Tom Askman on The Way Back to Being: Alcoholism, Spiritual Awakening, Intuition, and Returning to Your Authentic Self

Tom Askman on The Way Back to Being: Alcoholism, Spiritual Awakening, Intuition, and Returning to Your Authentic SelfIn this episode of The Neil Haley Show, Neil “The Media Giant” Haley welcomes author and longtime art professor Tom Askman to discuss his book The Way Back to Being: Tools for Returning Home. Askman shares his journey through alcoholism, depression, spiritual awakening, teaching, intuition, and his belief that people can reconnect with a deeper, more authentic way of living.Askman never expected to become an author. He spent more than five decades teaching studio art at universities, working with students in painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and other creative disciplines.Art became important to him because creating requires presence.When someone is deeply involved in making art, Askman says they are often fully engaged in the present moment instead of being consumed by worries about the past or future.But while his professional life appeared successful, his personal life was unraveling.Askman began drinking as a teenager and says alcohol eventually became deeply embedded in his life. By his 40s, despite a successful art career and a profession he loved, he was becoming increasingly depressed and disconnected from himself.He describes himself during that period as highly self-centered and unable to experience relationships in the meaningful way he now understands love.Alcohol initially seemed to provide an escape from fear, stress, and emotional discomfort. Eventually, however, it became part of the problem.When Askman stopped drinking, he discovered that simply removing alcohol did not automatically solve what was happening underneath.He eventually found Alcoholics Anonymous, where the 12-step process and relationships with other people in recovery helped him begin rebuilding his life.Askman describes AA as spiritual rather than religious. Through meetings, sponsorship, and working the steps, he says he gradually began moving from a life dominated by his thinking mind toward one more connected to his heart.One of the most important lessons was learning that he had to give away what he had received.After working through the program himself, Askman began helping others. That principle eventually influenced his teaching as well.He started asking deeper questions with his students.Many were academically successful yet still felt anxious, frustrated, fearful, or uncertain about what their lives were supposed to become. Askman began believing that education often emphasizes information, knowledge, achievement, and rational thinking while leaving intuition and inner awareness underdeveloped.That idea became central to The Way Back to Being.Askman distinguishes between intellectual knowledge and what he calls intuitive knowing.For him, intuition exists before analysis. It is experiential rather than purely intellectual.In his art classes, he sometimes encourages people to close their eyes, listen to music without lyrics, hold drawing materials in both hands, and allow themselves to create without planning what the finished image should look like.The goal is not producing a perfect piece of art.The goal is learning what it feels like to create without the rational mind controlling every decision.Neil and Askman discuss how that differs from artificial intelligence. AI can process enormous amounts of information and knowledge, but Askman sees human intuition as something that grows through lived experience, awareness, presence, and emotional connection.Askman also talks about teachers and thinkers who influenced his spiritual development, including Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, meditation traditions, and the HeartMath Institute.He describes spiritual growth as a continuing process rather than a single dramatic transformation.There are still moments when what he calls the “monkey mind” returns with judgment, fear, or overthinking. The practice is learning to recognize those moments and return to the...