About this item
What do you really want - isn't it happiness? And what keeps you from being happy? Could it be that your need to cling so tightly to what you believe - about yourself and life, about how things should be - is what's holding you back? In The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, a contemporary spiritual teacher in the non-duality tradition reveals how confronting and letting go of our negative beliefs about ourselves and the world ultimately sets us on the path toward an awakened life of profound joy, meaning, and purpose.We all want peace and freedom and love and happiness, we all want to be fulfilled, but so many of us fail to reach the level of contentment we've built up in our minds, often believing there's something wrong with us and blaming ourselves, others, or circumstances for our perceived lack of accomplishment or satisfaction.
About the Author
Jon Bernie is a contemporary spiritual teacher who offers a compassionate, heart-centered approach to awakening. His teaching focuses on returning the attention to the already enlightened state that lies at the core of our human experience.
www.jonbernie.org
www.facebook.com/jonbernie
He has four decades of practice and study in the contemplative traditions of Soto Zen, Theravada Insight Meditation & Advaita Vedanta. A series of early awakening experiences as a teenager led Jon to ordain as a monk in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and subsequently to the practice of retreat-based vipassana (insight meditation) as an early student of Jack Kornfield.
In the late 1980s, Jon's spiritual trajectory was profoundly altered by Jean Klein, an accomplished teacher of Advaita Vedanta and Kashmiri Yoga, with whom he studied intensively for an extended period. Jon subsequently spent time with H.W.L. Poonja and Robert Adams, both direct disciples of Ramana Maharshi. Jon's spiritual development was also greatly aided by his decades-long relationship with Brother David Steindl-Rast, who, along with Thomas Merton, was one of the first Christian monks to seriously practice in the Zen and Tibetan traditions and has since been instrumental in building interfaith networks worldwide. Jon was formally asked to teach by Adyashanti in 2002.
In addition to his work as a spiritual teacher, Jon is also an experienced healer and teacher of somatic embodiment via his extensive training in the Alexander Technique, the Qigong system of Dr. Yu Penxi and the Zero Balancing system of Dr. Fritz Smith. He has been in private practice since 1981 and has given lectures and workshops on the Alexander Technique and other modalities at the Suzuki Method Teacher's Conference, UCSF Medical School, JFK University, the Whole Life Expo and other conferences.
Jon leads classes, intensives and retreats in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationally. He also does intensive, one-on-one work with individuals both in person at his San Francisco office, and remotely by phone or Skype.
