Spiritual practice—and spiritual life in general—is full of paradoxes. We all like to think we’re good at holding them, but truthfully, we’re often not. As a teacher of meditation, this presents a real challenge. There

Meditation, to me, means choosing to rest in a state of contentment with the way things are. There are two primary ways to attain this conscious contentment as a sustained way of being. One is

Lately, I’ve found myself captivated by a deep and personal inquiry: What does it truly mean to be on a spiritual path? Many of us engage in spiritual practice. We meditate, pray, contemplate, or engage

The French philosopher Henri Bergson taught that life was more than mere existence—it is driven by a vital energy that gives it meaning by propelling us toward something greater. He called this force the élan

For the past few weeks I’ve noticed a growing recognition in my soul that tells me, it’s time. Time for what? Time for a holistically coordinated opening to the divine. As I look at the

Our minds are involved in at least three different operations: sensing, conceptualizing and intuiting. In the Hindu tradition, the sensing of the mind is part of the pranamaya kosha, or energy body. Sensations are felt

The goal of my work is to support as many people as I can in a life of continuous awakening and transformation. I am not focused on introducing people to the world of spiritual transformation,

When you meditate you settle like a leaf that has fallen from a tree, slowly moving toward the ground, landing, and rocking to stillness. It’s important to remember that resting is not an activity. Resting

The spiritual value of relaxation is dramatically underappreciated. It is the most powerful superpower you have. I believe it would be well worth your time to devote an entire year to exploring the spiritually transformative

I recently learned about how verbal commands can be used to initiate out of body experiences into the subtle realm of being and I was curious to try using them. During my recent yoga nidra

Embodying your cosmic self is a practice that can stabilize your awareness in cosmic consciousness. To understand how it works, you have to know that it is not merely an imaginative exercise. Imagination is certainly

The Tibetan Buddhist adept Lama Anagarika Govinda in his book Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness writes about the imaginative aspects of meditation. He clearly states that if you change your awareness you will live in

My decision to run a yearlong intensive practice program aimed at sustaining cosmic consciousness was based on my own experience, and the experience of many people like me, whose attention has been raised into profound

Twenty three years ago, I participated in a 60-day retreat that was utterly and completely life transforming. The circumstances of the retreat were extraordinary, involving eight months of intense preparation before starting. I can honestly

In deep meditation we discover the miracle of just sitting. Before I experienced this miracle, I could never have imagined that sitting quietly for extended periods of time could dramatically shift my sense of reality,

My spiritual path has been blessed with a number of extremely powerful breakthroughs that led to dramatic shifts in my consciousness. One of the most dramatic and impactful was an experience of cosmic consciousness that

Do you believe in meditation magic? I do. There is a magic to meditation that many practitioners never discover because it is only found when time is eliminated from the equation. You can call this

The way things work for me is that I sometimes find that a new understanding starts to grab me and I can’t stop. That is happening right now with the Hindu conception of the five

People who act as spiritual mentors do so in different ways from different directions. If you asked me about what I do, I would tell you that one of the things that is most important

We live in a paradigm in which we are trained to see ourselves as individual achievers who strategize and work towards the completion of objectives. This goal-oriented perspective is foundational to who we think we

One way to understand enlightenment is to think of it as being open at all levels, in all dimensions, to the flow of divine energy running through you. We are not alive as much as

As I see it, the goal of spiritual work is to live in the world from the highest source of love and wisdom we are capable of. Another way of putting it is opening to

I think of myself as a teacher of meditation and mystical philosophy, but at least half of the things people ask of me are about how to live a better, more spiritual, and more awakened

Spiritual abundance is not limited to material abundance, although it can include that. Spiritual abundance is not about accumulation of money or things, it is about the cultivation of an inner attitude that sees the

My primary spiritual training occurred in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi. In that lineage, at least in its western forms, the main vehicle for the transmission of wisdom is

In preparation for my two upcoming retreats I’ve been reading a wonderful book called In Days of Great Peace by Mouni Sadhu. Sadhu was a devotee of Ramana Maharshi and lived in Ramana’s ashram during

The great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi brought many seekers into a direct experience of nondual oneness where they saw that everything is part of One thing and that they themselves are that One thing. For

For the past thirty years my life has been devoted to two overarching goals: First, to experience enlightenment, and second, to understand the path that leads there. As I have come to see it there

Those who want to experience true inner freedom are, whether they realize it or not, most likely hoping to have a spiritual opening that is powerful enough, deep enough, or long lasting enough, that it

I use the phrase paradigm shifting to refer to the cultivation of radical thinking. The word radical comes from the Latin word radic, which means root, and so radical thinking means thinking below the roots.

The spiritual traditions of the East often assert that the process of awakening and growth unfold according to a science that can be understood and practiced. In the West the term science generally refers to

A Dream without a Dreamer “Let dreams wake you up to what you are, awareness.” – Sri Nisargadatta The realization of nonduality is the direct recognition of absolute unity. In this realization we recognize that

There are two levels of spiritual practice. The first leads to the attainment of inner freedom. This is the practice that is engaged with from our familiar identity as the person who was born on

During my formative years on the spiritual path, the teacher I worked with taught about the supreme importance of having a clear intention. He insisted that clarity of intention was the beginning, the middle, and

Meditation is often thought of as a means to and end, a vehicle for spiritual growth, or a stress reduction technique. Meditation can work this way, and it can be so much more than that.

The ultimate spiritual attainment in Eastern traditions is described as Samadhi, Nirvana, and Self-Realization, and in Western traditions as Divine Union or God Consciousness. Whatever that exalted state might be called, it is a state

I use the phrase luminous absorption to describe being deeply immersed in the awareness of awareness. Spending time in luminous absorption is what shifts our consciousness beyond the limits of time and space and opens

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describe a progression of practices that liberate awareness and reveal the miraculous nature of the higher self. The yogic practices described are arranged in eight limbs or stages. The first

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get

I want to start this essay with a story about a spiritual friend of mine, a true spiritual brother who was the first person who spoke to me about the power of spiritual rapport. Rapport

Many of us talk about spirituality and spiritual growth, but what we mean by that is often left a little vague and hard to define. When I speak of spirituality or spiritual growth, I specifically

It is often difficult for me to answer when someone asks me what I do. Usually I say that I teach meditation and mystical philosophy, which most people find generally satisfying, but to me feels

Spiritual liberation and awakening are very real and very attainable, but the truth is that sustaining our access to these divine states of being will take everything we have. Audio Clip 8:00 mins Download Audio

My journey into Soulwork began in 2016 when I started writing my first novel Transdimensional Crossing. At the time, I was leading a yearlong program called The Breakthrough Intensive and I was feeling that there

One of the most profound insights my spiritual practice has given me is that there are three different sources of our awareness and we can shift our attention between them. When we learn to move

There are times in your spiritual life in which you do practice, study, learn, grow, contemplate, and have insights and realizations that fuel your path and inspire you forward. And then there are times when

Transdimensional Illumination is the process through which awareness moves beyond the human spectrum of consciousness to perceive higher dimensions of reality. This process of crossing over into new dimensions of reality necessitates giving up control

Can cosmic consciousness save the world? I believe it can, if that shift happens soon enough. The term itself was coined by the English poet and activist Edward Carpenter in the late 19th Century after

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust In July and August of 2001 I spent two months on a retreat that dramatically altered

In the end, the attainment of cosmic consciousness is the realization that the consciousness you have right now, the one reading these words, looking out the window, or walking into the next room, is cosmic

Underneath everything I share is the realization of oneness. This means that underlying all of life and everything else in the universe, there is a single source and we are that source, and it can

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet says to Romeo as she implores him to renounce his family name so they can be together. After all, Romeo would still be himself

The inconvenient truth about transformation is that most often it involves hard, diligent work, over time, but if you are willing to do the work real, dramatic, and deep change is completely possible to achieve.

Meditation is always a spiritual practice, but for some of us it is our spiritual path. As a teacher of meditation, I find it useful to understand when meditation is someone’s path and when it

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” ~ William James We have all heard about the importance of having a positive attitude when

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin In mystical traditions around the world you find a common theme. They all

“Enlightenment is an accident, but some activities make you accident-prone.” The phrase above is often attributed to the spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti and what it implies is that spiritual enlightenment is not something you can

An essay about spiritual life probably needs to start with at least a brief description of what the author means about this rather ambiguous phrase. When I speak about spiritual life, I’m speaking about whatever

There is a new world of possibility that we gain access to when we change how we understand relationships and communication. This shift in perspective illuminates the world differently so that we begin to see

Jeff Carreira talks with J about the process of awakening into deeper awareness of our spiritual existence.

The following is the first chapter from my latest novel, I, Kosmos, published by Emergence Education. ~ The best place to start explaining the next weird chapter of my wonderful and often bizarre spiritual life

QUESTION: What do we do when our minds wander during meditation? Should I keep bringing my attention back to the breath and reconnecting with what is happening now? ~ ANSWER: That can be a very

The following introduction by Jeff Carreira is published in the recently released edition of Towards Democracy by Edward Carpenter, published by Emergence Education. ~ You have in your hand a spiritual gem, an extended cry

When we meditate we often find ourselves working hard and doing our very best to follow the simple instruction of sitting and consciously choosing to be content with everything the way it is. It is

If you are reading this essay, I can only imagine that you feel drawn to live a spiritual life, and I would be willing to bet that you would agree with me when I say

One of the most essential things to understand about deep spiritual work is that it cannot be accomplished through conformity. There is a point earlier on during your spiritual journey when it is necessary to

Earlier this week I experienced a profound breakthrough into the reality of “involution and evolution” as it has been spoken about by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. I woke up on Tuesday morning in the

The point I have been making in this series of essays is that the process of spiritual awakening is at least partially an artistic and creative process. We are both discovering new dimensions of reality

In this Instagram live I speak with Radita Leary about what it means to build a life around your spiritual passion and introduce The Spiritpreneurship Summit as an opportunity for spiritual visionaries.

You could say that creative illumination is a kind of spiritual magic, a word that still carries the blemish given to it during the Middle Ages when the Christian church in Europe discredited it as

In this live we discuss how we know when our seeking has come to an end and how to avoid the trap of premature claims of enlightenment.

In this live we discuss how we know when our seeking has come to an end and how to avoid the trap of premature claims of enlightenment.

In order to practice creative illumination we must liberate ourselves from the limitations of our materialistic conditioning. We’ve been taught that we live in an infinite expanse of three dimensional space. This vast ocean of

In our natural state we are effortlessly focused and beautiful relaxed. We discover our Natural State when we stop trying to meditate and actually just do it.

In the first essay in this series I introduced the process of creative illumination and as I see it, this can best be understood as the soul’s journey to wholeness. I outlined the contours of

In this live we discuss Collective Awakening and the Art of Self-Forgetting

Breathing has long been seen as a point of connection with divinity. In fact, the word spirit is derived from the Latin word spiritus which refers to the breath of a god. In his gospel,

When I teach I always emphasize that there are two equally essential aspects of spiritual work – the attainment of inner freedom, and the art of creative illumination. On the spiritual path we must first

In this live we discuss how the habit of inner freedom can be attained and maintained. This discussion is followed by guided meditation and questions.

In this live we discuss the spiritual nature of who we are and how we might live differently if we could.

In this session we speak about what it is that gives power to our meditation practice. In our investigation we explore the questions about life that we are asking and how committed we are to responding to the answers we find.

In this conversation with Daniel Allen of MetaSoul we discuss the authentic expression of the soul and the universal nature of the divine.

In this session we speak about those aspects of ourselves that exist beyond our physical senses. By learning to experience those aspects of who we are, we can bring a higher power of creation into our lives.

In this Christmas spirited stream we explored how the depths of our being give birth to the innocence and love that can transform the world.

The story of Christmas is the story of a birth that occurred in the middle of a dark and silent night, and promised to bring peace and joy to the world. In that story I

In this live I discuss the profound value of personal development, the realization of divine union, and the manifestation of the soul in human form.

In this live I discuss the profound value of personal development, the realization of divine union, and the manifestation of the soul in human form.

In this live we started by exploring the miracle of being present and went on to discuss the challenge of giving up control.

We start this stream by clarifying the idea of nonduality and answering some common criticisms of it. We go to explore the nature of life and spiritual surrender

As I see it, the experience of luminous absorption reveals our True Self and the True Nature of existence at the same time. We’ve been taught that we live in a reality of three-dimensional space

A conversation with Barrett Self about the path to realization and embodiment.

Learn to rest your awareness between all thoughts and discover who you really are.

Explore the fullness of our human self, our soul, and the oneness of life.

This meditation and spiritual contemplation begins by simply asking us to relax and to not do anything at all. What we find when we do nothing, is that everything continues. All of the activity that

In this audio I read my introduction to Seven Stories by H. P. Lovecraft; Real Dreaming and Cosmic Awareness. You will discover how Lovecraft’s strange and unusual fiction contains a vision of the otherworldly possibilities

As a spiritual teacher, what I teach is constantly evolving. As I continue to explore, learn, and grow, what I teach reflects my current interests and discoveries. For the past few years I’ve been fascinated

How do you meditate? Close your eyes and surrender. ~ Rumi For a long time I have talked and written about how the practice of meditation occurs in two distinct stages, but until now I

In the enlightenment tradition of Hinduism, the notion of transmission or shakti pat often plays a prominent role. Within that tradition, a teacher or guru is often seen as possessing access to awakening energy that

Part 1: The Art of Conscious Contentment I teach a form of meditation that I call The Art of Conscious Contentment and that practice offers a powerful path to spiritual awakening. In this essay, you’ll

I feel that the meditation I teach is perfect for beginners even though it’s often seen as an advanced practice. The reason I believe it’s perfect for beginners is because it takes us straight to

For the past twenty years, I’ve been teaching the practice of meditation and guiding people into the experience of spiritual awakening. When I started the Transdimensional Fiction imprint it was because I wanted to write

Today I want to share something with you. It’s the kind of thing that is true of so many of us, and yet so few of us feel free to say it. I came into

In this short teaching Jeff speaks about the goal of spiritual life as clearing an inner passage way so that the intelligent and sensitive life-force energy of creation can pass though us into the world.

I think of myself as a teacher of meditation and mystical philosophy, but of course at least half of the things people ask of me are about how to live a better, more spiritual, more

This morning I started writing the second novel in the Transdimensional Series, called Transdimensional Awakening. I am very excited about this novel. All I know so far is that it will be filling in the

Excerpted from: The Miracle of Self Realization: Reflections on the teachings of Ramana Maharshi by Jeff Carreira. ~ Ramana tells a story, in The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, about a boy who is fast

The novel Dreamed Awake starts with two characters who are heroes of mine. One is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, the other is my great grandfather Constantine Andrade. The idea for the novel initially came

The novel e-Ternity is about a mysterious app that appears suddenly on the main character’s phone. His quest to figure out what the app is and what it does begins an adventure that leads him

As a meditation practitioner and teacher, I have experienced myself, and witnessed others experience, the miracle of radical liberation countless times. There are many forms of meditation designed for a variety of purposes. The form

It seems that sometimes a cover initiates a novel. That was the case with my first novel Transdimensional Crossing. You see, the cover began to create itself a year or two before I even thought

In this unusual audio recording you will explore one of the more curious edges of philosophy and learn that during the twentieth century the pages of science fiction and fantasy novels became important storehouses for

In my last essay, I explained that a powerful and positive sense of self is crucial on the path to awakening and it is equally important for the continued journey of conscious evolution after awakening.

The path of awakening is often talked about as a path of self transcendence, so what roll could work on the self play in that process? What is a self?

This video asks you to question why you are seeking for spiritual fulfillment in the first place? Do you really know why you feel so compelled to seek. I describe my own discovery of the

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious

We are living through a crisis unprecedented in our lifetimes. As a dangerous virus moves mercilessly through our cities and towns we stay indoors and isolate to protect ourselves and each other. At the same

In this video I describe spiritual abundance as the state in which we perpetually recognize the inherent fullness of life. When we cultivate spiritual abundance we develop an inner tendency to notice all that is

The aim of my work is to support people to serve the future as Artists of Possibility. That means supporting people to discover and develop their own unique expression of an unimaginable future.

In this video Jeff speaks about how reality is shaped by how we talk about it, and goes on to discuss our ability to enter into a seemingly magical, creative space in consciousness where new

The world shows up for us. We wake up in the morning, open our eyes, and there it is. Like magic it just appears there. But here’s the problem. We’ve been conditioned to assume that the reason the world shows up that way, is because that’s the way it is. More or less, we generally believe that the world is the way it appears to us.

When your meditation becomes deep and steady what you find is that you flicker in and out of remembering that you are meditating. You will be meditating for a while, deliberately following the instructions, and then you will remember that you are meditating and realize that you had forgotten what you were doing for a few minutes.

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by small creative circles of awakened individuals whose writing, poetry, art, teachings and even business ventures, changed the world.

I recently returned from leading a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Sri Lanka. It was a powerful retreat for me as well as the others who were there. My experience is that silent retreats include

The myth of awakening refers to any belief we hold about there being something called awakening that’s going to happen in the future. The way we go beyond the myth of awakening is by accepting

Spiritual liberation and awakening are very real and very attainable, but the truth is that sustaining our access to these divine states of being will take everything we have. Audio Clip 10:00 mins Download Audio

In this audio clip Jeff Carreira asks the question, “How can we see beyond the current paradigm?” and goes on to explain how paradigms work and how they can change. Seminar Clip (6:00 mins) Download

There is a magic to the practice of meditation that many practitioners never discover because we only find it when we eliminate time from the equation. You can call this the discovery of radical immediacy

“Only those who risk going too far can find out how far they can go.” – T.S. Eliot I once asked a spiritual teacher a question that had been preoccupying me for months. I had

In this clip Jeff Carreira and Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal speak about the many different ways that new possibilities are brought into existence by small groups. These gatherings are today’s mystery schools and they play

For twenty years, I lived in a spiritual community that was rooted in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta and the lineage of the great Indian saint Ramana Maharshi. During those years, I had the luxury

I decided to write my first work of fiction because I’ve come to believe we are the authors of reality and a work of fiction might convey that fact better than writing about it in

My teachings can be seen as containing two essential aspects. You could call these spiritual freedom and living fulfilment. All three clips below were recorded during his 2019 Summer retreat and the first two clips capture the essence of his teaching in clear and succinct language.

In this audio clip Nora Bateson discusses why living systems cannot be effectively understood by modeling them because living systems are dynamically growing and changing all the time, and they are best understood as environments

As we gain access to spiritual power, it becomes more important to remember that the aim of spiritual work is always and only to be more surrendered to divinity.

There are two diametrically opposed dimensions of meditation that are both absolutely essential if we want our practice to result in dramatic spiritual breakthrough.

In the late nineteenth century, the great Indian sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa lived and taught in Kolkata. This divinely inspired being lived with his wife in a modest home. There, in his Temple Garden, the great mystic taught to all that came to visit him.

The answer to that question is a resounding Yes… and No! In my work as a teacher, I am always attempting to explain the indescribable, ethereal and always awesome realms of spiritual revelation and awakening. I want to demystify these holy realms by describing them in terms that are satisfying to our rationally trained intellects.

What makes paradigm shifting so challenging is that a new paradigm cannot be built from inside the existing paradigm – and we all live inside the existing paradigm. We have experiences beyond the current paradigm, but we don’t live there because it’s not established enough to live in yet.

This audio clip features Dr. Timothy Morton of Rice University discussing the strange way in which humanity’s efforts to solve our problems has actually created problems much larger than we could have ever imagined. We

This short clip was taken from a four session class with Jeff Carreira, called ‘The Miracle of Self-Realization: An Introduction to the Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi’, exploring the spiritual teachings of one of the

Once during a two-month-long meditation retreat, I was sitting and deeply embracing an impossible combination of opposites. I was focused, concentrated and alert on one hand, and at the very same time, relaxed, at ease,

One way to describe spiritual awakening is as the recognition that “this is it.” The experience that you are having right now is already awake and there is no other experience to get. The challenge

My work is aimed at the liberation of the human spirit. That means liberating the energy and intelligence that animates your heart, mind, body and soul so that it can manifest its full potential in

Today I’m writing about a topic that is a challenge for many meditators. It’s the question of what do we do about sleep in meditation. Any of us who meditate have experienced meditations where we

Spiritual paths, both traditional and alternative, in one way or another, always revolve around the call for surrender. Surrender means giving up, letting go, ceasing to resist. The moment of surrender is the moment of

Often people enter my work through my meditation classes and retreats. As their practice opens up into experiences of spiritual insight and revelation they begin to question their previous beliefs and assumptions about what is

In this audio clip recorded during a public seminar, Jeff Carreira discusses the ideas and work of Dr. Jeffrey Kripal of Rice University. During these 10 minutes you will learn about how the current paradigm

I went into my recent retreat in Sri Lanka with incredibly high expectations for myself and for the group of ten people that would be joining me on this adventure. It felt like everything was

After spending 7 full days, morning until night on a silent retreat I was disappointed that I hadn’t had any major breakthrough experiences. Sure, I’d had some insights and revelations and some wonderfully peaceful meditations,

This teaching reveals the depths of consciousness that are your always already awakened state and explains why surrender to that and that alone is the essence of a true spiritual life.

The way I see it, spiritual awakening means having experienced the mysterious truth of who we are deeply enough to lose confidence in our common conception of self, and I see enlightenment as the measure

In this recording you will discover that the goal of true meditation is to radically transform our sense of self so that we can be reborn as a higher version of ourselves.

When we talk about the spiritual path we use the words awakening and enlightenment as metaphors to explain profound shifts in our experience. In this essay I’ll give you one way to understand the difference.

This teaching introduces what I see as the two step process of the path to awakening. I sometimes refer to these two aspects of the path as first and second surrender, and sometimes as spiritual freedom and spiritual illumination.

In this teaching I speak about the inescapable reality that we can never let go more deeply than we are prepared to let go in life. If we truly want to experience the miracle of awakening we have to be available to have our life change. If we are unwilling to allow our life to change there is no way that we will be able to truly let go in meditation.

In this post I want to share an audio clip that was taken from a lecture I gave in a philosophy program I used to offer called The Breakthrough Intensive. In the Breakthrough Intensive we

This teaching and meditation reveal the profound combination of gracious acceptance and clear intention that we must be embraced before deep spiritual revelation can dawn on us.

Non-Duality is a state of consciousness that is revered in many Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. It is the direct recognition that beneath the surface of the apparent reality of a universe made up of

“Nothing is more practical than a good theory.” — Ludwig Boltzman, physicist and pioneer of thermodynamics. When we look at ancient cultures it’s easy for us to recognize the mythical nature of the stories they

This 12 minute audio clip was edited from a workshop called Manifesting Abundance given by Jeff Carreira and Susan Kullman on June 25, 2018 at the Aligned Center in Irvington, NY. In this short clip

The language of paradigm shifting has gained popularity in certain circles and unfortunately, as with anything else, when we become overly familiar with something it starts to lose meaning.

We are self aware. We don’t just experience the world, we experience ourselves experiencing it. Spiritual liberation is often spoken about as the attainment of Self-Awareness, but I think it is better understood in terms of the loss of self-awareness.

We are self aware. We don’t just experience the world, we experience ourselves experiencing it. Spiritual liberation is often spoken about as the attainment of Self-Awareness, but I think it is better understood in terms of the loss of self-awareness.

My work is dedicated to facilitating a shift in paradigm. The first aspect of what I do involves liberating our consciousness from the constraints of the current paradigm so our imagination is free to envision dramatically new ways of being.

Shortly after devoting my life to spiritual pursuit in 1992 I embarked on a quest for collective awakening – or what we called at the time inter-subjective enlightenment. I was working with a group of incredibly dedicated spiritual practitioners in the context of a residential community in which we did enormous amounts of practice and exploration.

In this essay we explore what it means to transcend one of our most foundational assumptions about reality. You see, even those of us who’ve had spiritual experiences that convince us that the essence of our being is spirit and not matter, still often default to culturally conditioned materialistic assumptions about life.

My longer retreats combine meditation practice and philosophical inquiry to liberate us from the perceptual constraints of the current paradigm and create the space for novel possibilities to emerge between us.

In my opinion what truly limits us and keeps us from realizing our highest potentials is often not a lack of will, strength, intelligence or desire. What truly binds us is most often a lack

New Year’s Day is known for the resolutions we make for the year to come. We use the date of January 1 to consider our lives, to celebrate our successes and achievements, and reflect on

My first book was called The Miracle of Meditation and that title perfectly describes exactly what I feel unendingly inspired to share with people. My own practice of meditation has blessed me with the experience

Today I want to tell you about some exciting plans I have for 2018. A new emphasis is emerging in my work, which is enhancing the way I teach, and I want to share that

This teaching introduces what I see as the two step process of the path to awakening. I sometimes refer to these two aspects of the path as first and second surrender, and sometimes as spiritual freedom and spiritual illumination.

In this practice session you will explore how spiritual freedom is won through The Practice of No Problem so that the gifts of illumination can enlighten your heart and mind.

Meditation is a practice that occurs in your whole body. I think you will be amazed at how this body-centered approach to meditation will supercharge your practice.

Embark on a mind bending inquiry into how it is that we are able to turn our attention in on itself and who it is that does that. In this mystical twist of awareness we discover the mystery of who we really are.

The practice of meditation teaches us how to step out of identification with thought and feeling until we discover the free-floating source of awareness that we truly are. Once we begin to master the art

Those of us seeking to live lives of deeper meaning, inner peace and freedom have become comfortable with the world spiritual. Before we assume that we all know what we are all talking about when

This audio course includes three short teachings explaining how to meditate. The Experience of Unbroken Trust (11mins) Download How to Be Free (Even when you don’t feel free.) (15mins) Download The Journey of Spiritual Illumination

I entered onto the spiritual path in earnest at a time when the profound esoteric wisdom of the East was being pursued earnestly in many circles. Some of us decided to pursue awakening and enlightenment

Since 1989, Jody Mountain has been studying, practicing and teaching the ancient art of Lomi Lomi Nui/Kahuna Bodywork and it’s foundations in Ancient Hawaiian Wisdom. In this interview you will learn how this ancient spiritual

In this conversation Jeff Carreira speaks with with Jody Mountain. Jody is a master of the ancient art of Lomi Lomi Nui/Kahuna Bodywork and teacher of the Ancient Hawaiian Wisdom from which it comes. She

A couple of months ago I met with my friend Nora Bateson while she was speaking in New York City. Our time together included sitting down to record an interview together about her new book

In 1859 Charles Darwin rocked the scientific and intellectual world with the publication of The Origin of Species (or more completely, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured

How many people are chasing after spiritual experiences? How many meditators are sitting hour after hour hoping to have their minds’ blown? How many people go to see gurus and teachers in the hopes of

The core of what I teach is the conviction that the shift in paradigm that so many of us recognize is needed, requires a transformation in the human sense of self. The practice of wormhole

I’ve devoted my life single pointedly to spiritual awakening for twenty five years. Twenty of those years were spent living in a focused and intense practice community. And over the last ten years I have

A wormhole inquiry is a philosophical hack designed to liberate us from some of our most foundational assumptions about reality. There are beliefs that we hold so deeply in our unconscious mind that questioning them

I just got back from a week-long retreat working again with Jody Mountain to deepen my grasp of the practice and principles of the Hawaiian massage tradition of Ancient Lomi Lomi. Looking back on the

Now let’s take what we have been discussing so far and put it all this together into a model of identification that will help us visualize what spiritual awakening means in relationship to the possibility

We live in an extremely materialistic age and we are all much more materialistic than we might imagine. And when I say materialistic I don’t mean in the sense that we like to buy nice

My work is rooted in the conviction that reality can change. And I don’t just mean that aspects of reality can change. We all already know that. I mean that reality itself can change. This

A version of this article was first published on the Opening to the Infinite Blog Those of us who sincerely seek for spiritual liberation and awakening are most likely hoping to have a spiritual experience

Do you believe in magic? I do. There is a magic to the practice of meditation that many practitioners never discover because we only find it when we eliminate time from the equation. My teaching

It is not uncommon today for people to describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. This trend is a direct result of the secularization process that began during the Western Enlightenment, During the span of

Our perception is filtered by the current paradigm so we don’t see reality as it is, we see reality as the paradigm we live inside of allows us to see it. Our perceptions are filtered,

The first time I was engulfed by the realization of Radical Inclusivity was during a sixty-day meditation retreat under the guidance of my spiritual teacher. As I sat from morning until evening following the simple

What I call wormhole inquiries are a sort of philosophical hack that free us from strict adherence to our current belief system and propel us into the open-ended possibility field of the unknown. I see this as

A paradigm is a set of assumptions that shape how we experience reality. We live inside these assumptions and experience reality only in the way they allow. One of the most foundational assumptions that we

As a meditation practitioner and teacher I have experienced myself and witnessed others experience the miracle of radical liberation countless times. There are many forms of meditation designed for a variety of purposes. The form

The Practice of No Problem is a meditation technique based on everything I have learned about how we can replace the habit of having a problem with the habit of having no problem. Imagine a

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. – Alfred North Whitehead In the current paradigm there is a strong belief that there is only one reality. We hold as

In the current paradigm we are compelled by things. We look at things, work with things, accumulate things, and love things. Things are material, i.e. they matter. Things are the stuff of life. We have

In the current paradigm of being human we are trained to think of ourselves as independent achievers. That means we imagine that we are isolated individual beings who run around with brains processing information that

Most of us reading this essay will be reading it from inside the paradigm of the modern Western world. That paradigm has often been seen as rooted in scientific materialism and sometimes been called the

It is the nature of elections that the results always leave some of us deeply disappointment. The most recent US election and the campaign that led up to it has left many feeling frustrated, angry

We live in a conceptual world. That means that we perceive concepts. For example, I am sitting in a coffee shop writing. As I look around I see tables and chairs, coffee cups and croissants,

The paradigm we’re embedded in could be called the Individual Achiever Paradigm. In it we feel like a separate individual that generates achievements by setting goals, creating plans, and realizing them through willful acts. We

One of the most foundational assumptions of the paradigm that currently shapes our experience is the assumption of the division between subject and object. In modern western philosophy this split between perceiver and perceived was

I love philosophy because I love how asking the right question can flip the world upside down. Many years ago I dedicated myself to the pursuit of spiritual awakening. I left the life I had

What makes paradigm shifting so challenging for us is that a new paradigm cannot be built from inside the existing paradigm – and we all live inside the existing paradigm. We have experiences beyond the

When I teach meditation I ask people to sit still and not make a problem out of whatever their experience happens to be. And I explain that what we experience in meditation doesn’t matter because

Commonly we refer to meditation as a practice. I think this is a bad idea. Practice is something you do now so that you will be able to perform better in the future when it

We are all born into a preexisting paradigm. A paradigm that consists of all of the unconscious assumptions we hold that tell us what is real and how reality works. One of the most foundational of

The first New Paradigm Circle of Emergence that inspired me was the circle of American Transcendentalists that gathered in the 1840’s and 50’s in and around Concord, Massachusetts. I have long been inspired by the

My work is focused on creating the conditions for collective awakening into what could be called Meta-Being. In this essay I will explain what I mean by that as specifically as I can. First of

If we want to consciously shift into a new paradigm there are two human capacities we need to pay particular attention to. The first is awareness. The second is our capacity to identify. Awareness is

We live inside of a paradigm based on an assumption of separation and division. We have been trained to believe that we live in reality and we have been taught that the reality we live in is

I believe that the evolution of the self occurs through successive transformative leaps and that this is the whole purpose of spiritual life. I like to refer to this now as the ‘Three Stage Process

In the late 1980’s when I started seeking in earnest you could work with a number of different spiritual teachers. The Indian sage J Krishnamurti and the Tibetan master Trungpa Rinpoche had already died, but

In 1817 the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described “the willing suspension of disbelief” as an act of “poetic faith” through which a reader accepts fanciful aspects of a fictional work. Without this willingness the

Although Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is best know as a towering literary figure he was also a scientific genius. His method of doing science was in some ways diametrically opposed to the methods of many of

In 1825 Samuel Taylor Coleridge published “Aids to Reflection” and put forth his answer to the question of whether we are stuff that got smart, or smarts that grew stuff, by proposing that there are actually two sources

Do you believe in meditation magic? I do. There is a magic to the practice of meditation that many practitioners never discover. We only find it when we eliminate time from the equation. You can

Spiritual paths, both traditional and alternative, in one way or another, always revolve around the call for surrender. Surrender means giving up, letting go, ceasing to resist. The moment of surrender is the moment of

I believe that spiritual growth under the right conditions is as natural as breathing…and the conditions of our world are the perfect conditions for spiritual growth. The person you are right now, with all of

In the traditions of the East a spiritual path is considered Tantric when its goal is to bring about the direct recognition of the immediate availability of our boundless nature. Tantra and Tantric paths do

For the past few years I have been exploring and teaching about a distinction that I speak about as the first and second surrender of spiritual awakening. The first surrender is the utterly passive acceptance

The meditation practice that I am describing here is the simplest thing you could possibly do. In fact it is so simple that you are already doing it right now without realizing it. It is

Most of us know Samuel Taylor Coleridge as the English Romantic poet and author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. We may not be aware that he was also an important English theologian who

William Jameswas trained as a medical doctor at Harvard University and became generally recognized as the first psychologist in America and his first and arguably most significant written work was “The Principles of Psychology” published

The art scene in New York in the fifties was a living hotbed for a new way of thinking and new conceptions about reality. Avant-garde painters, writers, musicians and more, were infused with a new

The Mystic knows that the key to entering into mystical realms of experience is the ability to let go of the familiar. Our ordinary and familiar perception of reality is exactly what we must learn

A mystic is one who sees the deeper reality that lies hidden beneath our ordinary experience of reality. The mystic looks deeply into the nature of things by letting go of conventional wisdom and allowing

What is the quality of being first? This was a question that Charles Sanders Peirce thought deeply about because he felt that the quality of being first, or ‘firstness’ as he called it, was an

What is the human soul? Is it some phantom-like part of us or is it a living dimension of the universe from which all life flows? The later is what Samuel Taylor Coleridge taught and

There are things that we know. And there are things that we know that we don’t know. And there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know. These last are the “unknown unknowns”

I recently had the pleasure to attend a special pre-screening of a new film entitled An Ecology of Mind. The film is an hour-long documentary about the anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson that was created by

Here is my second post exploring some of the ideas that are informing me as I prepare for my presentaion at the Science and Nonduality Conference. William James over the course of his life developed