Authors -Monkfish

Author	Biography	Books
Sharif Abdullah	Sharif Abdullah, JD, is an author and advocate for inclusivity and the social/ spiritual transformation of society. Sharif is a transformationist, working to align our global human societies with our common spiritual values. His vision and work for a world that works for all beings stems from his spiritual awareness and his experiences in over a hundred distinct cultures in over forty countries. Sharif is founder and director of Commonway Institute. His books include The Power of One: Authentic Leadership in Turbulent Times, the award-winning Creating a World That Works for All and Seven Seeds for a New Society. Sharif is a graduate-level adjunct professor of conflict resolution at Portland State University, a senior advisor to Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka and is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions. https://www.commonway.org
Ralph Abraham	Ralph Abraham has been a mathematician and chaos theorist since 1958 and a professor of mathematics at UC Santa Cruz since 1968, formerly teaching at UC Berkeley, Columbia, and Princeton. He is the founding director of the Visual Math Institute in Santa Cruz, California. He is the author of math texts, including Foundations of Mechanics with Jerrold Marsden and Dynamics, the Geometry of Behavior with Christopher Shaw. He has written several philosophical books –including Chaos, Gaia, Eros– and coauthored two volumes with Rupert Sheldrake and Terence McKenna. He designed the curriculum for the Ross School, grades 5-12, with cultural historian William Irwin Thompson and lectures and leads seminars worldwide on chaos theory. www.ralph-abraham.org
Mary Adams	Mary Adams, born in 1953, studied South Asian philosophy and then traveled and lived for several years in India, studying under such masters as Sri Nisargadata Maharaj. She eventually moved to England and became a practicing psychotherapist. She met Andrew Cohen in 1987 and was one of his closest students until the dissolution of Andrew’s organization, EnlightenNext, in 2013. She is the co-founder of the intercivilizational dialogue project 3rd Space and is writing a book on post-patriarchal leadership. http://3rd-space.org/
Patch Adams	Patch Adams is best known for his work as a medical doctor and a clown and as a social activist who has devoted forty-two years to changing America’s health care system. He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process. The Gesundheit Institute is a project in holistic medical care based on the belief that one cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the family, the community, the world and the health care system itself. Patch created a hospital—free for all people—that will be fully modern at 10 percent of the cost. The cleaning person and the surgeon will make the same salary—$300/ month—and all permanent staff will live there as a communal village, eliminating 85 percent of the environmental footprint. http://www.patchadams.org
Chet Alexander	Chet Alexander is a contemporary teacher of Kabbalistic Shamanism. He grew up in Jamaica as the grandson of a wealthy landowner. As a young boy, he was apprenticed in the Earth Teachings of the Jamaican Elders. His family later moved to England where he continued to study with respected elders of other indigenous traditions and with contemporary Kabbalists. John Crow Speaks is based on years spent with elders in ‘the bush’ in Jamaica. Chet and his wife, Ana, created the Nityananda Center meditation/wellness center in 2009. The Nityananda Center is a 501C3 Non Profit Corporation offering Massage, Yoga, Pilates, Kung Fu, Chi Gong and “Insight Classes,” the annual Discover Life Force, Folkloric Dance Festival, annual Retreats to Yucatan, Field Trips to Paradise Farms for schools, and an annual Bright Kids summer camp. The ‘One World, Soul of Dance,’ annual folkloric dance festival, presents live traditional dances from indigenous cultures around the world. Click here to see the 2018 promotional video. For more information on the Nityananda Center please visit the website https://www.nityanandacenter.com. Visit Nityananda Center on Facebook.
Iran Anvar	Iraj Anvar is an actor, singer, stage and film director, writer, translator, and educator. He completed his first diploma in Genoa, Italy at the Swiss School, then gained a degree in acting and directing at Alessandro Fersen's Studio di Arti Sceniche in Rome, Italy. On returning to his native Tehran, he co-founded the Tehran Theater Workshop where he directed and performed in many stage and television productions and translated plays and film dialogue into Persian, including European plays he directed for the stage. He also taught acting and diction at Tehran University. A few months before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he moved to New York City, where he received his PhD in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU where he taught Persian language and literature for several years. In New York, he has read and sung Rumi, Hafiz, and other classical poets in Persian and in his own translations at the Asia Society, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Bartholomew's Church, the Long House Preserve Garden, the Bowery Poetry Club, Stony Brook, and several other institutions.
David Appelbaum	David Appelbaum is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at SUNY, New Paltz. He is the author of many books, including Jacques Derrida’s Ghost: A Conjuration and The Delay of the Heart. He is a graduate of Harvard, past senior editor at Parabola, and founder of Codhill Press. http://www.codhill.com
Arjuna Ardagh	Arjuna Ardagh is an Awakening Coach, writer and public speaker. He has trained more than 1,300 people to become facilitators of Awakening. He is the author of seven books, including the 2005 No. 1 national bestseller The Translucent Revolution, featured in O, the Oprah Winfrey Magazine. His latest book, Better than Sex, is the complete introduction to Awakening Coaching. He has been a speaker at conferences all over the world and has appeared on TV, radio and in print media in twelve countries. He is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council. He lives with his wife, Chameli Ardagh, and their two teenage sons in California. http://radicalbrilliance.com
Chameli Ardagh	Chameli Ardagh is a passionate practitioner of embodied feminine spirituality and the founder of the Awakening Women Institute. She is the initiator of an international network of Women’s Temple Groups and the author of two books on feminine spirituality and embodiment. https://awakeningwomen.com
Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson	Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson is the Abner and Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and a vice president at American Jewish University. He is also the founding dean of the Zacharias Frankel College at the University of Potsdam, Germany, ordaining Masorti rabbis for Europe. His many books include God of Becoming and Relationship: The Dynamic Nature of Process Theology and Renewing the Process of Creation: A Jewish Integration of Science and Spirit. https://www.aju.edu
Hallie Iglehart Austen	Hallie Iglehart Austen grew up on a farm and has lived close to the earth most of her life. After graduating from Brown University, she drove from England to Nepal and back again over the course of a year. This journey, described in her first book Womanspirit led to a synthesis of spirituality and feminism, which she began teaching in the 1970s. Since then, she has led workshops, rituals and conferences at universities, the United Nations, and theological schools among other places. Hallie Iglehart Austen is cofounder of Seaflow: Protect Our Living Oceans, which educates the public about the dangers of active sonars and other ocean noise to whales, dolphins, and all sea life. She also initiated All One Oceans, establishing over fifty beach cleanup stations in California, Hawai‘i, Iowa, and Alabama and is starting a pilot project for grade school students on ocean plastic pollution. Hallie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and gives classes and private consultations on dream work, life transition rituals, and Wisdom Healing Qigong. https://heartgoddess.net
Kenny Ausubel	Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. His work has long been at the forefront of the environmental, health and progressive social-change movements. He is the CEO and cofounder of Bioneers, an educational nonprofit that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet, and co-founded the biodiversity organic company Seeds of Change. His film Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime (which won a “Best Censored Stories” journalism award) played in theaters, on HBO and international TV and at a special screening for members of Congress which was featured on National Public Radio. Kenny has written and edited several books, including Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature. https://bioneers.org
Sri Prem Baba	Sri Prem Baba is a Brazilian master teacher in the Sachcha spiritual lineage of northern India. He offers a method of self-discovery he calls “The Path of the Heart,” which bridges psychology and spirituality, East and West, the Amazon and the Himalayas. Prem Baba resides five months a year in India, where he teaches through daily satsangs (wisdom talks). Path of the Heart retreats and workshops are offered throughout the world. His latest book is From Suffering to Joy: The Path of the Heart. https://www.sriprembaba.org/en
Mary Bailey	Mary Bailey was the second wife of Foster Bailey, a Theosophist and 32nd-degree Freemason who founded the Arcane School in London with his first wife, Alice Bailey, in 1923. Alice received telepathic teachings from an entity she called “the Tibetan” which were published in 24 volumes by the Lucis Trust. Alice died in 1949; in 1951, Foster married Mary Bailey, an Arcane School student, who worked with him until his death in 1977. She was the president of Lucis Trust, and head of the Arcane School for 33 years. Her book, A Learning Experience (1990), recounts the Arcane School’s international growth. The Arcane School now has branches in New York City, Geneva, and London. Mary Bailey died in 2007.
Carolyn Baker	Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., is the author of Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths For Turbulent Times, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path Of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse and Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition. She lives in Boulder, Colo., where she works with Transition Colorado. A former psychotherapist, she offers life coaching for people who want to live more resiliently in the present as they prepare for the future. https://carolynbaker.net
Peter Bampton	Peter Bampton is a British-born (1965) spiritual teacher and co-founder, with his wife Cynthia, of the Awakened Life Project in Portugal. His main teacher was Andrew Cohen. http://www.awakenedlifeproject.org/
Bruno Barnhart	Bruno Barnhart was an author, spiritual director and monk of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. He is the author of several books including The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center and Second Simplicity: The Inner Shape of Christianity. He died in 2015.
David Bassuk	David Bassuk is professor of theater arts at Purchase College. Previously, he was artistic director of Novel Stages Theater Company and Arcadia Shakespeare Festival in Philadelphia, and co-artistic director of Ark Theater Company in Los Angeles. He has directed many productions, among them “Cat’s Cradle,” a musical by Kurt Vonnegut; an Off-Broadway production of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen; and “American Camera” at Lincoln Center.
Henry Bayman	Henry Bayman is a student of Sufism and an independent scholar who has lived in Turkey for many years. He has spent twenty-five years studying with the Masters of Wisdom of Central Anatolia. He is the author of The Station of No Station: Open Secrets of the Sufis (a study of Sufism and Islam as they relate to contemporary issues), The Secret of Islam: Love and Law in the Religion of Ethics, The Black Pearl: Spiritual Illumination In Sufism and East Asian Philosophies, and The Teachings of a Perfect Master: An Islamic Saint for the Third Millennium. www.henrybayman.com
Margaret Behan	Red Spider Woman—“Ba nee uth sai”—is Margaret Behan’s Arapahoe name; her Cheyenne name is “Ma’ee Vehoe ga’ee.” Her mother’s people are Southern Cheyenne, who are keepers of the Sacred Arrows. Her father’s people are Northern Cheyenne and they are keepers of the Sacred Medicine Hat. Her father’s mother was Arapahoe, the keepers of the Sacred Pipe Watonga. Margaret spent her childhood in Oklahoma, and went on to mission and government boarding schools. Her career has been making storyteller dolls out of natural clay that represent figures from stories and legends and expresses their great love for each other and their people. http://www.grandmotherscouncil.org
Dr. Robyn Benson	For twenty-one years, Dr. Robyn Benson, DOM, has been the mother of two and an adventure enthusiast, world traveler, speaker and author who loves to help and inspire each and every patient to achieve optimal, radiant and sustainable health. In addition to building Santa Fe Soul, a twenty-first-century health care center that is the home of twenty-five practitioners and has a vision that is locally focused and globally expressed, Robyn is now onto what she calls her legacy: the creation of a movement to change the face of health care, the Self-Care Revolution. https://santafesoul.com
Rabbi Ellen Bernstein	Rabbi Ellen Bernsteinr began pursuing studies in both environment and religion in high school and graduated from one of the first programs in environmental studies in the US at U.C. Berkeley in 1975. A pioneer in the field of religion and ecology, she founded the first national Jewish environmental organization, Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth, in 1988. She has written numerous books and articles on Judaism, Bible and ecology including most recently, The Promise of the Land: A Passover Haggadah (Behrman House, 2020). Ellen’s work on the Bible and ecology has appeared in The Green Bible (Harper One, 2008) and is featured in The Oxford University Press Handbook on the Bible and Ecology (2022). She continues to teach widely on Bible and ecology, and is an advisor to the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, a steering committee member for the Third Act/faith, and an advisor to the Green Sabbath project. https://www.ellenbernstein.org/
Father Daniel Berrigan	Peace activist and writer Father Daniel Berrigan was born in 1921 in Minnesota, and raised in Syracuse, New York. In 1939, he entered the Jesuit Order, and was ordained in 1952. He and his brother Philip, also then a priest, founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, which denounced the Vietnam War as immoral, and participated in the historic Civil Rights march at Selma, Alabama. In 1968, Father Berrigan and eight accomplices, known as the “Catonsville Nine,” raided the Catonsville, Maryland, draft-board office, and burned hundreds of files. In 1980, he founded Plowshares, an anti-nuclear arms group whose first act was raiding a missile manufacturing plant in King-of-Prussia, Pennsylvania, and hammering on missile cones. Often arrested for his protests, Father Berrigan spent almost seven years in prison. He has taught at Le Moyne College, Cornell University, and Fordham University, and has reflected on his career in 35 books of essays and poetry. He died in New York City on April 30, 2016.
Perle (Epstein) Besserman	Perle Besserman is the award-winning author of numerous works of fiction and creative nonfiction, including several books on spirituality that were praised by Isaac Bashevis Singer for their "clarity and feeling for mystic lore" and by Publishers Weekly for the "wisdom [that] points to a universal practice of the heart." Besserman's books have been translated into over ten languages. She holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and, together with Manfred Steger, is founding co-teacher of the Princeton Area Zen Group in Princeton, New Jersey. http://princetonzengroup.org
Brett Bevell	Reiki Master Brett Bevell is the author of The Reiki Magic Guide to Self-Attunement, Reiki For Spiritual Healing, Energy Healing for Everyone, The Wizards Guide To Energy Healing and the illustrated poetry books America Needs a Buddhist President and America Needs a Woman President. He has electrified audiences around the world with his masterful live oral recitations, and has often been compared to the late poet Allen Ginsberg. His poetry is featured on several CDs and is part of NPR’s permanent website archives. He is also the winner of the 1995 Paul Laurance Dunbar Poetry Prize. Brett regularly teaches workshops at the Omega Institute in Rhinbeck, New York and at Alex Grey’s Chapel of The Sacred Mirrors in Wappingers Falls, NY. www.brettbevell.com
Steve Bhaerman	Steve Bhaerman is an internationally known author, humorist and workshop leader. For more than twenty-five years, he has written and performed as Swami Beyondananda, the “Cosmic Comic.” Swami’s comedy has been described both as “comedy disguised as wisdom” and “wisdom disguised as comedy.” Noted author Marianne Williamson has called him “the Mark Twain of our generation.” Since 2005, Steve has written a political blog with a spiritual perspective, “Notes From the Trail.” His latest book, written with cellular biologist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., is Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here. https://wakeuplaughing.com
Tessa Bielecki	Tessa Bielecki lives in a hermitage in Crestone, Colorado, in the spirit of the Christian Mothers and Fathers of the desert. Co-founder of the Spiritual Life Institute, she was a Carmelite monk and Mother Abbess for almost 40 years, establishing radically experimental monastic communities of men and women in Arizona, Colorado, Nova Scotia, and Ireland. She was also editor-in-chief of Desert Call, the quarterly magazine of the community. In 2005, she left SLI to embrace the eremitical life more fully and co-found The Desert Foundation with friend and fellow hermit, Father Dave Denny. The Desert Foundation is an informal circle of friends who explore the wisdom of the desert and encourage understanding between the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Tessa is the author of several critically acclaimed books on Teresa of Avila, including Teresa of Avila: Mystical Writings, and Teresa of Avila: Ecstasy and Common Sense. She co-authored a new collection of writings on the Christmas season, Season of Glad Songs, with Father Dave Denny, and continues to teach on Christian mysticism and the contemplative life at retreats and workshops around the world. https://sandandsky.org
Loriliai Biernacki	Loriliai Biernacki is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include Hinduism, gender, and the interface between religion and science. Her first book, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, won the Kayden Award in 2008. She is coeditor of Panentheism across the World’s Religious Traditions (2013), and is currently working on a study of the 11th-century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta within the framework of wonder, the New Materialisms, and conceptions of the body-mind interface.
Gregory Blann	Gregory Blann, also known as Muhammad Jamal al-Jerrahi, is a sheikh in the Halveti-Jerrahi order of Dervishes and the author of Lifting the Boundaries: Muzaffer Efendi and the Transmission of Sufism to the West and The Garden of Mystic Love: The Origin and Formation of the Great Sufi Orders.
Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi	Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi is a Theravada Buddhist monk from New York City. He was ordained in Sri Lanka in 1972 and lived in Asia for twenty-four years. For eighteen years he was editor for the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy. Ven. Bodhi has many important publications to his credit, the most recent being a full translation of the Anguttara Nikaya, Numerical Discourses of the Buddha. In 2008, he founded Buddhist Global Relief, a nonprofit providing hunger relief and education in countries suffering from chronic poverty and malnutrition. He is president of the Buddhist Association of the United States and lives at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, N.Y http://www.buddhistglobalrelief.org
George Boeree	George Boeree is a retired psychology professor at Shippensburg University, Pa., where he taught personality theories and the history of psychology, among other topics. Born in the Netherlands, he grew up on Long Island, N.Y. He is married to Judith Kovarik and has three grown daughters and two grandchildren. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer
Nilton Bonder	Nilton Bonder, was trained and ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. He lectures regularly in the United States. Born in Brazil, he’s a best-selling author of twenty-nine books in Latin America, leads one of Brazil’s most influential Jewish congregations, and is active in civil rights and ecological causes. Some of his books have been translated in Europe and Asia and twelve of them in the U.S., including The Kabbalah of Money and The Kabbalah of Food, published by Shambhala. He’s led workshops for corporations such as IBM and Globo Network Television, and delivered lectures at Boston University, New York Central Library, American Academy of Psychoanalysis, The Open Center, and Omega Institute. He lives in Rio de Janeiro and New York City. https://www.niltonbonder.com.br/ing/ing.htm
Saniel Bonder	Saniel Bonder, born in 1950 in New York City, is a former disciple of Adi Da and is the founder of the Waking Down. With his wife, Linda Groves, he co-founded the Human Sun Institute. Together, they teach Waking Down and Waking Down in Mutuality. http://www.sanielandlinda.com/
Shelley Boris	Shelley Boris began her career in the food business in 1979 in the cheese department at Dean & DeLuca in NYC. Trained as a painter, Shelley has cooked for years as a professional chef. Shelley is partner, creative director, and executive chef at Fresh Company. Fresh Company runs the food service at Storm King Art Center and the Garrison Institute, as well as off-premise catering for private and corporate clients. Shelley is inspired by a diversity of regional cooking styles and has cooked for such personalities as the Dalai Lama and Mikhail Gorbachev. In the kitchen, Shelley’s warm, relaxed sensibility is an extension of her love of a leisurely stay at the table and her belief in the elemental value of eating and drinking well. A board member of Cold Spring’s Farmers’ Market, Shelley has long worked to support sustainable agriculture in the Hudson Valley. Shelley has written for publications such as The New York Times and Food & Wine, and has participated in panels at Pace University and the New York Public Library among others. Shelley curates an annual Earth Day meal open to the public at the Garrison Institute with speakers sharing insights into environmental issues. In 2014, Shelley published Fresh Cooking: A Year of Recipes from The Garrison Institute Kitchen (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2014). Her cookbook received praise and added to the evolving dialogue of eating well and responsibly. Her book emphasizes cooking with attention to detail, combined with the everyday need to feed oneself and others. www.freshcompany.net
Cynthia Bourgeault	Modern day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader, Cynthia Bourgeault divides her time between solitude at her seaside hermitage in Maine, and a demanding schedule traveling globally to teach and spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative and Wisdom path. She is the founding Director of both The Contemplative Society and the Aspen Wisdom School. Cynthia is the author of nine books: The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, The Wisdom Jesus, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Mystical Hope, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, Chanting the Psalms, Love is Stronger Than Death, and The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice. She has also authored or contributed to numerous articles and courses on the Christian spiritual life. She is a past Fellow of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural research at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, and an oblate of New Camaldoli Monastery in Big Sur, California. Cynthia continues to contribute to The Contemplative Society in her role as Principal Teacher and advisor. She is passionately committed to the recovery and wider promulgation of the Christian nondual tradition, and has worked closely with Thomas Keating, Bruno Barnhart, Richard Rohr, as well as many other contemplative teachers and leaders within the Christian tradition and other spiritual paths. Since 2013 she has served as one of the core faculty at the Albuquerque-based Living School for Action and Contemplation, together with Richard Rohr and James Finley. Cynthia makes her home in Stonington, Maine. http://cynthiabourgeault.org
Sarah Bowen	Sarah Bowen is an award-winning author, multifaith spiritual educator, inspired speaker... and aspiring Jedi. Her first book, Void If Detached: Seeking Modern Spirituality Through My Father's Old Sermons, received numerous literary awards. A graduate of New York City's One Spirit Interfaith Seminary, (Rev) Sarah is passionate about the study of the world's great faith traditions as well as travel to quirky, spiritually-charged locations. As a member of Spiritual Directors International, Sarah seeks to help others connect with the higher power of their own understanding, in whatever way is meaningful. A retreat-junkie, Sarah has retreated, workshopped, and studied with a wide range of teachers, including Diane Berke, David Wallace, Deepak Chopra, Mirabai Starr, Krishna Das, Sister Shivani, Phyliss Curott, James French, and Andrew Vidich. Especially interested in the intersection of animal welfare and spiritual values, Sarah has studied these topics at Emerson Theological Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Chicago Theological Seminary, the Chopra Center, and the Omega Institute. She hopes to one day to help put a massive dent in the factory farming industry. Before starting her spiritual journey, Sarah spent a few decades as a designer and brand strategist in New York City. http://www.thisissarahbowen.com
Gregg Braden	New York Times bestselling author Gregg Braden is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science and spirituality. Following a successful career as a computer geologist for Phillips Petroleum during the 1970s energy crisis, he worked as a senior computer systems designer with Martin Marietta Defense Systems during the last years of the Cold War. In 1991 he became the first technical operations manager for Cisco Systems, where he led the development of the global support team that insures the reliability of today’s internet. For more than 25 years, Gregg has searched high mountain villages, remote monasteries and forgotten texts to uncover their timeless secrets. His work is now featured on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Sci Fi Channel, ABC and NBC. To date, Gregg’s discoveries have led to such paradigm-shattering books as: The Isaiah Effect, The God Code, The Divine Matrix and Fractal Time. His latest book is Deep Truth: Igniting the Origin of Our Origin, History, Destiny and Fate. Gregg’s work is published in 17 languages and 33 countries and shows us beyond any reasonable doubt that the key to our future lies in the wisdom of our past. http://www.greggbraden.com
Steve Brett	Steve Brett was born in 1952 in the U.K. and spent several years in India, studying with Buddhist teachers, before meeting Andrew Cohen in 1987. He was one of Andrew Cohen’s closest students until the dissolution of Andrew’s organization, EnlightenNext, in 2013. Today, Steve is an independent scholar and the co-founder of the intercivilizational dialogue project 3rd Space. http://3rd-space.org/
Nicholas Brink	Nicholas E. Brink, Ph.D. is a past board member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, past president of the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery, a certified instructor of ecstatic trance, and the author of nine books: Grendel and His Mother; The Power of Ecstatic Trance, Baldr's Magic; Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval: Applying the Constructive Approach to Cognitive Therapy, Loki's Children, and Listening to the Spirits .
Cynthia Brix	Rev. Cynthia Brix is a contemplative interfaith minister and codirector of Satyana Institute. She is cofounder of the Gender Reconciliation International project, which conducts training programs for reconciliation between women and men in South Africa, Australia, India, Colombia and North America. Cynthia is coauthor of Women Healing Women and a contributing author of Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation Between Women and Men. Cynthia organized an international conference in Italy that brought women spiritual leaders together and produced a DVD from this conference titled Cultivating Women’s Spiritual Mastery. http://www.genderreconciliationinternational.org/
Jeff Brown	A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation and Ascending with Both Feet on the Ground. He is also the author of the viral blog Apologies to the Divine Feminine and the producer and key journeyer in the award winning spiritual documentary Karmageddon, which also stars Ram Dass, Seane Corn, Wah!, David Life, Deva Premal and Miten. Jeff’s newest book, Love It Forward, endorsed by bestselling authors Andrew Harvey and Caroline Myss, is another book of impactful quotes and writings, with a strong emphasis on love and relationship. http://www.soulshaping.com
Adam Bucko	Adam Bucko is a new monastic, activist, co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation, and co-author of Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for the New Generation and The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living.
Charles Burack	Charles Burack, Ph.D., is an award-winning poet, writer, scholar, and teacher as well as a spiritual counselor and creativity coach. He is the author of three books and numerous essays, poems, and stories. In his latest poetry collection, Leaves of Light (Apocryphile, 2016), the sacred Earth comes alive as Burack meets trees, flowers, birds, spiders, cats, seals, and other wondrous and endangered creatures as equals. They share their wisdom and beauty, love and fear, humor and suffering, and inspire in him profound ponderings, playful antics, and startling realizations. Burack is a professor at John F. Kennedy University, where he teaches courses on psychology, spirituality, and literature and has pioneered contemplative and creative approaches to education. http://www.charlesburack.com
Mark S Burrows	Mark S. Burrows is a Rilke scholar, award-winning translator, and poet, and his academic and popular writing explores the intersection of spirituality and the arts. A winner of the Witter Bynner Prize in Poetry, his poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. Known internationally for his work on Rilke, he is the translator of Rilke’s Prayers of a Young Poet, which includes many of Rilke’s best-loved poems that later appeared in The Book of Hours. He has also co-authored three volumes of poems inspired by Meister Eckhart, most recently Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light. https://www.msburrows.com
Stephen Burzi	Stephen Burzi was born, raised, and schooled in New York City, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, which he studied because "literature tells the truth about history." Since graduation - alongside a continuing study of various religions, mythologies, philosophies, cosmologies, and G. I. Gurdjieff's opus, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - he has enjoyed a long, successful, and fulfilling career supervising large-scale commercial construction projects in the New York Tristate area.
Sita Jamieson Caddle	Sita Jamieson Caddle has been chanting in the United States for the past 25 years and has led chanting evenings in Singapore, Bali and India. She started within the Hindu tradition of Kirtan and expanded out to all traditions to reach broader audiences. She blends sacred poetry into her evenings, weaving a tapestry of chant and spoken word that is powerful and celebratory. Sita is a teacher in the art of chanting and her classes allow people to become more fluid in their own ability to sing. She also works with sound as a healing modality combined with energy work to create a complete healing session. A native of Ireland, Sita feels her voice comes out of her Celtic roots; its full resonance expresses an ancient, earthy form of song. She is a disciple of Neem Karoli Baba and has performed with Krishna Das, Ram Dass and Baghavan Das. http://www.sitachants.com
Peter & Eileen Caddy	Born in London in 1917, Peter Caddy was raised within esoteric Christian and occult circles, and attended Harrow boarding school. His brother-in-law initiated him into the Rosicrucian Order. In 1962, after several jobs, a failed first marriage, and 15 years as a Royal Air Force officer of catering, Peter and his second wife, Eileen Jessop Caddy (born in 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt), moved to a Scottish trailer park with their three children and their friend Dorothy Maclean. They started a garden, and found that with Peter’s labor, Eileen’s “inner voice”—divine messages she received daily—and Dorothy’s ability to communicate with angelic beings about plants, they could produce extraordinary vegetables, including 30-pound cabbages. Their group, Findhorn Foundation, became a thriving New Age intentional community. Peter left Findhorn in 1979 after Eileen stopped receiving guidance. He married twice more, founded another community in California, and died in a car accident in Germany in 1997. Eileen died at Findhorn in 2006. In 2016, Dorothy Maclean celebrated her 96th birthday at Findhorn, which now has approximately 400 residents. Findhorn’s Ecovillage currently works on new methods of wind energy and water restoration and treatment. https://www.findhorn.org/
Mariana Caplan	Mariana Caplan, born in 1969, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher and author in the fields of psychology and spirituality. As a psychotherapist, she has helped spiritual practitioners and teachers of all traditions and worked with complex traumas within spiritual communities; as a yoga teacher, she founded and teaches the Yoga & Psyche Method. Her primary teacher was Lee Lozowick. https://www.realspirituality.com/
George Cappannelli	George Cappannelli is a writer, sculptor, Emmy-Award-winning producer/director, corporate and political consultant and cofounder of AgeNation, a media and events company dedicated to informing, inspiring and engaging people in critical challenges and opportunities of the second half of life. His nonfiction books include Say Yes To Change, Authenticity, I Dream of A New America, It’s About Time and Do Not Go Quietly: A Guide To Living Consciously & Aging Wisely For People Who Weren’t Born Yesterday. His consulting clients include some of the country’s leading Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits and U.S. senators and presidential candidates. http://www.georgecappannelli.com
Sedena Cappannelli	Sedena Cappannelli is the co-founder of AgeNation, a digital media company supporting people ages forty and over to live more conscious and engaging lives. She is recognized nationally as a speaker, award-winning author and Enlivened Ageing and wellness consultant. In her talks and programs, Sedena combines personal development, energy management and corporate strategies to help individuals and organizations create greater balance, vitality, productivity and purpose, and includes practical wisdom from her books Say Yes To Change, Authenticity and the bestseller Do Not Go Quietly. She is also the creator of P.E.P.—Personal Energy Program, a groundbreaking personal wellness DVD. http://www.agenation.com
Deepak Chopra	Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He is the founder of the Chopra Foundation and cofounder of Jiyo.com and the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. TIME magazine has described him as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” He is board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolism; a fellow of the American College of Physicians; a clinical professor in medicine at the University of California, San Diego; an adjunct professor at Kellogg School of Executive Management at Northwestern University; an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Columbia University; and a professor of consciousness studies at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked “Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine.” In conjunction with his medical achievements, Dr. Chopra is recognized as a prolific author of more than 85 books, translated into over 43 languages; 25 of his books have achieved the status of New York Times Bestsellers. His latest national bestseller, The Healing Self, was coauthored with Dr. Rudolph Tanzi. Dr. Chopra is also a contributing columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.deepakchopra.com
Philip Clayton	Philip Clayton is the Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. He has taught or held research professorships at Williams College, Harvard University, Cambridge University, and the University of Munich. His research focuses on biological emergence, religion and science, process studies, and contemporary issues in ecology, religion, and ethics. He is the recipient of multiple research grants and international lectureships, as well as the author of numerous books, including The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (2011), Religion and Science: The Basics (2011), Transforming Christian Theology: For Church and Society (2009), and In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World (2009). He also edited The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (2006). Over the last 20 years he has written extensively on “the world in God,” and worked to defend panentheism within the academic community in such works as Adventures in the Spirit (2008) and In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being (2004). http://philipclayton.net/
John B. Cobb Jr.	John B. Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, environmentalist and preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology. He is a founding co-director for the Center for Process Studies and professor emeritus of Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including God and the World, Christ in a Pluralistic Age, A Christian Natural Theology, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, Beyond Dialogue: A Mutual Transformation of Buddhism and Christianity, and Jesus’ Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed. In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://ctr4process.org/
Andrew Cohen	Andrew Cohen, born in 1955 in New York City, was a disciple of H.W.L. Poonja and became a spiritual teacher in 1986. He created the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment, founded the nonprofit organization EnlightenNext and launched EnlightenNext magazine. The organization collapsed in 2013, when Andrew was forced by his senior students to resign from his teaching position; subsequently, allegations of abuse of power and money surfaced. After two years in retreat, he began teaching again and leading retreats. His past students include the author of Spiritual Transmission as well as Peter Bampton, Mary Adams, Steve Brett and Thomas Steininger. https://www.andrewcohen.com
Deirdre B. Combs	Dr. Deirdre B. Combs is a cross-cultural leadership and conflict resolution consultant, executive coach, and university professor. She has worked with a myriad of corporate, government, and NGO clients over the past 25 years, including Aveda Corporation; the U.S. Postal Service, Forest Service, and State Department; IBM; Agenda Ciudadana; and Landmine Survivors Network. Dr. Combs is the author of three books on universal approaches to resolving conflict and overcoming challenges: The Way of Conflict; Worst Enemy, Best Teacher; and Thriving Through Tough Times. Combs has provided intensive leadership development training to thousands of State Department-sponsored international teachers, students, activists, and business professionals. She has taught in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, India, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Costa Rica, and served as a professor at the University of Creation Spirituality as well as for Columbia University, Montana State University, and Naropa University. http://www.combsandcompany.com
Daniel Craig	Daniel Craig is a Doctor of Oriental Medicine in Santa Fe, N.M., who practices in a community acupuncture clinic. He served in the Regular Army and Army National Guard from 1981 through 1993 and did one tour in Iraq/Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. Daniel is a member of Veterans For Peace—Joan Duffy Chapter in Santa Fe. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in oriental medicine. He is a native New Mexican.
Elizabeth Cunningham	Elizabeth Cunningham is the descendant of nine generations of Episcopal priests. She grew up hearing rich (sometimes terrifying) liturgical and biblical language. When she was not in church or school, she read fairytales and fantasy novels or wandered in the enchanted wood of an overgrown, abandoned estate next door to the rectory. Her religious background, the magic of fairytales, and the numinous experience of nature continue to inform her work. Cunningham is best known for The Maeve Chronicles, a series of award-winning novels featuring a feisty Celtic Magdalen, all published by Monkfish. She also recorded MaevenSong, a CD of original music from The Maeve Chronicles. Her earlier novels include The Wild Mother, How to Spin Gold, and The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy. She is the author of three collections of poems: Small Bird, Wild Mercy, and So Ecstasy Can Find You. Murder at the Rummage Sale, August 2016, is her debut mystery novel. She is at work on a sequel. An ordained interfaith minister, Cunningham is in private practice as a counselor. She is the mother of grown children and lives with her husband in New York State’s Hudson Valley. www.elizabethcunninghamwrites.com
Lama Surya Das	Lama Surya Das, who the Dalai Lama affectionately calls the “American lama”, has spent over forty years studying with the great spiritual masters of Asia. He is an authorized lama in the Tibetan Buddhist order and the founder of the Dzogchen Center. Surya Das is the author of the international bestseller Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World and twelve other books, including his latest release, Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now. http://www.surya.org
Ram Dass	Ram Dass, one of America’s most beloved spiritual figures, has made his mark on the world by teaching the path of the heart and promoting service in the areas of social consciousness and care for the dying. Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, an eminent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr. Timothy Leary. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God.” On his return from India, Ram Dass became a pivotal influence in our culture with the publication of Be Here Now. He now makes his home in Maui, teaching worldwide through his website at RamDass.org, and continuing the work of Neem Karoli Baba through his Love Serve Remember Foundation. https://www.ramdass.org
Andrew M. Davis	Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. He holds degrees in philosophy/theology and interreligious studies, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Religion at Claremont School of Theology. His research interests include metaphysics and philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, natural theology, comparative religion, and applied spirituality. His studies have led him to India, Israel-Palestine, and Europe. In 2013, he received Claremont’s Award for Excellence in Biblical Studies and in 2017 he was awarded a fellowship with FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics). https://www.andrewmdavis.info/
Jeff Davis	Jeffrey Davis is a writer, speaker, and consultant. He is author of the nonfiction book The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices As Muse for Authentic Writing (Penguin 2004; Monkfish Publishing, 2008) and the poetry collections City Reservoir (BarnBurner Press 2000) and Coat Thief (Saint Julian Press 2016). He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Artist’s Colony and has served for several years as fiction editor for Tiferet Journal. He has taught most recently at Western Connecticut State University’s MFA in Professional & Creative Writing Program as well as at leading centers & conferences around the world. He writes an online column on the science of creativity for Psychology Today and for The Creativity Post and also heads up the renegade team at Tracking Wonder Consultancy where he is building a movement of business artists and works with top professionals and teams to shape their captivating Story - in brands, signature assets, and intentional lives. He lives with his wife and their two girls in a farmhouse in New York’s Hudson Valley. www.trackingwonder.com
Tom Davis	Tom Davis was an Emmy Award winning American writer and comedian. He is best known for being one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live and for his former partnership with Al Franken, as half of the comedy duo “Franken & Davis.” His memoir, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There, was published in 2010 by Grove Press. He died in 2012.
Chris Deckker	Musician, artist and visionary entrepreneur Chris Deckker has been involved in the arts and entertainment industry for over thirty years. His extensive experience spans every level of the industry, from artistic to business. He is the cofounder of one of the United Kingdom’s most successful underground electronic music clubs, “Return to the Source” and record label, which gained international recognition in the ’90s, and is the founder of the electronic music group Medicine Drum, which was signed to Virgin Records USA. In 1997 he founded “Earthdance International—The Global Festival for Peace,” which has grown to become the world’s biggest synchronized dance event with over three hundred and fifty locations in sixty-five countries involved each year. Originally aimed at supporting Tibet, Earthdance has been described by the office of his Holiness the Dalai Lama as “the most successful global event of its kind aimed at supporting the Tibetan people.” Earthdance now supports global charities worldwide. Chris currently lives in Byron Bay, Australia, and is the co-director of UPLIFT, a hybrid eco-conference and music festival. http://www.upliftfestival.com
Dana Delibovi	Dana Delibovi began translating the poetry of St. Teresa of Ávila in 2019, after retiring from a hybrid career as an advertising copywriter and adjunct instructor of philosophy. Her translations of Teresa's poetry and her essays on Teresa’s legacy have appeared in journals including Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, U.S. Catholic, After the Art, and Confluence, with translations forthcoming in Catholic Poetry Room and a new anthology from Word on Fire. Delibovi's writing has also appeared in Noon, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, and Slippery Elm. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best American Essays notable essayist, and 2023 co-winner of the Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi is Consulting Poetry Editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and holds MA degrees from New York University and Bank Street College of Education. https://sweethunter.org/
Ilia Delio	Ilia Delio, OSF, holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University and has authored or co-authored many books, including Care for Creation, which won two Catholic Press Book Awards in 2009. Her recent books include A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space and Transcendence (2018), Making All Things New (2015), and The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love, which received the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award. She lectures nationally and internationally in the areas of science, religion, and culture, and is the general editor for the series Catholicity in an Evolving Universe, published by Orbis Books. http://idelio.clasit.org
David Dellinger	David Dellinger was born in 1915 in Wakefield, Massachusetts. While at Yale University, he was arrested for demonstrating for the trade union movement. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa in economics, he worked in a factory and lived among the homeless. As a fellow at Oxford University, he drove an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War. Back in New York, he enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary. He spent three years in federal prison, starting in 1940, for refusing military service, and was physically abused during solitary confinement. As a radical pacifist, Dellinger opposed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Vietnam War. His friends included Dr. Martin Luther King and the Berrigans, and he was one of the notorious Chicago Seven. In 2001, at age 85, he protested against the NAFTA treaty. His books include his autobiography, From Yale to Jail (1996). He died in 2004.
Yogi Amrit Desai	Yogi Amrit Desai is recognized as one of the pioneers of the authentic teachings of yoga in the West. Born in India in 1932, he met Swami Shri Kripalvanandji in 1947. Although Amrit was only 15, he knew he had found his teacher and immediately became a disciple of the renowned Shaktipat Kundalini master. He has followed his teachings ever since. After teaching art in a middle school, Amrit left India for America in February 1960, initially to receive a college degree. After earning a BFA and winning numerous awards for his paintings, his spiritual mission drove him to leave a promising career to practice and teach yoga to a few dedicated followers. That decision became his true life’s work and grew into the largest yoga society in North America. As one of the earliest Indian gurus who came to the U.S. in the early ‘60s, Yogi Desai is the last living master from that initial wave. https://amrityoga.org
Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi	Spiritual Leader, humanitarian and visionary Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known throughout the world simply as “Amma,” has served the world-community for decades, imparting wisdom, strength and inspiration. Through her extraordinary acts of love, inner strength and self-sacrifice, Amma has endeared herself to millions and inspired thousands to follow in her path of selfless service. Receiving Amma’s embrace, many feel inspired to offer selfless service to those in need. In this way, this simple yet powerful act as a mother’s embrace—has become both catalyst and symbol for the growing international network of humanitarian initiatives known as “Embracing the World.”® https://www.amritapuri.org
Joan Diver	As Boston's Hyams Foundation's first executive director, Joan Diver was nationally recognized for her creative leadership. A student of diverse spiritual paths and speaker from the heart, Joan has since offered healing to seekers, led contemplative and healing church ministries and partnered with her husband, Colin, in his role as President of Reed College. Their urban story is chronicled in J. Anthony Lukas' Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the lives of Three American Families. When Spirit Calls is Joan's first book. https://www.joandiver.com
Eben Dodd	Eben Dodd is an artist living in Oakland, California. Since moving to the Bay Area in 1999, he has been exhibiting drawings and paintings in galleries on the West Coast. Previously, his work appeared in WW3 Illustrated Magazine. America Needs a Woman President is his second collaboration with Brett Bevell; the first was America Needs a Buddhist President.
Elayne Doughty	Elayne Kalila Doughty, MA, MFT, is the founder of Soulful Women, Planet Breathe, the Soul Spa and the Queens of Transformation. She is a psychotherapist, speaker, ordained priestess soul-midwife, priestess empowerment coach and women’s empowerment expert. With her extensive background in soul transformation, the divine feminine, recovery, addictions, trauma, mental health, she has over twenty years of experience working with women who are transforming a painful past to a powerful present and an extraordinary future. Elayne is a sought-after teacher and speaker in the fields of women’s spirituality, healing, transformation and leadership. http://priestesspresence.com
Oriah Mountain Dreamer	Oriah is the author of the international best-selling books: The Invitation, The Dance and The Call. Her much-loved poem “The Invitation” has been shared around the world. Trained in a shamanic tradition, her medicine name, “Mountain Dreamer,” means “one who likes to find and push the edge.” Using story, poetry and shamanic ceremony, deeply personal writing and work as a group facilitator and spiritual mentor, Oriah explores how to follow the thread of our heart’s longing into a life where we can choose joy without denying the challenges of a human life. http://www.oriah.org
Donna Eden	Donna Eden, a pioneer in the field of energy medicine for thirty-five years, is among the field’s most sought, joyous and authoritative spokespersons. Able to clairvoyantly “see” the body’s energies since childhood, her healing abilities are legendary. Her book Energy Medicine has been translated into eighteen languages and was named the Health Book of the Year at the prestigious Nautilus Book Awards. Its sequel, Energy Medicine for Women, won gold medals in two national competitions. More than 80,000 people have attended Donna’s classes and she has trained more than seven hundred and fifty practitioners who are fully certified in her approach to energy medicine. http://www.innersource.net/
Normandi Ellis	Normandi Ellis is a spiritualist medium and the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction is rooted in her studies and travels in Egypt and includes the spiritual classic Awakening Osiris. Her most recent books from Bear & Co. are Invoking the Scribes of Ancient Egypt and Imagining the World into Existence. Her recent fiction, Going West, was published by Wind Publications. She facilitates spiritual travel through Egypt in conjunction with Shamanic Journeys. http://www.normandiellis.com
Patricia Ellsberg	Patricia Ellsberg is a social change activist, meditation teacher and coach. She reaches thousands of people worldwide, leading guided meditations for the Awakening Joy Course and teleseminars on Finding Mother-Love Within and—together with her sister, Barbara Marx Hubbard—on The Emergence Process: The Shift from Ego to Essence. She has been a lifelong partner to Daniel Ellsberg and in their first year of marriage helped him release the top-secret Pentagon Papers, which contributed to ending the Vietnam War. A central theme of her life has been creating a bridge between political activism and spiritual experience. https://www.patriciaellsberg.com/
Masaru Emoto	Masaru Emoto was born in Japan in July 1943. In 1986 he established the IHM Corporation in Tokyo. In 1992 he received a certification from the Open International University as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. He began to discover the mystery of water as he learned the concept of micro-cluster water and magnetic resonance analysis technology. Eventually, he realized that it was in the frozen crystal form that water showed us its true nature through. He has gained worldwide acclaim through his groundbreaking research and discovery that water is deeply connected to our individual and collective consciousness. He is the author of the best-selling books Message from Water, The Hidden Messages in Water and The True Power of Water, The Messages from Water and the Universe and others. He is a long-time advocate for peace in relation to water. He is currently the president of International Hado Membership and the chairman of the board of the nonprofit organization EMOTO PEACE PROJECT, where he works toward achieving world peace through water. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 3/11 of 2011, he has been helping the people of Fukushima and is giving “angel water” for free, as well as lecturing and providing Hado counseling in the Fukushima area. http://www.masaru-emoto.net
Bill Epperly	Bill Epperly, born in 1961 in New Jersey, is an integral coach, a mindfulness teacher at DePaul University and a mentor in the organization Trillium Awakening. He lives in Chicago. His teachers include Brother David Steindl-Rast, Father Thomas Keating, Terry Patten and Ken Wilber. https://billepperly.com
Jennifer Esperanza	Jennifer Esperanza is a culture and art photographer based in Santa Fe, N.M. She documented the humanitarian work in South India of Amma and her devotees after the Asian tsunami in 2004 and photographed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. She has photographed some of the greatest social-justice and earthjustice activists of our time, including Van Jones, Dr. Jane Goodall, Bill McKibben, Gloria Steinem and Tim DeChristopher. She also photographs music, fashion, culture, nature and erotica, and makes her own art. Road trips, travel, art and the ocean are some of her passions. Her work is known for its humanity, sensuality and beauty. She prays thanks with every click of her camera shutter. Jennifer’s motto is “Drowning in Beauty, Devoted to Love.” http://www.jenniferesperanza.com
Susan Coppage Evans	Susan Coppage Evans is a nest builder. She has a passion and the skill for creating structures which foster the beauty and sustainability of lifegiving organizations. She completed her Doctorate of Ministry from the University of Creation Spirituality while serving as an executive in psychiatric healthcare, and initiated the formation of Creation Spirituality Communities in 2006. She hosts international retreats through her company, WholeHearted, Inc., and in 2017 became founding president of the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality. http://home.mindspring.com
Richard Faulds	Richard Faulds, MA, JD, has practiced yoga and meditation for more than thirty years in close association with Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lennox, MA. Along with being its legal counsel for two decades, he has served as Kripalu’s president, CEO, board chair, and a senior faculty member. Richard is also the author of Kripalu Yoga: A Guide to Practice On and Off the Matl and numerous other books on the Kripalu tradition including Sayings of Swami Kripalu; Swimming with Krishna: Teaching Stories from the Kripalu Yoga Tradition; and Dharma then Moksha, the Untold Story of Swami Kripalu.
Rick Fields	A historian of Buddhism in the West and a poet and journalist, Rick Fields was born in Queens, in New York City, in 1942. In New York City, he encountered Zen and met Allen Ginsberg and other Beat poets before moving to California, where he studied at the Zen Centers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the early 1970s, he became interested in Tibetan Buddhism, and in 1973 became a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. His first work as a journalist was for the Whole Earth Catalog in 1969. Later, he was the editor of both Yoga Journal and Vajradhatu Sun, which became Shambhala Sun, and a contributing editor of Tricycle and New Age Journal. His books include How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (1991), and Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters, written with Bernie Glassman (1996). His last book, Fuck You, Cancer and Other Poems (1997) dealt with his experience with lung cancer. He died at home in Fairfax, California, in 1999. He was 57.
James Finley	James Finley was born in 1943 in Ohio and currently resides in California. He is a retreat leader, Thomas Merton scholar, clinical psychologist and master of the Contemplative Way. Formerly, as a Trappist monk, he lived at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, with Thomas Merton as his spiritual director. http://contemplativeway.org
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone	Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Ph.D., is an author, Jungian psychotherapist, and founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado. She was ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi in 1992 and is a leader in the international Jewish Renewal Movement. She served as Co-Chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North America (now known as T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights). Widely known for her work on Jewish feminism and the modern applications of Jewish mystical wisdom, Firestone teaches nationally on Jewish ancestral healing and the common boundary between ancient Jewish heritage and modern psychology. Rabbi Firestone lives in Colorado with her husband David. Together they have three grown children, Brianna, Emily, and Dakota. http://www.tirzahfirestone.com/
Patricia Flasch	Patricia Flasch has a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Wisconsin and was a trainer and marketing director for Cornucopia, a human potential school. Patricia had a large private practice in counseling in Seattle, and then opened LEADING FROM THE HEART in Denver, Colo. Patricia designed and taught seminar topics on “Relationships in Paradise” (Maui) and “The Psychology of Money” (Stockholm, Sweden). Patricia operates today as a soul mentor from Santa Fe, N.M. Her recent book, Becoming a Love Dog, is available on Amazon. Her current teaching involves using creativity as a force for conscious aging. She has clients worldwide.
James Ishmael Ford	James Ishmael Ford is both a Zen priest and a Unitarian Universalist minister. He has lived in monasteries and other spiritual communities, served as a local pastor and spiritual director, and preached throughout New England, where he lives. His previous books include If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break and, in 2024, The Intimate Way of Zen. http://www.jamesishmaelford.com/
Matthew Fox	Matthew Fox is an internationally acclaimed spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest, and an activist who was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. He holds a doctorate, summa cum laude, in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris. As a spiritual theologian, he has written 30 books that have been translated into 48 languages and have received numerous awards. Among them are Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, A Spirituality Named Compassion, The Reinvention of Work, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, and Christian Mystics. Fox is a recipient of the Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award (other recipients being the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Ernesto Cardenal and Rosa Parks); the Ghandi King Ikeda Award; the Tikkun National Ethics Award; and other awards. His work has been honored by theologians, artists, healers, and thought leaders, as well as by many of his students. www.matthewfox.org
Carl Frankel	Carl Frankel is a writer, journalist and entrepreneur. For about two decades, he was a nationally-known thought leader specializing in sustainability and socially responsible business. Since 2009 he has collaborated with Sheri Winston in The Center for the Intimate Arts, with roles ranging from strategic guidance to business development to event management to writing and editing. Frankel’s involvement with Winston and The Center for the Intimate Arts has inspired him to turn his attention to the fascinating world of sex and relationships. His 2004 book Out of the Labyrinth offered a high-level model of psyche and culture that provided deep insights into the nature of our global challenge. With Love and the More Perfect Union, his first book on relationships, Frankel brings his special aptitude for high-level modeling and insights to relationships. Frankel is a graduate of Princeton University (AB) and Columbia Law School (JD). http://carlfrankel.com
Amir Freimann	Amir Freimann was born (1958) in a kibbutz and grew up in a small village in Israel. At the age of 17 he became deeply interested in spiritual-existential questions about the nature of consciousness, freedom, self and the Whole. He served in the Israeli army and became a pacifist after participating in the 1982 Lebanon War. He then studied medicine but at the end of the 5th year of his studies decided to devote his life to spiritual awakening. He spent 2 years meditating in a Zen monastery in Japan and over 20 years doing intense spiritual practice and engaged in philosophical-spiritual exploration in the community of EnlightenNext in the USA. In 2009 he left the community and moved back to Israel. Shortly thereafter he began interviewing prominent spiritual teachers and their students which lead to the publication of Spiritual Transmission, which is his first book. http://free2quest.com/
Stephen Fulder	Stephen Fulder was born in 1946 in London and earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology. He became involved in Vipassana meditation and practice in 1975, spending years in India and later moving to Israel, where he founded Tovana, the Israel Insight Society. He has been teaching Buddhist meditation practice for nearly thirty years. http://www.stephenfulder.com
Arun Gandhi	Arun Gandhi worked as a journalist for the Times of India, Mumbai, for thirty years before coming to the United States to lecture on Gandhi and his philosophy of nonviolence at universities around the country and Europe. During the course of his life, he has rescued one hundred and twenty-eight abandoned newborn babies and found loving homes for them, and established cooperative programs in Indian villages, that have transformed the lives of over a million people. He is a much sought-after motivational speaker. http://www.gandhiforchildren.org
Sharon Gannon	Sharon Gannon is the co-creator with David Life of the Jivamukti Yoga Method, a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings. A student of Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, Swami Nirmalananda, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and Shyamdas, she is a pioneer in teaching yoga as spiritual activism and relating ancient teachings to the modern world. Sharon is also a musician and writer. Sharanam, is her latest album. Her books include Jivamukti Yoga, The Art of Yoga, Cats and Dogs Are People Too!, and Yoga and Vegetarianism. http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com
Stephen Gaskin	As a Korean War veteran turned-Beatnik, Stephen Gaskin, born in 1935, attended San Francisco State College on a GI Bill scholarship, earning a Master’s degree in 1964. He became an English professor, and, in 1967, started an informal philosophy seminar known as Monday Night Class, which drew a big following. Concerned that San Francisco was slipping into drug-induced decadence, he and 300 followers caravanned to Tennessee to found The Farm collective on 1,000 acres. In the 1970s, approximately 1,500 people lived there, keeping no liquor, guns, or chemical drugs; eating only vegetarian food; practicing meditation; and working for the collective. In 1976, he married Ina May Middleton, who [as Ina May Gaskin] wrote Spiritual Midwifery (1978) and, with her students, delivered 2,300 babies at The Farm. The Farm survived disease, hunger, serious debts, and Gaskin’s yearlong incarceration for growing marijuana; today, with 175 members who pay rent and have jobs outside, The Farm runs a press and produces radiation detectors used by law enforcement. Gaskin died at home in Summertown, Tennessee, on July 1, 2014, at age 79. http://www.thefarm.org
Jeremy Geffen	Jeremy Geffen, MD, FACP, was a medical oncologist, a leading expert in integrative medicine and oncology, and the author of the highly acclaimed book The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person. He devoted his career to developing the field of whole-person medicine and cancer care and created the pioneering integrative medicine and oncology program, The Seven Levels of Healing®. He died in 2015.
Michael Gelb	Michael J. Gelb is the world’s leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development. A pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, accelerated learning and innovative leadership, he has authored fourteen books on creativity and innovation, including the international bestseller, How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day. His latest book is Creativity On Demand: How to Ignite and Sustain the Fire of Genius. http://www.michaelgelb.com
Richard Geldard	Richard Geldard is a full-time writer and lecturer living in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Before turning to writing he was an educator, teaching English and philosophy at both the secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College, The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, and Stanford University, where he earned his doctorate in Dramatic Literature and Classics in 1972. He has also studied at St. John’s College, Oxford. Geldard is the author of ten books, including studies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Greek philosophy and culture. He is also a frequent lecturer. In June, 2003, and September, 2003, he was a featured speaker at Faneuil Hall in Boston as part of the Emerson Bicentennial Celebrations. In June, 2005, he was the Keynote speaker at the re-instatement of the Delphic Games in Delphi, Greece. In September, 2009 he gave the Flora Levy Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. www.rgbooks.com
Norma Gentile	Norma Gentile, a professional soprano and sound shaman, has combined a performance career with a private practice of energy healing for over twenty years. Her formal training in music (she holds a master’s from the University of Michigan) and her studies in subtle energy have helped Norma understand how sound affects our ability to heal. Over the years, Norma developed her own ability as a spiritual channel for those who teach (Archangel Michael), those who heal (Nature) and those who do both (the Hathors). She continues to offer meditation concerts and coach those who want to more fully utilize their own voices and healing abilities. http://www.healingchants.com
Allen Ginsberg	Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1929, and grew up in nearby Paterson. His father was a poet and schoolteacher. His mother’s mental illness and communist upbringing became recurring subjects in Ginsberg’s own poetry. Ginsberg befriended Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac while studying at Columbia University, and poet Gary Snyder while living in San Francisco in the 1950s. His first poem, “Howl,” published in 1956, was controversial. Obscenity charges brought against his book Howl and Other Poems were dismissed in court, but the attention brought him recognition as a new voice in American poetry. A lifelong nonviolent, anti-war, anti-nuclear power, pro-gay rights, and anti-censorship activist, Ginsberg became a practicing Buddhist after meeting Trungpa Rinpoche, and helped him found the Naropa Institute and its Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets in Boulder, Colorado. He lived with his partner, fellow poet Peter Orlovsky, in New York’s East Village, where he died in 1997. He remains one of America’s most important poets. https://allenginsberg.org
Bernie Glassman	Bernie Glassman was a Zen master, author, and the founder of the Zen Peacemakers. Glassman had a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and was awarded the Social Innovator Award in 2016, by the Lewis Institute at Babson. Among his books published are The Dude and The Zen Master with Jeff Bridges. He passed away in 2018. https://zenpeacemakers.org
Dwight Goddard	Dwight Goddard was a pivotal figure in early American Zen Buddhism. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1861, Goddard was an industrial engineer who made his fortune with the US government during WW1. Disillusioned with the war, he became a missionary, sent first to China, and later to Japan, where he lived and studied at a Zen Buddhist Monastary outside Kyoto for a year. After his return to the United States in 1924, he began writing books on Buddhism. He wrote and edited nine titles, among them, The Buddhist Bible, a work credited with influencing the views of Jack Kerouac and other Beat Generation authors. He died in 1939.
Joseph Goldstein	Joseph Goldstein was born in 1944 and grew up in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. After he graduated from Columbia University in 1965, he joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in Thailand, where he first encountered Buddhism. In 1967, he began a serious study of Buddhism that led him to India, Burma, and Tibet, and by 1974 he was teaching insight meditation retreats all over the world. He is a co-founder of Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, and is still a guiding teacher there. He envisioned the expansion to IMS’s Retreat Center and Forest Refuge, and in 1989 he helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Goldstein’s many books include Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, One Dharma, and Insight Meditation. https://www.dharma.org
Anna Goodman Herrick	Anna Goodman Herrick Anna Goodman Herrick works at the intersection of spirituality, sacred words, and human rights. She is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist. Anna has performed her poetry across the U.S., including at the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series, presenting “contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s own revolutionary poetic voice.” She has performed her poetry at the El Paso border for Artist Uprising with V (formerly Eve Ensler), Bloomsday on Broadway and Radio Bloomsday, and at the Theopoetics Conference. Her recent poetry is included in Rattle, The Ekphrastic Review, Hevria Magazine, and Ritualwell. She has created work for television and branded content for Sony, ABC Family, Oprah Winfrey Network, and MTV and shared her work at the Library of Congress, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and in film, stage, museums and galleries nationwide. For more information visit: annagoodmanherrick.com and Instagram @annagoodmanherrick.
Paul Gorman	Paul Gorman was a producer at WBAI for 28 years and created the idea for the “In the Spirit” radio show. Prior to his work as a prolific teacher and spiritual practitioner Gorman worked as a speechwriter and press secretary for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He has authored many books including Releasing Awareness Within and Awareness Itself. His teaching, The Miracle Self, is practiced in 93 countries. https://www.miracleself.com
Amit Goswami	Amit Goswami, Ph.D., is a retired professor of physics from the University of Oregon at Eugene. He is a pioneer of the new paradigm “science within consciousness,” an idea he explicated in his seminal book The Self-Aware Universe, in which he also solved the quantum measurement problem elucidating the famous observer effect. Amit has written nine other popular books based on his research in quantum physics and consciousness. He was featured in the film What the Bleep Do We Know? and the award-winning documentary of his life and work, The Quantum Activist. http://www.amitgoswami.org
Elizabeth T. Gray	Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. is a poet and translator whose selection of poems by Iran’s iconic female poet Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967), Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (New Directions, 2022), was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation. Her own books of poetry include Salient (New Directions, 2020). She serves on the boards of The Beloit Poetry Journal, Kimbilio Fiction, Friends of Writers, and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, and from 2009-2015 served as chair of the board of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She holds a BA and JD from Harvard University and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in New York City. http://www.etgrayjr.com
Father Bede Griffiths	Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths, was born in England in 1906. He converted to Catholicism in the early 1930s and soon after joined the Benedictine monastery Prinknash Abbey and took the name Bede. He later served as a Prior of Farnborough and then Pluscardin, during which time he gained an interest in Indian thought. He asked to go to India to set up a monastic foundation, but was denied. Later he was sent to India by the same abbot, but was to serve under the local bishop. From 1955 to1958, he joined Father Francis Mahieu Acharya at Kurisumala Ashram (Mountain of the Cross), where they developed a Syriac rite monastic liturgy. Griffiths took the Sanskrit name Dhayananda, meaning “bliss of prayer.” In 1963, he conducted a trip to the United States in which he engaged in an East-West dialogue. http://www.bedegriffiths.com
Deirdre Hade	Deirdre Hade is a spiritual teacher, master healer, mystic, poet and visionary leader in the ancient arts of the wisdom traditions of light. She is the founder of the Radiance Healing and Radiance Meditation Mystery School, facilitating thousands of healings, soul awakenings and journeys throughout the world. The core pillars—The Daughters of Miracles—Daughters of Miriam, The Kingship of Illumination, Radiance Healer Certification Program, Radiance Tree of Life Master Course and the Radiance Pure Energy at-home study course/guide, a pathway for all people to experience the mystical energy knowledge of Light. http://www.deirdrehade.com
Aliya B Haeri	Aliya B Haeri, born in 1947 in Hawaii, is a transpersonal psychologist, life coach and spiritual counselor with thirty years of international experience in psychotherapy. She is the director of the Academy of Self Knowledge (ASK) in South Africa and the wife and disciple of the Sufi teacher Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri. http://www.aliya-haeri.com
Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri	Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, born in 1937 in Iraq, is a Sufi Master and spiritual philosopher, and the descendant of several generations of spiritual leaders. He lives in South Africa, where he founded the Academy of Self Knowledge (ASK), which is directed by his wife, the transpersonal psychologist and spiritual counselor Aliya Haeri. He is the author of more than thirty books on the principles of Islam, Sufism and enlightenment. http://www.sfhfoundation.com
Roshi Joan Halifax	Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D., is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She is founder, abbot and head teacher of the Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, N.M. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress. She is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Orde and her work and practice for more than four decades has focused on applied Buddhism. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); The Fruitful Darkness; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Wisdom in the Presence of Death; Being with Dying: Compassionate End-of-Life Care (Professional Training Guide) and Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death. She is a Lindisfarne Fellow, co-director of the Fellowship and a Mind and Life Board member. http://www.upaya.org
Rev. Gina Rose Halpern	Rev. Gina Rose Halpern, D.Min., BCCC, is the founder of the Chaplaincy Institute, an Interfaith Seminary in Berkeley, Calif. She has dedicated her life to Interfaith and inclusive education. As a chaplain, artist and teacher, she has practiced creative ways to serve across divides and provide compassionate care. She is the author and illustrator of Where is Tibet? and To Heal the Broken Heart. http://www.chaplaincyinstitute.org
Diane Hamilton	Diane Hamilton, born in 1958, is a mediator, group facilitator and teacher of Integral Spirituality and Zen, as well as the co-founder, with her husband, Zen teacher and lawyer Michael Mugaku Zimmerman, of Two Arrows Zen, a center for Zen study and practice with two locations in Utah. She is a Dharma heir of Genpo Roshi. http://dianemushohamilton.com/
Andrew Harvey	Andrew Harvey is the founder and director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization that invites concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired and effective agents of change. Sacred activism is a form of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual passion with wise radical action in the world. The largescale practice of sacred activism can become an essential force for preserving and healing the planet and its inhabitants. Andrew Harvey has taught at Oxford and Cornell Universities as well as various colleges and spiritual centers throughout the world. He has written over thirty books. https://andrewharvey.net
Geneen Marie Haugen	Geneen Marie Haugen, Ph.D., grew up a little wild, with a run-amok imagination. As a guide to the intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche she delights in multidimensional listening, and in offering perceptive questions, ceremonies, escapades, and reflections that help expand a sense of our own possibilities as individuals (and as a species), and deepen our experience of participation with an intelligent, animate, holy Earth/cosmos. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth; Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth; Parabola Journal; and High Country News. She is committed to the world-transforming potential of the human imagination in collaboration with the Earth community. https://animas.org
J. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus	J. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus, D.H.L. is an award-winning radio broadcaster (21stcenturyradio.com), author, social justice, environmental and animal activist. She is a pioneer in holistic health care, founding the Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1984 (Ruscombe.org). A visionary and futurist, Zoh is also a transspecies telepath who communicates with animals both wild and domestic. Dr. Hieronimus is author of White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change (2017), The Future of Human Experience (2013), Sanctuary of the Divine Presence (2012), and Kabbalistic Teachings of the Female Prophets (2008). http://www.zoharaonline.com
Lex Hixon	From 1971 to 1983, while studying the Advaita Vedanta tradition with Swami Nikhilananda, Lex Hixon began hosting the weekly radio program “In the Spirit.” He completed his Master’s degree on Ramana Maharshi and in 1976 defended his dissertation on the Gaudapada Karika and was awarded his Ph.D. Meanwhile, Lex taught an evening class at the New School for Social Research in 1975. His lectures became his first book, Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions, published in 1978 by Doubleday. An overview of sacred traditions with an experiential bent and a generous spirit of universality, the book has been widely recognized as a classic in its field. In 1979, Lex founded Free Spirit magazine, a free directory of spiritual teachings and events in the New York area inspired by the contacts he made on the radio. He distributed the magazine using the family’s Volkswagen Microbus. The magazine still exists today as New York Spirit. To hear Lex’s recorded interviews: https://www.mixcloud.com/max-smile
Sheila Hixon	Sheila King Hixon was born in Chicago in 1940 and grew up north of the city and on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. She graduated from Smith College in 1962 and traveled around the world, returning to Honolulu. While working there, she reencountered her childhood friend Lex Hixon. In 1964, after moving with Lex to New York City, she began studying art at the New School. Later, the couple settled with their children in Riverdale, New York. A fulltime mother, Sheila shared Lex’s spiritual studies and practices, traveled with him, held spiritual events at their home, and hosted long-term guests from various spiritual traditions. In 2007, after studying with Bernie Glassman for 12 years, she received Dharma Transmission as Jinen Angyo Sensei. She serves on the board of directors of two family philanthropic foundations, based in New York and Hawaii, and still lives in Riverdale. She has a stepdaughter, a son, two daughters, and eight grandchildren.
Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle	Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle s a writer and dharma teacher. For over forty years she has devoted herself to spiritual practice, primarily Buddhist meditation, which has deeply influenced her professional life, in particular how to integrate psychology and meditation. After practicing as a psychotherapist with individuals, couples, and groups, she taught in the field of Behavioral Medicine where she pioneered the integration of meditation, yoga, and cognitive therapy with traditional Western medicine. As a Teaching Fellow at the Mind/Body Medical Institute, she developed and taught training programs for health professionals in new approaches to health and healing through Harvard Medical School. Her first book, Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple’s Journey Through Alzheimer’s, is an award-winning book that has sold close to 15,000 copies and has been translated into four languages. https://www.oliviahoblitzelle.com
Kristen Holt-Browning	Kristen Holt-Browning is a novelist, poet, and freelance copy editor and proofreader. Her poetry chapbook, The Only Animal Awake in the House, was published by Moonstone Press in 2021. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several literary journals, including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, and Necessary Fiction. She holds a BA from Connecticut College and an MA from University College London. Ordinary Devotion is her first novel. https://www.kristenholt-browning.com/
Rebe Huntman	Rebe Huntman, is a memoirist, essayist, dancer, teacher and poet. For over a decade she was head of the award-winning Danza Viva Center for World Dance, Art & Music and its dance company, One World Dance Theater. Rebe collaborates with native artists in Cuba and South America, has been featured in Latina Magazine, Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune and on Fox and ABC News. The recipient of an Ohio Individual Excellence award, Rebe has received support for this book from the Ohio State University, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Playa, Hambidge Center, and Brush Creek Foundation. She lives in Delaware, Ohio and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. https://www.rebehuntman.com/
Sandra Ingerman	Sandra Ingerman, MA, is a world-renowned teacher of shamanism. She is recognized for bringing ancient cross-cultural healing methods into our modern culture, and addressing the needs of our times. A licensed therapist, she is the author of eight books, including Soul Retrieval, Medicine for the Earth, Shamanic Journeying, How to Heal Toxic Thoughts, How to Thrive in Changing Times and Awakening to the Spirit World. She is also the author of seven CD programs produced by Sounds True. http://www.sandraingerman.com/
Rabbi Burt Jacobson	Rabbi Burt Jacobson, was a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied with Abraham Joshua Heschel, and was mentored in Kabbalah and Hasidism by Rabbi Arthur Green. After moving to California in the early 1970’s, Jacobson joined with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others in founding the Jewish Renewal movement, helping to reintroduce Jewish spirituality and mysticism in the U.S. and throughout the world.
Eli Jaxon-Bear	In 1990 Eli Jaxon-Bear met his final teacher, Sri H.W.L. Poonja, in Lucknow, India. Confirming Eli’s realization, his teacher sent him back into the world to share his unique psychological insights into the nature of egoic suffering in support of self-realization. He dedicates his life to passing on the transmission of his teacher. Eli Jaxon-Bear is the author of Sudden Awakening; The Enneagram of Liberation: From Fixation to Freedom and is the editor of Wake Up and Roar: Satsang with H.W.L. Poonja. Eli currently meets people and teaches through the Leela Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to world peace and freedom through universal self-realization. http://www.leela.org
Nathaniel Jaye	Nathaniel Jaye speaks on human intelligence and meaning design and is creator of 100 House, a co-living community in San Francisco. http://nathanjaye.com
Kathleen Jenks	Kathleen Jenks is the author of the autobiographical Journey of a Dream Animal; The River and the Stone, an historical novel about Moses, Miriam and Aaron in ancient Egypt; and the Green World Oracle. She has a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. For nine years she taught courses on mythology and ritual at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has guided private and group reincarnation sessions since 1973. She currently teaches in local colleges and lives and writes in her ivy-covered house, “Green Man Abbey.” http://www.mythinglinks.org
Rev. Gregory C.V. Johnson	Reverend Gregory C.V. Johnson was raised in the Mormon Church but became an evangelical Christian in his mid-teens. Since graduating from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California (1989) and Denver Theological Seminary (1992), he has served pastorates in three different Utah evangelical congregations over a nine year period. Reverend Johnson is passionate about Christian unity in Utah, and so in 2001 he left the local church pastorate to begin a missional organization called Standing Together. His ministry vision is to advance Christian unity among evangelical congregations and pastors and to foster a culturally sensitive dialogue between evangelicals and Mormons. He and his wife Jill are the parents of four children and reside in Lehi, Utah. www.standingtogether.org
Chan Master Guo Jun	Chan Master Guo Jun was ordained as a novice monk at Mahabodhi Monastary, Singapore under Venerable Master Song Nian and received his full monastic ordination at Guandgde Monastary, Taiwan under Venerable Master Jingxin, Venerable Master Liaozhong, and Venerable Master Guangyuan. Venerable Guo Jun is the lineage holder and successor of the Chan, Xianshou, and Cien schools of Chinese Buddhism. He has also studied in Thai, Burmese, Chinese Pure Land, Tibetan, Korean Son, and Japanese Shingon traditions. Guo Jun has a diploma in biotechnology from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore; a degree in Buddhist philosophy from Fuyan Buddhist Institute, Taiwan; and a bachelor of arts in psychology and sociology from Monash University, Australia. He graduated with a master’s degree in Buddhist studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Guo Jun is actively propagating the teachings of Chinese Buddhism. He has taught all over the world.
Cynthia Jurs	Cynthia Jurs is a teacher of sacred activism and engaged Buddhism in the lineage of Thich Nhat Hanh. In 1990, on pilgrimage in Nepal, she met a one-hundred-and-six-year-old lama named Charok Rinpoche living in a remote cave, from whom she received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases. For over twenty years she has traveled to diverse cultures around the world facilitating collaborations with young activists and indigenous elders in a unique ritual that strengthens community and catalyzes solutions to the planet’s problems. She founded Alliance for the Earth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the emergence of a global community committed to planetary healing and collective awakening. She directs the Open Way Sangha in New Mexico. http://www.earthtreasurevase.org
Jyoti	Jyoti is an internationally renowned spiritual advisor with a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology, who also completed postgraduate study at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She is one of the founders of Kayumari, a spiritual healing community located in North America, Europe and Brazil. She is the spiritual director of the Center for Sacred Studies, a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to sustaining a way of life based on collaboration and reciprocity with the Earth and all Her beings. Jyoti has devoted her life to a prayer of unity on the planet, developing alliances through collaborative relationships with those dedicated to the Earth and Her sustainability. http://www.grandmotherscouncil.org
Tamam Kahn	Tamam Kahn is a senior teacher in The Sufi Ruhaniat International. She has spoken about Sufism at conferences, has conducted poetry workshops, and has presented her own poetry and stories of the early women of Islam at conferences and Sufi gatherings for two decades. In 2009 she was invited to recite her poetry at an international Sufi conference: The Sidi Chiker World Meetings of Tassawuf Affiliates in Marrakech, Morocco. Her book, Untold, A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Monkfish Books, 2010, received an International Book Award for 2011, and has been translated into Indonesian. www.completeword.wordpress.com
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan	Born in 1934 and raised in the Bronx, New York, Aryeh Kaplan was an Orthodox rabbi, writer, and physicist. He completed his rabbinical training in Jerusalem and was ordained there in 1956 by Rabbi Yehuda Finkle, one of Israel’s foremost rabbinic authorities. He then went on to earn a B.S. degree with high honors at the University of Louisiana and an M.S. in physics at the University of Maryland. After completing a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, he changed career direction by taking a full-time position as a rabbi in Mason City, Iowa, in 1965. From then until the end of his life, he held positions as rabbi for congregations in many states across the country, ending up in Brooklyn, New York. Rabbi Kaplan wrote more than 50 books, including many on Kabbalah and meditation, but is best known for The Living Torah, a scholarly translation of the Torah with an extensive index. Rabbi Kaplan married Tobie Goldstein in 1961, and they had nine children together before he died suddenly in 1983 at the age of 48 from a heart attack.
Roshi Philip Kapleau	Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1912, Philip Kapleau briefly studied law, then learned court reporting. He went to Germany as chief court reporter of the first Nuremberg Trial in 1945; in 1946, he reported the Tokyo War Crimes Trial in Japan. There, he discovered Zen Buddhism and began attending lectures by D.T. Suzuki. Later, back in New York, Kapleau renewed his acquaintance with Suzuki, who was teaching Zen at Columbia University, but, rejecting Zen’s primarily intellectual treatment, he returned to Japan in 1953 to seek its deeper truth. Back in Japan, Kapleau used his court reporting skills to record interviews with Zen teachers, teachings, and even dokusan, traditional intimate meetings between teachers and students, for The Three Pillars Of Zen, published in 1965, the same year he was sanctioned as a Zen teacher. One of the first books to reveal the details of Zen practice, it has remained in print ever since. In 1966, he returned to the United States and established the Rochester Zen Center, where he founded his own lineage and taught for 20 years. Today, Roshi Kapleau’s descendants are teaching around the world; his many books on Zen include Awakening to Zen and Zen: Merging of East and West (originally titled Zen: Dawn in the West). He died at the Rochester Zen Center from Parkinson’s disease complications in 2004.
Gloria Karpinski	Gloria D. Karpinski is a holistic counselor, spiritual director, teacher and author. Her seminars as well as her individual in-depth life attunements emphasize the relevancy of universal spiritual principles to everyday life and the inter dynamics of mind, body, emotions and spirit. Gloria is the author of Where Two Worlds Touch: Spiritual Rites of Passage and Barefoot on Holy Ground: Twelve Lessons in Spiritual Craftsmanship, both published by Ballantine Books. Gloria lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her website includes a calendar of her workshops, lectures, intensives and other specialized programs. http://www.gloriakarpinski.com/
Les Kaye	Les Kaye has been integrally involved in developing Zen practice in the West for over fifty years. He began work for IBM in San Jose in 1958, and held positions in engineering, sales, and management. He started Zen practice in 1966 and in 1971 was ordained a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Two years later he took a leave of absence from IBM to serve as shuso (head monk) at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and in 1974, he received Dharma Transmission from Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki’s son and successor. In 1985, he was appointed abbot at Kannon Do Zen Center in Mountain View, California. Les’s first book, Zen at Work (Crown/Three Rivers), sold 14,000 copies. He is also author of Joyously Through the Days (Wisdom Publications), and coauthor of A Sense of Something Greater: Zen and the Search for Balance in Silicon Valley (Parallax Press).
Byron Katie	Byron Katie’s simple yet powerful method of inquiry into the cause of all suffering is called The Work. Since 1986, she has introduced The Work to millions of people throughout the world. Eckhart Tolle calls The Work “a great blessing for our planet,” and Time magazine named Katie a “spiritual innovator for the new millennium.” She has written several books, including the bestsellers Loving What Is, I Need Your Love—Is That True? and A Thousand Names for Joy; as well as Question Your Thinking—Change the World, Who Would You Be Without Your Story?, A Friendly Universe and, for children, Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? Her website features many free materials to download, as well as audio and video clips, a schedule of events and a free helpline with a network of The Work facilitators. http://www.thework.com
William Keepin	William Keepin, Ph.D., is cofounder of Satyana Institute and Gender Reconciliation International. He works in partnership with the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation and has convened eighty programs in eight countries for reconciliation between women and men. Will has practiced silent meditation for thirty years and leads retreats bringing contemplative spiritual leaders together from across the major religions, including the Dawn of Interspirituality conference. He is a physicist and former whistleblower in nuclear science policy. His books include Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation Between Women and Men and Song of the Earth: A Synthesis of Scientific and Spiritual Worldviews. http://www.satyana.org
Colleen Kelley	Colleen Kelley is an artist, poet and teacher. She is currently working on a series titled “I Nurse the Milk of Millenia” and a multimedia performance with electric cello played by Jami Sieber, rooted in their experiences with the Asian Elephants of India and Thailand. She was the art director, visionary and co-author for ten years on The Box: Remembering the Gift. This collaborative project resulted in a series of three books and artifacts contained in a wooden box. It is an environmental curriculum that is being used by groups and individuals around the world. http://www.colleen-kelley.com
Daisy Khan	Daisy Khan is an award-winning speaker and founder of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE), the largest global network of Muslim women committed to peacebuilding, gender equality, and human dignity. For two decades she’s been combating anti-Muslim bias and is renowned as a thought leader on Muslim women’s rights. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Khan was featured in Time magazine along with forty prominent people defining “what it means to meet adversity, and then overcome it.” As a prolific speaker, Khan lectures at businesses, schools, and think tanks including The Council on Foreign Relations, Aspen Institute, and Bloomberg. She’s a media commentator on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, PBS, and the BBC.
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan	Born in London in 1916 to renowned Sufi master Inayat Khan and Ora Ray Baker (second-cousin to Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science), Pir Vilayat was truly educated in an East / West inclusive manner. In addition to completing his studies at Oxford University and the Sorbonne, he pursued the guru hunt—the search for meaningful contact with enlightened spiritual masters, and was eventually initiated in the same order as his father had been: the Chishti Order of India. He was eventually named a Pir (guide) in that order. Pir Vilayat, as he was commonly known, went on to lead a movement his father had created specifically for Westerners, the Sufi Order of the West, which taught a universalist approach to Sufism thought most suitable for those in the West (as well as globally-minded people). Pir founded the Abode of the Message, a residential community for Sufis in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. His close students, inspired by his holistic teachings, in turn founded the Omega Institute, a leading holistic adult learning center in Rhinebeck, New York. Pir Vilayat died in 2004. His son, Zia Inayat Khan, succeeded him in leading the Order, which was recently renamed the Inayati Order.
Ruth King	Ruth King is an insight meditation teacher and emotional wisdom author and consultant. Ruth has a Masters in clinical psychology and is a graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Dedicated Practitioner Program and a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. She is the author of Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible, and designed The Emotional Wisdom Cards as well as the Mindful of Race Retreat: A Stimulus for Social Healing and Leadership and the Mindfulness Practices for Living Well course. She is the founder of Mindful Members, a meditation practice community in Charlotte, N.C., where she resides. http://www.ruthking.net
John Kiser	John Kiser is the author of five books, all of a rather contrarian flavor, including Communist Entrepreneurs: Unknown Innovators, The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith Love and Terror in Algeria, and most recently, Commander of the Faithful: A Story of True Jihad. Commander is an account of the life of Emir Abd el-Kader, a warrior, statesman, scholar who combined deep religious faith with chivalrous humanism and intellectual openness, which made him a hero in both the East and West. It is the third book of an Abrahamic trilogy that began unwittingly with Stefan Zweig: Death of a Modern Man. John Kiser is a former international technology broker. He has an M.A. from Columbia University in European History and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He lives in Virginia with his family. www.johnwkiser.com
Dr. David Korten	Dr. David Korten is the author of Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth; Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth; The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism; and the international best-sellers When Corporations Rule the World; and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, president of the Living Economies Forum, a board member of Toward Ecological Civilization, a full member of the Club of Rome, and an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He earned MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. https://davidkorten.org/
Swami Kripalu	Swami Kripalu was born in Gujarat, India and spent his life in that area except for four years in the U.S., from 1977-1981. The Kripalu Center in Massachusetts is his namesake and Kripalu Yoga is practiced the world over. Kripalu had many talents and interests. He was an accomplished musician and composer, playwright, poet, orator, storyteller, writer, and more. He was also a great lover of God and people. He was filled with life, love and humor and was deeply loved by his devotees. He was a student and teacher of love. He said that for every problem, love is the answer. He said that yoga is love. If so, then he is its best example. https://kripalu.org
Jiddu Krishnamurti	Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in the village of Madanapalle in the south of British India in 1895. As a young boy, he was identified by theosophists Charles Webster Leadbeater and Annie Besant as the Theosophical Society’s expected World Teacher. They directed Krishnamurti’s education. They first took Krishnamurti with them to Europe in 1911, when the Order of the Star was formed to support his work. Following the death of his brother in 1922, Krishnamurti began to find his own voice. In 1929, he dissolved the Order of the Star, returning all the money that had been raised for him, and became an independent teacher. For the next 50 or more years, based at home in Ojai, California, he lectured around the world, reminding people constantly that we are human beings first, not a nationality, caste, religion, or any other divisive identity. Krishnamurti also cautioned his followers to care for the environment. His books include The First and Last Freedom, The Only Revolution, The Book of Life, and many more. Krishnamurti purposely left behind only a large archive of talks and writings, but no successors to continue his work after his death in 1986. https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/
Tito La Rosa	Tito La Rosa, a descendent of the Quechua Indians of the Peruvian Andes, has spent more than a decade recovering and preserving, studying and intuiting the ancestral music of Peru. Tito is a curandero de sonido—a sound healer. When performing ritual and ceremony for healing, he enters into parallel worlds to bring forth sound that elevates the vibration of an individual and allows for healing and balance to occur. Tito was asked by the Peruvian Institute of Culture to play two-thousand-year-old instruments at the Museum of the Lord of Sipan to reinvent the sounds these instruments made. In recreating the sounds of this culture that had disappeared into time, Tito stated, “Time, like death, is a lie.” http://www.anandaashram.org
Colette Lafia	Colette Lafia is a San Francisco-based writer, spiritual director, and retreat leader. A graduate of the Spiritual Directors’ Institute at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, Colette recently completed the Living School program in the Christian contemplative and mystical traditions guided by Fr. Richard Rohr, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, and Dr. James Finley.    Colette has a passion for helping people connect more deeply with the presence of the sacred in daily life. She designs and facilitates workshops and retreats for an international audience, has an active practice as a spiritual director, and is an adjunct faculty member at Mercy Center.    Colette Lafia is the author of Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others (Conari Press, 2008), named one of the best spiritual books of the year, and Seeking Surrender: How My Friendship with a Trappist Monk Taught Me to Trust and Embrace Life (Sorin Books/Ave Maria Press, 2015).   http://www.colettelafia.com
Lakshmi	Lakshmi, born Shanna Paice in 1980, is a disciple of Mooji and his personal assistant. She lives at Mooji’s ashram, Monte Sahaja, in southern Portugal. Her initial encounter with Mooji took place at a satsang in Brixton, London, in 2007; since then, she has accompanied him on all of his tours and is instrumental in shaping the ashram’s life.
Gail Larsen	Gail Larsen has led a life of sufficient adventure to behoove her to learn to pray, with a path informed by studies in shamanism and angel guidance. She is the founder of Real Speaking® and author of Transformational Speaking: If You Want to Change the World, Tell a Better Story. She lives in Santa Fe, N.M. http://www.realspeaking.com
Carolyn Lee	Carolyn Lee, an Australian native, is a former senior lecturer in music in the National University of Ireland, which is where she met Adi Da in 1985 and became his devotee. She has been publishing Adi Da’s teachings and chronicling his life and work in her own books ever since.
Stephen Levine	Stephen Levine was the bestselling author of many books. With his wife Ondrea, he counseled terminally ill people and their loved ones for than 30 years. His renowned work in grief counseling inspired radio segments and interviews as well as magazine articles including pieces in O: The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today and the Utne Reader. He and Ondrea lived for many years in the mountains of New Mexico, where Ondrea still lives today. http://levinetalks.com
Atma Jo Ann Levitt	Atma Jo Ann Levitt, MA, RN, is a Certified Healing Touch practitioner and has been a faculty member at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health for more than 30 years. She designed and taught many of Kripalu’s original personal growth programs, led the annual year-end chanting celebration (saptah) for more than 20 years, and studied with Swami Kripalu when he visited the United States. She compiled Swami Kripalu’s biography and teachings in the book Pilgrim of Love. A nurse and Healing Touch therapist, she currently teaches R&R retreat workshops and frequently offers kirtan, continuous chanting, and meditation at Kripalu. In addition to Pilgrim of Love, she has written the Kripalu Cookbook, Sounds of the Sacred: Chants of Love and Prayer, and with her brother and sister, Sibling Revelry: 8 Steps to Successful Adult Sibling Relationships. www.kripalu.org
Robin Lim	Robin Lim, CPM, was born in 1956, the offspring of a Filipino-Chinese woman and a German, Irish, Native American man. Together, her parents built a bridge of love across cultures. She now lives in Indonesia, where she is called “Ibu Robin” (Mother Robin). Lim is a certified professional midwife with the North American Registry of Midwives and Ikatan Bidan Indonesia. She devotes her life to Yayasan Bumi Sehat, a not-for-profit organization with clinics in Bali and Aceh. Along with receiving babies into the world, Ibu Robin is a doula and the author of several books on childbirth, in both English and Bahasa Indonesia. Her book of poetry, The Geometry of Splitting Souls, was released by Blue Light Press/!st World Library. Robin’s two new books have been released in the Philippines: Butterfly People, a novel, and Placenta… the Forgotten Chakra, which promises to make gentle birth more gentle. Robin’s support and inspiration is her family—her husband Wil and their eight astounding children. She is Lola for three grandchildren: Zhòuie, Bodhi and Tashi. In 2006 Ibu Robin received the Alexander Langer Peace Award in Italy. In 2011 she was named CNN Hero of the Year for her work in maternal and child health in Indonesia and disaster zones. Her religion is Gratitude. http://iburobin.com/
Toinette Lippe	Born in London, Toinette Lippe had a long and distinguished career at Alfred A. Knopf. In 1989 she founded Bell Tower, where she published seventy books that nourished the soul, illuminated the mind, and spoke directly to the heart. Her first book, Nothing Left Over: A Plain and Simple Life was published in 2002. After fifty years in publishing, Toinette abandoned editorial work and devotes herself to East Asian brush painting, which she has taught at the Educational Alliance for four years and now teaches on the Upper West Side of New York City. Gunilla Norris’s book of days, On the Wing: Lyrical Moments, was illustrated with Toinette’s paintings of hummingbirds, and published in 2016. www.toinettelippe.com
Jennifer Berit Listug	Jennifer Berit Listug works in book publishing as a private consultant for authors assisting with manuscript editing and book publicity. She is also the co-director of Wild Awakenings, an adult Rites of Passage organization dedicated to fostering the thriving of Earth, life, and humanity. Jennifer was on the board of trustees at the Unity in Marin Spiritual Community for three years, serving as the board president for 18 months. Also at Unity in Marin, Jennifer was a guest speaker for Sunday mornings, led Rites of Passage groups for teenagers, and founded a young adult interfaith group committed to conscious connection, community service, and social activism. She is a passionate hiker, reader, writer, and public speaker. http://wildawakenings.com
Mark Longhurst	Mark Longhurst is a writer and “ordinary mystic.” He is a member of the new monastic “Community of the Incarnation” and works as the Publications Manager at the Center for Action and Contemplation. A former pastor, he served United Church of Christ churches for ten years and worked as a faith-based social justice activist in the Boston area for ten more. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, and a longtime yoga-practitioner, he runs two Substack newsletters at marklonghurst.substack.com. Mark lives in western Massachusetts with his family.
Arvol Looking Horse	Chief Arvol Looking Horse was born on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota in 1954. At the age of twelve he was given the enormous responsibility of becoming the nineteenth-generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe. He was raised in an era that gave witness to the suppression of his peoples spiritual practices. He says he decided to “work for change and let the world know how beautiful our way of life is, so the Seventh Generation can have a better life.” His life has revolved around his commitment to work towards religious freedom and cultural survival and revival.
John Daido Loori	Born to a Catholic family in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1931, John Daido Loori forged a birth certificate when he was 16 years old so that he could join the U.S. Navy, and served on an aircraft carrier from 1947 to 1952. Daido’s serious study of Zen began in 1974 with Soen Nakagawa Roshi and Eido Shimano in New York and continued in Los Angeles with Taizan Maezumi Roshi, who made him a priest in 1983 and gave him Dharma Transmission in 1986. After acquiring a large Catholic monastery in 1980 on 230 acres of land in Mt. Tremper, New York, Daido and Maezumi Roshi established Zen Mountain Monastery, and Daido founded the Mountains and Rivers Order. Daido died at Mt. Tremper in 2009 from lung cancer. Zen Mountain Monastery and Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn, New York, continue to operate under the leadership of his successors. https://zmm.org
Chelsea MacMillan	Chelsea MacMillan is a minister for the spiritual-but-not-religious, writer, activist, and co-founder of Brooklyn Center for Sacred Activism in New York City. http://chelseamacmillan.com
Barry Magid	Barry Magid, born in 1949, is a Zen teacher, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst committed to the integration of psychodynamic psychotherapy and Zen. He founded and teaches at the Ordinary Mind Zendo in New York City. He is a Dharma heir of Charlotte Joko Beck, and his own Dharma heirs include Claire Slemmer. https://www.ordinarymind.com
Peter Makena	Peter Makena learned with Sufi teachers the use of the voice in songs, chants and prayer. Today, Peter leads singing groups and facilitates countless gatherings, joining people in song and prayer to create “meetings of the heart.” The greatest influences on his work with voice and presence were Sufi meditations and chants, as well as Indian kirtan and ghazal-style songs. For four years Peter led daily singing groups in a meditation ashram in India. He lives in northern California and is on tour at yoga and meditation centers, music festivals and meditation retreats throughout the United States and in Europe. Peter has published nine CDs of his music. http://www.makenasinging.com/
Trevor Malkinson	Trevor Malkinson grew up in Victoria, B.C., Canada, and completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at the University of Victoria and a graduate degree in philosophy at Brock University. He is currently working on a Masters of Divinity at Vancouver School of Theology, and is training to be a minister in the United Church of Canada. http://www.beamsandstruts.com
Brigitte Mars	Brigitte Mars is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild and has worked with natural medicine as a nutritional consultant for over 40 years. She teaches herbal medicine at Naropa University, Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition, the School of Natural Medicine and Just for Health School of Herbalism. She has taught at Omega Institute, Esalen, Kripalu and the Mayo Clinic. She blogs for the Huffington Post and Care2. Brigitte is the author of fourteen books, including The Country Almanac of Home Remedies, The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine, Beauty by Nature, Addiction Free Naturally, The Sexual Herbal, Healing Herbal Teas and Rawsome!. Her latest project is a phone app called IPlant. http://www.brigittemars.com/
Rainbeau Mars	Rainbeau Mars uses literature, song, theatrical expression and activism to spread knowledge, power and inspiration throughout the world. She has made a variety of cinematic appearances, taken community leadership roles and been involved with literary features. Since writing her first book, 28 Days to Your Superstar Glow, she has been striving to express and create. Through these outlets, her true passion and purpose becomes transparent. Her journey is an invitation to all who desire expansion and transformation mentally, physically and spiritually. In the name of health and happiness, her dedication to service is an offering of empowerment and fulfillment. http://www.rainbeaumars.com/
Mark Matousek	Mark Matousek is a bestselling author, teacher, and speaker whose work focuses on personal awakening and creative excellence through transformational writing and self-inquiry. He brings over three decades of experience as a memoirist, editor, interviewer, survivor, activist, and spiritual seeker to his penetrating and thought-provoking work. Mark Matousek is the author of seven books including, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story, The Boy He Left Behind, and When You’re Falling, Dive. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, Details, Tricycle, Good Housekeeping, and Harper’s Bazaar. https://markmatousek.com
David McCallum	David McCallum, S.J. is a Jesuit priest, educator and spiritual director. He has a doctorate in adult learning and leadership from Columbia University and works in the area of adult spiritual maturation, leadership and organizational development and mission integration. Currently, he serves as the chief mission officer of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y.
Michael N. McGregor	Michael N. McGregor is an author and former professor of creative writing whose first book, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax, was a finalist for the Religion Newswriters Association’s Book of the Year. The American Association of University Publishers named Pure Act one of its top ten books in American Studies for libraries and it is now available in over 1,100 libraries around the world. The New York Times Book Review described it as “vivid and engaging,” and the Oregonian called it “deeply satisfying.” McGregor has been a guest on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Think Out Loud.” He has also recorded podcast segments for Poetry magazine, City Lights Bookstore, Late Night Library, and Urban Roots. During his twenty-five years of university teaching, he received multiple outstanding teacher awards. He lives in Seattle. https://michaelnmcgregor.com
Terence McKenna	Terence McKenna was a scholar of shamanism, an ethno-botanist, psychedelic researcher, and author of many books including Food for the Gods and True Hallucinations. An innovative theoretician and spellbinding orator, Terence emerged as a powerful voice for the psychedelic movement. He died in 2000.
Father William Hart McNichols	William Hart McNichols has been “drawing and coloring in his room” since he was five years old. He was a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) from 1968 to 2002. He studied philosophy, theology and art at St. Louis University, Boston College, Boston University and Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. Father Bill furthered his art studies at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in 1977. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in Denver on May 25, 1979. In 1983 he received an MFA in landscape painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. From 1983 to 1990 he worked with the AIDS Hospice team of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, N.Y. During that time, he also illustrated twenty-five books, mostly children’s books, for the Paulist Press. In 1990, he moved to Albuquerque, N.M. to study the technique, history and spirituality of icon painting with Russian-American master painter Robert Lentz. Father Bill also assists with sacramental ministry in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M. In 2007, Father Bill began to work on the Publication Ministry of the Icons. In 2008 to 2009 his first icon exhibit, Silence of the Storm: Icons and Images, featuring twenty-six originals, was shown at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, N.M. Currently several originals and many reproductions of his work are on exhibit at Solstice Gallery in Taos, N.M. http://frbillmcnichols-sacredimages.com
Dunya Dianne McPherson	Dunya Dianne McPherson is an acclaimed authority and meditative leader and the founder and principal teacher of the healing movement system, Dancemeditation™, a path of breath and intuition. Dunya is a Juilliard graduate, Sufi Master and National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellow. Dunya’s teaching credits include Princeton University, Swarthmore College, New York University, Barnard College, New York Open Center, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Netherlands Mystik Festival. Dunya holds a Master’s in writing and is the author of Skin of Glass: Finding Spirit in the Flesh, a memoir about dance as a spiritual path. http://www.dancemeditation.org/
Netanel Miles-Yépez	Netanel Miles-Yépez is an artist and religious scholar. Born into a Mexican-American family, in his late teens, Miles-Yépez discovered his family’s hidden Jewish roots and began to explore Judaism and other religions seriously. He teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Naropa. http://netanelmy.com
Dr. Robert Millet	Dr. Robert L. Millet is Professor of Religious Education, Outreach, and Interfaith Relations at Bringham Young University in Provo, Utah. Before joining the BYU Religion faculty in 1983, Professor Millet received his bachelors and masters degrees from BYU in Psychology and his Ph.D. from Florida State University in Religious Studies. Since being at BYU he has served as chair of the department of Ancient Scripture, dean of Religious Education, and Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding. He is the author of over 50 books and 150 articles, dealing mostly with the doctrine and history of the LDS Church and its relation to the other faiths. He and his wife Shauna are the parents of six children and reside in Orem, Utah.
Dan Millman	Dan Millman, a former world champion athlete, coach, martial arts instructor and college professor, is the author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior (adapted to film in 2006) and fifteen other books read by millions of people in twenty-nine languages. Dan teaches worldwide and has influenced people from all walks of life, including leaders in the fields of health, psychology, education, business, politics, sports, entertainment and the arts. http://www.peacefulwarrior.com
Dr. Arnold Mindell	Dr. Arnold Mindell is best known for his development and application of Process Work and for the 20 books that he has written and published on the subject. He is one of the founding members of the Process Work Institute in Portland, Ore., and the Research Society for Process Oriented Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. Along with his wife, Amy Mindell, he offers extensive teaching, training, facilitation and consultation in Process Work, which is a wide-spectrum approach to individual, organizational and global problems. Arnold is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and an international teacher, trainer, facilitator and advisor. He also works in private practice as a therapist in Portland, Ore., and he is an avid researcher, skier, runner and hiker. http://www.aamindell.net
Marsha Mirkin	Marsha Mirkin, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist, is a Professor of Psychology at Lasell College. The ideas for this book are drawn from courses and workshops she has taught in many settings on psychological interpretations and the contemporary relevance of the Bible. Prior to teaching at Lasell College, Dr. Mirkin was a resident scholar at Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. She has held appointments at Harvard Medical School and Boston University School of Medicine, and has been on the faculty of the Jean Baker Miller Institute at Wellesley College.
Rev. Dr. Devaa Haley Mitchell	Rev. Dr. Devaa Haley Mitchell is a transformational leader who supports people to reconnect with their spiritual depths, unleash their leadership gifts and step into their full potential. She is cofounder of the Shift Network and founder of the Inspiring Women Summit, a community of over 70,000 women from more than one hundred and sixty countries. Through the Soulful Women Wisdom School, she offers deeply experiential and transformative programs that guide hundreds of women to connect more deeply with spirit. As a musician, Devaa fuses East and West with sensuous, danceable tunes. Her debut album, Sacred Alchemy, aims to reawaken and liberate the many dimensions of the sacred feminine. http://www.devaa.com
N. Scott Momaday	N. Scott Momaday was born in 1934 in Lawton, Okla., to a Kiowa father and Cherokee/mixed-blood mother. In the course of his career, he has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Academy of American Poets Prize, the National Medal of Arts and the Premio Letterario Internazionale Mondello, Italy’s highest literary honor. Momaday lives in Santa Fe, N.M.
Swan A. Montague	Rev. Dr. Swan (Sahra Renata) is an author, poet and artist, a visionary and a mystic, with an M.A. in spiritual philosophy and a Ph.D. in metaphysics. She is an initiate of the highest ancient mystery schools and an extraordinary healer who is able to merge her consciousness with many dimensions and realities. Her divine sacred wall-hangings, known as Temple Veils, are made from antique eastern silks, jewels and crystals. She writes sacred poetry about divine mystery and love, shortly available on CD. She is author of the quartet The Book of Sahra, Jesus’ Secret Wife and Poems of the Golden Rose. http://www.bookofsahra.com
Mooji	Mooji, born Anthony Paul Moo-Young in 1954 in Jamaica, is an Advaita Zen Master who teaches self-inquiry and nonduality. He lives with a large group of his students at his ashram, Monte Sahaja, in southern Portugal. His teacher was H.W.L. Poonja, and Lakshmi is one of his students. https://mooji.org/
Victoria Moran	Victoria Moran is a longtime devotee of yoga and author of 13 previous books on wellbeing, compassionate living, and eclectic spirituality. Creating a Charmed Life was an international bestseller, and Shelter for the Spirit and Lit from Within earned her spots on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Victoria hosts the Main Street Vegan Podcast, is founder and director of Main Street Vegan Academy, and a cofounder of the Compassion Consortium, an interfaith spiritual center based on the principle of ahimsa. She was, at age 66, voted Peta's Sexiest Vegan Over 50 and in her early 70s trained as a yoga instructor (RYT-200) and raja yoga instructor. Victoria is a frequent speaker and podcast guest, based in New York City. http://www.victoriamoran
Mother Serena	Mother Serena, who was born Gladys Miller in New York in 1894, was an astrologer and healer. For over 60 years, at the chapel she created in her Upper West Side brownstone in New York City, she gave a noontime healing service every day but Sunday for the peace and wellbeing of the world, and requested help for a long list of people. Her husband, George Winslow Plummer, headed Societas Rosecruciana, a branch of Rosicrucians that opened to women members in 1916. Dr. Plummer affiliated the group with an esoteric branch of the Orthodox Church and became a bishop in the church. The couple traveled extensively, filling their house with water and earth samples from holy places. After Dr. Plummer died in 1944, Mother Serena married the next head of the church, Stanislaus deWitow; when he died, she became the church’s leader. She corresponded with students from around the world on astrological and spiritual matters. In 1980, she was consecrated as a bishop. Mother Serena died in 1989.
Mother Teresa	St. Teresa of Calcutta was born Agnes Bojaxhiu in 1910 to an Albanian Catholic family in Skopje, Macedonia. At 18, she joined the Loreto Sisters of Dublin in Ireland. After her novitiate in Darjeeling, India, she taught at a Catholic high school for girls in Calcutta, and in 1937 took her final vows. She went on to become the school’s principal, before leaving in 1946 to answer a second calling to serve the poorest of Calcutta. In 1950, she founded Missionaries of Charity with 12 members. Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s she established an orphanage, leper colony, nursing home, and health clinics. In 1971, she opened the first American House of Charity in New York. She was awarded the Jewel of India and the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in “bringing help to suffering humanity.” When she died in 1997, there were 4,000 Missionaries of Charity sisters and 610 foundations in 123 countries worldwide. Mother Teresa was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016. http://www.motherteresa.org
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen	Bawa Muhaiyaddeen was a Sri Lankan Sufi mystic who taught Hindu, Muslim, and Christian students. In the 1940s, some pilgrims encountered him as an old man in a forest and invited him to their village, where he began attracting students. Later, he met a Westerner who brought him to Philadelphia in 1971. In 1973, a group of Guru Bawa’s Philadelphia students formed the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship; the mosque they built together has operated since 1984, and fellowship groups were also established in Sri Lanka, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Guru Bawa wrote 25 books and recorded 10,000 hours of video and audio. Although very little is known about his background, it is believed that he was well over 100 years old when he died in 1986. http://www.bmf.org/
Caroline Muir	Caroline Muir is the co-author of Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving. Originally published in 1989, it has sold 130,000 copies and been translated into nine languages. Her work has been featured in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, Yoga Journal, Elle, Glamour, and Esquire. She founded Divine Feminine Awakening and works privately with woman and couples who wish to bring conscious sexuality to their relationships and to life. She resides in northern Nevada. www.divine-feminine.com
Swami Muktananda	Swami Muktananda was born Krishna Rau in 1908 in Karnataka State, India. At age 15, he met Bhagavan Nityananda. He traveled through India on foot and studied for 20 years before meeting Nityananda again and receiving shaktipat initiation from him. In 1956 Nityananda gave him land near Mumbai, where Swami Muktananda built an ashram. He led the first Shaktipat Intensive in 1974 in Aspen, Colorado, founded the Siddha Yoga Ashram in Oakland, California in 1975, and the Shree Muktananda Ashram (originally named Shree Nityananda Ashram) in upstate New York in 1979. He traveled extensively and wrote many books, including his spiritual autobiography, Play of Consciousness (1978). He died in 1982, having established hundreds of ashrams and meditation centers around the world. https://www.siddhayoga.org/
John Mundahl	John Mundahl, compiler and editor, was a resident at the original Kripalu Yoga Ashram from 1977–1981, the four years of Swami Kripalu’s stay in America. He is currently an author, retired school teacher, returned Peace Corps volunteer, yoga instructor, and Ayurvedic healer. His published work includes, Tales of Courage, Tales of Dreams, a collection of short stories.
Michael Murphy	Michael Murphy was born in 1930 in Salinas, California. He earned a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1952. After military service, he returned to Stanford for a short time for postgraduate studies, then left in 1956 to spend 18 months in India at the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, which shaped his ideas about humanity and the direction of his future work in the field of transformational energy. Back in San Francisco, he lived at the Aurobindo Fellowship, where he met Dick Price. Together, they founded Esalen Institute in 1962 on the Murphy family’s land in Big Sur. Murphy ran Esalen as an educational center until 1972, when he retired to write. In the 1980s, he organized the Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program in citizen diplomacy. His book Golf in the Kingdom, a fable about a golf game with a wizard, was published in 1971 and made into a movie in 2010.
Millard Murphy	Millard Murphy was a founding member of the intentional community La Tierra in Sebastopol, Calif., where he has lived since 1989. He has been a practicing lawyer and law school professor since 1986 in the arena of civil and human rights for prisoners, teaching law students how to provide legal services to prisoners in civil rights matters. Born in Los Angeles, he has remained close to home in California with his wife, Laurel, of thirty-two years, and his thirty-one-year-old son lives nearby.
Ravi Nathwani	Ravi Nathwani was born in East Africa and raised in India in the Hindu tradition. He lectures and leads workshops on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita for Yoga Teacher Trainings in the United States and Mexico. Ravi has taught at Tufts University since 1998, and also teaches at the College of Marin and JFK University in California. He also leads satsangs, meditation groups and workshops on a variety of Vedic/Yoga topics. Ravi has an MBA from Boston University and has lived in Bombay, London, Boston, San Francisco and Mexico.
Jacob Needleman	Jacob Needleman is Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, former Visiting Professor at Duxx Graduate School of Business Leadership in Monterrey, Mexico, and former Director of the Center for the study of New Religions at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He was educated in philosophy at Harvard, Yale and the University of Freiburg, Germany. He has also served as Research Associate at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, as a Research Fellow at Union Theological Seminary, as Adjunct Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of California Medical School and as guest Professor of Religious Studies at the Sorbonne, Paris (1992). In addition to his teaching and writing, he serves as a consultant in the fields of business, psychology, education, medical ethics and philanthropy, and is increasingly well known as an organizer and moderator of conferences in these fields. He has been featured on Bill Moyers' acclaimed PBS series, "A World of Ideas." www.jacobneedleman.com
Julie Seido Nelson	Julie Seido Nelson is a transmitted teacher (Sensei) in the Maezumi Roshi Zen lineage. Her home Zen community is the Greater Boston Zen Center, a sangha which has experienced three major upheavals due to teacher arrogance and abuses of power over the last several years. She is also a teacher at the Great Plains Zen Center in Monroe, Wisconsin. She has written for popular Buddhist audiences in Tricycle magazine and on her blog. Her Zen talks have been published in the Greater Boston Zen Center podcast series. She is now a professor emeritus after a career in research and teaching. Nelson is the author of Economics for Humans (University of Chicago Press) as well as many academic books, book chapters and articles published by Oxford University Press, Routledge, Springer, Blackwell, and others. Having begun Zen practice in 2004, she has found it to be of immense value. She is deeply saddened when people, either in addition to or instead of realizing the benefits, suffer great harm.
Hella Neumann	Hella Neumann earned her Master’s in art and education from the University of Berlin. In 1975 she founded Atelier Unterm Dach Art School in Germany, and directed the school for eighteen years. Her work included meditation, art therapy, bio-energetics and the biodynamic massage of Gerda Boyesen, London. In 1994 she began intensive study of systemic constellation work in Germany with the founder Bert Hellinger. She began her own constellation work in 1997 under the name “Songs of the Ancestors,” leading family constellation workshops, doing private constellations and training facilitators. She attends the national and international conferences in Germany and the United States. http://www.songsoftheancestors.com
Wallace J. Nichols	Dr. Wallace J. Nichols was a research associate at California Academy of Sciences. He earned his Bachelors in biology and Spanish from DePauw University, an MEM in environmental policy and economics from Duke University and a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona. Dr. Nichols has authored over one hundred scientific publications and reports on ocean conservation science, mentors a motivated group of international graduate students and advises numerous boards and committees as part of a commitment to building a stronger, more progressive, connected environmental community. He created BlueMind, bringing neuroscience to our understanding of the benefits of healthy waterway in our lives and authored a book on the subject with Little, Brown & Company. He lived on California’s SLOWCOAST with his family. http://www.wallacejnichols.org
Gudo Wafu Nishijima	Gudo Wafu Nishijima was a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest who began practicing zazen as a teenager. He is the author of several books on Zen Buddhism in Japanese and English. He is also a notable translator of Buddhist texts. Working with chodo Cross, Nishijima compiled one of the three complete English versions of Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Nishijima was ordained as a priest by the late Master Rempo Niwa, who was head of the Soto Sect in Japan. During the 1960s, Nishijima began giving regular public lectures on Buddhism and Zen meditation. He taught in English and Japanese for four decades. In 2005 he retired from lecturing and devoted his time to writing and publishing a blog about Buddhism. He died in 2014.
Gunilla Norris	Gunilla Norris grew up in Argentina, Sweden, and the U.S. A psychotherapist in private practice for more than forty years, she has been privileged to accompany many people on journeys to growth and healing. As a writer she has published eleven children’s books, two books of poetry, and six books on spirituality, most notably, Being Home: Discovering the Spiritual in the Everyday (Harmony Books), in 1991. She continues to write.
James O’Dea	James O’Dea is the award-winning author of Cultivating Peace, Creative Stress and other works, and the lead faculty for the Shift Network’s acclaimed Peace Ambassador Training program. He has conducted frontline social-healing dialogues for many years. James is the former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Washington, D.C., a past office director of Amnesty International and the former CEO of the Seva Foundation. He offers consulting and leadership intensives at his mountain home in Crestone, Colo. http://www.jamesodea.com
Christa J. Obuchowski	Christa J. Obuchowski is a traditional naturopath, botanical perfumer, distiller and educator. In 1994, Christa founded the AromaBotanica Institute in Santa Fe, N.M. She teaches classes on plant medicine, the art of perfume-making and self-care. Growing up in Germany, Christa was first introduced to plants at a young age, helping her grandfather make plant medicines, tinctures and sauerkraut. She studied aromatherapy, plant medicine and distillation with leading authorities in the field. Among her varied experiences are biodynamic gardening and studying with Mayan healers in Belize. She travels the world to learn about plants, extracts, scent and incense. http://www.christajobuchowski.com
Joran Slane Oppelt	Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner and founder of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and Integral Church—an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay, Florida. Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow, and co-author of Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories and Integral Church: An Interfaith Handbook of Ceremonies and Rituals. He serves as president of Interfaith Tampa Bay, chaplain emeritus at Unity Spiritual Campus, and ambassador of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. He has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion. https://joranslane.wordpress.com/
Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi	Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi, affectionately known as Sheikh Muzaffer Effendi, was born in 1916 in Istanbul, Turkey. His father was an Islamic scholar and a teacher in the court of Sultan Abdul Hamid. His mother, Ayesha Hanum, was a member of the Ozak family, believed to have descended from the Prophet’s grandson. When Sheikh Effendi was six years old, his father died, and a family friend and Sufi sheikh took over his spiritual education. Eventually, Sheikh Effendi became an imam, preaching in 42 mosques in Istanbul, including the famous Sultan Ahmed Blue Mosque. He joined the dervishes of the 400-yearold Pir Nureddin Jerrahi lineage, and became its head in 1965. He made many trips to Europe, and visited America 13 times, starting in 1978, when he was interviewed on “In the Spirit.” Sheikh Effendi wrote many books in Turkish and English. His first book in English was The Unveiling of Love (1981). He died in 1985.
Richard Packham	Richard Packham was born into a devout Mormon family and was raised in that religion. He married his Mormon high school sweetheart, graduated from Brigham Young University and began to raise a family. In his late twenties, as a graduate student, he began to question Mormon claims, and after three years of research he came to the conclusion that those claims were false. His leaving the Mormon Church led to his wife divorcing him. After studying many other religions, Richard came to the conclusion that their supernatural claims were false, although many had useful and humane teachings that could prove to be valuable guides for life. He realized then that he was an atheist. In 2001, he founded the Exmormon Foundation, which helps to disseminate more accurate information about Mormonism than is usually available from official Mormon sources. He spent his professional life as a college teacher, mostly in San Francisco, teaching foreign languages and computer science. He also holds a law degree and has practiced law. He is now retired and lives on a ranch in Oregon, raising timber and cattle with his present wife of forty years. He is also active in the online ex-Mormon community. http://www.packham.n4m.org
Waduda Paradiso	Cofounder of New Earth Records, Waduda studied psychology at the University of Rome, where she became a regular contributor to the hugely popular Radio Donna, Italy’s first and only feminist radio station. She gives ongoing seminars and lectures on the subject of hypnosis and meditation for transformation and contributes regularly to various Italian magazines on the subjects of wellness, music and Eastern philosophy. She lives in the wilderness of Northern New Mexico with her beloved Bhikkhu, and travels to India and around the world regularly. http://www.newearthrecords.com
Kristal Parks	For two years, Kristal Parks lived as a hermit in the intimate embrace of a forest and what she learned there guides her vision. Also, she was a human shield for disappearing Mayans during Guatemala’s civil war; volunteered in refugee camps in South East Asia; helped end apartheid in South Africa; was imprisoned for nonviolent peace actions; and participated with Ecuadorian tribes to protect the Amazon Rainforest. In 2005, Kristal founded Pachyderm Power! Love in Action for Elephants which worked to stop elephant genocide in Kenya for 10 years. Her pivotal efforts there successfully created an army of over 1,000 young people impassioned to save the elephant nation. Additionally, she (with many others) helped end the use of elephants by the Ringling Bros. Circus. Kristal weaves a tapestry of justice woven from various shades, hues, and textures of interconnected liberation movements. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in biology and a Master’s in justice, peace and social transformation. http://www.kristalparks.com
Terry Patten	Terry Patten, born in 1960, is an American integral philosopher, activist, spiritual teacher, author, coach and consultant, founder of Integral Spiritual Practice and the founder and host of the podcast Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice. With Ken Wilber and a core team, he co-authored the book Integral Life Practice: A 21st Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. He spent fifteen years as a student of Adi Da. https://www.terrypatten.com
Robert Peng	Robert Peng is the founder of Elixir Light Qigong. He began his qigong apprenticeship with the legendary monk Xiao Yao when he was a boy. As part of his training he did a hundred-day water fast in a dark, underground chamber. From this experience Peng developed the ability to discharge a powerful, concentrated form of Qi (“bioenergy”) that feels like a strong electric current. Today he uses this extraordinary power to heal and inspire. Peng teaches internationally, is the author of The Master Key: The Qigong Way to Unlock Your Hidden Power and producer of The Master Key Companion CD and DVD series. http://www.robertpeng.com
Claudia Picardi	Claudia Picardi lives and works in Torino, Italy, where she is a researcher and teaching assistant at the local university. She has always been fascinated by the workings of the human mind, which brought her first to a Ph.D. in computer science and artificial intelligence, then to study Buddhist meditation, and finally to a long personal and spiritual journey with transpersonal psychology. In 2012, she earned a Master in Transpersonal Psychology from former ITP, now Sofia University, in California, where she first learned about Creation Spirituality. She has a passion for stories, myths, and fairy tales as mysterious and wondrous sources of revelations on the soul and the Cosmos. Creative expression and being in nature are her favorite meditation practices. Since 2016, she has acted as vice-president of the Italian Association for Creation Spirituality. http://www.di.unito.it/~picardi
Tom Pinkson	Tom Pinkson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, musician, ceremonial retreat and vision-fast leader and sacred storyteller who helped start the first at-home hospice in the United States, then worked with terminally ill children at the Center for Attitudinal Healing in California for thirty-two years. His new book, Fruitful Aging: Finding the Gold in the Golden Years, is about meeting the challenges of aging in a skillful manner, growing this time of life into the richest and most rewarding time of all. Tom is a bridge builder, translating indigenous wisdom ways to help people wake up and connect to deeper, authentic being, exploring how to live, love and work from the holy place of soul. http://www.drtompinkson.com/
Aaron Posner	Aaron Posner is a theater director, teacher, and playwright. His adaptations of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev have had more than 100 productions, both in the United States and abroad. His other plays and adaptations include Stupid Fucking Bird, Life Sucks, No Sisters, District Merchants, JQA, and Sometimes A Great Notion. He has directed at major regional theater companies throughout the United States. https://americanplayers.org
Chaim Potok	Chaim Potok (1929-2002) is the author of nine novels, including The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev, Davita’s Harp, and I Am the Clay. He also wrote fiction for young adults (Zebra and Other Stories), children’s books (The Tree of Here and The Sky of Now), a collection of novellas (Old Men at Midnight), biographies of Isaac Stern and Vladimir Slepak, and Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews, along with numerous essays and short stories. An ordained rabbi, he served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Korea. The Collected Plays of Chaim Potok is the first volume of his plays to be published.
Rena Potok	Rena Potok is a writer, editor, and educator. Her articles, reviews, and poems have appeared in many publications, including Religion and Literature; The Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature; Borders, Exiles, Diasporas; and Contemporary Women Poets. She is the former senior acquisitions editor at the Jewish Publication Society, and is the editor of Hills of Spices: Poetry from the Bible as well as the 50th-anniversary critical edition of The Chosen by Chaim Potok. In 2017 she was a Fiction Fellow at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She teaches literature and writing at Villanova University.
Kristena Prater	Kristena Prater is a humanitarian activist and wellness consultant working with people to turn troubles into triumph. She believes in prayer as affirmation, which can be integrated into any religion. As the head of the Tessa Foundation, named in honor of Kristena’s daughter, who passed away in 2006, she has helped people in Tonga, Nepal, Guatemala, Colorado and New Mexico plant seeds of sustainable life. Her poems and articles have been published in various periodicals and she is currently working on a book and a screenplay. She is a mother of four and lives between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Aspen, Colorado. http://www.kristenaprater.com
Deva Premal & Miten	Deva Premal & Miten began their journey into love and music in 1990 when they met in India at the ashram of the controversial mystic, Osho. They see themselves as part of a 5,000-year-old tradition of mantra practice. Their worldwide concerts and bestselling albums have introduced millions to the benefits of chanting mantras from sacred Sanskrit texts. H.H. the Dalai Lama is known to use their music for his personal enjoyment and Rock icon Cher covered their famous adaption of the Gayatri Mantra on her Farewell Tour Movie. Eckhart Tolle says of their music, “…it is Pure Magic…!” http://www.devapremalmiten.com
Paul Quenon	Brother Paul Quenon, OCSO entered the Abbey of Gethsemani at 17. Thomas Merton was his novice master. Remarkable teachers and mentors furthered his development, such as John Eudes Bamberger, Dan Walsh, Flavian Burns, Pico Iyer, and Beatrice Bruteau. He studied theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and taught and lived at a monastery in Nigeria. He has played an active role in the International Thomas Merton Society for a half-century. His memoir, In Praise of the Useless Life, received a Catholic Press Award, and he has published ten books of poetry. Now in his eighties, he continues his life of choir, prayer meditation, and cooking at the monastery.
Jamal Rahman	Imam Jamal Rahman is a popular speaker on Islam, Sufi spirituality and interfaith relations. Cofounder and Muslim Sufi minister at Seattle’s Interfaith Community Sanctuary and adjunct faculty at Seattle University, Jamal travels nationally and internationally, presenting at retreats and workshops. He is the author of several books, including Spiritual Gems of Islam: Insights & Practices from the Qur’an, Hadith, Rumi & Muslim Teaching Stories to Enlighten the Heart & Mind. Since 9/11 Jamal has been collaborating with Rabbi Ted Falcon and Pastor Don Mackenzie. Affectionately known as the Interfaith Amigos, they tour the country sharing the message of spiritual inclusivity. http://www.jamalrahman.com
Theodore Richards	Theodore Richards is a poet, novelist, director and the founder of the Chicago Wisdom Project, as well as a core faculty member of The Fox Institute. The author of six books, including, most recently, The Great Re-imagining: Spirituality in an Age of Apocalypse, Richards is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including two Independent Publisher Awards, the USA Book Award, and the Nautilus Book Award. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters. https://theodorerichards.com
Dudjom Rinpoche	Dudjom Rinpoche was born in 1904 in the southeastern Tibetan province of Pemakö, one of the four hidden lands of Padmasabhava, and was considered a revealer of the treasures concealed there. As a Dzogchen master, he headed the ancient Nyingma lineage. He was also an astrologer, healer, poet, and scholar, and wrote several Tibetan histories. He left Tibet in 1958, establishing communities for Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal. In 1972, he visited London as the guest of Sogyal Rinpoche. He founded many Dharma centres in the West, including Dorje Nyingpo and Orgyen Samye Choling in France, and Yeshe Nyingpo and Orgyen Cho Dzong in the United States. Dudjom Rinpoche was a householder yogin. He married twice and had 10 children, many of whom are tulkus, including his son, Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche, a well-known Western teacher. Dudjom Rinpoche settled with his family in the Dordogne center, and died there in 1987. His body lies in a stupa at his monastery in Boudanath, Nepal.
Kalu Rinpoche	Kalu Rinpoche was born in 1905 in eastern Tibet. At age 15, he began studying at the Karma Kargyu Palpung Monastery. After 10 years there, he spent 15 years as a solitary yogi in the Tibetan forests. He returned to the monastery for final studies and began teaching in the 1940s. When forced into exile, he taught in India, attracting Western students, and eventually travelling to the West. He established the first Western three-year retreat center in France. During the 1970s, he introduced many Westerners to Tibetan Buddhism, founding centers in 12 countries and traveling to give teachings, empowerments and Refuge Vows. Kalu Rinpoche died in 1998 in his monastery in Sonada near Darjeeling, India. https://paldenshangpa.org
Carol Rocamora	Carol Rocamora is an educator, translator, playwright, director, and critic. She founded the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays at Annenberg Center, where she produced and directed three world-premiere plays by Chaim Potok. She is the author of seven books, and has served on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for the past 25 years. She is a member of the American Theater Critics Association, the Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk.
Broderick Rodell	Broderick Rodell’s role and mission as an educator is to develop learning systems that support humanity’s evolution towards the ultimate values of goodness, beauty, and truth. His approach targets the cultivation of multiple intelligences, including cognitive, emotional, moral, social, somatic, creative, and spiritual forms. He takes advantage of classical and contemporary ideas and tools from a broad spectrum of disciplines, including philosophy; psychology; biology; and yoga, a term that connotes the development of the whole being towards its full potential. He also utilizes capoeira, a Brazilian dance and martial art that employs the warrior’s spirit in developing discipline, creative expression, somatic intelligence, and community. Broderick offers these services to individuals and institutions via workshops, retreats, and ongoing public classes. http://broderickrodell.com
Richard Rohr	Richard Rohr is a globally-recognized ecumenical teacher, bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque. His teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy—practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized. He is academic dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation and the author of numerous books, including Everything Belongs, Adam’s Return, The Naked Now, Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, and The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. https://cac.org
Or N. Rose	Or N. Rose is the founding director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning and Leadership at Hebrew College in Newton, MA. Before assuming this position in 2016, he worked in various administrative and teaching capacities at Hebrew College. Rose has taught for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, The Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and in a variety of other academic, religious, and civic contexts throughout North America, and in Asia, Europe, and Israel. A prolific author and editor, his writings have appeared at MyJewishLearning, Religion News Service; The Times of Israel, Tikkun, The Washington Post, and various scholarly publications. He’s the author and editor of several books including a recent award-winner, With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps and Unexpected Learnings (Orbis 2023). hhttps://www.myjewishlearning.com/author/rabbi-or-rose/
Kim Rosen	Kim Rosen, MFA, is the author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words. In the darkest moment of her life, when psychological and spiritual teachings could not reach her, she found poetry. Now she combines her love of speaking poems with her background in spirituality and psychotherapy, offering poetry as a transformative agent for individuals and communities throughout the world. She is the co-creator of four CDs and her work has been featured in O, The Sun, The New Yorker and Spirituality & Health magazines, among other publications. https://www.kimrosen.net/about/
Peter Russell	Author and public speaker Peter Russell is recognized as one of the leading thinkers on consciousness and contemporary spirituality. His books include The Global Brain, Waking Up in Time and From Science to God, and his video, The Global Brain, won international acclaim. Peter believes that the critical challenge today is to free human thinking from the limited beliefs and attitudes that lie behind so many of our problems—personal, social and global. http://www.peterrussell.com
Regina Sara Ryan	Regina Sara Ryan, the author of Praying Dangerously and The Woman Awake, is a former Catholic nun, who has studied contemplation for over forty years. After leaving the convent in the early 1970s, Regina explored other religious traditions and was inspired by the lives of the great mystics and sages of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Sufism. Since meeting her own spiritual teacher, the Western Baul master Lee Lozowick, in 1984, Regina continues to follow what she calls a path of “unashamed devotion” in which she works to bring her life of contemplation into action. http://www.thewellspring.com
Myra Sack	Myra Sack graduated with a B.A in government and All-American Honors in 2010 from Dartmouth College, where she captained the women’s varsity soccer team. She earned a post-graduate Lombard Fellowship in Granada, Nicaragua with Soccer Without Borders. Following her lifelong passion for sports and social justice, Myra joined SquashBusters, Inc., in Boston in 2013, serving as their Chief Program and Strategy Officer. Myra has an MBA in Social Impact from Boston University and is trained as a Certified Compassionate Bereavement Care provider by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. She serves on the Board of the Courageous Parents Network and is the Founder of E-Motion, Inc., a non-profit organization with a mission to ensure community is a right for all grieving people. A writer, coach, and activist, Myra and her husband Matt, live in Jamaica Plain, MA with their second daughter, Kaia, and son Ezra. Myra’s oldest daughter, Havi, passed away on January 20, 2021 of Tay-Sachs disease. https://www.myrasack.com
Bruce Sanguin	Bruce Sanguin is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, having served congregations for the past twenty-seven years. Today he lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, writing, speaking, on the life and practice of evolutionary mysticism. He is the author of five books, including If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics, which won the IPPY gold medal award for the best spiritual book of 2012. His latest is The Advance of Love: Reading the Bible With An Evolutionary Heart. http://www.brucesanguin.com
Deborah Santana	Deborah Santana is an author, business manager, and activist for peace and social justice. She founded Do A Little, a nonprofit that serves women and girls in the areas of health, education, and happiness. In 2005, she published a memoir: Space Between the Stars. Deborah has produced five short documentary films, four with Emmy award winning director Barbara Rick: Road to Ingwavuma, Girls of Daraja, School of My Dreams, and Powerful Beyond Measure. These films highlight the work of nonprofit partners in South Africa, and Daraja Academy, a free secondary boarding school for girls in Kenya. Deborah holds a Master of Arts in philosophy and religion with a concentration in women’s spirituality. https://www.deborahsantana.com
Swami Satchidananda	Swami Satchidananda was born as Ramaswamy in 1914 in India. After losing his wife, he immersed himself in spiritual practices with Sri Ramana Maharishi, among other luminaries. In Rishikesh, he met his guru, Sri Swami Sivananda, who later sent him to serve in Sri Lanka, where filmmaker Conrad Rooks met him and invited him to the West. Pop artist Peter Max hosted Swami Satchidananda in New York in 1966, and helped convince him to stay in the United States. In 1969, after founding the first Integral Yoga center in New York, and as Integral Yoga centers were being established globally, Swami Satchidinanda opened the Woodstock music festival with a talk followed by meditative chanting. In 1979, he founded Integral Yoga’s headquarters at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville in Virginia; he built the Light Of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) to world peace there in 1986. As a humanitarian and pioneer of interfaith dialogue, Swami Satchidananda received many honors and awards, including the Juliet Hollister Award, the U Thant Peace Award and, posthumously, the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award. He died in 2002. https://swamisatchidananda.org/
Dana Sawyer	Dana Sawyer is professor emeritus of philosophy and world religions at Maine College of Art & Design in Portland. He frequently teaches at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and is author of many articles for Tricycle, Parabola, and Yoga Journal. In 2002, he published Aldous Huxley: A Biography (Crossroad Publishing). Subsequently, Sawyer was approached by Huston Smith to write his authorized biography, which came out as Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper (Fons Vitae Press, 2014) and was endorsed, on its back cover, by Jeffrey Kripal, Deepak Chopra, and H.H. the Dalai Lama
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi	Born in Poland in 1924 and raised in Vienna, Austria, Reb Zalman spent three years as a teenager running from the Nazis across Europe before landing in New York, where he entered the Lubavitch Yeshiva. He was ordained in 1947, and became one of the first Chabad outreach emissaries. He later received a doctorate in Hebrew Letters and taught in Canada and the U.S. He also studied with transpersonal psychologists and did LSD for the first time in 1962 after meeting Timothy Leary. His friends included Thomas Merton, the Dalai Lama, and Ken Wilber. He was also a friend of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who made him a sheikh in the Inayati Order, and he was likewise initiated by Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak of the Halveti-Jerrahi Order. He opened the rabbinate to women, was active in interreligious dialogue, and founded the Spiritual Eldering movement and ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. His many books include A Heart Afire: Stories and Teachings of the Early Hasidic Masters and From Age-Ing to Sage-Ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older. In 1995, Schachter-Shalomi moved to Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Eve Ilsen, to take the World Wisdom Chair at Naropa University, where he taught until 2004. He died in 2014. https://aleph.org
Nicki Scully	Nicki Scully has been teaching healing, shamanic arts and the Egyptian Mysteries since 1983. Techniques from her alchemical healing form are used internationally by thousands of practitioners. In the late 1980s, Nicki founded Shamanic Journeys, Ltd., which specializes in spiritual pilgrimages to Egypt, retreats and teleweb classes. Her latest book is Planetary Healing: Spirit Medicine for Global Transformation, which was co-written with her husband, Mark Hallert, and is part of a trilogy including Alchemical Healing: A Guide to Spiritual, Physical and Transformational Medicine and Power Animal Meditations. Nicki lives in Eugene, Ore., where she maintains a comprehensive healing and shamanic consulting practice. http://www.shamanicjourneys.com
Rabbi Rami Shapiro	Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro is one of the most creative voices in contemporary Judaism. He is an award-winning poet and essayist and his liturgies are used in prayer services throughout North America. He received rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, and holds a PH.D. from Union Graduate School. His previous books include Minyan, The Way of Solomon, Proverbs, and Hasidic Tales. www.rabbirami.com
Rupert Sheldrake	Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and the author of more than 80 scientific papers and twelve books. He has studied rain forest plants, developed a new cropping system widely used by farmers in the semi-arid tropics, and has done research on developmental and cell biology. He is best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance, a principle of memory in nature, according to which the so-called laws of nature are more like habits. He has also investigated unexplained aspects of animal behavior, including how pigeons find their way home, the telepathic abilities of dogs, cats and other animals, and the apparent abilities of animals to anticipate earthquakes and tsunamis. He subsequently studied similar phenomena in people, including the sense of being stared at, telepathy between mothers and babies, telepathy in connection with telephone calls, and premonitions. Although some of these areas overlap the field of parapsychology, he approaches them as a biologist, and bases his research on natural history and experiments under natural conditions, as opposed to laboratory studies. www.sheldrake.org
Joanne Shenandoah	Joanne Shenandoah, Ph.D., is one of America’s most celebrated and critically acclaimed musicians. She is a Grammy Award winner, with over forty music awards (including a record thirteen Native American Music awards) and sixteen recordings. She has captured the hearts of audiences all over the world, from North and South America, South Africa, Europe, Australia and Korea, with praise for her work to promote universal peace. She is a board member of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge. Joanne and her daughter Leah recorded on the title track “Path to Zero” with Jim Morrison, which also included the artists Sting, Bono, Sinead O’Conner, Robert Downey, Jr., and others. Joanne has performed for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and at St. Peter’s at the Vatican in Italy, where she performed an original composition for the celebration for the canonization of the first Native American Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. Shenandoah has performed at prestigious events such as the White House, Carnegie Hall, five Presidential inaugurations, Madison Square Garden, Crystal Bridges Museum, the NMAI-Smithsonian, the Ordway Theater, Hummingbird Centre, Toronto Skydome, the Parliament of the Worlds Religions (Africa, Spain and Australia) and Woodstock 1994. http://www.joanneshenandoah.com
Michael Shermer	Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. https://michaelshermer.com
Swami Siddheswarananda	Swami Siddheswarananda was a monk of the Ramakrishna Order of India. He was born in 1897 into a princely family (the House of Cochin) in Kerala, India. He received his spiritual initiation from Swami Brahmananda, one of the foremost direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. After serving the Order in several capacities he was sent in 1937, at the invitation of several French citizens, to France, where he became the spiritual head of the Centre Védantique, eventually the Gretz-Armainvilliers (Seine & Marne) until his passing away in 1957. During his say in France the Swami lectured and wrote extensively.
Nina Simons	Nina Simons is cofounder and co-CEO of the nonprofit Bioneers, an organization that since 1990 has identified, featured and disseminated breakthrough solutions for people and planet. She co-facilitates Cultivating Women’s Leadership retreats with Toby Herzlich and co-edited the recently published Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart. She was previously president of Seeds of Change and strategic marketing director with Odwalla and lives outside Santa Fe, N.M., with her husband and partner. http://www.bioneers.org
Claire Slemmer	Claire Slemmer, born in 1948, is an American presentation coach, voiceover artist and semi-retired actor who has been practicing Zen for twenty years. She has been a student of Barry Magid since 2004, and is one of his Dharma heirs. She is currently the director of the Ordinary Mind Zendo in New York City. http://www.claireslemmer.com
Susan Slotter	Visionary artist Susan Slotter—photographer, filmmaker, writer and integrative creative midwife—left the corporate world in 1989 to follow a call. She is the creator of SoulScapes®, experiences that connect us to the divine presence within ourselves, our relationships and the world around us. Called “portals into consciousness,” SoulScapes images, films, portraits and workshop experiences are tools for personal and collective transformation. SoulScapes have been presented through venues such as the Omega Institute, Fetzer Institute and Institute of Noetic Sciences; magazines including The Sun magazine, Yoga Journal, Gnosis, Creation Spirituality, Camera and Darkroom, Popular Photography and Photo District News; the Maine and Santa Fe Photographic Workshops and Hasselblad USA. Susan has created award-winning short films, worked on independent feature documentaries and has been developing an “evocumentary” on broadening ideas about leadership from the heart of the collective. http://www.susanslotter.com
Huston Smith	Huston Smith literally wrote the book on world religions, in 1958, with the release of The Religions of Man. Born in 1919 in China and raised there, he later became a professor of philosophy and religion, teaching at M.I.T., Syracuse University, and University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of 14 books, and the Christian Science Monitor once called him “Religion’s Rock Star.” The Dalai Lama once wrote that Smith, who became his friend in 1964, knew the “real taste” of religion; Ken Wilber, Deepak Chopra, and Karen Armstrong have cited him as a major influence on their work; Bill Moyers, who, in 1996, produced a five-part PBS series featuring Smith, said Smith had not only studied the world’s religions but “practiced what he had learned;” and Michael Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, has commented that, “Of the many presenters we’ve had over the past 50 years, only a handful ‘glowed in the dark,’ and Huston Smith was one of them.” —Dana Sawyer http://hustonsmith.net
Jeff Sollins	Jeff Sollins is the founder of Bridges In Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he completed a three-year residency in internal medicine. Board Certified and Diplomat of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, he also served on the board for over a decade. As a member of the American College of Physicians and Society of Internal Medicine, he has managed emergency rooms and multispecialty practices. Jeff’s loves include music composition and performing, Shotokan Karate, prayer, his mystical animals and, of course, his amazing miracle wife. http://www.bridgesinmedicine.com
Sobonfu Somé	Sobonfu Somé is a respected lecturer and author. As the founder of Wisdom Spring, Inc., an organization dedicated to the preservation and sharing of indigenous wisdom and fundraising for wells, schools and health projects in Africa, she is one of the foremost voices of African spirituality to come to the West, bringing insights and healing gifts from her West African culture to this one. Sobonfu tours the United States and Europe teaching workshops. Her books include: The Spirit of Intimacy, Welcoming Spirit Home and Falling out of Grace. http://www.sobonfu.com
Michael David Sowder	Longtime yoga and meditation teacher Michael David Sowder is an author, poet, and professor of poetry, religious studies, and yoga studies at Utah State University. With a PhD from the University of Michigan, Sowder is the author of two collections of spiritual poetry, The Empty Boat and House Under the Moon, and two chapbooks of poetry. Feminist poet Diane Wakoski chose The Empty Boat to win the 2004 T.S. Eliot Award. His chapbook, A Calendar of Crows, won the inaugural New Michigan Press Poetry award. Sowder’s writing explores themes of yoga, Buddhism, mystical experience and contemplative practice, wilderness, and fatherhood. He has appeared in MuseIndia, The Bombay Review, Shambhala Sun (now Lion’s Roar), American Life in Poetry, Five Points, Green Mountains Review, Sufi Journal, New Poets of the American West, and The New York Times Online. He frequently travels to India, where in 2014, he was a Fulbright Scholar. Trained in a Tantric yoga tradition, he has been practicing and teaching yoga and meditation for almost fifty years. The founder of the non-profit, Amrita Yoga Institute of Logan, Utah—which teaches yoga, meditation, contemplative practice and philosophy—he founded the first prison meditation program in the Alabama prison system in 1978, as well as prison writing and meditation programs at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Facility and at the Cache County Jail in Logan, Utah. https://www.michaelsowder.org/
David Spangler	David Spangler was born in 1945 in Columbus, Ohio, and lived with his family in Morocco from ages six to 12. He attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and Arizona State University, leaving in 1965 to move to Los Angeles, where he began lecturing on spirituality. In 1970, he went to Scotland to help establish the New Age community Findhorn. Returning to the U.S. in 1973, he and Dorothy McLean founded the Lorian Association and he and William Irwin Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Association. He and Thompson wrote Reimagination of the World (1991), criticizing the New Age movement’s commercialism, faddishness, glamorized spirituality, and guru figures. Spangler is considered a transitional thinker who bridges early esoteric theosophy and incarnational spirituality. His autobiography, Apprenticed to Spirit (2010), traces the development of postmodern practical spirituality. He is active as a lecturer and on the Internet. https://www.findhorn.org
Marilyn Stablein	Marilyn Stablein is the author of several works of fiction, non-fiction, essays, and poetry and is also a visual performance artist. Her books include Night Travels to Tibet, The Census Taker, and Climate of Extremes and her performances include Bardo Passages: Soul Journeys to Tibet and Himalayan Travelogues. Her work has appeared in Tricycle, The Sun, and Sage Woman. She has received a number of awards including a New York State Council on the Arts Award, a Yaddo residency, a Brazos Fiction Award, and a Seattle Arts Commission Literary Artist Award. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband where she co-directs Alternative Books. www.marilynstablein.com
Trevien Stanger	Trevien Stanger is a tree planter, poet, writer, and educator based within the Vermont side of the ancient Champlain Basin. He teaches environmental studies and ecological service learning at Saint Michael’s College and the Community College of Vermont, and partners frequently with Burlington’s innovative agricultural and conservation hub, the Intervale Center. Trevien lives on a four-acre homestead in the forested foothills of Richmond with his wife, nurse-midwife Whitney Smith; and their cat Birdie, or “Birdhisattva.” He is currently at work on a coffee table book about creating an eco-centric culture of clean water around Lake Champlain entitled Our Basin of Relations. https://trevientravels.com
Rhoney Stanley	Rhoney Stanley was an assistant in the underground labs where rebel chemists made the psychedelics that energized the hippie counterculture. Today she is a practicing holistic orthodontist in Woodstock, New York. Owsley and Me is her first book.
Tara Stapleton	Tara Stapleton is originally from Chicago, and has lived in several countries, participating in and learning about various cultures and traditions. She has spent decades studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism. After many years of solitude and meditation, she continues to apply what she learns from the Heart Essence of the Masters into her everyday life and healing practice. Tara incorporates wisdom from those various spiritual traditions, along with shamanism and astrology, into her worldview. In 2010, she created The Prayerfield of the Heart Essence project, a vast collective of enlightened beings from the spiritual realms whose purpose is assisting humanity and all sentient beings in personal and collective healing, growth and evolution. Tara lives and has her healing practice as an energy worker, medium and astrologer in Santa Fe, N.M. She also teaches Sky Dancing, a form of spiritual dance and meditation and is presently writing and bringing through a form of Dakini yoga. http://www.prayerfieldoftheheartessence.org
Margaret Starbird	Margaret Starbird holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Maryland and pursued graduate studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is the author of several widely acclaimed books reclaiming Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine in Christianity. Starbird gives lectures and retreats worldwide and has appeared in numerous TV documentaries. Her books include The Woman with the Alabaster Jar and The Goddess in the Gospels, both mentioned in The Da Vinci Code, followed by Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile. Other titles include Magdalene’s Lost Legacy and The Tarot Trumps and the Holy Grail. Married with five grown children, Margaret lives near Seattle. http://www.margaretstarbird.net
Mirabai Starr	Mirabai Starr writes creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialogue. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. She has received critical acclaim for her revolutionary new translations of the mystics. She is author of the poetry collection, Mother of God Similar to Fire, a collaboration with iconographer, William Hart McNichols, and the award-winning book, God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Her newest book, Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation, received the Spirituality & Practice “Best Books of 2015” award. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico. www.mirabaistarr.com
Manfred B. Steger	Manfred B. Steger is the founding teacher of the Princeton Area Zen Group. He and his wife Perle Besserman are deeply dedicated to the cultivation of a Western-style lay practice that maintains the essential elements of Zen—sitting meditation, interviews with a teacher, and silent retreats. A professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and Honorary Professor of Global Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, Steger has written or edited twenty books on politics, history, and religion, including the bestselling Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. http://www.princetonzengroup.org
Brother David Steindl-Rast	Brother David Steindl-Rast was born in Vienna in 1926, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in anthropology and psychology. He joined the Mount Savior Monastery in Elmira, New York, in 1953, and was a postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. In 1967, after 12 years of theological training, and with Vatican approval, he began participating in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, studying with Yasutani Roshi, Soen Roshi, and Suzuki Roshi; he later co-authored The Ground We Share: Buddhist and Christian Practice (1994) with Aitken Roshi, and wrote several other books. In 1969, he co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies, with Hindu, Sufi, Jewish, and Buddhist teachers, for which he received the Martin Buber Award in 1975. In the 1970s, together with Thomas Merton, he provided a renewal of religious orders through the House of Prayer movement, affecting 200,000 members of communities in the U.S. and Canada. He currently runs the online community Network of Grateful Living, does lecture tours, and lives as a hermit. https://gratefulness.org
Thomas Steininger	Thomas Steininger, born in 1962 in Austria, is a philosopher and cultural activist, the publisher of the German magazine Evolve, a speaker on cultural evolution, a faculty member of Meridian University in California and the co-founder of the Emerge Dialogue Process. He was one of Andrew Cohen’s closest students until the dissolution of Andrew’s organization, EnlightenNext, in 2013. https://emerge-bewusstseinskultur.de
Michael Stillwater	Michael Stillwater is an artist using music for healing. A filmmaker, author and educator, he is co-creator of Graceful Passages: A Companion for Living and Dying and founder of Inner Harmony Music and Song Without Borders. His documentary film, In Search of The Great Song, explores and celebrates the power of song to reconnect us to our hearts and each other. He lives in Switzerland and tours internationally, offering contemplative retreats and evolutionary song workshops. http://www.innerharmony.com
Rick Strassman	Rick Strassman, MD, is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is the author of DMT—The Spirit Molecule, the co-author of Inner Paths to Outer Space and the author of the forthcoming The Soul of Prophecy (all published by Inner Traditions). http://www.rickstrassman.com/
Gail Straub	Gail Straub is the author of the bestselling Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life As You Want It, the critically acclaimed The Rhythm of Compassion and the awarding-winning feminist memoir Returning to My Mother’s House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine. A pioneer in the field of empowerment, she co-directs the Empowerment Institute, a school for transformative social change where over the last three decades she has offered her work to tens of thousands of people worldwide. Gail co-founded IMAGINE: A Global Initiative for the Empowerment of Women currently under way in Afghanistan, Jordan, Africa and India. http://www.empowermentinstitute.net
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki	Marjorie H. Suchocki is professor Emerita at Claremont School of Theology, where she held the Ingraham Chair in Theology for 12 years. She is also the faculty co-director emerita of the Center for Process Studies and the director of the Common Good International Film Festival. She is widely recognized as a leader in process thought, and has written many articles and books in philosophy, theology, and religion, including God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology, The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context, The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology, Divinity and Diversity: A Christian Affirmation of Religious Pluralism, and Through a Lens Darkly: Tracing Redemption in Film. https://ctr4process.org
Matthew Juksan Sullivan	Matthew Juksan Sullivan was ordained at the Nine Mountains Zen Gate Society as a Dharma Teacher in 2006 and a Zen Master in 2013. He is a dharma heir of Hwasun Yangil Sunim, who was a dharma heir of Wol Ha Sunim, a Grand Zen Master and the former Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism.
D.T. Suzuki	Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (18 October 1870 – 12 July 1966) was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin (and Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West. Suzuki was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit literature. Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities, and devoted many years to a professorship at Otani University, a Japanese Buddhist school.
James Swartz	James Swartz was born in 1941 in Butte, Montana. After graduating from the University of California and moving to Waikiki, Hawaii, to start a business, he began his spiritual quest at age twenty-six, when he experienced what he calls a “life-changing epiphany” at the local Post Office, which he recounts in his book Mystic By Default, led him to study with Swami Chinmayananda. Today, he and his wife Sundari teach traditional Vedanta around the world, and he has written two books on the subject. http://shiningworld.com
Jon Sweeney	Jon M. Sweeney is an award-winning author who has been interviewed in the Dallas Morning News and The Irish Catholic, and on television at CBS Saturday Morning. His book, The Pope Who Quit (Doubleday/Image), was optioned by HBO. He is also author of forty other books on spirituality, mysticism, and religion, including Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, with Mark S. Burrows (Hampton Roads), the biography Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Catechist, Saint (Liturgical Press), and Thomas Merton: An Introduction to His Life and Practices (St. Martin’s Essentials and Penguin Random House Audio, 2021). His bookish reputation is nothing new. In 2014, Publishers Weekly featured Jon in an interview titled, “A Life in Books and On the Move.” He began the 1990s as a theological bookseller in Cambridge, and ended the decade founding a multifaith publishing house, SkyLight Paths Publishing, in Vermont. He’s worked in books and publishing ever since. Today he writes, reviews, edits, and recommends books, speaks regularly at literary and religious conferences, is a Catholic married to a rabbi, and is active on social media (Twitter @jonmsweeney; Facebook jonmsweeney). Sweeney lives in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee.
Brian Thomas Swimme	Brian Thomas Swimme received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon in 1978 for work in gravitational dynamics. He teaches in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Brian brings the context of story to our understanding of the 14-billionyear trajectory of the universe. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. Brian is the author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe is a Green Dragon. He is co-author of several books, Manifesto for a Global Civilization with Matthew Fox, The Universe Story with Thomas Berry, and The Journey of the Universe, with Mary Evelyn Tucker. Brian is also the creator of three educational video series: “Canticle to the Cosmos,” “Earth’s Imagination,” and “The Powers of the Universe.” Most recently, he hosted the 60 minute film “Journey of the Universe,” broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide and winner of the Northern California regional Emmy for Best Documentary in 2011. https://storyoftheuniverse.org
Jeffrey Szilagyi	For more than two decades Jeffrey Szilagyi has crafted his work-life around the healing arts and community initiation practices for adolescents. As a perpetual student of the human body and passionate advocate for ending the unconscious battle culture has with human nature, Jeffrey writes, speaks, and trains on human vitality and stress intelligence. On his off days you can find him trying to be an adequate parent to his two incredible daughters, cultivating his Dao of Soccer, or geeking out on evolutionary biology. http://acusfmarin.com
Rabindranath Tagore	Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent, being highly commemorated in India and Bangladesh, as well as in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.
Katherine Woodward Thomas	Katherine Woodward Thomas is the national bestselling author of Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life, a licensed psychotherapist, creator of the Conscious Uncoupling Program and co-creator/co-leader of the Feminine Power transformative courses for women. Her work has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world, both through her live and virtual learning communities. As a highly sought-after relationship expert, Katherine is deeply devoted to the evolution of love in our world in all of its many forms. http://www.katherinewoodwardthomas.com/
Donna Thomson	Donna Thomson is an intuitive, author and meditation teacher. Since 1987 she has channeled healing light, energy and information for the benefit of others in individual and group awareness sessions. With her husband and partner in healing work, Bob Schrei, she is the co-originator of SourcePoint Therapy®, an energy healing system. Donna is the author of The Vibrant Life: Simple Meditations to Use Your Energy Effectively (Sentient Publications, 2006). http://www.sourcepointtherapy.com
Robert Thurman	Robert Thurman was born in New York City in 1941 and received a doctorate in Buddhist studies from Harvard in 1972. This came after marriage as an undergraduate, the birth of a daughter, the loss of an eye, a divorce, and a pilgrimage to India in 1962. He was the first American to take Tibetan Buddhist monk vows in 1964. In 1966, he renounced his vows, remarried, and returned to Harvard for PhD studies. After graduation, Thurman taught at Amherst College, where he founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, until 1988 when he joined Columbia University’s religion department. He remains there as the Jey Tsong Kapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. At the request of the Dalai Lama, his close friend, Thurman co-founded Tibet House to preserve Tibetan culture in exile, in 1987, and the Menla Mountain Retreat and Conference Center, a Tibetan healing arts facility, in 2001. He has written many books on Tibetan Buddhism and has been named as one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time magazine. He and his second wife, Nena von Schlebrügge, live in New York, where they raised four children, including actress Uma Thurman. https://bobthurman.com
Christopher Titmuss	Christopher Titmuss was born (1944) in the U.K. and spent several years as a Theravada Buddhist monk. He is a senior Insight Meditation and Dharma teacher in the West, and an author of books on Dharma; he resides in the U.K. and teaches worldwide. http://www.christophertitmuss.net
Sakya Trizin	The 41st Sakya Trizin was born in 1945 into the Sakyapa, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s four lineages. His parents and a sister then died in quick succession, leaving him and his other sister, Sakya Jetsun Chimey Luding, with their aunt, who trained them to teach and transmit. In 1959 he moved the family to Rajpur, India, where he established the Sakya Center, a nunnery, hospital, college, followed by many centers around the world. He married in 1974 and his two sons are also Rinpoches. Today, Sakya Trizin heads the Sakya lineage. His U.S. seat is at Tsechen Kunchab Ling in Walden, New York. Sakya Jetsun Chimey Luding settled in Vancouver, Canada, and founded Sakya Kachod Choling on San Juan Island in Washington. http://hhsakyatrizin.net
Tarthang Tulku	Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan lama in the Nyingma tradition, was born in eastern Tibet in 1935. As a young man, he received extensive formal Dharma training from many important teachers, including his root guru Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro. He left Tibet in 1958 and taught for several years at Sanskrit University in Varanasi, India, where he started a Tibetan printing press. In 1969, he relocated to Berkeley, California, with his wife, the poet Nazli Nour, and established the Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Center, Dharma Publishing, the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, and the Tibetan Aid Project. Today the center includes over 20 nonprofit organizations worldwide, and there are Tibetan Nyingma Institute satellite branches in the Netherlands, Germany, and Brazil. In 1989, Tarthang Tulku founded the World Peace Ceremony in India, where, over the last 27 years, he has distributed more than 4 million Dharma books, free of charge, to the Tibetan diaspora. He has also restored monasteries and holy places in Tibet and India, and created the Odiyan Retreat Center in Northern California, a temple complex on more than 1,000 acres. He has written and edited over 100 books for Westerners, including Gesture of Balance, Knowledge of Freedom, and Revelations of Mind. https://nyingmainstitute.com
Carol P. Vaccariello	Carol P. Vaccariello, D.Min., MSE, MBA, M.Div., Oblate OSB is an ordained interfaith minister, priest, and bishop. Carol is a recipient of the Siksika/Sac Blackfoot Ancestral Blessing, a spiritual coach, ritual/ retreat leader, captivating speaker and storyteller, an honored Elder in Creation Spirituality Tradition, and is a member of the Braided Way. She participates in Hindu and Buddhist-Christian dialogues and has studied/ taught on six continents. Carol is the founder of All Peoples Center, Wheel Within the Wheel Ministries, and Ordo Hagia Sophia (Order of Holy Wisdom), an egalitarian spiritual community. She is the author of The Lion of God: Archangel Ari’El … Personal Encounters, published in 2017. Carol has also produced, directed, and led the Cosmic Mass with Matthew Fox. She facilitates and builds labyrinths, medicine wheels, sacred drums, and sweat lodges. https://www.authorcarol.com
Andre van der Braak	Andre van der Braak lived in Andrew Cohen’s spiritual community for 11 years, an involvement initiated shortly after Cohen had begun teaching. He was one of the original editors for What Is Enlightenment? Magazine. He was also an editor for Cohen’s first teaching text, Enlightenment is a Secret, which entailed reading over 4,000 pages of transcribed talks, and editing them into book form. Today he lives in Amsterdam where he teaches philosophy. www.avdbraak.nl
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee	Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, born in 1953, is a British Sufi mystic and the lineage successor of Irina Tweedie in the NaqshbandiyyaMujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is a lecturer and the author of many books on Sufism, mysticism, dream work and spirituality. Since 1991, he has lived in Northern California, where he founded the Golden Sufi Center. https://goldensufi.org
Jason Apollo Voss	Jason Apollo Voss authored the 2011 Foreword Reviews Business and Economics Book of the Year finalist, The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth, a book about how to make more conscious decisions. Jason retired as co-Portfolio Manager of the Davis Appreciation Fund (DAIF) in 2005 after it bested the NASDAQ by 77.0 percent, the S&P 500 by 49.1 percent and the DJIA by 35.9 percent. Jason has given numerous press interviews but is most proud of being published simultaneously in the Wall Street Journal and New Age Journal in February 2011. Jason has been meditating since he was seven. http://www.jasonapollovoss.com
Mark Waldman	Mark Waldman is a faculty member of the College of Business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He coaches individuals in business and personal development and has authored twelve books, including Words Can Change Your Brain and How God Changes Your Brain, picked by Oprah as one of the nine “must-read” books for 2012. According to Time, Newsweek and the Washington Post, he and Andy Newberg are the world’s leading authorities on spirituality and the brain. His research has been featured in O magazine, the New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur and dozens of other magazines. http://www.markrobertwaldman.com
Julia Walsh	Julia Walsh is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration and part of her congregation’s formation team, serving women who are discerning their vocation. She has a MA in Pastoral Studies from Catholic Theological Union and is a spiritual director and secondary teacher. As a creative writer, educator, and retreat presenter she is passionate about exploring the intersection of creativity, spirituality, activism, and community life. Sister Julia’s work can be found in publications such as America, Living Faith Catholic Devotional, National Catholic Reporter, Living City, The Christian Century, Chicago Sun-Times, and St. Anthony Messenger. She hosts the Messy Jesus Business blog and podcast and is on Twitter and Instagram as @JuliaFSPA. A lover of the outdoors, she sometimes can be found studying wildflowers near Elgin, Iowa, her hometown. She lives in Chicago. https://messyjesusbusiness.com/about-sister-julia/
Keith Ward	Keith Ward is professor of religion at Roehampton University, London. He is a former professor of the history and philosophy of religion at London University; dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge University; and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. He is a fellow of the British Academy, and has written numerous books, including God: a Guide for the Perplexed, Christ and the Cosmos, The Christian Idea of God, and The Big Questions in Science and Religion. He is a priest of the Church of England, and a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. https://www.keithward.org.uk
Tim Ward	Tim Ward is the author of What the Buddha Never Taught, which was a bestseller in Canada and a Book-of-the-Month selection in the United States. Ward has written for a variety of publications, including Reader’s Digest, The Toronto Globe and Mail, Common Boundary Magazine, and several Traveler’s Tales anthologies. Tim is also the president of Intermedia Communications Inc. He lives in Maryland with his family. www.timwardsbooks.com
Alex Warden	Alex Warden is a mystic devoted to answering the call of her heart: to share the experience of the essential oneness of life with others. Her work focuses on the development of relational consciousness, an awareness born from the primordial feminine knowing of unity and interrelatedness. A mother, spiritual director and the founder of Essential Oneness, Alex speaks and leads workshops and retreats internationally on spirituality, feminine wisdom and dream studies. She has extensive experience in Christian mysticism and has been a student of Sufism since 1996. http://www.essentialoneness.org
Brad Warner	Brad Warner is a Soto Zen monk, author, blogger, and occasional punk rock bass guitarist (Zero Defex). His books include Hardcore Zen, Sit Down & Shut Up, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, and Sex, Sin & Zen. His writings can also be found in Tricycle and Shambhala Sun and on Suicidegirls.com. In 1993 he moved to Japan, where he landed a job with the company founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, the creator of Godzilla. The following year he met Gudo Nishijima Roshi, who later ordained him as a monk and made him his dharma heir. These days, Brad travels widely, leading retreats and giving lectures around the world, and is reported to be living in Brooklyn. www.hardcorezen.info
Alan Watts	Alan Watts was born in Kent, England, in 1915. At 16, he became involved with the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he met Alice Bailey and D.T. Suzuki, and read extensively in philosophy, psychology, history, and Eastern wisdom. In 1938, he married, moved to America, and became an Episcopal priest. When his marriage ended in 1949, he left the priesthood and moved to California. In 1953, he began a weekly program at Pacifica Radio, attracting a loyal following. His first book, The Way of Zen (1957), was hugely successful. He spent his last years in the San Francisco Bay area between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mt. Tamalpais, where he died in 1973. Two of his daughters currently manage his literary estate; a son has archived his talks. http://www.alanwatts.org/
Susun Weed	Susun Weed, author and herbalist, is the voice of the Wise Woman tradition, where healing comes from nourishment. She is known internationally as an extraordinary teacher with a joyous spirit, a powerful presence and an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs and health. She restores herbs as common medicine and empowers us all to care for ourselves; she is the author of the Wise Woman Herbal Series, including five books on women’s health and wellbeing the Wise Woman Way. http://www.susunweed.com
Kerri Welch	Kerri Welch, Ph.D., teaches at California Institute of Integral Studies and Integrity Academy at Casa de Luz Center for Integral Studies and is working on a narrative nonfiction book about the science of temporal perception, The Texture of Time: A Fractal Topology. She lives in Austin, Texas. https://kerriwelch.wordpress.com
H.G. Wells	Herbert George "H. G." Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was a prolific English writer in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, and social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. He is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, and Wells is called a father of science fiction. His most notable works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
Hank Wesselman	Dr. Hank Wesselman, Ph.D., is a paleoanthropologist and award winning author of eight books on shamanism, including The Spiritwalker Trilogy, Awakening to the Spirit World (with Sandra Ingerman,) and The Bowl of Light, an account of his philosophical discussions with the Hawaiian visionary Hale Makua. He is a shamanic teacher and practitioner now in the thirtieth year of his apprenticeship and resides on Hawai’i Island. http://www.sharedwisdom.com
Ganga White	Ganga White is the founder of the White Lotus Foundation, and Yoga Ashram, in Santa Barbara, California and is recognized as an outstanding teacher and exponent of Yoga. He has been called one of the “architects of American yoga” and a “pioneer of yoga” by the Yoga Journal. Since 1967 he has made many valuable and enduring contributions to his field. Ganga White is the author of Yoga Beyond Belief—Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice. http://www.whitelotus.org
Marcia Wieder	Marcia Wieder, CEO/Founder of Dream University, is leading a Dream Movement. Whether teaching at the Stanford Business School, speaking to executives in China or addressing young women at Girl Scout Camp, her riveting style impacts audiences worldwide. She is the personal Dream Coach to Jack Canfield, stars in Beyond the Secret with Bob Proctor and is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, along with John Gray and Marianne Williamson. She has authored fourteen books and appeared on Oprah, Today and in her own PBS-TV special. http://www.dreamuniversity.com
Ken Wilber	Ken Wilber (1949) is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology and the creator of Integral Theory and Integral Spirituality, as well as the founder of the Integral Institute. His thinking has been influenced by the Buddhist philosophy of Nagarjuna. http://www.kenwilber.com
Terry Tempest Williams	Terry Tempest Williams has been called “a citizen writer”—a writer who speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Orion magazine and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She has also published several books, including Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, An Unspoken Hunger: Stories From the Field, Leap; Finding Beauty in a Broken World and When Women Were Birds. She and her husband, Brooke Williams, divide their time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Jackson Hole, Wyo. http://www.coyoteclan.com
Marianne Williamson	Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual teacher. Six of her 10 published books have been New York Times bestsellers. Four of these have been #1 New York Times bestsellers. A Return to Love is considered a must-read of the New Spirituality. One paragraph from that book, beginning, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…”—which is often misattributed to Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural address—is considered an anthem for a contemporary generation of seekers. Marianne’s latest New York Times bestseller is A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever. A Course in Weight Loss was selected by Oprah as one of her “Favorite Things” in 2010. http://www.marianne.com
Colin Wilson	Colin Wilson has written over 100 books. At 24, he was hailed as a major existentialist thinker when his first success, The Outsider (1956) was published. But in many of his books, Mr. Wilson has consistently revealed his contention that insight is achieved during moments of well-being, attained through effort and focus and that pessimism is what robs people of their vital energies. He died in 2013.
Skylar Wilson	Skylar Wilson is the founder and co-director of Wild Awakenings, an adult Rites of Passage organization dedicated to the thriving of Earth, life, and humanity. Over the past 16 years, Skylar has led retreats all over the world focusing on ecological restoration, wilderness knowledge, meditation, and ceremonial practices. Skylar is director of an intercultural ritual called the Cosmic Mass, which brings together the world’s spiritual traditions into an embodied, transformational ritual that builds community through music, dancing, and the arts. He works closely with community organizations including the Stepping Stones Project in Berkeley, California, which holds Rites of Passage groups for teenagers, using a community-based curriculum. He enjoys surfing, swimming, climbing, writing, giving and receiving bodywork, as well as facilitating one-on-one integration sessions with people of all ages and backgrounds. He received his master’s degree in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2012. http://wildawakenings.com
Fred Alan Wolf	Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., works as a physicist, writer and lecturer. His work in quantum physics and consciousness is well known through his popular and scientific writing. He is the author of sixteen books and audio CDs, many technical and popular articles and is also known as Dr. Quantum. He appeared in many movies, including What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret. He won the National Book Award for Taking the Quantum Leap; his latest book is entitled Time-loops and Space-twists: How God Created the Universe. http://www.fredalanwolf.com
Carmela Yacoboni	Carmela “Millie” Yacoboni is a daughter, sister, aunt, wife, mother, grandmother and friend to many. Millie is an artist who creates brushless paintings and the author of 4U, a four-ingredient cookbook, and a fundraiser for children with cleft palates. She lives in Florida and is part of the water aerobics group “Waterlogged Divas.” Now 92, she says, “Getting old is great! Look at the alternative.”
Celeste Yacoboni	Celeste Yacoboni is passionate about helping people discover a deeper experience of the sacred in their daily lives. Ordained as a Minister of Walking Prayer by the Center for Sacred Studies, Celeste leads “How Do You Pray?" workshops in which people share and experience different ways of connecting to a Source greater than themselves. She also maintains a private practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she facilitates healing and transformation through her unique approach to spiritual coaching and her mastery of a number of the healing arts. With breath, touch, prayer and song she holds a space of awareness, presence and inspiration that allows her clients to experience a profound integration of body, mind, spirit and emotion. How Do You Pray? is her first book. www.howdoyoupray.com
Peter (Hakim) Young	Peter (Hakim) Young was born in 1949 in London. In the mid-1970s he enrolled at the Beshara School at the Chisholme Institute as a student, and served as principal of the school from 1984 to 2015, taking over the organization’s direction after the death of Bulent Rauf. Since leaving Chisholme, he has been running green woodworking courses.
Mark Youngblood	Mark Youngblood is a lifelong student, teacher, and facilitator of Inner Mastery. His life purpose is to elevate human consciousness and promote spiritual growth, individually and collectively. He founded his company, Inner Mastery, Inc., 20-plus years ago to promote personal and organizational transformation. His outreach presently includes executive coaching with top management, the Inner Mastery Community, Dear Human books, public speaking, and special workshops.
Tom Zender	Tom Zender is a successful business executive and mentor, a bestselling author and a recognized spiritual leader. Author of God Goes to Work and One-Minute Meditations at Work, he raises work and business consciousness for organizational integrity and conscious commerce. He held management positions at General Electric and Honeywell and was a senior vice president in NYSE and NASDAQ listed corporations. Tom is president emeritus of Unity, which serves over three million people of all faiths worldwide. His corporate board experience includes NASDAQ- and Toronto Stock Exchangelisted companies, plus nonprofits that include the Evolutionary Leaders, the Forum for Corporate Directors and Ottawa University. http://www.tomzendermentor.com