What is Multidharma?
Multidharma is a philosophy of spirituality for 21st century seekers and finders. Its central principles are:
1
Spiritual, mystical, or religious experiences are important moments in a natural process of human development. Various names have been used for this process, such as awakening, self-actualization, self-transcendence, enlightenment, and many others. Both the experiences themselves and the larger process they are part of are verifiably real, utterly transformative, and, most importantly, available to anyone.
2
Spiritual growth has been valued across cultures throughout history, but different religious traditions have prioritized and specialized in particular kinds of experiences or insights. Religious dogma aside, no tradition has a monopoly on spiritual development or the single correct answer to what it all means.
3
Spiritual experiences can reliably be evoked by certain types of practices; however, not everyone responds in the same way to these techniques. This means that each person needs to discover their own customized suite of practices that works best for them.
4
A mature spiritual path will embrace this diversity, empowering you to develop an approach that is a good fit for your own unique needs and natural orientations, instead of coercing you to conform to a particular narrow dogma or practice system. The “right” spiritual path is the one that is right for you.
5
Multidharma respects and values people’s experiences and realities regardless of where they are in the spiritual trajectory, including if they choose to not get involved in spirituality at all. People have varying talents, capacities, and inclinations toward certain areas of spirituality — just as in sports, the arts, or other endeavors — but that doesn’t make anyone better than anyone else.
The Threads
There are many ways to organize the vast spectrum of spiritual techniques and ideas. This website presents a “multi-threaded” model, with each thread representing a major aspect, area, theme, or dimension of spiritual growth and development. Our approach to each thread is based on centuries of spiritual insight, but the overall model values individual flexibility over conformity with tradition.
Emptiness
- Experiences and phenomena related to nonduality, nonself, nonexistence, spaciousness, transcendence, subject/object collapse, kensho, satori, jhana, samadhi, nirodha, nirvana, sunyata, anatta, etc.
- Techniques and approaches drawn from Theravada, Zen, Advaita, Daoism, TM, Patañjali Yoga, Actualism, Headless Way, and related meditation and inquiry traditions.
Oneness
- Experiences and phenomena related to unity, love, divinity, sacredness, holiness, benevolence, compassion, joy, healing, God, Goddess, cosmic intelligence, etc.
- Techniques and approaches drawn from Mahayana Buddhism, Bhakti Yoga, Deity Yoga, Christian Mysticism, Sufism, Jewish Mysticism, Goddess traditions, Paganism, Nature Mysticism, and related traditions.
Energy
- Experiences and phenomena related to energy, kundalini, qi, prana, winds, bliss, meridians, dantians, chakras, auras, koshas, light-body, rainbow body, quantum fields, astral projection, etc.
- Techniques and approaches drawn from Yoga, Qigong, Vajrayana, Daoism, Asian medicine, martial arts, and related traditions.
Psyche
- Experiences and phenomena relating to the unconscious mind, including all traumatic, intergenerational, ancestral, sociocultural, transpersonal, archetypal, biological, elemental, and soul-level conditioning.
- Techniques and approaches drawn from psychology, Jungianism, Shamanism, indigenous religions, and other traditions that plumb the depths of the psyche.
New to spirituality?

For those just getting started, why not launch your spiritual journey with a balanced approach that supports multiple threads of development? Unlike other books that present Asian spiritual techniques as fixed traditions, this introduction teaches you how to develop a customized plan that fits your strengths, values, and individuality. The author introduces 16 of the most transformative techniques from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese traditions, while providing a rich discussion of the history, philosophy, and experiential outcomes of these practices.
Multi-threaded Awakening
This short booklet presents a phenomenological map or model of the awakening process based on the principles of multidharma. The first part of the process involves opening up and deepening into each of the threads. However, as one proceeds, the threads’ integration — both with daily life and with one another — becomes the primary focus. This culminates in reality being experienced as a unified, empty, divine, pulsating, deeply meaningful, and also completely embodied and natural whole. Ultimately, however, even integration falls away, giving way to complete, clear, utter simplicity.
