The Dharma of Direct Experience

A deep exploration of the direct experience of non-dual reality and its lessons for spiritual growth and development • Examines the direct perception of non-dual reality and shows its implications for navigating ordinary reality in an open, compassionate, and ever-maturing way • Shares the author’s most significant awakening experiences and explores their psycho-emotional and psychospiritual foundations • Offers practical teachings for spiritual understanding, emotional development, and the cultivation of compassion Exploring the direct perception of non-dual, “non-ordinary” reality, Paul Weiss shares guidance for navigating ordinary reality in an open, compassionate, and ever-maturing way. He affirms our shared human potential for the “direct experience” of reality--unmediated by our more relativistic mental faculties--and reveals this experience as an essential dimension of our conscious capacity for growth. He shares his most significant awakening experiences and the circumstances leading up to them, exploring the personal and transpersonal dimensions of the experiences and their psycho-emotional and psycho- spiritual foundations. He points to such experiences as part of our ongoing integration as human beings and the essential path of practice that supports our availability to them. Interweaving perspectives from psychology and neuroscience with important lessons from spiritual traditions around the world, Weiss explores how to live a life of integrity, reciprocity, and openness to reality, offering practical teachings for spiritual understanding, emotional development, and the cultivation of compassion, viewed by ancient Buddhist sages as the true meaning of existence. He addresses such human qualities as vulnerability, empathy, reciprocity, openness, and intimacy and shows how they express and participate in deeper conscious truths. The author also examines practical wisdom teachings within both Buddhist and Christian paths to realization. Combining engaged mysticism with transcendent humanism, along with thought- provoking poetry, Weiss offers a living vision of a non-dual way of experiencing the world, a path that supports our functional, emotional, and spiritual maturity.