Awakening WITH JASON SHULMAN
Youtube/Facebook Live Series
“Awakening with Jason Shulman" invites you to grab a cup of coffee and tune in for grounded and restorative conversations about life’s big questions. Jason Shulman, an internationally-known spiritual mentor, modern kabbalist, and Buddhist teacher, hosts a series of virtual discussions with students, seekers, and visionaries, plus live audience Q&As. Join Jason and his guests as they consider topics of healing and spiritual awakening, inspired by his four decades of teachings. His gentle and pragmatic approach honors human imperfection and constant change, embraces the ego as a vehicle of the spiritual journey, and reminds us that finding transcendence is our true nature. “Awakening with Jason Shulman” provides an informative and nourishing space to explore the divine curiosity in us all.
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Use the “Search” function below to scroll through the latest episodes of Jason’s Youtube Live series “Awakening with Jason”, music videos, and past video segments.
Healing Into Awakening Podcast
Episode 7: Forgiveness
May 26, 2020
This episode features a recording of The Foundation for Nonduality and A Society of Souls community meeting from March 18th 2020. This opening message from Jason Shulman will resonate with many during this time in history, and beyond.
Episode 6: Evening Prayer
April 21, 2020
Jason has been a musician and songwriter for most of his adult life. In the last few years, he has returned to writing music and composing songs. This song was written a few months before the Covid-19 emergency but it seems to embody an attitude we all need to cultivate right now in this time of love and danger. Consider it an adult lullaby with a sidecar of kindness.
Episode 5: There’s no life
March 31, 2020
In true nonduality, we understand that a fish never leaves the water. The fish never comes to the end of the water, even if it is an explorer fish, swimming this way and that. It never comes to the end of the ocean because its nature is to be in the water. The fish and the water are one. As long as we think “Here I am whole, and there I’m not,” we think there is an end to the ocean of self. But truly, there is no end to this ocean.
Episode 4: Sound of the lamentation of beings
March 17, 2020
A guide to this poem (with a little help from Wiki): Avalokitesvara is a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. This bodhisattva is variably depicted, described and portrayed in different cultures as either male or female. In Tibet, he is known as Chenrezig, and in Cambodia as Avloketesvar. In Chinese Buddhism, Avalokitesvara has evolved into the somewhat different female figure Guanyin, also known in Japan as Kanzeon. The Master the poem speaks about is Ramakrishna, the Bengali teacher who died in 1886. In many ways, he united the dual, theistic path with the avaitic or nondual path. The weeds and the little Rockaway river are all found around my home in New Jersey.
Episode 3: not so empty hands
March 4, 2020
“In this new reading, which is about idealizing the spiritual state and thereby missing the state we are in—which is the only state that actually leads us to freedom—I say Your hands need to be empty in order to receive. Well, that’s true enough for a start but not completely true. Emptying your hands, that is, laying down your previous ideas of what should be and looking at what is, is important. But I would like to add this: even if your hands are not empty, that’s OK. In a sense, our hands can never be empty. We have, after all, a body that holds history in its flesh and a mind and heart that are based on echoes from the past and anticipations of the future. So the point is not to try to empty your hands so much as to know what is in them. When you know your history is in your hands, or someone else’s ideas or path, you are ahead of the game. Only return to yourself as you are is what I would say now.” ~ Jason Shulman
Episode 2: a path through the desert
February 18, 2020
“Every time I see someone succeed along some portion of their spiritual path, I am brought to tears. What does “succeed” mean in terms of a spiritual path? To me, it is not about achieving some so-called higher state; it is not about gaining new powers or equanimity or even only getting insight into a psychological state, important though that is. Instead, it is that moment when the heart surrenders to what is, when we stop defending against the human condition—even for a brief moment—and find in its vast imperfection and temporality a moment of deep acceptance that is so vast we suddenly feel connected to every other pulsating thing in the cosmos, all the other temporary people, all the mortal stars, all the earth and its creatures. It is in those moments we hear that sweet and bitter song of being alive and the harmonies of gratefulness fill our being. And it starts with being open to our own suffering.” ~ Jason Shulman
Episode 1: the great bear mother
January 30, 2020
Every one of us who has attempted to walk the road of the spirit has had many encounters with the Great Bear Mother, that implacable life-force that simply cannot take “no” for an answer. All difficult moments in our lives, whether they are with partners and mates, with illness or health, with friends or foes, are actually encounters with the Great Bear. You don’t have to be a student of any particular discipline to have experienced what it is like to walk into the unknown with all the best of intentions, hoping to gain more clarity and insight into yourself and your place in the universe and encountering what we might call “resistance.” To counter our resistance, there resides in the universe an opposite force that demands, calls forth and insists upon awakening. This force resides in each of us, in that part that is not only personal. In this piece this calling appears as the Great Bear Mother.