Diary of a Mystic Apprentice is a completed 95,000 word spiritual memoir – wry, candid, and deeply human. It tells the story of Phil Shankland, a writer and long-time seeker whose journey led him to sit for 1,500 hours in a cold Derbyshire church with a self made mystic led to an unlikely collaboration with John Butler and the creation of the Spiritual Unfoldment YouTube channel (230,000 subscribers, 25 million views, 5,500 email list). With endorsements from acclaimed authors and a ready-made global audience, the book offers both literary quality and commercial reach. Phil is currently completing his next book, Mistaken Identity – why you are not who you are, confirming his trajectory as a multi-book author.

About the Book

Title: Diary of a Mystic Apprentice

Word count: 95,000

Genre: spiritual memoir / crossover nonfiction

Tone: warm, candid, self deprecating, literary but accessible with contemporary cultural crossover.

Pitch: Part memoir, part field report from the interior, Diary of a Mystic Apprentice is a candid account of my apprenticeship with John Butler, blending the wit of Rousseau with the contemplative candour of Merton — a modern “cult classic” for readers hungry for depth and authenticity. Christian from Pilgrim’s Progress gets waylaid by Richard E Grant from Withnail and I.

Synopsis:

Diary of a Mystic Apprentice is a candid, wry, and deeply human memoir of spiritual seeking in everyday life. When writer and serial entrepreneur Phil Shankland stumbled across John Butler’s Wonders of Spiritual Unfoldment in a charity book sale, he didn’t expect it to change everything. Yet within weeks he had uprooted his life, moved to Bakewell, and found himself rising at 5am through English winters to sit in silence with John – ‘Mr Nothing’ – in a cold parish church.

The diary chronicles the trials and illuminations of this apprenticeship: moments of deep stillness, comic missteps, encounters with seekers and skeptics alike, and the paradoxical dance of “losing yourself to find yourself.” Shankland’s voice blends the honest wit of Rousseau with the contemplative candour of Merton – making the timeless search for truth both accessible and surprising.

What began as a private journal has become a field report from the interior: part travelogue, part spiritual confession, part comedy of errors. With endorsements from respected authors and a global audience through the Spiritual Unfoldment YouTube channel (230k subscribers, 25m views), Diary of a Mystic Apprentice speaks to a growing hunger for authentic spirituality — grounded, unvarnished, and lived in the grit of ordinary life.

Endorsements:

“A triumph: wry, rollicking and wise.”

Charles Foster, author of The Edges of the World

“A mix of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions & Thomas Merton’s Journals.”

BAFTA Winner, Nick Daubeny

“A spiritual memoir of the search for enlightenment – as if Christian from Pilgrim’s Progress got waylaid by Richard E Grant from Withnail and I. Soulful, shambolic, and yet strangely inspiring… You could call it a field report from the edges of sanity and stillness….a unique voice.”

Robert Twigger, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for literature.

“The ancient refrain of ‘know-thy-self’ unveils itself here, and in so doing may help the reader to do the same.”

Owen A. Barfield, Founder, Barfield Press