Ted Esser, Ph.D. has been the Director of the Spiritual Emergence Network (founded by Stan and Christina Grof in 1980) for over fifteen years. He has had training and experience with several spiritual traditions, with expertise in the areas of lucid dreaming, kundalini, nonduality, altered states of consciousness, and other things transpersonal.
He has held Core Faculty and Adjunct Professor positions teaching graduate-level Consciousness Studies and Transpersonal Philosophy, Theory, and Research Methods courses at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University) and Consciousness & Dream Studies courses at John F. Kennedy University.
His dissertation, Lucid Dreaming, Kundalini, the Divine, and Nonduality: A Transpersonal Narrative Study examines its subject from a transdisciplinary framework, including transpersonal psychology, consciousness studies, religious studies, and dream studies. He is a contributing author in Lucid Dreaming: New Perspectives on Consciousness in Sleep to published by Prager. Previously, he worked in public and educational television for 7 years, producing the Midnight Theatre series for KCTS 9 in Seattle, WA.
He holds BA & BFA degrees in Communications (New Media) & Photography (Video Art) from the University of Washington, and an MA in Philosophy & Religion (Philosophy, Cosmology & Consciousness program ) and a PhD from the East/West Psychology program (Consciousness Studies track) from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He has five children and lives in San Diego County, CA with his partner where he conducts his spiritual counseling practice globally.