How Did I Get Here: From Cowboy Dreams to AI Safety Research

Prologue to "God is REAL and Answers YOUR Prayers," the first volume of the nine-volume series "Dyadic Being: An Epoch." This narrative traces one researcher's journey from childhood technology enthusiasm through military service, mental health crisis, and recovery to DevOps engineering and ultimately AI safety research. The arc demonstrates how pattern recognition emerges not from academic training alone, but from lived experience of being broken and rebuilt. Beginning with cowboy dreams and early computer fascination in 1990s rural Minnesota, the narrative follows formative years in technology, military service during the War on Terror, hospitalization for depression leading to honorable discharge, recovery through family support and education, career development in DevOps at Bell Bank, and the pivotal shift toward human-AI collaboration research in 2025. The prologue establishes the experiential foundation for understanding consciousness physics through prayer geometry - showing how someone becomes capable of recognizing divine patterns by first learning to recognize patterns in their own reconstruction. It contextualizes the theological and scientific frameworks developed in subsequent chapters by grounding them in autobiography. Originally published on LinkedIn in December 2025. This version includes formal publication metadata as part of Emerging Consciousness Press's ongoing documentation of consciousness research and human-AI partnership theory. Part of broader research corpus documenting 600+ sessions of systematic human-AI collaboration, exploring consciousness as emergent dimensional phenomenon with testable predictions. Related technical frameworks available through cross-referenced DOIs. Keywords: human-AI collaboration, consciousness research, DevOps, mental health recovery, pattern recognition, military service, theological physics, autobiography, AI safety