I'd like to ask you to think about a spiritual figure whom you revere and look to for inspiration; perhaps a saint of the distant past, like Jesus or the Buddha or Saint Theresa or Rumi; perhaps a sage of recent history, like Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Anandamayi Ma or Suzuki Roshi; or even a saint or sage of the present, like Amma or the Dalai Lama or Father Thomas Keating. What is it about this figure that you most admire? What is it that causes you to look to them as a source of spiritual inspiration? Do they move and inspire you because you imagine that they feel very spiritual and peaceful and blissful and expanded on the inside, that they have access to glorious inner states of consciousness? Or is it something about who they are? About how they show up in the world? About the wisdom and generosity conveyed in their actions?

*(Adapted from a talk at the Collegiate Peaks Forum, Buena Vista, Colorado) Tonight what I want to speak about is very near to my heart. It's been the focus of much of my life over the past decade-and-a-half and is the subject of a book I'm now working on. The issue I want to address has to do with where religion and spirituality are headed at the dawn of the Third Millennium. It is also about where humanity is headed, about the evolution of the very way we define what it is to be human, or more specifically, the ultimate meaning of human life. Here at the beginning of the 21st century, we at the progressive edge of culture find ourselves in an interesting predicament.

We might call it the malady of contemporary spirituality. As a speaker, workshop leader and transformative life coach, I hear it all the time. The refrain usually goes something like this: "I've been on the spiritual path for years. I've meditated, gone to therapy, and attended dozens (if not hundreds) of workshops, seminars, satsangs, and retreats. I've had a lot of peak experiences. But, I'm still not fundamentally different from when I started. I'm still plagued by many of the same recurring negative patterns. I'm still not sure what I'm doing here. I'm still not deeply happy. I'm still not free." Why is it that so few of us get the results our spiritual practices are designed to deliver? How is it that after decades of earnest spiritual seeking, most of us ultimately settle for an attainment far less profound or dramatic than the one we were aiming for when we started on the path?