Index
Traditions
Lineages, schools, and ways — each with its own center of gravity.
- Advaita Vedanta
The non-dual current of Vedānta — the teaching that there is only Brahman, and what you call yourself is already that.
- Bhakti
The path of love — the sustained surrender of the self to the Beloved as the direct way to liberation. Across India, it is the path most practitioners have actually walked.
- Christian Mysticism
The contemplative current running through every church — the claim, held for two thousand years, that God can be known directly and not only believed in.
- Christianity
The tradition centered on Jesus of Nazareth as the crucified and risen Christ — the largest religion in the world, spanning many churches, and holding that in this one life the eternal God entered time.
- Eastern Orthodoxy
The Christian tradition of the Greek- and Slavic-speaking East — holding, by its own account, an unbroken liturgical, theological, and mystical continuity since the apostolic era.
- Gnosticism
A family of early Christian and pre-Christian movements holding that direct knowledge (gnosis) of the divine is the path of salvation.
- Hermeticism
An esoteric tradition rooted in the Corpus Hermeticum, combining Greek philosophy, Egyptian religion, and a vision of correspondence between cosmos and soul.
- Hinduism
Not a religion but a family — a 3,500-year ecosystem of texts, practices, philosophies, and devotions rooted in the Indian subcontinent, held together by shared vocabulary rather than shared creed.
- Indigenous Spirituality
The spiritual traditions of peoples rooted in specific lands — relational, place-based, and generally inseparable from daily life.
- Islam
The religion of submission to the one God (Allah) as revealed through the Prophet Muhammad in the Qur'an — foundation of Sufism and one of the three Abrahamic faiths.
- Jainism
An ancient Indian tradition teaching radical non-violence and the liberation of the soul through ascetic discipline.
- Judaism
The oldest of the Abrahamic traditions — a covenant between God and a people, expressed in Torah, law, community, and centuries of mystical depth.
- Kabbalah
The mystical tradition of Judaism — a cosmology of divine emanation (sefirot), a hermeneutic of scripture, and a path of return.
- Mahayana Buddhism
The great vehicle — a family of Buddhist schools whose aim is not personal release but the awakening of all beings, and whose heart is the bodhisattva vow.
- Modern Non-Dual
A contemporary, often post-religious current drawing on Advaita, Dzogchen, Zen, and Western mysticism — direct pointing without denominational frame.
- Quakerism
A radical Christian tradition centered on silent waiting for the "Inner Light" — the direct, unmediated presence of God in every person.
- Shamanism
Across cultures, the oldest recognizable form of human spiritual practice — working with non-ordinary states to serve healing, guidance, and community.
- Sikhism
A tradition founded by Guru Nanak in 15th-century Punjab, teaching the oneness of God, the dignity of all people, and liberation through remembrance and service.
- Stoicism
A Greco-Roman philosophical tradition treating philosophy as a way of life — cultivating virtue, acceptance, and inner freedom.
- Sufism
The inward dimension of Islam — the path of the heart, polished by the remembrance of God until nothing remains but Him.
- Taoism
A Chinese philosophical and religious tradition centered on the Tao — the nameless way underlying and flowing through all things.
- Theravāda Buddhism
The oldest surviving Buddhist school — the tradition that preserves the Pali Canon and the direct lineage of teaching traced to the Buddha himself.
- Tibetan Buddhism
The full Mahayana philosophical program augmented by Vajrayāna methods — a Buddhism preserved, developed, and embodied in Tibet for over a millennium.
- Transpersonal Psychology
A 20th-century movement integrating psychological science with the contemplative traditions — treating mystical experience as data worth studying.
- Yoga
The Indian science of uniting individual and universal — a family of practices and philosophies pointing toward liberation.
- Zen
A lineage of awakened mind transmitted outside the scriptures, pointing directly to what is already here.