Opening to Our Deepest Ground: Illuminating the Journey of Healing and Awakening

Ep. 179 (Part 1 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.

“Transcendence is a beautiful first step… but there’s a very important process of embodying awareness more and more deeply, in the physical body, in the subtle body.”

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1

• Introducing John Prendergast, Ph.D., retired psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and author, whose most recent book is Your Deepest Ground (00:57)
• What is our deepest ground? (01:55)
• What is the difference between presence and ground? (04:29)
• The fear of losing control, of annihilation, that comes up in the process of healing and awakening (06:47)
• Using the myth of the underground descent, but emerging not as a hero, but simple and humble—devoid of egoic will (09:29)
• A translucency of the body/mind emerges: a core illumination (13:18)
• Meditation, self-inquiry, and time with authentic teachers are what have brought John to luminosity (15:09)
• The connection to one’s teacher: for John, this was Jean Klein and Adyashanti (16:25)
• Back to returning to the world—not as a hero, but where there’s no sense of accomplishment and hierarchy disappears (17:55)
• The tyranny of the enlightenment drive (20:42)
• Willfulness gradually transforms into willingness (24:07)
• Individual guidance can come as the small, still voice but also in kinesthetic form (25:25)
• Are there specific practices that facilitate opening to our deepest ground? (27:24)
• Evoking presence: John leads an invitation to welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation (29:14)
• The difference between John’s work and traditional psychotherapy (31:31)
• Beyond welcoming, John teaches a self-inquiry practice that asks, “Do I really want to know what is true?” (36:15) 
• Working not just on personal limiting beliefs but existential limiting beliefs—e.g., “I am a separate self” (39:19)
• Recognizing the limitation of rational thought, a transformative space emerges around ordinary mind (41:59)
• What is the experience of transrational knowing? (43:01)

Resources & References – Part 1

• 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
• Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (abridgment by D.C. Somervell)
• Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
• J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit
• Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno
• Adyashanti, spiritual teacher, Open Gate Sangha
• Jean Klein, spiritual teacher, The Ease of Being
• The 10 Ox Herding Pictures
• Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach, see also Deep Transformation’s A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series
• Stanislav Grof

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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