Taking on the Transformative

Seeking relief from her migraine headaches, Dr. Sue Morter turned to meditation. As a new meditator, 24 years ago, she sat down to meditate as part of a group. As she followed along chanting a mantra, her mind was stilled and she was instantaneously transported into a higher state of consciousness, that she explains “was completely altered from where we operate on a daily basis.” Dr. Sue shares with Wonderderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere, “I could see 360 degrees…I could see in every direction simultaneously…I was a ray of light. And I had always been there. I knew instantly that this was the truth of who I was. ” Her life’s work has evolved from this formative moment and the multi-dimensional experiences and understandings she continues to access as she works to embody this greater truth of who we are, teaching it and sharing it with others through her Energy Codes coursework, BodyAwake Yoga, Spiritual B.E.S.T. (Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique) and as a best-selling author. Dr. Sue is a transformational leader, teaching us how we’re contributing to the expansion of human consciousness as “we’re waking to the truth of why we’re here and what we’re capable of.”

Nicole Baden’s life in Zen began with a crisis. She was 17, overwhelmed and felt she may not survive. With help from her father, and her own intuition, Nicole looked for relief in the form of her 18th birthday gift: a trip to a Zen meditation retreat. Hoping to quiet her existential dread, what Nicole took away from that trip was even greater. It set her on a path that would entirely change her concept of self, and the way she’d experience being in the world. Now known as Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi, she is a Dharma Successor of Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi, and director and a resident teacher at the Zen Buddhist Center Schwarzwald in Germany—the very same place she arrived as a frightened teen many years ago. The way Nicole teaches about Zen clarifies, demystifies and prescribes ways for her students to change their own paths by practicing meditation. “You can start sitting at home in homeopathic doses,” she tells Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere. “If you start introducing bodily stillness into your daily life, that would be a really good start.” Beginning next year, Nicole intends to do more teaching in the United States, online and in-person, expanding the offerings at Dharma Sangha’s Crestone Mountain Zen Center in Crestone, Colorado, where she serves as Assistant Abbot.

In 1950, a 19-year-old Stanford University sophomore named Michael Murphy had a serendipitous encounter that changed his life. Murphy had prepared to sit through more of his pre-med coursework. Instead, he wound up in a lecture hall where the great religions scholar and professor Frederic Spiegelberg delivered a message that shook Murphy to his core, altering his ambitions, his career trajectory and his spiritual outlook. “Walking out of there, one sentence kept going through my head,” Murphy, now 93, shares with Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere, “It was like an obsessional thought: you will never be the same, you will never be the same.” Spiegelberg’s influence set Murphy on a path that would lead him to turn a sacred plot of land on the Northern California coast into a cliffside hub for the study and practice of human potential. Co-founded with Richard Price in 1962, Esalen Institute has left an indelible mark on countless individuals and on a broader culture of seekers and scholars. Wonderstruck’s second season kicks off with a story only Michael Murphy can tell, about Esalen’s wild evolution and impact, guarding it against drug dealers and cults, and a lifetime, says Murphy, of moving “into this greater life that’s pressing to be born in us all.”