260. Mirabai Starr

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Author of critically acclaimed new translations of the mystics, and reflections on the unifying teachings at the heart of all spiritual paths. Mirabai Starr uses fresh, lyrical language to help make timeless wisdom accessible to a contemporary circle of seekers.

Daughter of the counter-culture, Mirabai was born in New York in 1961 to secular Jewish parents who rejected the patriarchy of institutionalized religion. Intellectual artists and social justice activists, they were active in the anti-war protest movement of the Vietnam era.

In 1972, Mirabai’s mother, father, and her younger brother and sister uprooted from their suburban life and embarked on an extended road trip that led them through the jungles of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where they lived for many months on an isolated Caribbean beach, and ended in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico. There, the family embraced an alternative, “back-to-the-land” lifestyle, in a communal effort to live simply and sustainably, values that remain important to Mirabai to this day.

As a teenager, Mirabai lived at the Lama Foundation, an intentional spiritual community that has honored all the world’s faith traditions since its inception in 1967. This ecumenical experience.

Mirabai has been an adjunct professor of Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos since 1993. Her emphasis is on making connections between the perennial teachings found at the heart of all the world’s spiritual paths, in an effort to promote peace and justice.

Mirabai speaks and teaches nationally and internationally on the teachings of the mystics and contemplative practice, and is a certified bereavement counselor. She is available for interviews, speaking engagements, workshops, and contemplative retreats.

She lives in the mountains of Northern New Mexico with her husband, Jeff Little (Ganga Das). Between them, Mirabai and Jeff have four grown daughters and six grandchildren. Mirabai’s youngest daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident in 2001 at the age of fourteen. On that same day, Mirabai’s first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul, was released. She considers this experience, and the connection between profound loss and longing for God, the ground of her own spiritual life.

Books:

Website: mirabaistarr.com

Interview recorded 10/25/014 at the Science and Nonduality Conference.

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.

Transcript of this interview

Second BatGap interview with Mirabai.

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.