What Are The Jhanas And How Can They Change Your Life? (Jhourney Founder, Stephen Zerfas)

12/14/23 • 57 min

Today’s guest is Stephen Zerfas, the Co-Founder and CEO of Jhourney.

Five years ago Stephen found himself crying tears of joy after stumbling into a prolonged state of ecstatic bliss on a meditation retreat.

Up until this point, most of the retreat was migraine-inducing so he wasn’t sure how he had landed in this profound place. After the retreat, he was interested in how to recreate this experience whenever he wanted. Through many months of personal experimentation and research, he realized that these states are available to all humans on demand. In fact, you don’t even need to be a long-time meditator!

In this conversation, we discuss the Jhanas and how Jhourney is going about making them more accessible. Interesting ideas include:

An overview of the Jhanas and why we should care
How meditation as far as what has been brought to the West is still largely unexplored
The history of why these experiences went from very popular to obscurity and are now emerging yet again
The different schools of insight including dry vs. wet insight
His learnings collecting the largest scientific dataset on Jhana meditators in the world
How technology can enhance this age-old tradition
Arguments against pursuing the Jhanas and his response
How access to the Jhanas has the potential to change the world

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast

Today’s guest is Stephen Zerfas, the Co-Founder and CEO of Jhourney.

Five years ago Stephen found himself crying tears of joy after stumbling into a prolonged state of ecstatic bliss on a meditation retreat.

In this conversation, we discuss the Jhanas and how Jhourney is going about making them more accessible. Interesting ideas include:

An overview of the Jhanas and why we should care
How meditation as far as what has been brought to the West is still largely unexplored
The history of why these experiences went from very popular to obscurity and are now emerging yet again
The different schools of insight including dry vs. wet insight
His learnings collecting the largest scientific dataset on Jhana meditators in the world
How technology can enhance this age-old tradition
Arguments against pursuing the Jhanas and his response
How access to the Jhanas has the potential to change the world

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast

Previous Episode

How Understanding The Energy of Money Can Transform Your Relationship With It (Sarah McCrum)

Today’s guest Sarah McCrum is the author of the book Love Money, Money Loves You. Sarah’s background was that she studied energy with Chinese masters for 20 years eventually opening a Qigong center in London. In 2010, she experienced spontaneous contact with the energy of money and began to receive information about its essence and what it wanted to communicate to humans. She began to transcribe this information and eventually, it became the contents of her book.

Although this may sound like an absurd idea to many people, channeling is responsible for many profoundly impactful books such as A Course In Miracles which we covered in an earlier podcast. The idea is that all things are made of energy, including beings and energies on higher planes, and if we can open to and connect with these energies we can begin to receive and transmit information. This is the same exact way a radio works.

I’ve read Sarah’s books and the ideas are pretty revolutionary. It really makes you question everything you thought you knew about how money works. Some concepts it covered which we discuss in this episode include:

How money is actually in unlimited supply
Its purpose to facilitate exchange, connection, and expansion
The role of relaxation and enjoyment in aligning with the flow of money
How it’s not inner abundance vs. outer abundance, but both
Why so many of us are unconsciously blocking money from flowing into our life
Why spiritual teachings about money cause many people unnecessary difficulty
How to find love and joy in money

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast

Next Episode

David Perell On Faith, Creating From Love, and Surrendering To Your Natural Gifts

There are some people I just love listening to talk.

Today’s episode is one of those people.

David Perell is an entrepreneur, writer, and creator of the renown online course Write of Passage which helps aspiring writers transform their lives by writing online.

A lot of people know David on the internet because of his prolific writing and content creation, but what I was interested in learning about is how the shifts in David’s personal and spiritual life fuel his creative endeavors.

In this conversation we talk about David’s journey with his faith and how it’s empowered him to be a better leader and step even more deeply into his purpose. It feels like many people I talk to these days have difficulty feeling aligned with their purpose. A big part of my personal hypothesis is that uncovering this is a process that occurs naturally once you begin to do the inner work and remove the impediments that make it easy to embrace what you love.

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast