Matthew Thomas Baker has been engaged in spiritual study, transformation, and arts education for over thirty years. Matthew earned an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University and a master's degree in psychology and counselling from Prescott College, focusing on adolescent development, depth and archetypal psychology, shamanism, and transpersonal psychology. He also completed a seven-year spiritual study course through the international Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and tutored others in the course for several years. Prior to his retirement in 2022, Matthew was a founding educational leader of a highly successful and innovative American high school for the arts.
At the age of thirty, while reading traditional Buddhist "pointing-out instructions" in Ken Wilber's book The Eye of Spirit, Matthew experienced a spontaneous awakening and recognition of the conscious Awareness that all beings share. That awakening radically altered his view of himself, others, and even objects in the world. Everything appeared to be spontaneously arising out of one awake field of Awareness.
In the years since, he has learned to live into that initial insight, and unconditioned awareness is always accessible to his mind and heart. In addition, the intelligence of Awareness and the soul has burned down and rebuilt his personality, leaving no figurative stone untransformed. Matthew suspects that the transformational process never really ends. There is always more that can unfold on our human journey as we grow into wiser, more compassionate, and more creative beings.
Matthew is the founder and spiritual director of the Institute for Nondual Shamanism and currently lives and teaches in London.