People often ask me how I got to where I am now. I have condensed my life and inspirations into this short space, to give you a little better understanding of the lengths I’ve gone to explore the world of conscious awareness and the structures that make a better culture. I don’t regularly share all of these details but I was inspired to here to honor some of the key moments that shape my work.

I was an inquisitive and a precocious child, inspired by my particle physicist father and traditional but also very independent thinking mother. I learned to love the world of books and philosophy, and to observe the nuances of other cultures and to try to figure out what makes the world work and why some places made me feel so much more at home than others. 

With a cultural background in Reconstructionist Judaism, I spent five years when I was still in middle and high school studying texts on ethics and morality, parsing out what stood as universal and what could be attributed to more sectarian and limited beliefs. A key turning was when I found some books on meditation and began my own practice as a sophomore in high school in 1978. Those sessions showed me there were other ways to relate to my experience and other dimensions of awareness that could be glimpsed with practice, effort, and time.

I continued my academic studies at Cornell University, where I began putting my curiosity about building a better world to the test. With an independent major, I was able to cover transdisciplinary studies. I delved into the impact of patriarchal structures, learned about the design of American civil liberties and the role of civil disobedience, how gender affects development in preschool children, and the basics of urban planning, all with an eye to figure out what creates the scaffolding for life-affirming cultures. I went to lectures on Buddhism from visiting scholars, practiced yoga, and in 1982, on the recommendation from one of my professors, I went on my first 2-week program at the Kripalu Center. 

There was already a fire burning in my heart to pursue that highest goal of clear seeing. When I saw people at Kripalu who lived that life full time, that fire in my heart burst out of its confines. It was the first time I’d seen the possibility of devoting myself to, as Plato called it, the good, the true, and the beautiful as my life’s mission. From that catalyst, I went on to immerse myself in four years of intensive practice in India between 1983 – 1986, with a few periods of intensive retreat, study, and work in the US.

Those years were defined by open ended exploration and self-regulated study, and I was fortunate to be exposed to some of the most revered teachers of that time, from a variety of traditions. I had the good fortune to take longer teachings with the Dalai Lama, when he was young and would teach for hours every day for a week or ten days straight. In Dharamsala, I met and studied with other renowned practitioners in the Tibetan tradition including Nyingma Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and others. In 1986, I took the refuge commitment with one of the Dalai Lama’s Senior Tutors, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche. My Nautilus award-winning book Adventure in Zanskar documents some of the remote areas I explored to deepen my understanding and observe the life and cultures these philosophies gave rise to. 

During this time I also explored Theravada Buddhism, sitting 20-day retreats in Bodh Gaya, 10-day retreats with S.N. Goenka, and the 1985 3-month retreat at Insight Meditation Society with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. The practice taught me so much and I remain so grateful that I was able to take the time to devote to open ended practice for so long.

The texts of Vedanta and the physical practices of yoga and breathwork were also were part of my training. In 1985, I completed Kripalu Center’s 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training with Don Stapleton. Between 1983 – 1986 I spent twelve months in total immersed in Vedanta, Yoga Vasistha, Yoga Philosophy, Hatha Yoga, and Pranayama at the Sivananda Center in Rishikesh. My teachers included the highly revered Swami Krishnananda, Swami Chidananda, and Swami Brahmananda. I was also introduced to the work of the independent thinker J. Krishnamurti and his dialogues with physicist David Bohm, as well as to the books from the saints AnandamayiMa, Vivekananda, and Ramakrishna, all of whom opened my mind to different ways of thinking about the ultimate goal of human development, ego and thought, motivation and consciousness. 

In 1986, I became a founding member of a meditation retreat community with worldwide network of centers, where I lived and worked as a lay monastic for 27 years, practicing a variety of meditation techniques, exploring emergent dialogue and presencing processes, studying cultural theories including Evolutionary Philosophy, the work of Teilhard de Chardin and Brian Swimme, Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics. During part of this time I also worked as a senior editor for What Is Enlightenment? Magazine, one of the premier spiritual and philosophical magazines of the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

Always inquisitive, my research on individual and collective transformation, the power of purpose and intention, the stabilizing and strengthening force of meditation practice, and the urgent need for a profound leap in our educational systems, led me to establish Inner Strength in 2014, to bring the best of what I’d learned to students in under-resourced schools and empower them with the keys to inner development – inner strength for outer stability. 
I believe that if more and more young people grow up understanding the interconnected nature of life, the wonder of consciousness and how we can all live lives fueled by meaning, purpose, curiosity and fulfillment we can truly build a fluid and evolving life-affirming culture. 

This community is the next evolution of my work and thinking and I very much look forward to sharing that with you.