I had my first mystical opening when I was fourteen years old. Then, five years later, in 1975, I received “Shaktipat,” the descent of divine grace, via an initiation from Swami Muktananda, a spiritual master from India, in the tradition of Siddha Yoga. This awakening catalyzed a decades-long spiritual quest. During the next seven years, as Muktananda’s student, I lived in meditation centers across the globe (including two years in India), and spent hours every day meditating, chanting, and giving myself to the practice of selfless service. Eventually, I was trained to become a swami (or monk), and I gave talks and led workshops in the philosophical traditions of yoga and Tantra.

Muktananda died in 1982, before I could return to India to take my monastic vows. Soon afterwards, I entered the academic world, studying comparative religion. In 1994, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, with a focus on Religion and the Human Sciences (the psychology, philosophy, and anthropology of religion). I joined the Religious Studies faculty at Southern Methodist University that same year. For the last almost three decades, I have taught courses on mysticism, the nature of consciousness, religion and healing, primal religions, as well as yogic philosophy and the practice of meditation.

Also, crucially, in 1986, I married Sandra, my beloved wife of 36 years (she died last year, on April 12th). Sandra was the spiritual head of the Full Spectrum Center for Spiritual Awakening, located in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where she taught for several decades.

In 1995, I began my training with Levent Bulakbasi, a Turkish energy healer who led the IM School of Healing Arts in Manhattan. After completing my four-year training in the IM School (which involved many long weekend seminars in NYC), I spent several more years there (as well as several additional years in Sandra’s center) teaching neo-Reichian techniques designed to free up life energy using the breath, movement, and sound in these large (and heartfelt) group settings.

In 2005, I began my current academic study of, and participation in, the Santo Daime religious tradition. This new religious movement began in the early twentieth century in the depths of the Amazonian rainforest in Brazil. It is a fusion of indigenous shamanic practices, West African traditions, esotericism, and Christianity. At the heart of the Santo Daime tradition is the sacrament of the Daime (known in other contexts as ayahuasca), a mind-altering brew that opens participants up to the spiritual dimensions of reality. For those of us within this tradition, the Daime embodies the Consciousness of the Christ, it is the transformative Light and Love of our own Divine Nature. I recently published a book on this transformative religious tradition with Columbia University Press – Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition. I also created a website as an adjunct to the book: www.LiquidLightBook.com

In The Heart of Awakening, we will not be taking Daime as part of our work together, but because I am so deeply immersed in working with this sacred brew, its Power and Light will inevitably be an underlying and deeply healing Energy and Presence in our work together.