About Cynthia

Cynthia's retreats and meditative awareness programs focus on the unifying presence of silent awareness or inner stillness, together with the work of self-inquiry. Her approach is influenced by the profound insights of  J. Krishnamurti, GI Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharshi, as well as her own inquiry and study, which includes Buddhism, Sufism and mystical Christianity.  She has taught classes on themes related to non-duality and currently facilitates educational programs based on the insights of J. Krishnamurti.  

Over the years, she's also given educational courses based on the lives of a diverse group of historical and mythologized figures who challenged the status-quo of their traditions, such as the Tibetan yogi, Milarepa, Hildegard of Bingen, Rabia of Basra, Yeshe Tsogyal, Mary Magdalene, Teresa of Avila and the poet, Dante. She's written numerous articles on the inner quest for meaning and is the author of Silent Awareness: The Revelation That Changes Everything and the forthcoming book, Awareness Meditations.  

Cynthia's inner search took on a much deeper significance when she was a photojournalist covering a war. Over a period of four years, she traveled to front-line hospitals and refugee camps during the horrific Balkan War in the mid-1990's. She worked with United Nations humanitarian organizations, such as Save the Children and Terre des hommes and with Human Rights Watch. Her role was to help visually document the shattering impact that war has on children and to interview refugees. In the midst of it, she found herself face-to-face with the entrenched, mind-made cultural and religious divisions that causes immense suffering around the world. 

The more she traveled to front-line hospitals, refugee camps and destroyed cities and towns, the more it became clear to her that the root cause of war and all other forms of violence and exploitation is a gross distortion in the human mind that divides us against ourselves and separates us from each other and from nature. This was a turning point for her.

What she came to understand can be briefly summarized as follows:  Without understanding the structure of our own conditioned minds, particularly the mind's tendency to be self-critical, tribal and divisive, which in turn creates a society that is critical of others and that is tribal and divisive, we will continue to be at war with ourselves and with each other. 

The way out of the repeating patterns of war, violence and exploitation begins with a deeper awareness of our true relationship with each other and with nature.  It's our own inner transformation that helps transform the world around us.