Listening from the Heart of Silence by John Prendergast

Listening from the Heart of Silence by John Prendergast

Listening from the Heart of Silence: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, Volume 2 is a companion volume to The Sacred Mirror. It expands and deepens the groundbreaking dialogue begun in The Sacred Mirror.

The title Listening from the Heart of Silence refers to a quality of listening that originates prior to the duality of the one who listens and the one who is heard. It is a listening that is global, spacious, and paradoxically (to the mind at least), extremely intimate. It comes from and points to our homeground in silent, lucid openness - what some have called the Heart. When we listen from this heart of silence, we invite healing on the deepest level, welcoming everything just as it is. This is as true in our ordinary relationships as it is in the specialized relationship between therapist and client. Once the heart of silence is fully recognized, our lives begin to move from the inside out with greater honesty, love, spontaneity and power, radiating out like concentric circles on the surface of a pond. Our lives increasingly embody our deepest truth.

All psychological suffering is ultimately rooted in the misunderstanding of who we really are. The vital current of nondual wisdom implicit in the world's great spiritual traditions directly addresses the origins of the profound sense of lack and separation that are the basis of human suffering.

Dr. John J. Prendergast is an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he has taught a Transpersonal Counseling Techniques class for more than a decade. He is the author of The Chakras in Transpersonal Psychotherapy in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (2000), and co-author (with S. Krystal, P. Krystal, P. Fenner, P. Fenner, and I. Shapiro) of The Chakras in Transpersonal Psychotherapy in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (2000). and K.) of Transpersonal Psychology, Eastern Philosophy, and EMDR, in F. Shapiro, F. Shapiro, F. Shapiro, F. Shapiro, F. Shapiro, F. Shapiro (ed.) American Psychology Association Books, EMDR As An Integrated Psychotherapy Approach: Professionals of Different Orientations Examine the Paradigm Prism (2002). He has co-organized and lectured at conferences on Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, as well as workshops for therapists on The Energybody in Psychotherapy and Transpersonal Aspects in Psychotherapy: Presence, Resonance, and Inquiry.

Since 1985, he has been in private practice. In 1970, he began Transcendental Meditation and later taught it; he visited India three times to study with several instructors, including Ammachi; and he spent fifteen years with his principal teacher, Jean Klein, a European sage who blended parts of Advaita Vedanta and Kashmiri Shaivism. Adyashanti is his current teacher.