Opening to Our Deepest Ground: Illuminating the Journey of Healing and Awakening (Part 2)

Ep. 180 (Part 2 of 2) | In this podcast, John Prendergast, spiritual teacher, depth psychotherapist (retired), and prolific author, eloquently lays out the territory we encounter on the spiritual path as we move towards opening to our deepest ground. John defines deepest ground as “ungraspable and unfathomable, something we can know intimately as a quality of awareness, unbounded and open.” “When we touch into this,” he continues, “we move from a place of love, peace and groundedness.” In working with students and clients over four decades, John says the presence or absence of ground has been the most important theme. 

John has a gift for communicating exactly what is most useful for a spiritual practitioner to hear: taking an integral and nondual approach different from traditional psychotherapy, he invites us to evoke presence—welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation—let go of ordinary knowledge and allow a translucent, transformative space to emerge around ordinary mind. Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness, John explains that opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization; he also weaves in an intriguing version of the hero’s journey, where the hero emerges from the underground, not as a figure of accomplishment and victory, but as a simple, humble being, void of ego. The rich wisdom and gentle guidance offered here is invaluable, worthy of listening to many a time. Recorded November 7, 2024.

“We are on the wave of life waking up to itself through humanity.”

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2

• Gaining an experiential understanding of the archetypal teachings of Carl Jung to better understand multidimensional ground (01:19)  
• Jungian archetypes are subtle ground; Ramana Maharshi’s focus is no ground (05:09)
• Trusting the wisdom of our own psyches (09:07)
• Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness (12:07)
• The collective unconscious: linking consciousness to our ancestors (14:29)
• Multidimensional healing: healing ancestral lineages (15:20)
• Eastern transcendence and Western focus on living life: opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization (16:51)
• The living question: What is life asking of you? (21:20)
• The first encounter is with darkness, stillness, emptiness; then comes a sense of pure potentiality and an upwelling current of life (22:41)
• What does engaged nonduality look like? Existential crisis and climate change (27:18)
• Frequency holders and/or frequency actors (31:56)
• Invitation to nondual communities: what is the natural response to this genuine existential threat? (33:02)
• The hesitancy people feel about bringing out the light of awareness (34:37)
• Opening the heart to collective suffering (35:30)
• Our love of truth will bring us to our deepest ground: let that be our guide (37:18)

Resources & References – Part 2

• Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
• Carl Jung, The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition 
• Advaita Vedanta 
• Kashmir Shaivism
• Ramana Maharshi, Indian sage and liberated being, 1879-1950
• John Prendergast’s website: Listening from Silence
• John Prendergast, Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality
• John Prendergast, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence
• John Prendergast, In Touch: How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself
• John Prendergast, The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy

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A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, John J. Prendergast, PhD. is a nondual teacher, author, retired psychotherapist, and retired Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he taught masters level counseling students for twenty-three years. John studied for many years with the European sage Dr. Jean Klein, as well as with Adyashanti. He was invited to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt in 2011 and received dharma transmission (authorization to teach) from Adyashanti in 2023. John has been offering residential retreats with his wife, Christiane, since 2015, in both the U.S. and, more recently, in Europe. He also has extensive experience teaching online.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell