Philip Goldberg

Website: www.philipgoldberg.com

Like the beloved Dodgers of my youth, I was born and raised in Brooklyn and now live in Los Angeles. In between, I made stops in Manhattan, New England, Pennsylvania, San Francisco and Iowa.  As a college student in the 1960s, I shuttled uncertainly from one major to another, while carrying out more important work outside the classroom: expanding my mind in various ways, awakening to sex, relentlessly searching for higher truths and trying to save the world from racism and war.  That pattern continued through three graduate schools in two years.  In retrospect, what seemed like confusion was an idealistic young man scratching his way to the two passions that would mark his adult life: spirituality and writing.  The two have intersected professionally at times, most happily in the past couple of years.

After giving up on academia and taking my first job, I pursued answers to the Big Questions that I had not found in psychology and the other social sciences.  Despite having been raised by atheists who disdained religion—or maybe because of it—I was drawn to the pragmatic mysticism of the East, through Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley and the classic texts of Taoism, Buddhism and Vedanta.  This led inexorably to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, both because of its Beatles-led fame and in spite of it. That was my spiritual home for a number of years; I spent a good portion of the 1970s teaching meditation and otherwise working for the TM organization.

That affiliation not only got me started on what would become an eclectic and independent spiritual path, but it also triggered my career as a professional writer.  Throughout my academic life, the one consistent element was my writing skill.  Sometimes, I would fantasize to friends about living the writer’s life.  But I never took it seriously as a career plan.  Then, while lecturing on meditation, I was asked to write an article on the subject for Seventeen Magazine.  It was my first paid gig as a writer.  Two years later, through a series of fortuitous events, I was offered a contract to write a book on TM.
My spiritual pursuits and my writing career proceeded on separate tracks, coming together only on occasion.  In my books I was able to indulge my interests in psychology, human potential and holistic health.  Early on, to pay the bills, I accepted offers to collaborate with experts who had book ideas but neither the capacity nor inclination to write.  I acquired a reputation as a good collaborator, which led to other offers.  These projects became a kind of day job while I worked on my own material.  It was an excellent education, and it paid the bills.  Meanwhile, I published a novel (This is Next Year)and some nonfiction of my own, and got my foot far enough into the door of Hollywood to get a good case of show biz frustration.

In the meantime, I continued earnestly pursuing spiritual development.  This lifelong quest for higher awareness and intimacy with the Divine took on many forms, but always remained my highest priority.  I would also teach meditation, run spiritual support groups, and counsel people on spiritual matters—all of which, in addition to my books, earned me a Ph.D. in psychology.  Along the way, I helped to create the Forge Guild of Spiritual Leaders and Teachers, on whose board I now sit.  I became an ordained Interfaith Minister.  I began to offer spiritual counseling professionally.  And, to my great satisfaction, spirit and writing came together in the past two years, culminating with the release of my most recent books, Making Peace with God and Roadsigns: Navigating Your Path to Spiritual Happiness.

Last March, in between publications, I married my beloved, Lori Deutsch.

Now, I am counseling individuals and couples, leading workshops, lecturing, and working on new books that shall, for the moment, remain nameless.  I am also in the process of creating a new organization, Spiritual Wellness Associates Network (SWAN), which is dedicated to helping people live healthy spiritual lives.