Mirabai

About

For those of you who are new to me, my name is Mirabai. I live for beauty, and am especially passionate about the beauty of language. Writing fills my cup; so does reading literary fiction and poetry. I love ambling through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with my husband Ganga Das and our two dogs Ruby and Lola in my homeland of New Mexico. The Sacred Feminine and the wisdom of the mystics across the spiritual traditions infuse my life with clarity and meaning.

I am a daughter of the counter-culture, born in New York in 1961 to secular Jewish parents who rejected the patriarchy of institutionalized religion. Intellectual artists and advocates of social justice and environmental responsibility, my family was active in the anti-war protest movement of the Vietnam era.

In 1972, my mother, father, and younger brother and sister uprooted from our suburban life and embarked on an extended road trip that led us through the jungles of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where we lived for many months on an isolated Caribbean beach, and ended in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico. There, our family embraced an alternative, “back-to-the-land” lifestyle, in a communal effort to live simply and sustainably, values that remain important to me to this day.

As a teenager, I lived at the Lama Foundation, an intentional spiritual community that has honored all the world’s faith traditions since its inception in 1967. This ecumenical experience became formative in the universal quality that has always permeated my work. I was an adjunct professor of Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years. My emphasis has always been on making connections between the perennial teachings found at the heart of all the world’s spiritual paths, in an effort to promote peace and justice.

I speak and teach nationally and internationally on the teachings of the mystics and contemplative practice, and the transformational power of grief and loss.

I live in the mountains of Northern New Mexico with my husband, Jeff Little (Ganga Das). Between us, we have four grown daughters and eight grandchildren. My youngest daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident in 2001 at the age of fourteen. On that same day, my first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul, was released. This experience, and the connection between profound loss and longing for the Divine, is the ground of my own spiritual life.