining a positive or “high-life” mindset collided with circumstances I could not control or understand.

But I also accept responsibility for my own choices. At different points I was surrounded by drugs, instability, and unhealthy influences.

I fell. I made decisions I regret.

I learned that responsibility does not mean accepting responsibility for everything that happens around you. There is a difference between accountability and self-destruction. There is a difference between owning your actions and allowing someone else’s actions to determine your worth.

This lesson remains part of my life.

After the relationship broke down, I went on what I call a walkabout. Not a glamorous spiritual vacation. Movement. Distance. Thinking. Trying to understand who I was when the life I imagined was no longer there.

I later re-entered the relationship and experienced much of the same pain again. So I left again. Another walkabout. Another attempt to understand who I wanted to become.

By this point Tree of Perception was already developing. Even while my personal life was unstable, the vision remained: community, conversation, consciousness, learning, responsibility, people seeing themselves and one another more clearly.

But vision does not exempt anyone from consequences. There were more trials and poor decisions. Eventually I spent an extended period in jail.

That period became another place where my perception changed.

When normal life disappears, you can be left confronting who you have been, who you blame, what you regret, who you love, who hurt you, who you hurt, what stories you repeat, and whether the person you say you want to be resembles the person your actions are creating.

Losing my mother

My mother died December 5, 2019. Drugs, alcohol, and severe depression had taken an enormous toll on her life.

Losing her changed me deeply.

There are people we continue talking to after they are gone. Things we wish we could show them. Moments when something good happens and the instinct remains: “I want Mom to see this.”

Her death changed my perception of time.

There are conversations we postpone because we think there will always be another day. Things we intend to build someday. People we intend to forgive someday. Places we intend to go someday. Words we intend to say someday.

Then someday disappears.

I don’t want to live entirely inside “someday.”

Julia

On October 10, 2022, I met Julia. I describe her as a gift from God.

Julia brought into my life the experience of building with someone rather than constantly fighting to keep everything from falling apart. Our relationship still requires honesty, accountability, patience, growth, forgiveness, and showing up.

We now have Khora. Khora and I share a birthday: September 15.

As I write this in October 2026, Kairos is due January 2027.

The names carry meaning for me: Khora — space; a place in which something can come into being. Kairos — an opportune or meaningful moment.

Space and time.

Maybe coincidence. Maybe poetry. Maybe perception.

Some things can remain unanswered.

Tree of Perception

Tree of Perception never completely disappeared.

Sometimes it was active. Sometimes dormant. Sometimes a website. Sometimes artwork. Sometimes code. Sometimes files on an old hard drive. Sometimes simply an idea in my head that refused to disappear.

Today I am rebuilding it. But my understanding of it has changed.

Once I thought I needed to explain something to the world. Now I am more interested in creating a place where people can explain themselves to one another.

Tree of Perception is intended as a place for people to share what they think, what they experienced, what they desire, what they fear, what they believe, what they create, what they learned, and what they still do not understand.

And learn together.

Tree of Perception is part social experiment, part educational space, part workshop, part community, part technology lab, part art project, part conversation.

Some parts may eventually become nonprofit work. Some may become businesses. Some experiments may fail completely. That is acceptable.

The purpose is not to pretend we already know exactly what T.O.P. will become. The purpose is to create fertile ground and see what grows.

HeWhoUs Commons

This idea is beginning to move into physical life through HeWhoUs Commons. The first version began in my garage.

Nothing glamorous. Just a place. A place where people can gather.

Coffee may be there, but coffee is not the point. Conversation is.

The hope is that people can talk, bring ideas, work on things, teach, learn, help somebody, sit with somebody, and eventually hold meetings or workshops. The Commons is still a private pilot, not a public drop-in venue.

Community itself becomes part of the experiment.

What happens when we make a place available? What happens when people contribute instead of only consume? What happens when somebody teaches what they know? What happens when another person admits what they do not know? What happens when people who might otherwise never speak share the same space?

We do not know. That is part of why we are building it.

Building things

Technology unexpectedly became a major part of my journey. I enjoy taking old machines, discarded hardware, servers, laptops, tablets, routers, software, and forgotten projects and asking:

“What else can this become?”

That question is Tree of Perception in miniature.

A discarded computer becomes a server. An old laptop becomes an administration machine. A tablet becomes a home interface. An old educational game becomes something children and adults can learn from in a browser.

Code recovered from a forgotten hard drive becomes part of the new Education space. Old artwork becomes part of a project that survived long enough to meet its future version.

This taught me: “Rebuilding is not the same as starting over.”

You do not have to erase your past to become something new. Recover what was good. Learn from what was broken. Leave behind what no longer serves you.

Build again.

Why Shiva

My legal name is Camron. I prefer Shiva.

For me the name is not about claiming to be a god. It represents something I recognize in my life: creation and destruction are connected.

Things end. Relationships collapse. Projects fail. Identities change. People die. Plans disappear. Then something grows in the space that remains.

I have destroyed parts of my own life. Other parts were destroyed around me. I have rebuilt. More than once.

I expect I will again.

Shiva Street Walk

One mission continues to follow me: Shiva Street Walk.

I intend to do it. The details can evolve. But I know what I do not want it to become.

Not walking for attention. Not suffering for spectacle. Not creating heroic mythology around myself.

I want to walk for the right reason. To meet people. To listen. To serve. To experience places instead of merely passing through them. To understand communities from the people living inside them. To learn. To share.

Tree of Perception may grow along the way. Or the journey may change Tree of Perception itself.

Either is acceptable.

What I believe now

I still believe thoughts matter. But my understanding has matured.

Thinking something does not obligate the universe to give it to you.

Thoughts influence what we notice, what we attempt, what we tolerate, what we build, who we surround ourselves with, and what possibilities we recognize. Through countless decisions and interactions, thoughts become part of reality.

But reality also pushes back.

Other people have agency. Chance exists. Loss exists. Consequences exist. Bodies fail. Relationships change. People make decisions we cannot control. Terrible things can happen despite what we believe.

Any mature philosophy has to make room for that.

Tree of Perception is no longer about proving I have found THE answer. It is about creating a place where answers can be examined together.

Tell me what you believe. Tell me why. Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what changed your mind. Tell me what you fear. Tell me what you desire.

Show me what you created. Teach me something. Let me teach you something.

Let’s disagree without destroying one another. Let’s build things. Let’s help somebody.

Let’s see what happens.

Still becoming

I am not writing this from the finish line. I still work a regular job. I am still trying to build a life where more of my time can go toward creating, learning, helping, community, family, and Tree of Perception.

I am a husband, a father, a son who still misses his mother, a person who has failed, a person who has hurt people and been hurt, a person who has believed too strongly sometimes, a person who has doubted deeply, a builder, a student, a man still trying to understand the prayer he made as a little boy.

Tree of Perception is part of that attempt.

Perception is not only about how we see the world. It is about being willing to look again. With new information. With another person’s experience. With humility.

With real eyes. And maybe realize.

My name is Camron.

I prefer Shiva.

And I’m still walking.

— Shiva William Bhairava