About
The mission
My wish is to show how the light of consciousness can be a powerful way to illuminate every dimension of our human experience. When we tap into this expanded consciousness in us, we are empowered to become our own sources of wisdom and intelligence. I believe that spiritual transformation is not only about inducing abstract mystical states, and that it may be an essential key for our future as a race. Nowadays especially, we desperately lack any type of broader perspective. Humanity’s life-endangering challenges are met with a deeply limited way of thinking, without considering the quality of the mind that faces these challenges. As a result, while we are flooded with information, we still possess very little clarity. Consciousness is actually the source of clarity and it provides us with the ability to see the world with fresh, new eyes. My work strives to consistently
demonstrate this in many different ways, by using a great diversity of tools and addressing many dimensions of our existence.
You are the grace
you have always been
waiting for.
Shai Tubali
The spiritual
journey
Since early childhood, I have had intense observational tendencies, and have felt that I was not fully a part of human experience, but rather was watching and studying it from the outside. This tendency became helpful on the meditative journey, in which we practice being a pure and nonattached consciousness. Early signs of mystical passion showed when I was exposed in my early twenties to ideas from the world of Zen, as well as books by Osho and Jiddu Krishnamurti. One evening, during a course of Transcendental Meditation, the lecturer mentioned that traditionally, this meditation could culminate in the experience of oneness with the universe. Without understanding why, from that moment on I knew that this was the only thing that could interest me in life. This initiated two years of intense pursuit. I didn’t care what I had to leave behind for this to happen: I was only interested in this elusive realization. I don’t think I even meditated properly. My main tool was self-inquiry: examining what and how I was observing and trying to get to the bottom of statements by spiritual masters.
A shift of
perspective
The defining inner revelation took place at the age of twenty-three, while I attended a silent retreat in Sinai, Egypt, with my first spiritual teacher, Tyohar. The shift of perspective occurred on my teacher’s birthday, in the midst of a celebration for him. While everyone was singing and playing the guitar, I was sitting outside the circle, looking at the whole scene. But instead of looking at the scene, I suddenly looked at the looker—the one who looks. For some reason, this was a perfect moment of honesty and lucidity, such that when I looked inside myself, I saw nothing. There was no center. It was like seeing something that was a plain fact. I could look backward to the history of my life, and there too I found no consistent self to bind all the memories and experiences. The whole chain of time and continuity broke at that moment. There was complete stillness, as if the whole world simply paused. Since the bliss was beginning to pour through every pore of my body, I felt that I had to drag myself away from the celebration to the beach. There, it felt like my self, which was previously just a tiny seed, exploded in every direction, and the sense of “I am” that was previously contained inside my body was everywhere: I was in the sun, the rocks, the sea, and in everyone around me … There was no place in the whole universe where this “I am” was not, but in a completely universal sense. This initiated a sort of unity consciousness, which was profoundly blissful.
Integration
This started a whole year in which this inner discovery kept revealing subtleties of realization. At the same time, I no longer had the conception of my own story of development. Since the sense of self held the whole structure of my psyche together, when it melted away, the structure began to crumble and there were no familiar tools with which I could relate to the world around me. Throughout that year, I just sat in my room, spontaneously meditating, or took long walks, but I could hardly speak. All I could do was simply immerse myself in this bliss and experience alternating bouts of tears and laughter. When I was twenty-six, I met my second and long-term teacher, Dr. Gabriel Cousens, who guided me for seven years in a more careful and traditional way. As a profound yogi who was initiated by Swami Muktananda, he greatly helped me to master the kundalini process. Seven years later, he called me one night and told me that he felt that the process was completed; thus, he urged me to teach.
My private life
Since my interest in becoming and achieving something as a personal self has waned, the way I live is fully dedicated to just one thing: my energy is invested in the constant creation of tools and knowledge that can enhance people’s understanding. Most of my days are spent alone, simply and silently, in a rather monk-like routine and environment. For me, the silence and solitude are not only rejuvenating, but also the source of creativity. When I’m not teaching, my days are devoted to either writing or developing teaching materials. This goes on until late in the evening. The creative development of these teachings has no end and is ever expanding. There is so much to do! My only wish is that I could have enough time to carry out this inner vision. At the end of each day, I usually watch films, since they tell me so much about the human experience. Personally, I believe that films are the art form that most directly discusses the meaning and purpose of life.
