Jac O’Keeffe

Jac O'Keeffe is a spiritual leader, teacher and author who explores consciousness. Her site says she has been teaching and holding workshops around the world for more than ten years, guiding people in the unfoldment of their own spiritual journey.

Her teaching is for people who are done with seeking, done with hiding and done with outsourcing their awakening to gurus. She describes its aim as helping people reach a level of spiritual maturity in which they are their own guru and keep their autonomy at every stage of awakening. In her words, her role is "not to invent new concepts, but rather to empower you to go there for yourself and see."

Her teaching draws on her own experience. She writes that some years after her awakening she realized a new identification had replaced the old one: a more expanded identity with "nondual awareness." In time she saw that this identity had to dissolve too. She asks what lies beyond even the sense of spaciousness and pure consciousness. For her, the unfolding of consciousness does not end when you wake up.

Jac is the author of Born to Be Free and How to Be a Spiritual Rebel. She is a founding member of the Association for Spiritual Integrity (ASI). The organization encourages spiritual teachers and their communities to support one another in growth and spiritual development. It aims to build a network of resources for people in leadership roles and to encourage continual self-reflection. She has co-presented with ASI colleagues at a Harvard Divinity School conference on the uses and abuses of power in alternative spiritualities. At another Harvard Divinity School conference she spoke on the influence of colonialism on ethics and accountability in alternative spiritual teaching, and proposed a new system of accountability.

She offers courses, a library of audio, video and written teachings, and private mentorship sessions for people who identify as spiritual leaders. She also offers Jacbot, a free AI tool that draws on her teachings and is meant to support the user's own judgment and agency.