Meditation
Kareem began his meditative journey in January 2012, when he had a wholly unexpected initial opening beyond the confines of the analytic mind, into what could be described as the depths of the unknown. This was terrifying to him, for his life to that point had largely been lived within the thinking mind, with its plans and controlling mechanisms. It led him to devote a very large part of his time over the subsequent years to meditation, and to the intense study of a host of spiritual traditions from around the world. Those efforts were initially an attempt to grasp what he had experienced, but very soon he realized that not only was such a grasping impossible, it was also utterly counterproductive, and generated massive amounts of suffering. Letting go of all grasping was the only way to go.
Since this journey began in 2012, he has spent a couple months each year on retreats. He committed himself to a daily sitting practice, and also shifted his PhD dissertation more firmly in the direction of meditation and spirituality. His meditation practices have changed his life in radical and unexpected ways, and one year after his initial opening, he experienced a second opening that was more centered on the heart. The insights he had while meditating also led him to abandon his planned career as a research-focused academic professor, and prompted him to transition to a "digital nomad" lifestyle with India as his main base, working remotely and spending several months each year on meditation retreats.
Kareem’s journey with formal seated meditation began with a series of ten-day silent retreats in the Burmese vipassana tradition (as taught by S.N. Goenka), but after about 2.5 years of practice in vipassana, he began to find the approach too structured and goal-oriented for his own needs. This initiated a period of experimentation, wherein Kareem learned about and practiced dozens of different meditative modalities, which led him slowly and inexorably to no-path practices that are referred by various impressive-sounding names, such as “Dzogchen,” “radical Zen,” and advaita (non-duality), all of which ultimately boil down to simply learning to stop striving for a future-oriented goal named "enlightenment," and instead to clearly see through the illusory separate self and be the open aware nature that you already are.
While Kareem considers every being he meets in this life to be a teacher (including all the plant and animal friends!), he has been very fortunate to sit with several skilled meditation teachers. In addition to the six different vipassana teachers he sat with and learned from, including John Beary, Kareem has attended several retreats with Adyashanti and one with Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche, and has been lucky to receive in-depth personal guidance from the nondual teacher Didier Weiss. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, he attended the 5-week “intensive satsang” with the Zen teacher Dolano in Pune, India. It was at the first of those three intensives that the sense of spiritual seeking dropped away. Since then, the journey has continued, but in a much lighter and more playful way.
Kareem is passionate about meditation and non-duality in general, and he serves as an informal adviser to people starting out on the meditative path, pointing them in the right direction(s) so that they can find the teachers and the meditation modalities that are the best fits for them. Please free to contact Kareem directly if you have any questions – he is always very happy to help serve the greater good in any way he can, and does so free of charge.
Since this journey began in 2012, he has spent a couple months each year on retreats. He committed himself to a daily sitting practice, and also shifted his PhD dissertation more firmly in the direction of meditation and spirituality. His meditation practices have changed his life in radical and unexpected ways, and one year after his initial opening, he experienced a second opening that was more centered on the heart. The insights he had while meditating also led him to abandon his planned career as a research-focused academic professor, and prompted him to transition to a "digital nomad" lifestyle with India as his main base, working remotely and spending several months each year on meditation retreats.
Kareem’s journey with formal seated meditation began with a series of ten-day silent retreats in the Burmese vipassana tradition (as taught by S.N. Goenka), but after about 2.5 years of practice in vipassana, he began to find the approach too structured and goal-oriented for his own needs. This initiated a period of experimentation, wherein Kareem learned about and practiced dozens of different meditative modalities, which led him slowly and inexorably to no-path practices that are referred by various impressive-sounding names, such as “Dzogchen,” “radical Zen,” and advaita (non-duality), all of which ultimately boil down to simply learning to stop striving for a future-oriented goal named "enlightenment," and instead to clearly see through the illusory separate self and be the open aware nature that you already are.
While Kareem considers every being he meets in this life to be a teacher (including all the plant and animal friends!), he has been very fortunate to sit with several skilled meditation teachers. In addition to the six different vipassana teachers he sat with and learned from, including John Beary, Kareem has attended several retreats with Adyashanti and one with Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche, and has been lucky to receive in-depth personal guidance from the nondual teacher Didier Weiss. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, he attended the 5-week “intensive satsang” with the Zen teacher Dolano in Pune, India. It was at the first of those three intensives that the sense of spiritual seeking dropped away. Since then, the journey has continued, but in a much lighter and more playful way.
Kareem is passionate about meditation and non-duality in general, and he serves as an informal adviser to people starting out on the meditative path, pointing them in the right direction(s) so that they can find the teachers and the meditation modalities that are the best fits for them. Please free to contact Kareem directly if you have any questions – he is always very happy to help serve the greater good in any way he can, and does so free of charge.