Supporting Continuous Awakening and Transformation (or Why I do What I do)

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, I don’t want to have to convince people about their inner potentials. The people who work with me have experienced that more is possible and they want to realize it.

The first question to consider is, how does continuous awakening and transformation happen? I would start by offering my definitions of both spiritual awakening and spiritual transformation.

Spiritual Awakening is the sudden or gradual expansion of our experience of reality.

Spiritual Transformation is the stabilization of an expanded experience of reality into a permanent perspective.

My experience tells me that spiritual awakening happens naturally when we relax our currently fixed points of view. Consciousness naturally expands. If we are not experiencing the expansion of our consciousness it is probably because without knowing it, we are holding on to the perspective that we currently have.

The 2-day virtual meditation retreats and October’s 7-Day in-person silent retreat are both designed to create the space for the experience of expanded awareness. The atmosphere of these retreats will allow us to relax our normal perceptual processing so that new ways of experiencing reality can emerge.

My experience also tells me that in order for our experiences of expanded awareness to stabilize into permanent vantage points, we need to change the way we think. What holds our current experience of reality in place are all of the conscious and unconscious ideas that we have about it. We believe things are one way and so we experience them that way. By changing how we think and what we believe about reality, we change our perception of it as well. As a new understanding of reality becomes permanent, so do the perceptions it gives access to.

In addition to changing the way that we think, or perhaps it is an inevitable outcome of that, we also need to develop a new sense of self. In the end, the stabilization of our spiritual experience into a transformed existence depends on a transformed sense of self. We cannot continue to think of ourselves in the same way and be different.

This is what I am working toward: supporting as many people as I can to continuously expand their experience of reality, and stabilize those experiences in ongoing transformations. Growing together spiritually with you is what makes life meaningful to me. It is what I live for and what I am working to support.

I am engaged in many different ways to bring this about. Besides the retreats, I also teach five days a week in The Mystery School, three weeks each month. I lead other retreats and classes in The Mystery School and I have two small groups that I meet with regularly and a few individuals as well. I'm about to publish a new book, and I have two others that I’m working on.

I know no one, or nearly no one, can keep up with all the things that I am doing, but I want to offer as many ways as possible for people to engage because I know that each avenue helps. Every time someone reads one of my books, or attends a retreat, or takes a class a little more momentum is built toward the realization of a new world.

You reading this essay right now helps, if you write to me to share your thoughts about it it helps even more, if you mention it to a friend or use some of the ideas here in a conversation, more again. I have always felt that the way we grow is through a lot of small engagements rather than single big leaps forward. Leaps will happen, but the consistency of smaller efforts is what matters most.