my story
Kevin Quiles (He/Him)
Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, home of the once largest satellite dish and the Taino Indians, I made my way onto New York rather quickly. There, my parents and siblings took on the challenges before us. Long story short, it wasn't until I graduated from high school and moved to Miami, Florida that I turned into a church goer. New ideas popped into my head about studying to be a minister. Thus, I graduated from Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in the 1987. I went on to earn a Master's of Divinity degree in 95'. From there, I trained as chaplain, first in a psychiatric residential facility and later in a major hospital in South Carolina. I was fortunate in those two plus years to have excellent supervisors who held an integrated approach to psyche and Spirit. For sure, it was a nice balance.
​
What followed next was a career in hospice, not church. Working with adults facing that moment of transition changed me in ways I might never be able to explain. Sometimes it made sense. Other times it proved confusing. Nevertheless, I did it for 15 years. I never looked back on the Church thing. My career in hospice was my path. The dying became my teachers. And today I've been fortunate to write about it.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​After my hospice career and a military deployment, I entered academia once again to earn a Master of Arts in Community Counseling in 2011. I began a career in private practice as Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), which I've now done for over a decade. I became certified in hypnotherapy in 2012 and in Kundalini Yoga in 2019.
​
Throughout my life I have engaged in some form and fashion in spiritual paths. The travels have sometimes been messy, especially when I followed the strict paths created by men. Other times extremely rewarding. Today, I consider myself a mystic and follower of esoteric practices, which leads me to my next and last point I'd like to share with you.
​
​
​
For several years, I've dedicated myself to helping men and women who experience strange things that cannot be explained by western epistemology. It really goes back further not only in my career as hospice chaplain where I saw what appeared to be patients communicating with deceased loved ones but also in my own spiritual development. I provide support programs, therapy, and mentorship to credible individuals and partners who have encountered something strange, be it spirit, energetic movements, psi such as telepathy or precognition, or an encounter with a UFO and or Advanced Intelligent Beings (AIBs).
​
This entering of the Strange fueled yet another thrust, one that was brewing slowly as I worked in the field. Hearing of credible and well-functioning individuals, groups, and tribes being labelled as mentally ill sparked a major concern. And when I did my own studies--for the information I offer isn't shared in academia--I learned what I already knew on a deeper level. The mental health functions out of a narrow epistemology that gives no clearance of "normal" other than its own. A serious look into the history of psychiatry soon reveals that the mental health profession is not an "evidenced-based" discipline.
​
I find it imperative for the mental health field not only to look closely at how it has erected its own definition of "normal" but also how its pretense on transparency. It is our ethical duty to discuss not only the pros but the cons of the field. Psychiatry should be open about its guessing posing as evidence and its historical relationship to big Pharma. Psychology should be clear about its narrow form of epistemology that eventually forces the epistemological approaches of other cultures to conform. And the therapist should be open to sharing with the client the pros and cons of using diagnostic codes. In my opinion, only then can the mental health field thrive with the good intentions that it has to offer the human experience. But until the field reforms, society as a whole will become one big pathology.
​
​
​
​​​​​​​​​Education:
Southeastern College 1987
Reformed Theological Seminary 1995
Argosy University 2011
​​
