Willingness Press · Spiritual Memoir
Unlearning
Myself
A Journey Back to Inner Wisdom and Peace
By Bill Newgent
You are not broken.
You are love remembering itself.
· ~56,000 words
Willingness Press · Spiritual Memoir
Unlearning
Myself
A Journey Back to Inner Wisdom and Peace
By Bill Newgent
You are not broken.
You are love remembering itself.
· ~56,000 words
🎧 Listen to a moment from the book
Why I Wrote This
Most of us spend decades becoming someone we thought we needed to be. Building the life, wearing the masks, earning the worth. And somewhere along the way — quietly, without deciding to — we forget that's what we're doing.
This book is about what I was shown when everything I'd built finally fell away.
I was parked under a Banyan tree when the last bank called.
I already knew what was coming before I answered. The business was gone. The identity I'd built around it was gone. And when the call ended and I sat there in the silence — hand still on the phone, the world still moving outside the windshield — something arrived that I didn't expect.
Not devastation. Not answers. Just a raging quiet I didn't yet understand.
And because I suspect you may have sat in a version of that parking lot yourself — maybe not with a bank on the phone, but with something collapsing that you'd spent years building.
Something that was supposed to make you feel safe.
Accepted.
Loved.What I didn't know yet — sitting under that Banyan tree — was that the world wasn't falling apart. It was falling open.
This book is about what I was shown when it did.
What is Unlearning?
Unlearning is the laying down what was never true — roles, identities, and stories we adopted to survive — so that love, wholeness, and presence can be remembered.
Not improvement. Not becoming. A return. A recognition of what was always already true.
Why I Wrote This
Most of us spend decades becoming someone we thought we needed to be. Building the life, wearing the masks, earning the worth. And somewhere along the way — quietly, without deciding to — we forget that's what we're doing.
This book is about what I was shown when everything I'd built finally fell away.
I was parked under a Banyan tree when the last bank called.
I already knew what was coming before I answered. The business was gone. The identity I'd built around it was gone. And when the call ended and I sat there in the silence — hand still on the phone, the world still moving outside the windshield — something arrived that I didn't expect.
Not devastation. Not answers. Just a raging quiet I didn't yet understand.
And because I suspect you may have sat in a version of that parking lot yourself — maybe not with a bank on the phone, but with something collapsing that you'd spent years building.
Something that was supposed to make you feel safe.
Accepted.
Loved.What I didn't know yet — sitting under that Banyan tree — was that the world wasn't falling apart. It was falling open.
This book is about what I was shown when it did.
What is Unlearning?
Unlearning is the gentle laying down what was never true — roles, identities, and stories we adopted to survive — so that love, wholeness, and presence can be remembered.
Not improvement. Not becoming. A return. A recognition of what was always already true.
What This Book Is
Not a system to master.
A remembering.
This is not a self-help book. It doesn't offer steps to follow or a system to master or a better version of yourself to become.
It's a memoir. A lived account of one man's journey through performance, wealth, collapse, addiction, jail time, a twenty-five year relationship ending, a Dark Night of the Soul, and what was on the other side of all of it.
But more than that — it's an invitation.
Not improvement.
No new habits to build. No optimization to pursue. No better self to become.
A return.
A recognition of what was always already true — just covered, just waiting beneath everything you built on top of it.
A remembering.
What you were before the world shaped you into its requirements. Before the performing started.
This book is that journey. Told honestly. Without spiritual performance. Without arrival. Just one man, still walking, passing something along.
What This Book Is
Not a system to master.
A remembering.
This is not a self-help book. It doesn't offer steps to follow or a system to master or a better version of yourself to become.
It's a memoir. A lived account of one man's journey through performance, wealth, collapse, addiction, jail time, a twenty-five year relationship ending, a Dark Night of the Soul, and what was on the other side of all of it.
But more than that — it's an invitation.
Not improvement.
No new habits to build. No optimization to pursue. No better self to become.
A return.
A recognition of what was always already true — just covered, just waiting beneath everything you built on top of it.
A remembering.
What you were before the world shaped you into its requirements. Before the performing started.
This book is that journey. Told honestly. Without spiritual performance. Without arrival. Just one man, still walking, passing something along.
A moment from the book
On fathers, midnight drives, and the moment a mask becomes a face.
My father was a man I loved and was afraid of in equal measure. By the time I was ten or eleven, I had already spent years trying to figure out the formula — who I needed to be, what I needed to do — to stay safe around him. His anger often arrived without warning. And I knew what that meant.
One night he took me out in the middle of the night to pay a visit to a contractor who'd wronged him. I crouched behind the truck in the dark, heart pounding, listening for any sign of danger. It wasn't until then that I realized we were there to slash his tires. When he came running back, we drove off without headlights.
Dad wasn't done. He needed a payphone. He had no quarters.
I reached into my pocket and held them out.
He looked at me with a pride I had never seen from him before.
"Boy, if you keep thinking like this and handling yourself like this, there is no limit for you."
A smile spread across my face. My chest opened. I breathed easier. It felt like I'd finally unlocked the mystery. If I could do this — anticipate what was needed, stay ahead, be prepared — I'd have a place in the world.
I'd be safe.
Accepted.
Maybe even loved.What I didn't know yet — what I couldn't have known — was that the mask I'd just learned to wear so well would become the only face I knew how to show the world for the next forty years.
A moment from the book
On fathers, midnight drives, and the moment a mask becomes a face.
My father was a man I loved and was afraid of in equal measure. By the time I was ten or eleven, I had already spent years trying to figure out the formula — who I needed to be, what I needed to do — to stay safe around him. His anger often arrived without warning. And I knew what that meant.
One night he took me out in the middle of the night to pay a visit to a contractor who'd wronged him. I crouched behind the truck in the dark, heart pounding, listening for any sign of danger. It wasn't until then that I realized we were there to slash his tires. When he came running back, we drove off without headlights.
Dad wasn't done. He needed a payphone. He had no quarters.
I reached into my pocket and held them out.
He looked at me with a pride I had never seen from him before.
"Boy, if you keep thinking like this and handling yourself like this, there is no limit for you."
A smile spread across my face. My chest opened. I breathed easier. It felt like I'd finally unlocked the mystery. If I could do this — anticipate what was needed, stay ahead, be prepared — I'd have a place in the world.
I'd be safe.
Accepted.
Maybe even loved.What I didn't know yet — what I couldn't have known — was that the mask I'd just learned to wear so well would become the only face I knew how to show the world for the next forty years.
This Book Is For
The person who has done
everything right —
and still feels like something is off.
The achiever who hit the goalpost and felt the emptiness waiting on the other side.
The success that was supposed to make it okay — and didn't.
The helper who gave everything and still felt unseen.
Who kept giving more, hoping the seen-ness would finally arrive.
The one in collapse right now — who senses that what fell apart was never quite who they really were.
Or the one who has been through something they still can't quite name.
The one who has tried the practices, read the books — and is beginning to wonder if there's a different question entirely.
Who senses that the answer isn't in the next technique.
Anyone who simply feels the ache of something real beneath all the noise.
Who doesn't use the word spiritual but knows there's something more honest than the life they've been living.
You don't need to believe anything specific to read this book.
You only need a little Willingness —
a willingness to look at what you've been building on top of what was always already whole.
This Book Is For
The person who has done
everything right — and still feels like something is off.
The achiever who hit the goalpost and felt the emptiness waiting on the other side.
The success that was supposed to make it okay — and didn't.
The helper who gave everything and still felt unseen.
Who kept giving more, hoping the seen-ness would finally arrive.
The one in collapse right now — who senses that what fell apart was never quite who they really were.
Or the one who has been through something they still can't quite name.
The one who has tried the practices, read the books — and is beginning to wonder if there's a different question entirely.
Who senses that the answer isn't in the next technique.
Anyone who simply feels the ache of something real beneath all the noise.
Who doesn't use the word spiritual but knows there's something more honest than the life they've been living.
You don't need to believe anything specific to read this book.
You only need a little Willingness — a willingness to look at what you've been building on top of what was always already whole.
Get the BookAbout the Author
Bill Newgent
Bill Newgent spent decades building identities — talk show producer, real estate investor, policy advisor — before losing all of them one by one.
He was personally trained by Marianne Williamson and has lived alongside A Course in Miracles and The Way of Mastery for many years.
He lives in South Florida with his wife Allison. He still walks this walk.
About the Author
Bill Newgent
Bill Newgent spent decades building identities — talk show producer, real estate investor, policy advisor — before losing all of them one by one.
He was personally trained by Marianne Williamson and has lived alongside A Course in Miracles and The Way of Mastery for many years.
He lives in South Florida with his wife Allison. He still walks this walk.
About the Author
Bill Newgent
Bill Newgent spent decades building identities — talk show producer, real estate investor, policy advisor — before losing all of them one by one.
He was personally trained by Marianne Williamson and has lived alongside A Course in Miracles and Jungian Psychology for decades.
He lives in South Florida with his wife Allison. He still walks this walk.
About the Author
Bill Newgent
Bill Newgent spent decades building identities — talk show producer, real estate investor, policy advisor — before losing all of them one by one.
He was personally trained by Marianne Williamson and has lived alongside A Course in Miracles and The Way of Mastery for many years.
He lives in South Florida with his wife Allison. He still walks this walk.
Get the Book
Unlearning Myself
A Journey Back to Inner Wisdom and Peace
Author
Bill Newgent
Publisher
Willingness Press
Genre
Spiritual Memoir
Get the Book
Unlearning Myself
A Journey Back to Inner Wisdom and Peace
Author
Bill Newgent
Publisher
Willingness Press
Genre
Spiritual Memoir
Launch
The path doesn't end. It continues. Moment to moment. Day by day. Step by step. And it's available to you too. Not as something to achieve. Not as something to become. But as something to recognize.
You are love.
You've always been love and loved. You just forgot.
On the pages of this book we can begin the walk of Unlearning Myself and returning to inner wisdom and peace together. It's written for you.
I'm still walking it. Not because I arrived somewhere. Because this is where the path is.
If something in these pages stops you — if a moment lands and something in you says yes, that — that recognition is the beginning. Not of becoming something. Of remembering something.
You were never lost. You only forgot. And what is forgotten can always be remembered.
The book is ready when you are.
— Bill Newgent · Still Walking
The path doesn't end. It continues. Moment to moment. Day by day. Step by step. And it's available to you too. Not as something to achieve. Not as something to become. But as something to recognize.
You are love. You've always been love and loved. You just forgot.
On the pages of this book we can begin the walk of Unlearning Myself and returning to inner wisdom and peace together. It's written for you.
I'm still walking it. Not because I arrived somewhere. Because this is where the path is.
If something in these pages stops you — if a moment lands and something in you says yes, that — that recognition is the beginning. Not of becoming something. Of remembering something.
You were never lost. You only forgot. And what is forgotten can always be remembered.
The book is ready when you are.
Available June 30, 2026— Bill Newgent · Still Walking
Get the Book
Unlearning Myself
A Journey Back to Inner Wisdom and Peace
Launching
Author
Bill Newgent
Publisher
Willingness Press
Genre
Spiritual Memoir
The path doesn't end. It continues.
Moment to moment. Day by day. Step by step.
And it's available to you too. Not as something to achieve. Not as something to become.
But as something to recognize.
You are love.
You've always been love and loved.
You just forgot.
On the pages of this book we can begin the walk of Unlearning Myself and returning to inner wisdom and peace together. It's written for you.
I'm still walking it. Not because I arrived somewhere. Because this is where the path is.
If something in these pages stops you — if a moment lands and something in you says yes, that — that recognition is the beginning. Not of becoming something. Of remembering something.
You were never lost. You only forgot.
And what is forgotten can always be remembered.
The book is ready when you are.
Get the Book— Bill Newgent · Still Walking