The Infinite Awakening Program
The core of the program is the School for Awakening, an eight-class intensive immersion in nondual teachings and practices taught in intimate dialogue with Stephan and centered around his new book Infinite Awakening. Each class features guided meditations, direct pointers, self-inquiry exercises, and plenty of time for Q&A and discussion. The point of the program is to wake you up right now to your essential spiritual nature and to clarify and deepen your understanding.
Once you’ve graduated from the School, you can join an ongoing group led by Stephan designed to help you live from your awakening understanding and embody the insights you’ve gained in the everyday world of love and work. Along the way, if you want more individualized attention to the issues and challenges you encounter on the path, you can choose to engage in individual mentoring sessions with Stephan.
You don’t have to go off to a monastery or ashram to recognize and abide in your natural state of awakened awareness. The Infinite Awakening program provides the resources you need to wake up and enjoy the peace, happiness, and love of your essential nature right here in the midst of ordinary life.
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“Stephan Bodian’s online course, the School for Awakening, is a pure treasure. For anyone wanting a clear understanding of the nondual traditions of Advaita, Zen, and Dzogchen, Stephan’s explanations are invaluable. More importantly, the School for Awakening includes many opportunities for glimpses of our true nature, as well as the vital necessity for ongoing embodiment.
— Al Z., California
The School
The core of the Infinite Awakening program, the School for Awakening, is a 16-week, eight-class intensive immersion in nondual teachings and practices designed to wake you up right now to your essential spiritual nature and to clarify and deepen your understanding. Centered around Stephan’s new book and taught directly by the author, each class features direct pointers, guided meditations, self-inquiry exercises, and plenty of time for reflection, dialogue, and discussion to ensure that all your questions are addressed and you’re pointed directly to the answers beyond words. The program ends with a two-day mini retreat where you can put into practice the teachings and guidance you’ve received.
The Group
The Chop Wood, Carry Water embodiment group is a natural extension of the School, intended for alumni as a way to integrate the awakened perspective you’ve gained into the challenging circumstances of everyday life. How can you bring your deepening understanding of your inseparability into your intimate relationships, your work, your interactions with people you don’t know, and your approach to challenging emotions and mind-states? How can you stay open and fully present when life seems to make such pressing demands on you?
The Mentoring
Informed by more than 30 years of training and experience as a psychotherapist, as well as decades as a spiritual teacher, the individual mentoring I offer is custom-tailored to your unique journey on the pathless path. In an atmosphere of love and self-compassion, we endeavor to release the hold of the core stories and habitual patterns that cause you suffering while deepening your experience of your nondual spiritual nature.
Welcome reality as it is
The more you embrace life just as it is, the more separation falls away in an ongoing cascade of interbeing.
Awaken the heart
Seeing that you’re fundamentally not separate from the rest of reality allows you to embrace everything you encounter as your very own true self.
Release the grip of ego
Once you recognize that the mind is not in control of your life, you can learn to trust and relax into the Mystery that is.
Work with challenging emotions and mind-states
As you keep being triggered by the limited attachments that bind you as a human being , you get to welcome the negative feelings while investigating the mistaken narratives that perpetuate them.
Keep beginner’s mind
As your awakening deepens, you don’t accumulate more theories and points of view but instead keep returning to the infinite openness of don’t know mind.
Discover your own unique path
Knowing who you are at the deepest level empowers you to move through life in alignment with both your own needs and the good of the whole.
The School for Awakening
Since 2007 I’ve offered the annual School for Awakening, an intensive, multi-month full-immersion in nondual teachings and practices drawn from my own extensive experience and training in Zen, Dzogchen-Mahamudra, and Advaita Vedanta. Several years ago I gathered the materials and teachings I’d used in the School to write the book Infinite Awakening. Now I lead the School as an ongoing exploration and dialogue using the book as its core text.
In each of the eight biweekly classes we’ll be discussing the corresponding chapters, reflecting on key points, doing select practices together, answering your questions, and inviting you to go beyond the mind and rest in your natural state of awakened awareness to reveal your nondual spiritual nature. Between classes you will be asked to read the corresponding chapter(s) in the book and do the practices described there. In addition, you’ll be assigned (or get to choose) a dyad partner with whom to share your journey and engage in homework assignments, and we’ll end the program with a two-day mini retreat where we can drop into the silence together and rest in not knowing. Classes meet on alternate Wednesdays, 9-11 am US PT/5-7 pm UK/6-8 CET beginning September 23.
The program is priced at $495 to make it available to as wide an audience as possible. If you enroll by July 4, the tuition will be only $395. If you have limited income and still find you can’t afford it, please contact me to arrange a low-fee option.
Topics we’ll be exploring include:
🟆 Realizing the inherent emptiness of self
🟆 Awakening the heart
🟆 Connecting with your inherent love and compassion
🟆 Welcoming reality just as it is
🟆 Integrating absolute and relative dimensions of being
🟆 Shifting the fundamental locus of your identity
🟆 Recognizing and moving through the stages of awakening
🟆 Recognizing and avoiding spiritual bypassing
🟆 Identifying post-awakening pitfalls and dead-ends
🟆 Working with challenging emotions, mind-states, and core beliefs
🟆 Creating awakened relationships
🟆 Embodying the truth in everyday life
🟆 Benefiting others through the quality of your presence
🟆 The importance of beginner’s mind
🟆 Clarifying your intention and motivation
🟆 Orienting to the “direct approach” to truth
🟆 Releasing the grip of ego
🟆 Seeing through the bubble or dream you inhabit
🟆 Practicing effortless “nondual” mindfulness
🟆 Facilitating your awakening through guided meditation, contemplation, self-inquiry
🟆 Discovering your own unique path
🟆 Being authentic at every level
What People Say About the School
“I was very grateful for the opportunity to participate in the School for Awakening this year. Stephan embodies profound wisdom and compassion, always pointing to our ground of being and the non-dual nature of experience. As a teacher Stephan offers intelligent, gentle, yet radical guiding, which allows for the unveiling of many hidden doorways on the spiritual path.”
— Bogdan B., New York
I really enjoyed Stephan Bodian’s School for Awakeningand would truly recommend it to any open-minded seeker. Sharing his knowledge, teachings, and pearls of wisdom with us throughout the coursebased on all the years of his personal experience, was a great blessing to receive. If one is truly open-minded, one can receive so much more from this course than words can ever express. If you just allow it to happen, your heart may open, and you can get in touch with the true nature of your being. A very precious and unique opportunity.
— Nika D., Germany
Stephan skillfully challenges and points out the assumptions of our limited, assumed small self and offers insight into what we are, that which is aware, that which contains. Grounded in his extensive background in Zen and psychotherapy, Stephan acknowledges the potential pitfalls of spiritual bypassing and our shared humanity while at the same time pointing to the Mystery, and, yes, the Love that is innate in such recognition. I highly recommend anyone that is searching to enroll in this “university.”
— Joseph B., Arizona
“I just completed Stephan’s School of Awakening. I am grateful for and humbled by the experience. He wove a tapestry of meaning that helped unravel some of my knots/nots and helped me to glimpse I vs. me. The sangha provided pointers and companionship, and my dyadic partner has been a gem. Stephan’s School has brought more clarity to what has been an oft shrouded journey to self-awareness moving toward Awake Awareness. I highly recommend this School of Awakening to fellow travelers.
— Stephen S., California
The School for Awakening was a positive, affirming, and validating experience. Stephan was not too tight, not too loose: clear and simple, did not complicate the teaching, and brought it into the flow of all experience. I especially enjoyed the meditations of opening into the stillness and spaciousness as a non-effort, a non-striving. Ahhh…… thank you!
— Susan W., Michigan
Enroll Now
Early Enrollment:
Take advantage of our Early Enrollment pricing and secure your spot in the next School for Awakening by registering and paying before July 4.
Regular Enrollment:
Enroll and secure your place in the School for Awakening by paying after July 4. If finances are a problem, please inquire about paying by installments.
The next School for Awakening begins on September 23, 2026.
Once you’ve submitted payment, please send me an email with your full name, location/time zone, email address, and a brief description of
your spiritual journey to date, including any practices you do or have done and teachings you’ve studied.
I look forward to welcoming you to the School for Awakening!
The Chop Wood, Carry Water Embodiment Group
Once you’ve studied and practiced the “direct approach” to truth taught in the School for Awakening, you can join a biweekly group led by Stephan focused on living from the awakened understanding in every moment of life. How can I stay connected to the deeper ground of interbeing while meeting the challenges of intimate relationships, the demands of work and career, and the strong negative emotions that may arise? Life is where the nondual perspective gets tested, deepened, and refined.
If you want to awaken or deepen your awakening, and live from this place in everyday life, then this is the school for you. Stephan is a true master teacher and you will find this course to be rich as well as practical.
— Maria F., Pennsylvania
Individual Spiritual Mentoring
Individual spiritual mentoring sessions are an intimate blend of compassionate self-reflection, timeless spiritual wisdom, and the techniques and insights of Western psychology. My experience as a teacher of spiritual awakening and my expertise and training as a psychotherapist enable me to listen deeply to your questions, sense where you may be stuck or off track, guide you in connecting with your own inner knowing, and help you realign with your path
The purpose of these sessions is to support you in:
Realizing and abiding in the truth of your being at every level
Confirming and clarifying your path
Welcoming your experience just as it is with a compassionate heart
Inquiring into the stories and patterns of thinking and behaving that cause you suffering.
As the light of awareness illuminates the unconscious patterns that limit you, we naturally orient together toward greater awareness, openness, clarity, freedom, and love.
If you're interested in working together, you can email me to schedule a session. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
50+ years of experience
Stephan's guidance is rooted in more than 50 years of study, practice, teaching, and realization in three different nondual wisdom traditions, combined with 30+ years as a licensed psychotherapist.
Adapted to Your Needs
Individual mentoring takes into account your unique life history and circumstances and your particular goals and aspirations to help guide you on your pathless path home to your essential spiritual nature
Infused with Nondual Wisdom
The course and mentoring are infused with the deeper understanding that who you are as an individual is an expression of the deeper ground—call it consciousness, spirit, or Being--that animates and unites us all.
Teacher Training Available
Those who reach the fruition of their search and feel motivated to share it will receive guidance in cultivating the subtle skills necessary to express the inexpressible and help kindle the flame of truth in others.
FAQs
Ready to step onto the path of true self-discovery? We are here to guide you.
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As with most involvements, the more time you spend, the more you’ll benefit. The basic requirement is approximately seven or eight hours per month (in addition to the three-hour class): two or three to read and listen to teachings; another hour or two of guided meditations; and four hours for meeting with your dyad partner for a minimum of two times per month. The dyads are particularly important and form an essential component of the program that enables you to digest and assimilate the teachings and practices with the intimate support of another participant. You’ll also be encouraged to maintain a regular meditation practice of some kind.
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Yes. In fact, the School is perfect for those who have begun to awaken and want to deepen and clarify their awakening and learn to embody it in everyday life.
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Many people come to the School after years of meditation experience in another tradition, like vipassana or TM. They’ve discovered the limitations of the progressive approach and seek teachings and practices that point directly to their inherent wakefulness beyond the mind. But neither previous practice nor familiarity with nondual teachings is required, you just have to be motivated to wake up out of the dream of separation and realize your true nature directly for yourself.
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You will be assigned (or can choose) a dyad partner you’ll meet with online between classes to practice guided meditations and self-inquiry, share your insights and experiences, and explore the teachings together. Many participants have found that the support they received in their dyad relationship enriched their experience immeasurably and helped facilitate the awakening process. When you enroll in the School, you are implicitly agreeing to meet at least twice with your dyad partner between classes for at least two hours each time to support one another on your journey.