Lama Adam B. - Letters to My Former Self

In March 2020, Lama Adam Berner emerged from his 42-month meditation retreat into a world on fire: a global pandemic, political unrest, and a slow-motion reckoning with the long-term effects of intensive meditation. Adam initially thrived as a spiritual leader at his “home” meditation center—but soon found himself grappling with anxiety, depression, and an unsettling dissonance between what was being asked of him and what he knew was right. Forced to keep his struggle hidden from the wider community—even as he longed for connection—he grew increasingly isolated from the center’s leadership, where cycles of harm, denial, and what he would later understand as moral injury deepened behind the scenes, exacerbating latent, as-yet-unidentified meditation-related adverse effects. In this talk, Adam shares what he would tell his former self: that compassion begins with oneself, clarity arises from embodied awareness, and continual tending of the nervous system may be an essential enlightened activity. Drawing on his journey through meditation-related adverse effects and moral injury scholarship, Adam will speak to the difficult but necessary process of reclaiming agency, authenticity, and integrity in the aftermath of harm.