John Greer

John Greer’s book, Seeing, Knowing, Being: A Guide to Sacred Awakenings, is a winner of the 2013 Nautilus Silver Book Award in religion and spirituality. It is the culmination of nearly twenty years of inquiring deeply into the sacred texts and teachings of the world’s wisdom traditions, and a quest to find what is universal in the human heart. He has studied vipassana meditation and nonduality with Matthew Flickstein, of Forest Way, for fifteen of those years and taught meditation himself for over a decade.

With pointers, questions, and metaphors, John’s gentle and compassionate approach might be compared to someone helping an amnesic friend to remember who they are. A satsang, or dialogue about your true nature, is in truth, Life speaking to Itself. You are That, but through a lifetime of conditioning and identification with the body/mind you have forgotten the wholeness and wonder of your true nature. The assumptions we most need to examine are the last we think of questioning: our assumptions about the way we see the world. When we let go our fixed ideas about reality, remember that the Truth lies within, and yield to the innocence of unknowing, opportunities for our vision to clear can arise.

John holds a Ph.D. in education from Pennsylvania State University, spent thirty years as a professor at the University of Memphis, and was a recipient of the university’s highest award for distinguished teaching. John served two years in Nepal with the Peace Corps, and has traveled extensively on six continents. He is married and lives with his wife in Memphis, Tennessee.