Welcome to the domain of
Enlightened Spirituality

Begun in September 2006, this wide-ranging website has over 125 original essays (some short, some book-length, the equivalent of over 3,400 pages of total material) and several dozen photos and sacred images for viewing, with no bothersome ads and only one commercial webpage (for our Wake Up Press). To help new and returning visitors search for specific names or topics, we've added a Google search box for this entire website:

Explore one of the Internet's most extensive websites on truly healthy and enlightened Spirituality, awakening to Absolute Awareness, a profoundly nondual theology of God, the lives and teachings of sages and saints (for female adepts, see our huge Women of Spirit resource), and many articles on our mystical traditions, world religions, powers of Consciousness, emotional healing, styles of meditation, sacred relationships, conscious dying into Eternal life, spiritualized politics, wonders of science, spiritual humor, and more.

Here you can always remember to breathe more fully, love everyone more deeply, and relax more easily into/as the Divine One who is the Light and Truth of WHO WE REALLY ARE.

Is it really possible to live an enlightened life of all-embracing love, compassionate service, and actual freedom from binding ego-tendencies? Can one live spontaneously yet intelligently from the sublime fragrance of real wholesomeness and bountiful generosity? Can one, in short, awaken from the ultimately miserable "me"-dream to the inspired grandeur of Divine Awakening?

The answer to each of these questions is YES.

Behold an assembly of humanity's most eminent spiritual leaders—from Jesus and the Buddha and many luminaries of ancient and medieval times to our era's Ramana Maharshi, Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramakrishna, Narayana Guru, Meher Baba, Nityananda, Nisargadatta, Dadaji (Amiya Roy Chowdhury), Neeb Karori (Neem Karoli) Baba, Padre Pio, Gemma Galgani, Maria Esperanza, Mother Teresa, Thich Nhat Hanh, Taungpulu Sayadaw, Dipa Ma, Ajahn Chah, Hsu-yun, Hsuan-hua, Cheng Yen, Kyongho, Mangong, Daehaeng, Kusan, Harada Roshi, the 14th Dalai Lama, Dilgo Khyentse, 16th Karmapa, Sheikh al-Alawi, Hazrat Babajan, Anasuya Devi, Anandamayi Ma —along with several thousand other sages, saints, adepts, prophets and incarnations within all our sacred traditions....

All these impressive figures have clearly shown us over the millennia what it is to have genuinely "let go, let God" (God = Awareness-Love-Reality-Spirit-Brahman-Atman-Buddhata-Tao-AinSof-Allah). They are enlightened—without narrowly identifying with anyone who is "enlightened" or claiming any special, superior state of "enlightenment." They are entirely lightened up, illumined, awake, free, clear, emptied out and filled up with Divine virtue.

In a world with so much craziness, crassness and corruption on display, especially rife within the easily-exploited fields of religion, we can all be thankful that, as Sufi poet-saint Jalaluddin Rumi once remarked, "counterfeiters only exist because there is real gold." Truly enlightened spiritual ones exist (emanated by the Divine as "dream figures" to awaken us) and truly enlightened spirituality is possible for anyone willing to let dysfunctional egocentricity dissolve in the Divine Reality of Absolute, Infinite Awareness.

Countless people today ask what it means to live a deeper spiritual life.... Beyond the old dilemma of whether to renounce the world or immerse oneself in it, the enlightened "Free Beings" (the Avatâra-Incarnations and awake adepts) show us how to freely transcend yet pervade the world with Love and Light through the Power of Pure Awareness.

This Divine Reality of Pure Awareness, Open Presence or Spirit, the one Sacred Principle, is both beyond all yet within all. As the theologians say, this Divine Awareness/Reality is both transcendent and immanent. Not any kind of "thing" but the Source, Witness and Reality of all things, this God-Self is other than this world, yet right here animating and embracing this dreamlike world and all her deliciously unique beings.

Let's be completely clear about This: Awareness is Who You Really Are, right HERE, right NOW, the Infinite, Open, Imperceptible (but quite live-able or be-able) Host for all "guest" experiences, as the Zen masters say.

Awareness is the Supreme Self, the unseen Seer of seeing, the unheard Hearer of hearing, the unthinkable Thinker of thinking, as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (our oldest wisdom text) revealed Divine Truth nearly 3,000 years ago.

Hence, anyone living and flourishing in/as Divine Awareness-Bliss-Love can be totally involved in the world while entirely uninvolved, fully engaged while completely free as the One Who Alone IS, the I AM THAT AM. This God-Self or Divine Dreamer, the true Living God, Pure Open Awareness, adventures as "I am this" or "I am that," delightfully playing the always-poignant role of the individual human, animal or celestial being, eventually awakening ItSelf (from Its egocentric soul condition) to the clarity of Divine Presence, the only Reality. One's life, therefore, can be a beautiful unfolding flower of virtue, eventually fully blossoming into a life of Divine splendor.

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As you explore this multi-faceted website, we think you'll find this to be one of the most extensive sites for authentic spiritual life on the Internet ("authentic" in philosopher Ken Wilber's sense of opening one to the highest/deepest experiential levels). So, having arrived at this site, make yourself at home, and bookmark this page for easily returning whenever you wish. Inform friends about this spiritual resource. New materials will be added over the years to the already sizeable content available at this site, such as new essays, photos, book-titles, links to other websites, and other items of interest. Check out the What's New page for updates.

Here you'll find a big collection of offerings, wide-ranging across a number of topics, and also ranging from "basic" to "advanced" levels of spirituality. We feature numerous sections or domains for exploring different facets of this many-sided jewel of spiritual life. These sections or domains can be accessed at any time by simply clicking on one of the buttons at the top-left of each webpage:


• Nondual or mystical spirituality--Mysticism, "a transcendental form of common sense" (as G.K. Chesterton put it), is a hot trend today, especially in its nondual mode. Discover the way to intuitively awaken to the One Truth of God or Pure Awareness, while avoiding the "de-personalization" pitfall or confusion over the "two truth levels." In short, learn to discern authentic nondual spirituality from "neo-" or "pseudo-nonduality." When selfishness fully drops off, when there is utter relaxing of all "knots of the heart," one discovers the blissfully Infinite God-Self, wonderfully beyond all yet within all. As sage Nisargadatta Maharaj of Bombay so beautifully stated the balanced spiritual life to us, "Wisdom says I am nothing; Love says I am everything." Many readers have found especially helpful here the short essay Our Real Nature and the long section on Questions & Answers on Nondual Spiritual Awakening, as well as the teachings of illustrious Indian sages Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, Meher Baba, and Jnaneshvar, Japanese Zen master Bankei, and British sage Douglas Harding also featured at this Nondual Spirituality section.

• Religion and spirituality--At this largest subdomain of our website, you can read many informative and detailed essays on the histories of our world religions, with key sages and saints, important insights and terms, extensive bibliographies and lovely images. You'll also find besides these overview essays on the different religions a number of substantial presentations on the lives and teachings of our most eminent spiritual leaders and their teachings, including the Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, John Scottus Eriugena, St. Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Bayazid Bistami, Hakim Sanai, Qadir al-Jilani, Jalaluddin Rumi, Jnaneshvar, Milarepa, Bankei, Moshe Cordovero, the Ba'al Shem Tov, and others from our Great Traditions. See, too, a few excerpts from Our Religions' Future, the final work in Timothy's trilogy to be published someday in the "Spirituality in the New Millennium" series.

• Women of Spirit: Saints, Teachers, Healers, Sisterhoods and Goddesses of East & West--A free online narrative encyclopedia that i compiled in the early 1990s, equivalent to over 1,200 pages of printed material. This project archives in a single place more information and inspiration than can be found anywhere in print or in cyberspace on many hundreds of women spiritual adepts from all of our religious traditions, including the major religions as well as many dozens of new religious movements of the past 150 years. Enjoy this enormous book-resource here for free (click the Women of Spirit tab at the bottom of our list of menu tabs at the upper left section of any webpage).

• Healthy and unhealthy spirituality--Distinguish empowering, highly functional spiritual life from dis-empowering, dysfunctional "cultism," and discern healthy from unhealthy theologies. Explore a truly empowering panentheist model of God (no mere theism or pantheism), as well as a major new schema on religion outlining the 12 different spiritual temperaments. Learn useful criteria for optimal well-being (that is, find out the real goal of spiritual life) and also "how spirituality is so very good for you" on so many levels.

• Soul-full spirituality--Here, we focus on the soul-level in our Reality as body-mind-soul-Spirit, and examine parapsychology studies of psi powers and thanatology evidence from five different research-angles to find out "what survives?" "what awaits the soul on the 'other side'?" and "what is conscious dying and Eternal Life beyond being a separate soul, i.e., as Spirit?" Learn, too, about dealing with and fully releasing powerful emotions, and explore an ancient map of the six different kinds of karma/ego-tendencies to understand why people behave the way they do and why our real goal is not some "heaven" but complete God-Realization, waking up from the dream of being a born/dying/reincarnating "me."

• Engaged spirituality--Whereas mysticism is awakening to our True Identity as Infinite Awareness, the Open-Free "I," engaged spirituality is compassionately opening unto the "I" that is "We." This website section features a lengthy webpage on Ethical Vegan Eating (our only hope to turn around climate change and end the horrifying agony of trillions of fellow animals); a long Sun magazine interview from 2003 with Timothy Conway on engaged and mystic spirituality; an op-ed piece written after 9/11, featured in the Gandhi Institute periodical, on how to peacefully resolve the terrorism issue; an eye-opening essay on liberation theology and the Vatican's official Catholic radically progressive economic doctrine (largely censored in the U.S. news media); excerpts from Timothy's forthcoming book Healing Our World; and Mahatma Gandhi on nonviolence and being a satyagrahi, a "truth force" peace-person who remedies injustices with justice and fairness, compassion and courage.

• Relationship spirituality--Realize how the God-Self or Pure Awareness always transcends yet includes relationship. So, what is this nondual Self in its relationship-dance? What is healthy commitment, communication and peacemaking? What is it to fulfil the commandment of Torah and Rabbi Jesus to "love thy neighbor as thySelf?" Check out a relational form of "self-enquiry": "My partner's bodymind personality seems 'over there'—but where is my partner's true Awareness?"

• Science and spirituality--Behold our universe's uncanny anomalies, veritable "cosmic miracles," and how one famous atheist scientist concluded: "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology." A provocative survey for Nature magazine showed nearly 50% of scientists believe in a "personal" God, suggesting that many more scientists believe either in this or a more sophisticated "transpersonal" idea of God. Find out why neither materialism or contemporary "intelligent design" camps offer satisfactory models for this dreamlike cosmos. Peruse excerpts from a second volume of the trilogy in preparation, Spirit, Science & Deep Wonder. Moreover, in our tragically "dumbed-down era," see what it means to think carefully and critically, for instance, how to determine the validity of truth-claims--fact or fiction? Finally, an essay on miracles and paranormal powers is available for reading, with great bibliographies on physics, cosmology, parapsychology, healing, and other topics; and see a paper on one particularly well-studied and extensively applied psi power—remote viewing.

• Meditation and Spirituality--There are several styles of meditation from which to choose: convergent-concentrative meditation; divergent-"opening" (witnessing, mindfulness) meditation; wisdom meditation; devotional meditation (Divine surrender); and self-inquiry (Who/What am I?). And of course there are different levels of "depth" in meditation and meditative living. You can also open to the “highest” meditation of spontaneously being meditated by the Divine in pure experiencing, beyond effort and structure.

• Spiritual humor--A ton of funny items and favorite jokes, collected over the years or sent to me by friends and family. Recall another gem from theologian G.K. Chesterton, who said "angels can fly because they take themselves lightly!" While "devils" fall from grace due to serious, heavy pride and greed. There's also now a link at this subdomain to a distinct webpage on Zen humor, with classical tales and hilarious paintings from China and Japan.

• Aesthetic spirituality-- [Please check in the future for this domain to come online.] Here, beyond words, you'll find original photos of nature and sacred art images old and new--that is, if we can get enough bandwith down the road for this website. With enough space, we can even include some sacred music.

Some of these domains have more content to be uploaded, so remember to bookmark this homepage and come back whenever you want inspiration in the wonderful domain of healthy, holy, enlightened spirituality!

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You can also:

• --link to the Wake Up Press, featuring books on saints & sages, such as the acclaimed Women of Power and Grace: Nine Astonishing, Inspiring Luminaries of Our Time, and forthcoming works Liberating Zen Sourcebook and Films for Spiritual Inspiration as well as future projects India's Sages: Nondual Wisdom from the Heart of Freedom and India's Sages Source Book: Nondual Wisdom from Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas, Tantrics, Sants, Sikhs and Sufis, along with (in years to come) the aforementioned trilogy of works (tba).

• --link to an abundance of free MP3 audio files of talks and devotional singing from our Timothy & Friends Satsangs (Divine Truth gatherings), when my wife and I lived in Santa Barbara, California, until moving to Arizona in Summer 2016 to be close to her family members. (NOTE: after moving to the central Arizona highlands in mid-2022, my wife passed away six months later from pneumonia.)   

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Abiding and basking in the Light of Your Divine Truth!

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HERE BELOW ARE ALSO TO BE FOUND DIRECT LINKS TO THE DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF THIS WEBSITE:

Nondual Spirituality or Advaita, Spirituality’s Hottest Trend

Awaken to Nondual Spirituality, Realization of the One God-Self. Be authentic with this Power and Freedom, beware narcissism and depersonalizing, respect the Two Truths, love all, serve all

Religion and Spirituality

Explore the world of Religion and Spirituality, our sacred mystical traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shamanism

Engaged Spirituality

Commit to Engaged Spirituality, bringing Divine compassion and justice to our politics—making enlightened policy together—for a fair economy, healthy environment, and peaceful world

Healthy and Unhealthy Spirituality

Find your Spiritual Temperament, discern Healthy and Unhealthy spirituality, empowering theology, warning signs of cultic dysfunction, why spirituality is so healthy for you

Soul-full Spirituality

Discover the world of Soul-full Spirituality, including the soul’s survival of death, evidence for reincarnation, the five kinds of karma that characterize beings, etc.

Science and Spirituality

Contemplate the mysteries of Science and Spirituality, the Cosmos and Consciousness, with excerpts from Timothy Conway’s upcoming book, <I>Spirit, Science and Deep Wonder</I>

Relationship Spirituality

What is the nondual God-Self in its dance of relationship, I and Thou? What is relational spirituality, healthy commitment, communication and peacemaking?

Meditation and Spirituality

Meditation is an age-old practice for God-realization and liberation, now a resurgent trend in religious-spiritual circles, east and west, also used widely for stress management

Spiritual Humor

Enjoy “lightening up” with the best spiritual humor about God, religion, church, synagogue, life, old age, death, prayer, meditation, food, sex, money, love, men, women, children, etc

Satsang with Timothy

Join a free Satsang, Gathering in Truth, with Timothy and friends, a consummate blend of nondual wisdom-devotion, realizing the One Who Is, the heart of all beings

Satsang Audios

MP3 files of Timothy Conway's spiritual satsang talks on nonduality, and devotional music

Timothy Conway

Timothy Conway, devotee of the One in all, sagely author, and singer of sacred music, freely shares the way of nondual, mystical spirituality and the healing way of engaged spirituality

Testimonials--What Our Readers Are Saying

Here's a sampling of what some of our readers are saying about the wide-ranging contents at our Enlightened Spirituality website and about the book Women of Power & Grace

Wake Up Press

For excellence in Spirituality, The Wake Up Press publishes Women of Power and Grace: Nine Astonishing, Inspiring Luminaries of Our Time, and Timothy Conway’s forthcoming India's Sages

Updates to enlightened-spirituality.org

Look here for updates and what's new at our enlightened-spirituality.org website, one of the Internet’s most comprehensive websites on spirituality

Women of Spirit: Saints, Teachers, Sisterhoods and Goddesses of East & West

Timothy Conway's online book giving an extensive history of women spiritual adepts in all the spiritual and religious traditions, ancient & contemporary, East & West