Deep Transformation

Ep. 185 (Part 1 of 2) | In this lively, mind and heart-opening conversation, Miranda Macpherson, contemporary spiritual teacher and author, shares the extraordinary wisdom she has gained from experience—both from the initial life-changing transmission of boundless love she received in Ramana Maharshi’s cave, and from the subsequent need for integration of the deeper truths that were revealed upon being called back “down the mountain,” back to the West to teach and serve. For her, the trick of navigating ordinary life without reconstructing an ego boiled down to three words: What’s needed now? 

Miranda discusses how to show up in the world of today and not let resistance to right action win. “Wake up and love,” she offers. “Take inventory, ask, is there anything in the way of me being openhearted and awake in this moment?” She explains a practice she developed called ego relaxation, emphasizes the power of devotion—the source of strength, love, courage, and motivation—and shares several of the key questions she asks herself in her own practice to keep her receptive to existential grace. Miranda’s inspiring teachings are infused with her foundational sense of divine benevolence; “Grace is alive!” she tells us. And being human, we can embody grace; we can become “grace delivery devices.” Recorded November 1, 2024.

“There’s always more evolution, openness, clarification, expansion, and possibility—because God is exponential.”

• A prayer for all of us—for the human family and the highest possibilities (01:03)
• Introducing interfaith minister, spiritual teacher, author, and leader of the Living Grace Global Sangha, Miranda Macpherson (02:53)
• What brought Miranda to the spiritual path? (03:56)
• Miranda’s early prayer of resistance (I’m done here!) and the subsequent explosion of boundless love (08:37)
• Miranda’s opportunity at a young age to learn what a soul grapples with, hanging out with adults in a psych ward (12:14)
• Were there mentors to help Miranda after her opening? (17:01)
• How much harder it must be for teenagers to copy with existential crisis today (21:59)
• The G word: what is the authentic language of our own soul? (24:17)
• The fear we all have of remembering the ancient, forgotten song (25:14)
• Ultimately it asks for full surrender; then there is only God (27:18)
• It’s in the edgiest places that the biggest openings often happen (28:38)
• For every realization you have to ask, what is its wisdom? How can it be expressed & embodied so its only impact is a blessing? (30:20)
• Are there more people waking up now? (33:39)
• Not knowing what anything is for: being receptive to existential grace (38:17)
• Being absorbed into the depth of the nonconceptual: pure being in its thunderous, unshakable, silent depth (39:48)
• The experience in the cave obliterated everything—all spiritual concepts were erased (42:46)
• How to navigate ordinary life without reconstructing an ego (43:46)

• Miranda’s website: MirandaMacpherson.com
• The Living Grace Global Sangha
• Miranda Macpherson, The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation
• Miranda Macpherson, Boundless Love: Transforming Your Life with Grace and Inspiration
• Miranda Macpherson, Meditations on Boundless Love (Sounds True audiobook)
• Miranda’s oracle card deck, Cultivating Grace: Access Inner Peace, Clarity, and Joy on Your Spiritual Path
• Ramana Maharshi, Indian sage and liberated being, 1879-1950
• Gerald G. Jampolsky, Love is Letting Go of Fear
• A Course in Miracles, Helen Schucman and the Foundation for Inner Peace
• Ken Wilber, The Religion of Tomorrow (waking up, growing up, cleaning up, showing up) 

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Miranda Macpherson is a contemporary spiritual teacher who has been guiding others into direct experience of the sacred for over thirty years internationally. In her twenties she founded the OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in London, where she trained and ordained over 600 ministers and counsellors. Today Miranda leads the Living Grace Global Sangha, leads retreats internationally, broadcasts extensively, and serves as core faculty at The Shift Network. Unapologetically feminine, joyful, and down to earth in her way of being, Miranda is dedicated to loving people all the way back into the freedom and wholeness of our true nature.

Miranda’s books include The Way of Grace: the Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation (Sounds True), Boundless Love (Rider) and Meditations on Boundless Love (Sounds True), and the Cultivating Grace Card Deck. Miranda is also a kirtan musician and singer with two mantra albums: Streams of Grace and The Heart of Being. Find out more at www.mirandamacpherson.com.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 184 (Part 2 of 2) | In the tenth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali addresses what co-host Roger Walsh calls perhaps Inner Journey Home’s most profound chapter of all, the chapter on True Nature, as well as subjects he writes about in his autobiographical fragment, Luminous Night’s Journey. In the second turning of the Diamond Approach teaching, we transition from exploring individual true nature to boundless true nature—the absolute, ground of all manifestation. Following the mystery of truth, you come to absolute truth, Hameed tells us, and you find a mystery that not only liberates but makes everything happen. Hameed describes the absolute as the radiant blackness before the light, its luminosity awareness, and relates how, in the absolute, the feeling of intimacy is palpable. Here, the soul recognizes “I am home.”

Hameed relates how being and nonbeing are integrated, and about how time and space emerge out of true nature. Every moment is a new creation, he explains, not formed by the past or present, but new, instant to instant, from nonbeing to being. Hameed says true nature is the essence of freedom, and that in these troubled times the important thing is to recognize “I am free” and ultimately indestructible, and to be ourselves, grounded by the truth of our inner nature. Towards the end of the conversation, co-host John Dupuy asks Hameed, “What motivates you? Why aren’t you simply hanging out being true nature?” Hameed laughs and responds, “I am.” Recorded April 10, 2025.

“The idea is to be free. Inwardly.”

• Beingness is what Hameed calls presence; everything is both being and non-being (00:52)
• Being in the world but not of this world (04:12)
• The effects of studying Reichian therapy and breathwork on Hameed’s experience and way of teaching (06:32)
• The body needs to be open and at ease to experience presence; this is why yoga is widely practiced in East Indian traditions (09:17)
• Is having an ego a necessary stage for waking up? (13:01)
• Space and time are created by true nature, even though it is timeless (14:43)
• True nature is the essence of freedom; it is “radically unqualifiable” (19:38)
• The depths of our experience set the limit on our intellectual understanding (22:53)
• In these troubled times, the important thing is to recognize “I am free” and be ourselves, grounded by the truth of our inner nature (25:07)
• Profound equanimity allows deeper compassion to emerge (28:29)
• The values of true nature are fundamental and eternal; how do we manifest these all the time? (29:20)
• After all the amazing, mind-shattering realizations, life becomes ordinary and simple (32:21)
• What motivates Hameed now? (35:24)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach
• A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality
• A. H. Almaas, Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment
• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
• Mahamudra
• Wilhem Reich, Reichian therapy
• Nāgārjuna, central philosopher of Mahayana Buddhism
• Plato’s cardinal virtues
• The Ten Ox Herding Pictures from the Zen tradition
• Viktor Frankl, “Everything can be taken away from one except…” 

The A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series will generally follow the sequence of Hameed’s magnum opus, The Inner Journey Home (which John describes as psychoactive and spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually transformative), so listeners may want to get a copy of this book, to study and follow along on this exhilarating path of awakening.

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Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the U.S. to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him to inquire into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature rather than the physical nature of the universe. He left the academic world to pursue an in-depth journey of inner discovery, applying his scientific precision and discipline to personal, experiential research. This included study with different teachers in different modalities, extensive reading, and continuous study of his own consciousness in an effort to understand the essential nature of human experience and reality in general.

Hameed’s process of exploration led to the creation of the Ridhwan School and, with his colleague Karen Johnson, resulted in the founding and unfoldment of the Diamond Approach. He is the author of 20 books, including Nondual Love: Awakening to the Loving Nature of Reality, Love Unveiled: Discovering the Essence of the Awakened Heart, Keys to the Enneagram: How to Unlock the Highest Potential of Every Personality Type, The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, and more.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 183 (Part 1 of 2) | In the tenth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali addresses what co-host Roger Walsh calls perhaps Inner Journey Home’s most profound chapter of all, the chapter on True Nature, as well as subjects he writes about in his autobiographical fragment, Luminous Night’s Journey. In the second turning of the Diamond Approach teaching, we transition from exploring individual true nature to boundless true nature—the absolute, ground of all manifestation. Following the mystery of truth, you come to absolute truth, Hameed tells us, and you find a mystery that not only liberates but makes everything happen. Hameed describes the absolute as the radiant blackness before the light, its luminosity awareness, and relates how, in the absolute, the feeling of intimacy is palpable. Here, the soul recognizes “I am home.”

Hameed relates how being and nonbeing are integrated, and about how time and space emerge out of true nature. Every moment is a new creation, he explains, not formed by the past or present, but new, instant to instant, from nonbeing to being. Hameed says true nature is the essence of freedom, and that in these troubled and times the important thing is to recognize “I am free” and ultimately indestructible, and to be ourselves, grounded by the truth of our inner nature. Towards the end of the conversation, co-host John Dupuy asks Hameed, “What motivates you? Why aren’t you simply hanging out being true nature?” Hameed laughs and responds, “I am.” Recorded April 10, 2025.

“In the absolute, everything dissolves; the absolute is the universal solvent.”

• Introducing the 10th dialogue in the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, focusing on The Inner Journey Home‘s chapter, True Nature (00:55)
• What is the phenomenological experience of presence? (02:07)
• The soul can feel like presence—but more often it is structured by our history and appears as our ego self (05:14)
• Presence is the true nature of everything: perfect, complete, totally blissful (06:24)
• Love of truth naturally appears in the heart along the inner journey (09:04)
• The concern with talking about true nature is if you describe it, people look for something that isn’t it (11:57)
• Hameed wrote Luminous Night’s Journey to elucidate the experience of the soul, the absolute, and how soul and absolute are integrated (13:48)
• In the second turning of the teaching, we transition from individual true nature to boundless true nature: the absolute, the ground of all manifestation (18:11)
• The visible and invisible, manifest and unmanifest (19:58)
• Everything happens not from present to future, but from nonbeing to being (21:04)
• Everything dissolves in the absolute: it is the universal solvent (21:41)
• The absolute is the luminous, radiant blackness before the light (24:57)
• In the absolute, the soul recognizes “I am home” (26:47)
• Looking into the absolute, there is nothing; looking away from it, you see the manifest (28:48)
• The concept and experience of cessation (30:44)
• Hameed’s distinction between consciousness and awareness (32:40)
• Awareness = luminosity + emptiness (34:25)
• Emptiness is not empty space, it’s being and nonbeing unified (36:39)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach
• A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality
• A. H. Almaas, Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment
• Fourth Way teacher E.J. Gold, The American Book of the Dead
• Saccidānanda, a description of the subjective experience of ultimate unchanging reality: existence, consciousness, bliss
• St. John of the Cross, “The Dark Night of the Soul” (poem)
• Dharmakāya
• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, “Every moment is a new creation.”
• The cessation of perception as recognized by the Buddha (Wisdom Library website)
• Fana, the Sufi experience of cessation
• Nirodha refers to the cessation or renouncing of craving and desire; it is the third of the Four Noble Truths
• Dzogchen

The A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series will generally follow the sequence of Hameed’s magnum opus, The Inner Journey Home (which John describes as psychoactive and spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually transformative), so listeners may want to get a copy of this book, to study and follow along on this exhilarating path of awakening.

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Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the U.S. to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him to inquire into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature rather than the physical nature of the universe. He left the academic world to pursue an in-depth journey of inner discovery, applying his scientific precision and discipline to personal, experiential research. This included study with different teachers in different modalities, extensive reading, and continuous study of his own consciousness in an effort to understand the essential nature of human experience and reality in general.

Hameed’s process of exploration led to the creation of the Ridhwan School and, with his colleague Karen Johnson, resulted in the founding and unfoldment of the Diamond Approach. He is the author of 20 books, including Nondual Love: Awakening to the Loving Nature of Reality, Love Unveiled: Discovering the Essence of the Awakened Heart, Keys to the Enneagram: How to Unlock the Highest Potential of Every Personality Type, The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, and more. 

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 182 (Part 2 of 2) | Robert Lawrence Kuhn, producer of the popular PBS series Closer to Truth, which explores consciousness, the mystery of existence, and related topics with an open-minded approach, recently authored a remarkable article: “A Landscape of Consciousness,” in which he surveyed over 200 theories about what consciousness is. Robert tells how he inhabited each theory for a few days while writing it up, and discovered that unlike with other fields of knowledge, a study of consciousness produces more theories the more we know, rather than narrowing the field down. He emphasizes we need to be expansive with our universe of understanding of what consciousness is, and realize that how we engage with the Big Questions of life depends upon our particular theory of consciousness.

Robert tells how the Big Questions, notably what is consciousness and why is there something rather than nothing, have called him all his life, leading him to create the Closer to Truth series, to explore these questions with the leading minds of our time. What Robert didn’t know to begin with, but marvels about now, is how the passion for delving into the most fundamental, existential questions we face as humans unifies people around the world, from every demographic, providing a unique and wonderful point of integration. This is a fascinating, warm, engaging conversation that draws us ever farther into an exploration of the mysteries of life, where we glimpse what lies at the core of humanity. Recorded April 17th, 2025.

“It’s not that we have too many theories of consciousness, it’s that we have one too few.”

• The challenge of putting these theories into a digestible form (00:54)
• Understanding our personal theories of consciousness as extensions of our worldview (03:14)
• Our own theories often evolve from materialism to panpsychism to idealism (07:11)
• How the title Closer to Truth for the PBS/YouTube series came about (11:59)
• It’s easier to entertain materialist or atheist theories in environments constructed by humans—exposed to the natural universe, you encounter awe, wonder, connection (14:04)
• The concept of awe and transcendence in art and how it reflects our nature of mind (16:16)
• What has exploring these theories of consciousness done to Robert? (17:59)
• The closer we look, the more we end up in bottomless mystery (23:36)
• How exploring the Big Questions unifies people—cutting across religion, race, culture (25:28) 
• Acknowledging the limits of knowledge—epistemic humility—appreciating the mystery, and universality (29:54)
• The deeper your understanding goes, the richer your appreciation and awe (31:16)

• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator, producer, and host of the PBS series, Closer To Truth
• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, “A Landscape of Consciousness,”article in Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology, August 2024
• Paul Davies, quantum physicist, director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, “The universe is about something.” 
• Steven Weinberg, theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics
• David Charmers, philosopher, cognitive scientist
• Ken Wilber on Integral Epistemology (The Ken Show on Integral Life)
• Mind, Art, Transcendence Series (Closer to Truth video)
• Dora Serviarian Kuhn, Khachaturian Piano Concerto (YouTube video)

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Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual; he is the creator, writer, host, and executive producer of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading global resource on Cosmos (cosmology/physics, philosophy of science), Life (philosophy of biology), Mind (consciousness, brain/mind, philosophy of mind), and Meaning (theism/atheism/agnosticism, global philosophy of religion, critical thinking). Kuhn’s comprehensive review article on theories of consciousness—“A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications”—is published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology (August 2024, pp. 28-169). In its review, IAI News says, “Kuhn has written perhaps the most comprehensive article on the landscape of theories of consciousness in recent memory.” 

Dr. Kuhn has written or edited over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; The Library of Investment Banking; How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi Jinping); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (China’s best-selling book in 2005 and in December 2022); and The Origin and Significance of Zero: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (with Peter Gobets). He is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation, and has a BA in Human Biology (Johns Hopkins), a PhD in Anatomy/Brain Research (UCLA), and an SM (MBA) in Management (MIT).

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 181 (Part 1 of 2) | Robert Lawrence Kuhn, producer of the popular PBS series Closer to Truth, which explores consciousness, the mystery of existence, and related topics with an open-minded approach, recently authored a remarkable article: “A Landscape of Consciousness,” in which he surveyed over 200 theories about what consciousness is. Robert tells how he inhabited each theory for a few days while writing it up, and discovered that unlike with other fields of knowledge, a study of consciousness produces more theories the more we know, rather than narrowing the field down. He emphasizes we need to be expansive with our universe of understanding of what consciousness is, and realize that how we engage with the Big Questions of life depends upon our particular theory of consciousness.

Robert tells how the Big Questions, notably what is consciousness and why is there something rather than nothing, have called him all his life, leading him to create the Closer to Truth series, to explore these questions with the leading minds of our time. What Robert didn’t know to begin with, but marvels about now, is how the passion for delving into the most fundamental, existential questions we face as humans unifies people around the world, from every demographic, providing a unique and wonderful point of integration. This is a fascinating, warm, engaging conversation that draws us ever farther into an exploration of the mysteries of life, where we glimpse what lies at the core of humanity. Recorded April 17th, 2025.

“Consciousness is perhaps the single most unifying question that humanity can explore.”

• Introducing Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author, public intellectual, producer of the PBS series Closer to Truth, which explores fundamental questions of existence (01:02)
• How did it feel to be writing “A Landscape of Consciousness,” a 175k-word article that surveys over 200 theories about what consciousness is (02:50)
• Now Robert is building a website with notated theories of consciousness that allows for theories to grow and change (11:33)
• Consciousness theories, unlike other fields of knowledge, grow the more we know (14:59)
• All the “big questions” are dependent on your theory of consciousness (18:57)
• Why is there something rather than nothing? What is consciousness? Two fundamental questions that have been with Robert all along (23:17)
• Nine levels of nothing and the deep nature of phenomenal consciousness (25:36)
• Why Robert didn’t include his own theory in his survey, and then did—in 71 words (26:58)
• What does the explosion of consciousness theories say about consciousness? (30:27)
• The self-referential paradox of understanding consciousness (35:04)
• How to structure and organize the amalgam of theories (37:08)
• Roughly half the theories went into materialism categories (39:02)
• Challenge theorists conclude we can never understand consciousness (41:03)
• Robert’s theory categories: materialism, non reductive physicalism, quantum, integrated information, panpsychism, monism, dualism, idealism, illusory, anomalies and altered states (42:18)
• What kind of knowledge do psychedelics and altered states offer? (49:20)

• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator, producer, and host of the PBS series, Closer To Truth
• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, “A Landscape of Consciousness,”article in Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology, August 2024
• Anil Seth & Tim Bayne, Theories of Consciousness (Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2022)
• Computational + functionalism
• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, “Levels of Nothing”
• Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology (Journal)
• Denis Noble, visionary, one of the pioneers of systems biology
• Raymond Tallis, philosopher, poet, cultural critic, neuroscientist, coined the term neuromania
• Sir Roger Penrose & Dr. Stuart Hameroff, Consciousness and the Physics of the Brain (YouTube video)
• John Torday, PhD, physiologist at UCLA, investigator at the Lundquist Institute
• Non-reductive physicalism
• Integrated information theory, led by Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch
• Panpsychism
• Colin McGinn, British philosopher best known for his work in philosophy of mind
• Paul Davies, quantum physicist, director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science

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Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual; he is the creator, writer, host, and executive producer of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading global resource on Cosmos (cosmology/physics, philosophy of science), Life (philosophy of biology), Mind (consciousness, brain/mind, philosophy of mind), and Meaning (theism/atheism/agnosticism, global philosophy of religion, critical thinking). Kuhn’s comprehensive review article on theories of consciousness—“A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications”—is published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology (August 2024, pp. 28-169). In its review, IAI News says, “Kuhn has written perhaps the most comprehensive article on the landscape of theories of consciousness in recent memory.” 

Dr. Kuhn has written or edited over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; The Library of Investment Banking; How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi Jinping); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (China’s best-selling book in 2005 and in December 2022); and The Origin and Significance of Zero: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (with Peter Gobets). He is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation, and has a BA in Human Biology (Johns Hopkins), a PhD in Anatomy/Brain Research (UCLA), and an SM (MBA) in Management (MIT).

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 180 (Part 2 of 2) | In this podcast, John Prendergast, spiritual teacher, depth psychotherapist (retired), and prolific author, eloquently lays out the territory we encounter on the spiritual path as we move towards opening to our deepest ground. John defines deepest ground as “ungraspable and unfathomable, something we can know intimately as a quality of awareness, unbounded and open.” “When we touch into this,” he continues, “we move from a place of love, peace and groundedness.” In working with students and clients over four decades, John says the presence or absence of ground has been the most important theme. 

John has a gift for communicating exactly what is most useful for a spiritual practitioner to hear: taking an integral and nondual approach different from traditional psychotherapy, he invites us to evoke presence—welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation—let go of ordinary knowledge and allow a translucent, transformative space to emerge around ordinary mind. Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness, John explains that opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization; he also weaves in an intriguing version of the hero’s journey, where the hero emerges from the underground, not as a figure of accomplishment and victory, but as a simple, humble being, void of ego. The rich wisdom and gentle guidance offered here is invaluable, worthy of listening to many a time. Recorded November 7, 2024.

“We are on the wave of life waking up to itself through humanity.”

• Gaining an experiential understanding of the archetypal teachings of Carl Jung to better understand multidimensional ground (01:19)  
• Jungian archetypes are subtle ground; Ramana Maharshi’s focus is no ground (05:09)
• Trusting the wisdom of our own psyches (09:07)
• Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness (12:07)
• The collective unconscious: linking consciousness to our ancestors (14:29)
• Multidimensional healing: healing ancestral lineages (15:20)
• Eastern transcendence and Western focus on living life: opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization (16:51)
• The living question: What is life asking of you? (21:20)
• The first encounter is with darkness, stillness, emptiness; then comes a sense of pure potentiality and an upwelling current of life (22:41)
• What does engaged nonduality look like? Existential crisis and climate change (27:18)
• Frequency holders and/or frequency actors (31:56)
• Invitation to nondual communities: what is the natural response to this genuine existential threat? (33:02)
• The hesitancy people feel about bringing out the light of awareness (34:37)
• Opening the heart to collective suffering (35:30)
• Our love of truth will bring us to our deepest ground: let that be our guide (37:18)

• Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
• Carl Jung, The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition 
• Advaita Vedanta 
• Kashmir Shaivism
• Ramana Maharshi, Indian sage and liberated being, 1879-1950
• John Prendergast’s website: Listening from Silence
• John Prendergast, Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality
• John Prendergast, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence
• John Prendergast, In Touch: How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself
• John Prendergast, The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy

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A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, John J. Prendergast, PhD. is a nondual teacher, author, retired psychotherapist, and retired Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he taught masters level counseling students for twenty-three years. John studied for many years with the European sage Dr. Jean Klein, as well as with Adyashanti. He was invited to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt in 2011 and received dharma transmission (authorization to teach) from Adyashanti in 2023. John has been offering residential retreats with his wife, Christiane, since 2015, in both the U.S. and, more recently, in Europe. He also has extensive experience teaching online.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 179 (Part 1 of 2) | In this podcast, John Prendergast, spiritual teacher, depth psychotherapist (retired), and prolific author, eloquently lays out the territory we encounter on the spiritual path as we move towards opening to our deepest ground. John defines deepest ground as “ungraspable and unfathomable, something we can know intimately as a quality of awareness, unbounded and open.” “When we touch into this,” he continues, “we move from a place of love, peace and groundedness.” In working with students and clients over four decades, John says the presence or absence of ground has been the most important theme. 

John has a gift for communicating exactly what is most useful for a spiritual practitioner to hear: taking an integral and nondual approach different from traditional psychotherapy, he invites us to evoke presence—welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation—let go of ordinary knowledge and allow a translucent, transformative space to emerge around ordinary mind. Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness, John explains that opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization; he also weaves in an intriguing version of the hero’s journey, where the hero emerges from the underground, not as a figure of accomplishment and victory, but as a simple, humble being, void of ego. The rich wisdom and gentle guidance offered here is invaluable, worthy of listening to many a time. Recorded November 7, 2024.

“Transcendence is a beautiful first step… but there’s a very important process of embodying awareness more and more deeply, in the physical body, in the subtle body.”

• Introducing John Prendergast, Ph.D., retired psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and author, whose most recent book is Your Deepest Ground (00:57)
• What is our deepest ground? (01:55)
• What is the difference between presence and ground? (04:29)
• The fear of losing control, of annihilation, that comes up in the process of healing and awakening (06:47)
• Using the myth of the underground descent, but emerging not as a hero, but simple and humble—devoid of egoic will (09:29)
• A translucency of the body/mind emerges: a core illumination (13:18)
• Meditation, self-inquiry, and time with authentic teachers are what have brought John to luminosity (15:09)
• The connection to one’s teacher: for John, this was Jean Klein and Adyashanti (16:25)
• Back to returning to the world—not as a hero, but where there’s no sense of accomplishment and hierarchy disappears (17:55)
• The tyranny of the enlightenment drive (20:42)
• Willfulness gradually transforms into willingness (24:07)
• Individual guidance can come as the small, still voice but also in kinesthetic form (25:25)
• Are there specific practices that facilitate opening to our deepest ground? (27:24)
• Evoking presence: John leads an invitation to welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation (29:14)
• The difference between John’s work and traditional psychotherapy (31:31)
• Beyond welcoming, John teaches a self-inquiry practice that asks, “Do I really want to know what is true?” (36:15) 
• Working not just on personal limiting beliefs but existential limiting beliefs—e.g., “I am a separate self” (39:19)
• Recognizing the limitation of rational thought, a transformative space emerges around ordinary mind (41:59)
• What is the experience of transrational knowing? (43:01)

• John Prendergast’s website: Listening from Silence
• John Prendergast, Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality
• John Prendergast, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence
• John Prendergast, In Touch: How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself
• John Prendergast, The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy
• Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (abridgment by D.C. Somervell)
• Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
• J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit
• Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno
• Adyashanti, spiritual teacher, Open Gate Sangha
• Jean Klein, spiritual teacher, The Ease of Being
• The 10 Ox Herding Pictures
• Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach, see also Deep Transformation’s A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series
• Stanislav Grof

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A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, John J. Prendergast, PhD. is a nondual teacher, author, retired psychotherapist, and retired Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he taught masters level counseling students for twenty-three years. John studied for many years with the European sage Dr. Jean Klein, as well as with Adyashanti. He was invited to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt in 2011 and received dharma transmission (authorization to teach) from Adyashanti in 2023. John has been offering residential retreats with his wife, Christiane, since 2015, in both the U.S. and, more recently, in Europe. He also has extensive experience teaching online.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 178 (Part 2 of 2) | In the ninth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed gives a fascinating account of how four distinctly different wisdom teachings came to him in succession, directly from true nature, embodied in the form of diamonds. “In the beginning, I didn’t know…what the hell were these? Is it my imagination?” Hameed laughs. But then his colleagues and students experienced the diamondness too. Like angels of revelation, each diamond vehicle brings a different type of wisdom: the first diamond vehicle, Guidance, brings clarity and initiated the practice of inquiry; the second embodies the wisdom that pleasure is what we are, bringing an understanding of pleasure from a spiritual perspective; the third diamond vehicle holds the wisdom of how to conduct our lives from a place of truth, and the fourth the wisdom of true knowledge—knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening.

Not only do we hear marvelous stories of how the diamond-shaped wisdom messengers appeared to Hameed, but he also imparts a wonderfully comprehensive yet succinct rendering of the teachings they brought, and the conversation flows from embodying wisdom to embodying pleasure, the inward turn, and why bliss must be combined with emptiness for enlightenment to occur. Also, how to live a life of truth with the inner compass provided by the third diamond teaching, the pitfalls of the ego’s tendency to accommodate others, how being is inseparable from knowing, and lots more. A very full, warm, rich conversation, filled also with humor, sparkle, and delight. Recorded January 30, 2025.

“The Diamond Dome brings in the wisdom of true knowledge—spiritual knowledge, knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening.”

• Emptiness has a bliss to it (00:49)
• The death tantra and sexual tantra paths to enlightenment (01:06)
• Emptiness/fullness, being/non-being, unity/particularity: two sides of reality (03:18)
• We lose track of the particularity when we focus on unity only (05:22)
• There are many different levels of particularity: ego, body, soul… Each diamond vehicle is a particularity (09:39)
• The Citadel, the third diamond vehicle, is the essential conscience, the wisdom of how to conduct your life from the perspective of true nature (10:05)
• Accommodating is part of the behavior of the ego, but in accommodating, most of the time you are selling yourself, compromising (13:20)
• Living a life of truth brings in the unity and the particularity (15:37)
• You transition when you become willing to sacrifice comforts, relationships, the supports of the ego, to align only with truth (17:56)
• On this path, the vehicle first appears then manifests each of its aspects—different shaped diamonds within a diamond (21:31)
• For Hameed, first Diamond Guidance appeared, then Markabah, then the Citadel, then the Diamond Dome (24:24)
• The Diamond Dome brings in the wisdom of true knowledge—spiritual knowledge, knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening (25:41)
• This vehicle brings the knowledge of each aspect; basic concepts are clearly delineated (29:27)
• True nature informs the individual mind with basic concepts (34:38)
• Each vehicle highlights certain parts of the ego as obstacles to realization; the dome highlights self-identity, the “I-ness” of the ego (36:26)
• To embody the Diamond Dome the ego needs to experience cessation (37:43)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach
• A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality
• Vajrayana Buddhism’s Saṃbhogakāya
• The three kayas of Mahayana Buddhism (Lion’s Roar website)
• A. H. Almaas, Space Cruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey
• Advaita Vedanta
• Dzogchen
• Dogen, founder of the Sōtō School of Zen, “A blade of grass is a blade of grass.”
• William Blake, “Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,” from “Auguries of Innocence”
• A Course in Miracles, Helen Schucman and the Foundation for Inner Peace
• Walt Whitman, “Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,” from the preface of Leaves of Grass
• The cessation of perception as recognized by the Buddha (Wisdom Library website)
• A. H. Almaas, Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment

The A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series will generally follow the sequence of Hameed’s magnum opus, The Inner Journey Home (which John describes as psychoactive and spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually transformative), so listeners may want to get a copy of this book, to study and follow along on this exhilarating path of awakening.

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Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the U.S. to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him to inquire into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature rather than the physical nature of the universe. He left the academic world to pursue an in-depth journey of inner discovery, applying his scientific precision and discipline to personal, experiential research. This included study with different teachers in different modalities, extensive reading, and continuous study of his own consciousness in an effort to understand the essential nature of human experience and reality in general.

Hameed’s process of exploration led to the creation of the Ridhwan School and, with his colleague Karen Johnson, resulted in the founding and unfoldment of the Diamond Approach. He is the author of 20 books, including Nondual Love: Awakening to the Loving Nature of Reality, Love Unveiled: Discovering the Essence of the Awakened Heart, Keys to the Enneagram: How to Unlock the Highest Potential of Every Personality Type, The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, and more.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 177 (Part 1 of 2) | In the ninth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed gives a fascinating account of how four distinctly different wisdom teachings came to him in succession, directly from true nature, embodied in the form of diamonds. “In the beginning, I didn’t know…what the hell were these? Is it my imagination?” Hameed laughs. But then his colleagues and students experienced the diamondness too. Like angels of revelation, each diamond vehicle brings a different type of wisdom: the first diamond vehicle, Guidance, brings clarity and initiated the practice of inquiry; the second embodies the wisdom that pleasure is what we are, bringing an understanding of pleasure from a spiritual perspective; the third diamond vehicle holds the wisdom of how to conduct our lives from a place of truth, and the fourth the wisdom of true knowledge—knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening.

Not only do we hear marvelous stories of how the diamond-shaped wisdom messengers appeared to Hameed, but he also imparts a wonderfully comprehensive yet succinct rendering of the teachings they brought, and the conversation flows from embodying wisdom to embodying pleasure, the inward turn, and why bliss must be combined with emptiness for enlightenment to occur. Also, how to live a life of truth with the inner compass provided by the third diamond teaching, the pitfalls of the ego’s tendency to accommodate others, how being is inseparable from knowing, and lots more. A very full, warm, rich conversation, filled also with humor, sparkle, and delight. Recorded January 30, 2025.

“For enlightenment to happen, emptiness has to be combined with bliss.”

• Introducing the 9th dialogue in the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series: How did the Diamond Approach teaching come to Hameed? (00:53)
• First came a pure, transparent presence like liquid diamond: clarity itself (04:46)
• The diamond also came with a sense of precision, of sharp discrimination, of objectivity (08:07)
• Hameed’s vision of the diamond vehicles: like a fleet of ships in black space (11:05)
• The first diamond vehicle, guidance, brought about the practice of inquiry (12:06)
• Hameed’s near-death experience: looking down upon his body it was a body of diamonds; two diamonds called him back: love and joy (13:23)
• Recounting this experience to friends later, the diamond vehicle filled the room—the sacred manifest (17:08)
• Manifest in this one body was the guidance for the teaching, like an angel of revelation but shaped like a spaceship made of diamonds (19:46)
• Each diamond vehicle brings a different kind of wisdom (20:58)
• Diamond wisdom can be used as guidance in the scientific field (22:36)
• It’s not just a teaching, but a presence that embodies the teaching; embodying the presence is learning the teaching (25:11)
• The second diamond vehicle is the vehicle of pleasure, understanding pleasure from the spiritual perspective: the teaching of the inward turn (27:04)
• Pleasure turns out to be a whole realm, where all aspects appear in their pleasurable form (34:38)
• Inner guidance is where the truth is from instant to instant, telling you to look here, not there (35:58)
• Hameed differentiates pleasure from bliss, because pleasure is something ordinary human beings know (37:39)
• Embodying the wisdom that pleasure is what we are (40:08)
• All the vehicles are expressions of the essence of consciousness, messengers of wisdom (40:54)
• For enlightenment to happen, emptiness has to be combined with bliss (42:10)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach
• A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality
• Vajrayana Buddhism’s Saṃbhogakāya
• The three kayas of Mahayana Buddhism (Lion’s Roar website)
• A. H. Almaas, Space Cruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey
• Advaita Vedanta
• Dzogchen
• Dogen, founder of the Sōtō School of Zen, “A blade of grass is a blade of grass.”
• William Blake, “Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,” from “Auguries of Innocence”
• A Course in Miracles, Helen Schucman and the Foundation for Inner Peace
• Walt Whitman, “Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,” from the preface of Leaves of Grass 
• The cessation of perception as recognized by the Buddha (Wisdom Library website)
• A. H. Almaas, Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment

The A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series will generally follow the sequence of Hameed’s magnum opus, The Inner Journey Home (which John describes as psychoactive and spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually transformative), so listeners may want to get a copy of this book, to study and follow along on this exhilarating path of awakening.

---

Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the U.S. to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him to inquire into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature rather than the physical nature of the universe. He left the academic world to pursue an in-depth journey of inner discovery, applying his scientific precision and discipline to personal, experiential research. This included study with different teachers in different modalities, extensive reading, and continuous study of his own consciousness in an effort to understand the essential nature of human experience and reality in general.

Hameed’s process of exploration led to the creation of the Ridhwan School and, with his colleague Karen Johnson, resulted in the founding and unfoldment of the Diamond Approach. He is the author of 20 books, including Nondual Love: Awakening to the Loving Nature of Reality, Love Unveiled: Discovering the Essence of the Awakened Heart, Keys to the Enneagram: How to Unlock the Highest Potential of Every Personality Type, The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, and more.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 176 (Part 3 of 3) | Longtime spiritual practitioner, gifted teacher, Tibetan Buddhist lama, and developmental psychology specialist Kimberley Lafferty integrates contemporary psychology and wisdom tradition in this lively, luminous conversation about the process of awakening, the evolution of ethics, and the extraordinary capacities that come online as we mature into later stages of development. What do developmental perspectives have to add to our understanding of human nature and to spiritual practice? Our meaning-making shifts radically as we develop, Kimberley says, and because of that our reality itself shifts. This is why communicating with people with very different points of view can fail so miserably—one person’s reality is simply not the same as the next person’s reality. We need to discern, what is their meaning-making reality in this moment? What is ours?

Throughout, Kimberley grounds the discussion in practical, real-life scenarios; she also shares intriguing research on later stage development that has found that as we mature, our senses evolve: our hearing evolves to deep attunement; our seeing evolves to witnessing, our capacity of touch evolves to embody presence. It’s exciting and inspiring to see the road ahead, to acquire new insights and tools to improve communication across cultural (and age) divides, to have the concept of bodhicitta unpacked so deftly and common misperceptions about emptiness corrected—and to witness Kimberley’s wise and zesty approach to life: “What connects us all is our luminous, aware consciousness,” she says, “and if we can lean into the messiness, I think we can find our way through.” Recorded October 3, 2024.

“How can I reconstruct myself to be truth, goodness, and beauty?”

• What are some of the capacities that come online as people mature? (01:26)
• At late stage development, people awaken to individual construction; this is meta-awareness or 5th person perspective (03:40)
• It’s like waking up in a lucid dream and realizing you’re dreaming (06:00)
• How can I reconstruct myself to be truth, goodness, and beauty? (07:24)
• Development is a balloon, not a ladder (10:15)
• How developmental theory illuminates broader perspective taking: the capacity of skillful means (13:12)
• Siddhis (transpersonal powers) start to come on: precognitive capacities, the capacity of empathy (16:24)
• What challenges come about as we develop? (17:40)
• What connects us is our luminous, aware consciousness—if we can lean into the messiness, we can find our way through (22:43)
• What are humans becoming? The possibility of becoming trans-human (25:28)
• In later stages, our senses evolve: our hearing evolves to deep attunement; our seeing evolves to witnessing, to see through time and space, our capacity of touch evolves to embody presence (28:49)
• Seeing polarities rather than opposites: polarities are the building blocks of how we construct reality (31:50)
• Bodhicitta taps us into our ultimate nature (35:12)
• Correcting misperceptions of the bodhisattva vow (40:34)
• The tradition of debate in the Tibetan-Buddhist tradition (42:30)
• You are not alone; there is spiritual support available (45:36)

• Kimberley Lafferty’s website: The Confluence Experience (Education, Community, Experiences)
• 12-month living immersion in the STAGES matrix with Terri O’Fallon & Kimberley Lafferty
• The Association for Spiritual Integrity (ASI)
• Vajrayana Buddhism
• Huston Smith, The World’s Religions
• His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
• Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory
• Dan Brown, Buddhist meditation teacher and author
• Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being
• Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind
• Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen at War
• The A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series (Deep Transformation podcast series)

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Kimberley Theresa Lafferty is a seasoned teacher-practitioner specializing in constructive developmental psychology and Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana. She leads multi-year, private spiritual education cohorts with the Confluence Experience, and co-leads, with Terri O’Fallon, the penultimate Minds I year-long developmental course of Stages International. She is an active Board member for the Association for Spiritual Integrity. Kimberley is also a wife and mother to a young son, living in a remote valley of the North Cascades of North America which deeply impacts her worldview and practice.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell