Elevating Consciousness | Inner Work & Contemplative Practice in a Time of Meta-Crisis

Stephen Jenkinson is a former palliative care worker, cultural activist, and writer whose work explores the intersection of death, grief, meaning, elderhood, and ceremony. He has spent decades helping people navigate grief, death, and dying — both as the former director of palliative care at a major Canadian hospital and afterward through his Orphan Wisdom School, which seeks to cultivate deep life skills in an age of cultural fragmentation.

A recovered theologian, builder, stone carver, and farmer, Jenkinson brings the authority of lived experience to everything he touches. He's traveled the continent as a ceremonial guide for weddings, fu...

Kabir Kadre is the executive director of Open Field Awakening, a nonprofit initiative exploring how wisdom, human development, and collective practice can help humanity navigate the meta-crisis. For more than two decades he has worked at the intersection of organizational leadership, contemplative inquiry, and social transformation. 

A quadriplegic since a spinal cord injury in 2002, Kabir brings a deeply embodied perspective to questions of interdependence, vulnerability, care, and human flourishing. His work is informed by a long-standing meditation practice in an Indo-Tibetan lineage and a commitment to translating spiritual and developmental insight into meaningful service.

In t...

Christopher Bache is a professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, where he taught for 33 years. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Trained at Notre Dame, Cambridge, and Brown, Bache spent seven years earning a PhD — a process that turned him into a hardcore agnostic. He then began a 20-year self-experiment taking high-dose LSD using protocols developed by psychedelic pioneer Stanislav Grof.

For two decades, Chris lived a double life — a professor in public, and in private, a ma...

Andrew Louis Venezia is a meditation and Circling teacher, coach, and writer based in Amsterdam, whose work presents Circling and related practices as a path of Tantric awakening and integration. After experiencing a life-changing encounter with Awakened Interbeing during a retreat for his Master's degree cohort, Andrew embarked on a three-year research project exploring the intersection of relational practice and awakening. It was during this period that he discovered Circling.

He has since dedicated his life to weaving Circling together with the classical Tantric paths of Vajrayana Buddhism and Nondual Shaiva Tantra, as well as modern, embodied...

Lydia Becker is a therapist, instructor, and midwife with over three decades of experience in Skan-Reichian bodywork. Rooted in the tradition of Wilhelm Reich, her work uses breathwork and bodywork to release emotional and physical tension held in the body — supporting people in softening long-held patterns, breathing more fully, and rediscovering their natural aliveness.

In 1988, she became a licensed midwife — and it was through her midwifery work that Lydia experienced the power of breath and the importance of softening the social persona during birth, which led her to deepen her study of breath and body-oriented therapy. In 1993, she...

Ken Wilber is a philosopher, author, and the creator of Integral theory. He is considered by many one of the most influential thinkers of our time, whose writings have been translated into over twenty languages and have profoundly impacted domains as varied as business and medicine, psychology and ethics, politics and religion, art and education, and personal relationships.

His AQAL (All Quadrants, All Lines) framework attempts to map human reality across four quadrants, multiple stages of development, lines of intelligence, states of consciousness, and personality types — offering what he calls a cosmic address, a way of locating wh...

Sylvie Barbier and Rufus Pollock are the co-founders of Life Itself — a collective of pragmatic utopians committed to practical action for a radically wiser, weller world. Sylvie is a French-Taiwanese ritual artist whose work synthesizes Eastern and Western philosophies and aesthetics, creating contemporary rituals where the audience takes an active, interactive role. Rufus is an entrepreneur, activist, author, and long-term Zen practitioner who has founded several successful for-profit and nonprofit initiatives. His 2018 book "Open Revolution," about building a radically freer and fairer information age, has been translated into multiple languages.

Together, both as a couple and through th...

Stephen Zerfas is the CEO and co-founder of Jhourney — a tech startup scaling transformative meditation through a data-driven lens, guiding complete beginners into deeply absorbed meditation states known as the jhanas in less than a week. Stephen discovered the first three jhanas through his own practice and, upon learning of their profound history, made it his mission to bring them to as many people as possible. 

He has since trained with leading jhana teachers including Leigh Brasington and Delson Armstrong. Jhourney has served over 1,300 alumni with a 60-70% success rate helping participants access the jhanas on weeklong ret...

Daniel Garner is a writer, philosopher, and one-half of O.G. Rose — the philosophical and literary voice he shares with his wife, Michelle Garner. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Uno Press Lab Prize, and has been featured in literary publications including The Iowa Review, The William and Mary Review, and Broken Pencil. Daniel has been involved in writing over a dozen books including "The Conflict of Mind," "The Map Is Indestructible," the "Belonging Again" series, and a creative fiction work, "Under the Wing." When not writing or thinking on the deepest questions of ou...

Richard Flyer is a community weaver and entrepreneur who has devoted his life to exploring how spirituality, local relationships, and practical action can renew communities, building ecosystem networks from the ground up. Deeply influenced by Sarvodaya Shramadana's grassroots mobilization of 15,000 Sri Lankan villages, Richard champions bottom-up regeneration rooted in local relationships, spiritual practice, and everyday service.

His work spans founding Vecinos Unidos in San Diego, leading the San Diego Food Bank, supporting syntropic agroforestry in Hawaii, building symbiotic networks across Living Local Economy, Food Systems, Arts and Culture, and Neighbor Networks in Reno, and launching the Symbiotic...

Daljeet Peterson is an astrologer, Human Design analyst, and author exploring how ancient and modern systems of meaning can guide us through times of transformation. His work bridges astrology, Human Design, and the Gene Keys as complementary maps of consciousness — tools for aligning with one's deeper purpose and participating more consciously in the collective evolution of our species. 

A former television editor turned cosmic cartographer, Daljeet brings a storyteller's sensibility to the study of archetypes, weaving together myth, history, and contemporary culture. He is the author of "Collective Souls: Generations, Astrology, and the Future of America," which exp...

Natureza Gabriel is an ancestral neuroscience pioneer, developer of Autonomics, and founder of Hearth Science — an organization and community offering tools, trainings, and practices that help people cultivate nervous system fluency and deepen their experience of wellbeing. 

At the heart of his work is Autonomics, an animist cartography of living autonomic physiology shaped by over three decades of collaboration with more than one hundred mentors and advisors across 25 healing traditions and 24 cultures, many indigenous. It is considered one of the first accurate maps of the living autonomic nervous system in modernity. 

His Autonomics trainings have been...

Pema Dragpa is a dharma teacher, author, and ordained Tibetan Buddhist Lama who graduated with honors in Philosophy and Religious Studies from New York University in 2002. Since 2004 he has served as a resident teacher at Padma Samye Ling, a meditation retreat center founded by the Nyingma Dzogchen masters Venerable Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Venerable Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche. In 2010 he was formally ordained as a Lama by the Venerable Khenpo Rinpoches. He is also a senior editor of more than 25 books on Buddhist philosophy and the author of "An Integral View of Tibetan Buddhism: Preserving Lineage Wisdom in...

Peter McEwen is an ordained Nyingma yogi, meditation coach, and founder of The Field, an organization teaching tantric methods to practitioners navigating contemporary life demands. Since 1993 he has studied under Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Tulku Orgyen P'huntsok, Lama Pema Dorje Rinpoche, and Bruce Tift, and has completed the traditional Vajrayana three-year retreat curriculum. Peter writes The Current on Substack, sharing essays and tools from thirty years of integrating contemplative practice with daily life. His work focuses on embodied presence and nervous system fluency, offering methods that survive the actual pressures of work, relationships, and daily complexity.

In this...

David Rug is a metaphysician, civilizational theorist, and visionary storyteller on a journey of transmuting childhood wounds of social fragmentation into memetic medicine for the human family. Sensitized to the pains of social division and disconnect early in life through his parents' divorce and the increasingly political fracturing of his family field, he set out on a quest to understand the root causes of conflict and miscommunication. While completing his bachelor's degree in physics at Heidelberg University, he discovered GameB and adjacent movements, realizing there was, in effect, a "physics of communication" — principles that could be applied to the ch...

Dr. John Churchill is a psychologist, dharma teacher, and founder of Planetary Dharma — an integrally informed community embracing the vows and path of the Bodhisattva, committed to elevating human consciousness and collective transformation. John holds a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from William James College and is a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine. His journey into Buddhist psychology began as a monk at Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland, where he undertook an in-depth study of Buddhist contemplative practice. He later spent 15 years training and teaching Mahamudra meditation within an Indo-Tibetan Mahayana lineage under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel P. Brown.

Ali Tataryn is a counselor, somatic educator, and coach who guides clients through somatic-emotional release and helps them map their internal emotional landscapes for healing and self-development. She is the founder of Relational Dojo, a space where kind humans come together to co-create curious and courageous conversations, and co-founder of Sacred Somatic Events, a sober somatic dance experience inviting participants into full-spectrum self-expression.

Her primary training is in counseling, expressive arts, and somatic education. Ali has completed over 260 hours of Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training and is a trained T3 Circling Facilitator through the Integral Center. She is...

Delson Armstrong is a maverick meditation teacher and author. At age 16, disillusioned with conventional life, he embarked on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas, where he spent 6 to 8 hours a day practicing meditation, studying sacred texts, and receiving guidance from masters across multiple lineages. 

Through this intensive training Delson developed the rare ability to enter nirodha-samāpatti — a meditative state marked by the complete cessation of perception and feeling — for extended periods of time. These claims have been rigorously examined through neuroscience research, with findings published in a 2023 paper titled "Cessation of Consciousness in Meditation."

He is the...

Dor Konforty is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, investor, and awakening teacher dedicated to distilling the first principles of the dharma and bringing them to every aspect of human life. He spent most of his twenties conducting interdisciplinary brain research in academic settings, and his thirties as an entrepreneur and CEO in the decentralization space—applying his neuroscience background to envision more collaborative, non-zero-sum human networks. 

In parallel, he has devoted thousands of hours to meditation practice as well as growth and relational modalities, training closely with pragmatic dharma teachers such as Culadasa, Daniel Ingram, and Delson Armstrong, and per...

Daniel Thorson is a former monastic, podcaster, writer, and coach. He spent five years as a resident at the Monastic Academy and has accumulated two years of silent retreat experience. Daniel is a certified Aletheia Coach and Circling facilitator whose work weaves together embodied inquiry, attachment-based healing, philosophical exploration, and relational presence. For many years he hosted the Emerge podcast, a pioneering platform that helped catalyze what many now call the liminal web. He currently writes The Intimate Mirror on Substack, exploring meaning, transformation, intimacy, and the search for religion in the age of artificial intelligence.

In...

Hyrum Lewis is a professor, author, and political theorist who teaches history at Brigham Young University–Idaho, where he leads the American Foundations Team. His research focuses on the history of ideology and the intersection of political and intellectual culture, with extensive writing on the evolution of American conservatism, historical pedagogy, and cultural conflict in the American West. He is the author of several books including his most recent, "The Myth of Left and Right," co-authored with his brother Verlan Lewis, which argues that the traditional left-right political spectrum is a misleading and oversimplified framework for understanding contemporary American po...

Jordan Hall is a tech entrepreneur, philosopher, and meta-systemic thinker who, over a year ago, announced his conversion to Christianity. 

In this conversation, we explore Jordan's early experiences with religion and spirituality, what ultimately drew him to Christianity, and what Christianity might offer that Eastern traditions do not. We get into entrepreneurship as a path to cultivating instincts and intuitions, landing in Black Mountain and finding Christianity, and the deeper humility Jordan discovered through extensive study of the tradition.

We explore the idea that the meta-crisis is fundamentally a crisis of religion, the impact of r...

Seth Zuiho Segall is a Zen Buddhist priest, clinical psychologist, and writer who served on the clinical faculty of the Yale University School of Medicine for nearly three decades. He is a science writer for Mindfulness Research Monthly, a contributing editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and a review editor for The Humanistic Psychologist. Ordained in the White Plum lineage, he has practiced meditation and Buddhism for nearly thirty years, currently leads Pamsula Zen of Westchester, and guest teaches at the New York Insight Meditation Center. He is the author of several books including "Buddhism and Human Flourishing" and...

Brad Kershner is an educator, independent scholar, and Head of School at Kimberton Waldorf School. He is co-founder of The Reconstitution Project, a meta-political think tank, and author of "Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership." Alongside his work in education, Brad collaborates with thought leaders and spiritual teachers around the world, developing wisdom-based responses to planetary problems.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore how Brad became an educator and the Waldorf approach to education, the fundamental principles of child development, and the state of emotions and mental health in young people today.<...

Murray Stein is a Jungian psychoanalyst, author, and lecturer. He received his bachelor's in literature and master's in Divinity from Yale and completed his PhD in Religion and Psychological Studies at the University of Chicago. He trained as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich and is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He is the author of many books including "The Principle of Individuation" and "Jung's Map of the Soul."

In this conversation, we unpack Jung's Map of the Soul and...

Bonnitta Roy is an insight guide, philosopher, and futurist whose work is grounded in cutting-edge cognitive science, evolutionary theory, contemplative studies, and metaphysics. From 2014 to 2022 she designed, developed, and directed a master's course in Consciousness Studies at the Graduate Institute, now known as Salem University. She went on to launch the Pop Up School, developing transformative courses such as "A New Theory of the Body," "Lyric Culture: Ontological Designs for Backloop Realities," and "Varieties of Religious Experiences." Her latest venture is The Divinity School — a leadership program forging leaders who can see deeper into reality, make decisions that benefit th...

Ari Nielsen is a practitioner with an eclectic background spanning Reichian breathwork, cybernetics, unschooling, Dzogchen, and improv. He spent over a decade living in the heart of the community surrounding Adi Da, the prime representative of California New Age spirituality in the 1970s. He also edited the collected works of Bruce Di Marsico, an existential therapist whose philosophy can be summed up as "be happy, and do what you want." Ari currently writes a Substack elucidating a radically liberating orientation to life he calls "Searchless Responsiveness."

In this episode, Ari shares his journey into spirituality, his years...

Zak Stein is a writer, educator, and futurist whose work explores existential risk and the meta-crisis. He studied religion and philosophy at Hampshire College before completing his doctorate in educational neuroscience, human development, and educational philosophy at Harvard. He is co-founder of several organizations including Lectica, the Civilization Research Institute, and the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He is the author of "Education in a Time Between Worlds" and co-author of "First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on Cosmoerotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come."

This is our third conversation. We've previously explored...

Cedric Chin is a business operator, programmer, and writer, and the founder of Commoncog — a publication exploring the models of business expertise and how to accelerate the acquisition of that expertise. His approach to writing and learning is simple but rigorous: find interesting ideas, try them out in his own life, and share the results. Over the years he has compiled an extensive knowledge base on how to think and learn better in business and beyond.

In this conversation, we explore what led Cedric to study expertise and the limits of mental models, the problem with deliberate pr...

Cadell Last is an anthropologist, philosopher, and founder of Philosophy Portal — an online educational platform opening space for the next generation of philosophical thought. After developing a strong grounding in evolutionary anthropology and biology, he began a deep study of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, opening him to fresh perspectives on some of life's most challenging questions. Today his work explores biocultural evolution, the mind-matter relation, and speculative futures. He is the author of "Global Brain Singularity" and "Systems and Subjects," co-author of "Sex, Masculinity, God," and lead editor of the community anthologies "Enter the Alien" and "Abyssal Arrows."

In...

Tom Morgan is a former financier and founder of The Leading Edge, a media platform and transformational community dedicated to sharing world-changing ideas and facilitating life-changing experiences. After nearly 20 years in finance — including roles at Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and Sapient Capital — Tom became increasingly disenchanted with the path he was on. An awakening experience eventually led him to leave finance and enter a difficult multi-year existential crisis that forced him to reconsider success, purpose, money, meaning, and what it means to live a meaningful life. Today, Tom describes himself as a “curiosity sherpa,” seeking out unconventional thinkers, transfor...

Kyle Kowalski is an ex-marketing executive turned solopreneur who left the corporate world after experiencing an existential crisis. He founded Sloww — a digital knowledge base and community sharing insights into the art of living for students of life. An interdisciplinary dot collector and synthesizer, Kyle creates in-depth book summaries, e-books, and a wisdom-packed weekly newsletter integrating slow living with meaning, purpose, money mastery, transformational learning, and human development.

In our last conversation, we explored the art of slow living, IKIGAI, financial freedom, and the lottery of birth. This time we go deeper — into the real challenges of buil...

Bernardo Kastrup is a philosopher of mind and the leading voice for metaphysical idealism — the view that all of reality is essentially mental. He holds PhDs in both Philosophy and Computer Engineering and has worked at CERN and the Philips Research Laboratories, where the Casimir Effect of Quantum Field Theory was discovered. He founded the parallel processing company Silicon Hive, acquired by Intel in 2011, and currently serves as Executive Director of the Essentia Foundation — dedicated to presenting scientific and analytic evidence challenging traditional materialism. He is the author of over ten books including "Why Materialism is Baloney," "The Idea of t...

James Baker is an inner work practitioner and founder of Intentional Society — an online transformational community centered on developmental and relational practices. After spending 15 years in software development, he became disillusioned with the corporate world and decided to pursue his passions. He launched Intentional Society, and after over 150 weekly gatherings, the community has grown into a distinctive space for personal transformation and interpersonal exploration.

In this conversation, we explore the role of relational practices in human development, what Intentional Society is and the premises it's built on, and the major takeaways from over 150 weekly gatherings with a co...

Layman Pascal is a prominent thinker in the Liminal, Metamodern, Game B, and Integral spaces whose work explores post-metaphysics, nonduality, metamodernism, integral metatheory, new shamanism, the future of religion, developmental philosophy, and meta-progressive politics. He is the co-host of the Integral Stage podcast.

This episode was recorded live at Limicon 2024 and explores ideas from Layman's two popular essays "The Metamodern Business Bureau" and "Make Game A Pay for the Wall." After our dialogue, we opened the floor for participants to ask questions and share reflections.

In this conversation, we explore transforming the money and meaning...

Darcia Narvaez is a professor of psychology whose work explores the neurobiology of moral development, evolved parenting practices, and small-band hunter-gatherer societies. Identified as one of the top 2% of scientists worldwide, she is the president of Kindred World — a nonprofit dedicated to creating a wisdom-based worldview — and the founder of the Evolved Nest, an initiative that integrates findings across child development, child raising, and adult behavior while promoting optimal health, wellbeing, cooperation, and sociomoral intelligence. She is the author of several books including the award-winning "Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality."

In this conversation we explore the...

Bruce Tift is a psychotherapist, author, and longtime Vajrayana Buddhism practitioner with over 40 years of practice. As a therapist, he has worked in psychiatric wards and social services, and has maintained a private practice since 1979. He taught at Naropa University for twenty-five years and has lectured internationally. A student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, he has had the fortune of meeting many realized teachers along the way. He is the author of "Already Free" — a book exploring the relationship between psychotherapy and awakening through the lens of both Western psychology and Vajrayana Buddhism.

In this conversation, we exp...

Richard D. Bartlett is a community organizer, entrepreneur, and coach who helps people grow high-trust communities and decentralized organizations. In 2011 he was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement — a pivotal moment that set him on the path to becoming a key player in Enspiral, an organization that shares money, power, and information to help its members do meaningful work. He went on to found Loomio, a software that helps organizations navigate decentralized decision-making, and later The Hum, a non-hierarchical management consultancy. His latest venture is Microsolidarity — a community building network and movement dedicated to cultivating high-trust groups at a hu...

North Burn is a meditation teacher and practitioner who has devoted fifteen years to full-time contemplative practice across Insight Meditation and Soto Zen traditions. He has spent five years in monastic communities, two years in silent intensive retreats, and several years in solitude and self-directed study. Influenced by Joseph Goldstein, Greg Scharf, Leslie James, and Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi, he began teaching meditation retreats in 2016. He is the founder of Boundless Refuge — an annual three-month silent retreat dedicated to transforming suffering into peace through the practice of the middle way.

In this conversation, we explore what inspired No...

David Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition who began Zen practice in 1971 and completed the formal koan curriculum in 1988. For many years he taught Buddhist and comparative philosophy at university level. Although retired from academia he continues to lecture internationally on the intersection of Buddhism and modernity. He is the author of many books including "Lack & Transcendence," "Ecodharma," and "Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond."

In this conversation, we explore the fundamental problem of human existence — what David calls "lack" — and the unskillful ways we typically try to address it. We get...