Recommendations for Dr Peter Fenner and his programs
Peter Fenner’s capacity to listen deeply and respond perfectly is unparalleled in my experience with spiritual teachers. As if by magic he is able to point out the tangled assumptions that are opaque to us, and without any judgment or arrogance reveal the way to greater ease and realization. His style is simple yet profound, and lovingly sensitive. If you wish some help in freeing yourself from suffering – in any realm of your life, or help in realizing the clear, joyous nature of your original being, this man can be trusted.
Elias AMIDON
Nondual Teacher, Spiritual Director (Pir) Sufi Way International, Crestone, CO
Peter’s profoundly insightful teachings and training course (“Radiant Mind”, and “Natural Awakening: Advanced Nondual Training”) are of immeasurable value to anyone interested in going beyond conventional approaches to spiritual and psychological transformation. His radically clear style of communication and discernment, combined with illuminating and compassionate presence, are a powerful conduit to the rediscover our true nature to which he’s able to bring students and participants with effortlessness and precision… Working and studying with Peter has not only profoundly impacted my personal life but also greatly enhanced my professional practice in psychotherapy. I continue to be moved, inspired and amazed by the effect that working with Peter has had on my life. I will be forever grateful for his teachings and presence in my life. With much appreciation, thank you Peter!
Andrea COLOMBU Ph.D.
Psychologist CPSC & Owner of In Forma Integral Fitness, CA
I had the great fortune to work with Peter for a 9 month Nondual Teacher Training… This Training has been a wonderful opportunity to experience a new way of being with my students, others and life, as well as seeing more clearly where my place is as a facilitator. Learning to hold others in a space of unconditional awareness has been a gift both for me and those I come in contact with as a mentor. It has also been wonderful to see how healing and release can happen naturally without needing to do or undo anything.
Michael KANE
Insight Meditation Teacher, Life Coach at Natural Bodhi Wellness, FL
After eight years of Zen monastic training in Japan and a long hiatus from formal practice, I met up with Peter Fenner and his Radiant Mind approach. How refreshing and invigorating! In that first gathering, it was as if one koan after another reilluminated itself. The Natural Awakening Training has made it possible for me to re-embrace teaching and on the “best” of days, enter the marketplace with open hands. I am so grateful for Peter’s training, scholarship and unique way of making Buddhist wisdom directly accessible to Western hearts and minds.
Jan HODGMAN
Soto Zen priest, Focusing Trainer and meditation teacher, WA
Peter Fenner is a teacher’s teacher and at the same time an ongoing student and scholar of nondual traditions. He has a rare ability to connect with a person one on one in order to allow not-knowing while upholding responsibility within everyday experience. Peter Fenner functions naturally as a teacher even when you’re just chatting with him. He possesses a gentle magnetism… For the student in the Natural Awakening Training, the whole complex makes for tremendous support, good networking, and a steeping within a clean, unfettered wisdom..I recommend getting to know Peter and studying with him.
Jerry KATZ
Owner of Nonduality.com, nondual coach
Author of One: Essential Writings on Nonduality, Halifax, Canada
Peter is an extraordinary teacher of ancient “timeless wisdom” for today’s world. I recommend him to anyone who wishes to live a life of inner peace and clarity. My work with him is joyful, filled with ease and integrity. I have been studying with him for almost 5 years and my work and personal life have flourished more and more each year. He is direct, down to earth and deeply respectful of everyone.
Judith ORLOFF
Co-founder at Radical Love Foundation, Boulder, CO
Peter is unique, and I have not seen teachings in his specific area of wisdom with such a depth, clarity and richness. Peter shares generously in his writing and in person from his long and deep experience and is an advanced and excellent coach and facilitator. His transmission is authentic, crisp and truly contagious. With an immediate sense and timing, he mirrors what is essential in birthing. The Natural Awakening: Nondual Advanced Training prepared me for sharing presence in new ways in my professional role, as a meditation teacher and in living life.
Kristina LINDGREN
Visionary Leadership Consultant
Mindfulness Coach & MBSR Teacher at Mindful People, Sweden
Peter’s skill at expressing the inexpressible and also making it explicit to allow others to transmit that which cannot be transmitted is extraordinary. The Training is challenging and transformative and applicable to all areas of our lives.
Justine MAYER, M.D.
Zen Teacher, Australia
This course transformed my life by immersing me in the experience of nondual awareness and empowering me to share this with others. Peter is not only a master of nondual transmission he has also mastered how to share this wonderful gift with others. […] I was also amazed by the powerful impact of Peter’s personal coaching during the course, as he revealed and dissolved previously unseen identity limitations. Through Peter’s course and the incredibly loving support of my fellow students, I have been inspired and enabled to share nondual awareness more widely and deeply than I ever imagined possible.
Adam CHACKSFIELD, Ph.D.
Nondual Facilitator, President of the Center for Nondual Awareness
Peter Fenner has a unique talent for melting away presumed obstacles on-the-spot with his brilliant use of deconstructive dialogue and unfindability inquiry. He works from the result level, continually revealing the effortlessness of being. The Teacher Training provides the guidance and opportunity for developing one’s own talent and style for manifesting nonduality in the world.
Vonna SMITH
California
Peter is an exceptionally clear, warm and generous teacher. He takes the impossibly difficult subject of “nothing” and sparks an atmosphere where the dynamic relationship between formlessness and form abide. This unique learning community has revolutionized my work as a therapist and as a therapy instructor.
Heather DAWSON, MA, RCC. RCAT
Psychotherapist, Vancouver, Canada
I am very thankful to Peter Fenner who has brilliantly organized and lovingly transmits the Nondual Teacher Training. The Training is delivered in an experiential way that is both profoundly personal and clearly practical in its ability to support people entering and remaining in nondual awareness. The effect of the transmission in others has been remarkable and indescribably evident.
Lynda COLE
Psychospiritual Therapy, Vancouver, Canada
The most important aspect of Peter’s training is the purity in which he explores and encourages others to explore the unconditioned by clearing away conceptualizations that can appear to inhibit just being. I say, “appear,” because there is no thing that differentiates being from the personal. A laser-like attention to inquiry effects a dissolution of the questioner and simply the questions lingers in the vastness of open space–what that space means is irrelevant and the knowledge of this creates perfect freedom. I heartily endorse Peter’s work, Peter’s presence and the energy supporting both as evidence of Truth.
Lynda JAME
Psychologist, New York
Dr. Peter Fenner’s Nondual Training for therapists and teachers is an intellectual, spiritual and communal tour de force… Perhaps the most wonderful aspect of this work has been the quality of community that has assembled around Peter. I have experienced such a beautiful, loving feeling of sangha… I have absolutely no doubt that this spiritual family from around the world will be an enduring part of my life for years to come.
Sean Patrick HATT, Ph.D., Seattle, WA
Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Nondual Inquiry Group Leader
Meeting Peter is an experience in itself. […] He is poised and humorous at the same time. His words are chiseled, none is fortuitous although all are spontaneous. They scan and reach the inner core of our behaviors with a deep understanding and a wide sympathy, so they never hurt even if they come and touch our difficulties to adjust to the realities of life. I cannot explain for explaining would make the whole thing complicated where spontaneity only is invited. What he points must and can be lived to resume our natural “freedom-peace-and-bliss”.
Martine QUENTRIC-SEGUY,
Painter, ethnologist, psychotherapist, author of many nondual books in French
Peter’s work is a consistent and authentic synthesis of his immersion in the Buddhist Madhyamika and Dzogchen traditions, combined with his study of Western psychotherapy and depth psychology. His years of formal training have allowed him integrate the experiential heart of these traditions and teach without any need to refer to them. His years of contemplative training as a Buddhist monk have brought him a deep inner stillness and utmost respect for the people with whom he works. Forgoing any fixed method or predetermined structure, he fully engages himself in his contemplative dialogues¾with warmth, and a seriousness of intent that is juxtaposed with humor and absurdity. The foremost source, though, that accounts for the quality of his work, is his own extraordinary presence. I whole-heartedly recommend Peter to you. His work cuts across sectarian divisions between different spiritual schools, and brings a fresh vitality and relevance to ancient contemplative traditions.
Silvia OSTERTAG †
Zen roshi Director of Bildungsstätte Seeg, Germany
Author of several books in German
[The Radiant Mind Course] is a brilliant postmodern implementation of Buddhist nondual wisdom. Peter Fenner has taken the refined deconstructive practices that have liberated ten of thousands of Asian contemplatives and adapted them for effective Western use. I highly recommend it.
Robert THURMAN, Ph.D.
Buddhist Scholar, Columbia University
President of Tibet House in New York
Like his root teacher, the beloved Lama Yeshe, Peter has a fresh, unusual approach. Through a natural process of deconstruction, underlying assumptions and belief systems that bind us to habitual patterns are revealed. As these belief structures and preferences rise to the surface, the sun of awareness dissolves fixations. As fixations are released, the space of suchness opens, and participants can experience the fresh, open quality of aware presence. Peter’s approach has shown itself to be useful for beginners as well as for more advanced practitioners.
Lama PALDEN
Sukhasiddhi Foundation, California
Peter Fenner has studied with wise Tibetan elders and brought their practical and also nondualistic teachings alive in a modern way which can benefit us all, skilfully pointing out how we can discover and actualize our innate unconditioned awareness while integrating it into daily life, where the rubber actually meets the road on the spiritual path.
Lama SURYA DAS
Founder of Dzogchen Community, CA
Author of Awakening to the Sacred, Awakening the Buddhist Heart
Peter Fenner is a teacher-practitioner of the first order. I know of no other Western author who communicates the essential reality of unconditioned awareness with such power, simplicity, and authenticity.
Allan COMBS, Ph.D.
Author of The Radiance of Being; Living the Integral Life
Peter has produced a brilliant distillation and delivery of “nondual” wisdom teachings (such as Zen and Dzogchen in the Buddhist tradition) in a manner that has made a measurable difference in my everyday life and my deeper sense of being. As a psychologist and writer myself, the work has brought a certain depth of experience that cannot be extracted from a great book or weekend seminar alone. The process is skillfully designed to progressively build a level of contemplative understanding that takes hold for the long run.…. I would highly recommend Radiant Mind to anyone ready to make a genuine spiritual commitment to seeing things as they really are.
Art ROSENGARTEN, Ph.D.
Psychologist, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility
Peter has a consummate skill in revealing the paradoxes and absurdities of our inner functioning, thereby giving us an opportunity to discover the unconscious fixations that underlie our beliefs, convictions and affirmations. His teaching acts as a living koan, allowing the mind to abdicate its pretensions of omnipotence… Beyond the technique of his work, Peter radiates a transparent, attentive and silent presence which gives an authenticity and undeniable value to his presentations. His teaching comes from a living experience and not from second-hand theoretical knowledge.
Dr. Jean-Marc MANTEL, M.D.
Psychiatrist, France
Author of books in French and English
Quite simply, Peter Fenner’s Radiant Mind work creates the conditions for participants to actualize nondual awareness… Experiencing Peter’s powerful, yet gentle, deconstructive methods are a must for anyone interested in nonduality. I guarantee that even the most sophisticated nondual learner will be taken to new levels (where levels are irrelevant, of course) with Peter’s innovative work!
Jerry DONOGHUE
Asheville Compassionate Communication Center
I have had the privilege of having Peter as a teacher in both the Radiant Mind Course and Natural Awakening Teacher Training. His way of teaching is both precise and wonderfully spacious. I have seldom received teachings in this wide open way. It is as if Peter is teaching at different levels at the same time; providing his students with information about the Buddhist (especially Dzogchen ) tradition and at the same time giving a transmission of the highest quality. Following his trainings has been a life changing experience for me and his work never ceases to inspire me.
Meeting Peter is meeting a truly great teacher who knows how to bring together the depth of realizing Nondual Awareness and intriguing ways of communicating that. He has deeply moved me in the way he is dedicated to this work and his students and i am grateful for the continuing collaboration and friendship.
Myra Pieters-Engelkes
Praktijk voor Psychotherapie en Healing en Facilitator Nonduale Ervaringsgroepen, The Netherlands
Peter Fenner helped me taste the end of my spiritual path. Peter not only effectively points you to Nonduality so, you can not only taste it but drink from it all the time. He also practically teaches you how to effectively teach others. My first introduction to Peter was thanks to Dr. O. Carl Simonton with whom we studied the book “Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditional Awareness.” The similarities between the Simonton’s approach in our work with cancer patients and Peter’s teachings were great so, the convergence and application was natural. The intimate Peter’s teachings (including Radiant Mind CD recordings) and I could personally experience Ultimate Healing what I had been reading about and chasing for over 20 years.
Mariusz Wirga, M.D.
Medical Director, Psychosocial Oncology, Todd Cancer Institute Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, CA
Peter Fenner transmits the wisdom of nondualism directly through his presence and his penetrating insight. In the Radiant Mind course and in his teacher training courses, students are given a myriad of brilliantly designed opportunities to develop the skill of experiencing, presencing, and transmitting unconditioned awareness. After more than 30 years of practicing and teaching yoga and meditation, finding and working with Peter has been, for me, profoundly transforming and the end of all seeking. Peter’s teaching is practical and leads to “waking up” in the midst of habitual, conditioned ways of being, thinking and behaving. Working with Peter has enabled me to use all of the circumstances of my life as openings into ultimate healing, the ultimate medicine of unconditioned awareness. The great gift of Peter’s teaching has effected not only my moment-to-moment awareness, but touches everyone in my life. I deeply appreciate and highly recommend Peter as a teacher, coach, and spiritual mentor.
Susan MORTON
Founder/Director of the Yoga and Meditation Center of Montclair, NJ
In Peter’s transmission there is no so-called “spiritual by-passing“ as he is deeply in tune with whomever he is talking to. The atmosphere is calm, timeless, explicit, and infinite space opens up through a warmth and love that´s imbued by his fine sense of humor. This is how he presences unconditioned awareness.
Peter’s simple suggestion of “just sitting“ can produce an extraordinary experience of being. In his teaching he begins at the result level. We don´t need to strain ourselves not to think, we fully and simply appreciate the way we are. Our thoughts and silent conversations are our friends and not adversaries. We begin where we want to be, at the result level of presencing non-dual awareness, the contentless, centerless no-thing that is not nothing. Here we inhabit the unconditioned world of compassion and love beyond comparative and competing, values and judgments. With Peter’s support we discover how to seamlessly integrate effortless meditation into our daily lives.
Tom ROTMANN, M.D.
Privatpraxis für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapi
Facharzt für Innere Krankheiten & Psychotherapie, Germany
Peter brings exceptional clarity and perceptivity to the challenge of helping people awaken to “unconditioned mind” — our true nature. His Radiant Mind program builds on his many years of deep personal investigation into the subject. He makes the wisdom of the non-dual accessible in a down-to-earth manner without any religious trappings — and he does so with wit and charm.
Peter RUSSELL, Ph.D.
Author of From Science to God
Independent Professional Training & Coaching Professional