Mystical immersion inspired by profound
spiritual writings
~ with Amy Edelstein & Chris Parish ~
Do you cherish spiritual writings that propel you onto your own spiritual quest?
Is there a mystic who ignites your passion for depth that lies both beyond and nearer-than-near?
Have you experienced the art of contemplation that you transports you into a new order of possibility?
For many of us, the great awakenings of the world’s luminaries have fueled our own devotion to Spirit. Their examples inspire us and compel us to want to realize higher consciousness in our own lives. Coming in direct contact with a breathtaking spiritual vision of radical Love stirs something in us. It touches us from somewhere beyond our reach, while all the feeling like it is coming from our very own heart.
When we encounter the words of great realizers, we feel them echo in our own being. They call to us and inspire us to reach higher. They fill us with optimistic confidence about enacting real change in the world around us. Seeing how the illumination of great souls uplifted the culture they lived in, we see how our own transformation can contribute to the evolution of our world. And that compels us to reach way beyond what we assume is possible.
Absorbing the vision of great luminaries is crucial to spiritual life, but do you still find it hard to make structured time for this in your own life?
Many of us have beautiful books on our shelves, but it’s hard to carve out the time to immerse ourselves in contemplation. The days click by. We’re busy and overwhelmed, and feel pressured to keep up with the world around us.
I’ve discovered that when someone takes me by the hand, and lays out the path, stone-by-stone, discovery lets loose with its own momentum On our own, we often don’t find time for important reflection, but if we let ourselves taste the sweetness of the fruits, the energy we need need to make it happen arises all by itslef. That’s why Chris Parish and I have created the Great Awakenings digital course. We are making it easy to engage deeply in the practice of profound spiritual inquiry and contemplation.Here’s how it works
➤ The course focuses on 12 great mystics and one of their time-honored books.
➤ For each mystic, you’ll receive a one-hour MP3 talk from Amy and Chris discussing one of the mystics. They’ll bring the luminary’s insights and their lives into 3-D, and illuminate their relevance to us and their uniqueness in history.
➤ You’ll receive a PDF for each mystic with an original account from Amy or Chris of their own experience being touched by the view and transmission of these great masters.
➤ You’ll receive instructions for contemplation to learn how to see through each mystic’s eyes, expanding your own understanding and experience of the sacred.
➤ You’ll receive specially curated quotes for further contemplation.
➤ And you’ll receive an additional 90-120 minutes audio with further reflection and answers to questions about the mystics.
In this course you will discover new sides of familiar spiritual figures and you’ll meet ones you may not have known of before. You’ll gain an understanding of their relevance to our time, and their unique contribution to practitioners who are deeply committed to bringing Spirit to the world.
You will follow a path of intriguing and illuminating questions that create a passageway to the soul. In this course you have full permission to explore – and to catch fire.
Great Awakenings will create the kind of spiritual inquiry that makes it easy to drop into your own depth and experience the inner confidence that inspires us to change the world.
Through Great Awakenings, you’ll fall in love with new mystics and time-honored figures. This intimacy, which comes alive as you share your discoveries with others, will open and integrate your own mystical experience into your life.
Gentle & Expert Guidance
Helps You Grow in Strength & Confidence
Chris and Amy have over 70 years of combined experience in spiritual practice. Their contemplative and transformational practice is just as active today as it ever was. In different ways they both continue to inquire, debate, discuss, evolve, integrate, and explore deeper truths.
In the Great Awakenings Digital Course, Amy and Chris share the edge of their own inquiry with you, bringing out the most significant insights from the works you will read. The course carefully takes you into the awakened Heart of these passionate pioneers and teaches you to stretch your own wings.
You will be exploring spiritual depth and questions including:
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How could Vimala Thakar’s Silence perhaps be deeper than we customarily go in meditation?
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Why is Alfred North Whitehead’s process perspective a profoundly spiritual sensitivity?
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How did the great Sufi Master Irina Tweedie develop the depth she did?
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Why have the teachings of the Buddha become so popular and how can we relate to him as both deeply realized and a real individual sprung from his own time and place?
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What could the wild bhakta Mirabai have to teach us now about the Heart?
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Was Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry a technique or a description of his own process?
- What led Teilhard de Chardin to such an adventurous yet profoundly spiritual view of the cosmos and world around us?
What Others Have Said
About Amy & Chris’ Work
“Chris and Amy have been my teachers for years. From my first session I recognized a quietness and depth in their listening and connection. I feel such supportiveness and empathy, without compromising how far we can go, that it brings a lightness and makes outrageous things seem possible.” Maura, Spain
“Amy and Chris both transmit a deep meaningfulness and satisfaction of life. They are so in touch with what it means to live in alignment with the evolutionary impulse, with cosmic conscience, and they demonstrate a purpose that reaches far beyond the personal all the way back in history and forward into a future that we can not even imagine yet!” Poul, Denmark
“Amy’s own history was very inspiring because she both showed what is possible for everybody and what it really takes to find your own way and stay true to it – to be a living expression of it. And that what it takes is not something that we first have to get, but something that we already have, that we have to learn to listen to and cultivate. At the same time she did not hide the fact that it takes a lot of courage if we want to make ourselves available to the spiritual impulse and the radical freedom and insecurity that comes with it.” Helle, Norway
“I have always thought that a true teacher had the capacity to teach on many levels at the same time, speaking to the place each person listening was able to hear, therefore expanding the awareness of everyone listening in some way. You certainly do that each and every time. You are incredible models for all of us who teach in any capacity.” Donna, Ohio
“When Chris talked about his own practice, and how he’s changed what he does, it challenged my thoughts about meditating. It reminded me that even though practice is very important, it cannot become a goal in and of itself. This inspires me to approach my meditation for the right reasons and to check in with my goals regularly so there’s always freshness and depth.” Alan, Sweden
Though you’re guaranteed to learn a lot, Great Awakenings is more than an digital course. It’s an opportunity to enrich and expand your spiritual practice in real time. It’s an opportunity to enliven your entire approach to the spiritual dimension of life. And to immerse yourself in the joy, beauty, and Love of the sacred.
➤ 12 Great Mystics & Their Major Books
➤ 12 Cultural, Historical, Spiritual, & Biographical Audio Lectures
➤ 12 Spiritual Inquiry Audio Sessions
➤ 12 Comprehensive Guides to Contemplation
Why do we call it Great Awakenings?
We’ve taken 12 great spiritual works written by great luminaries pointing to profound spiritual illumination.
We’ve designed an digital series that you’ll experience as a collective spiritual practice.
We’ve created a framework that makes profound spiritual inquiry accessible and easy.
With each section of the course, you’ll look through a different mystic’s lens, opening a new portal to the infinite.
Finally you’ll have the time (and the excuse) you need to read or re-read those great works that have been on your mind.
Chris and Amy will use their extensive experience with spiritual practice to guide you into a field of conscious contemplation. This profound engagement with mystical writings gives you access to perspectives and understanding that we often skim over. Consider this a deep dive into a still pool.
You’ll also be able to let go to some recorded guided meditations that lead to the experience of the mystery of emptiness and consciousness.
Do I Have to Read An Entire Book for Each Mystic?
We hope your will be able to use this series as an excuse to rediscover the spiritual nourishment that comes from the intimate reading of mystical works, but we’re also realistic.
We appreciate how busy everyone is – and more is not always better. So we’ve made this digital program deep, transformative, and manageable.
You’ll receive an hour-long talk from Chris and Amy that will fill you with questions and insights. We’ll take you into the heart of each classic. You’ll find out why we think each mystic is so visionary and how they stepped beyond their own times.
You will see these authors through Amy and Chris’ intimate experience. We will share times we spent personally with some of these masters and mystics as well as times these same books came alive for us.
At the end of the lecture, you’ll have a felt sense of why these mystics and their great awakenings have influenced people for centuries and even millennia after they passed from this life.
And, we’ll post a study guide and short passages so you can get your own taste of these Great Awakenings.
Finally, when it comes to your contemplative inquiry practice you will receive or two questions that will take you into the chosen book. It is potent enough to take you down the rabbit hole to find yourself somewhere you never could have imagined. As you go from classic to classic, you’ll experience the differences of faith, era, or tradition and appreciate the variety of authentic pathways to illumination.
The Great Books & Mystics You Will Work With
Freedom from the Known, J. Krishnamurti
For Love of the Dark One: Songs of Mirabai, edt. Robert Bly
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, edt. Lucien Price
I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Heart of Matter & The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin
An Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire, Lama Yeshe
Nature, Oversoul, & Other Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chasm of Fire, Irina Tweedie
Blossoms of Friendship, Vimala Thakar
Be As You Are, the Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, edt.David Godman
The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pali Canon, trans. Bhikkhu Nanamoli
Be Here Now, Ram Dass
Program Details
Amy and Chris will bring to life the selected book, illuminating central themes, historical and cultural significance, and how we might benefit from these insights in our own spiritual practice. 12 Comprehensive Guides to Contemplation The guides will include questions and instructions for contemplations, quotes, and guidelines for practice related to each mystical work.
In these practice sessions, conducted by conference call, you will be guided through a workshop format, with small group inquiries on short illuminating passage from the session’s book. The small group discussions will be interspersed with Q&A and instruction Chris and Amy. 12 Essays on the Mystics & the Selected Spiritual Book Read Amy or Chris’ personal reflection and inspiration about the works chosen for this program. Be inspired afresh to take your own path and process seriously. Join Amy & Chris on this wonderous spiritual journey. Experience how far you can go, Enrich your practice for years to come! Great Awakenings Digital Course will be available soon, September 2015. Take advantage of the discounted Pre-Order Special Price $179. (Regular price, $379.) Immerse Yourself in the Joy of Spiritual Discovery Chris began his meditation practice in 1973 in India, and Amy began her dedicated spiritual work in 1979 in Israel. They bring with them knowledge of time-honored spiritual paths, contemporary evolutionary spirituality, and their personal insights, gleaned by clocking many hours of practice and persevering through enormous challenges to experience the liberating breakthrough of spiritual insight and the humbling wonder of self transformation. The spiritual teachers and meditation instructors they have studied with in person include (more or less in chronological order) Lama Yeshe, Douglas Harding, JK Krishnamurti, Munindra, Christopher Titmuss, School of Advanced Jewish Studies, Eido Roshi, Yogi Amrit Desai, Lama Zopa, Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche (One of the Dalai Lama’s Spiritual Advisors), HH the Dalai Lama, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche (one of the Dalai Lama’s Senior Tutors), Geshe Sopa Rinpoche, SN Goenka, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Swami Krishnananda (from Sivananda Divine Life Society), Swami Chidananda (from Sivananda Divine Life Society), Metropolitan Anthony (Orthodox Christian leader), Vimala Thakar, and both practiced evolutionary spirituality with Andrew Cohen and EnlightenNext. Pre-Order Your Great Awakenings Digital Course Here And You’ll Be Among the Very First to Receive Your Program in September 2015! Great Awakenings Digital Course will be available soon, September 2015. Take advantage of the discounted Pre-Order Special Price $179. (Regular price, $379.)
Pre-Order Your Digital Course Now
About Amy Edelstein & Chris Parish
Amy Edelstein, cofounder of Emergence Education, is a gifted educator, writer, and spiritual mentor committed to individual transformation and the evolution of our shared cultural values. She is a clinical pastoral chaplain, the first Evolutionary Spirituality interfaith minister ordained by the Council of Interfaith Churches, and holds the OUnI Wisdom Chair in Evolutionary Spirituality. Amy currently is leading an initiative in the Philadelphia Public School System teaching Mindfulness & Cultural Development to over 600 students. She has a background in Judaic philosophy, studied with a number of preeminent Vedantic and Buddhist teachers in Asia in the early 1980s, then practiced evolutionary spirituality for over twenty-five years with Andrew Cohen and practitioners at EnlightenNext. She is the author of the Love, Marriage & Evolution and is working on a new book about evolutionary spirituality, including a new liturgy that responds to the needs and life transitions from a contemporary, evolutionary spiritual perspective.
Chris Parish is a leading voice in the emerging field of evolutionary spirituality and is a popular speaker, workshop facilitator and cultural commentator, teaching in various countries. Having begun his path as a meditator in India in the 1970s, Chris has spent over forty years immersing himself in the practice of individual and collective spiritual transformation and philosophical inquiry. Twenty years ago, he cofounded and directed the educational charity EnlightenNext UK in London. His background was originally in ecology and nature, a subject still close to his heart. Chris teaches nonduality and meditation as well as evolutionary emergence. He is currently writing a book about evolving British culture entitled The Creative Thread.A Rich Background of Practice