That title is playful — every day is full of gratefulness for me and I certainly don’t confine it to conventional holidays like our American Thanksgiving. So, I don’t seriously mean that the gratitude I’ll express here is “early.”

I want to give thanks today to two specific individuals, and their fields of connection, that have become increasingly important in my life and in Linda’s and my work.

The more visible alliance, to date, is with Ken Wilber and his Integral Institute and Integral Spiritual Center. Of course Ken’s prominent endorsement of Linda and me and our work is itself a great gift. Yet, especially after this last Integral Spiritual Center Retreat in October, I see this alliance growing stronger. Ken has fleshed out his Integral vision in ways that make more room for our particular contribution, and likewise contribute more to our own work. Both Linda and I came away excited at what the future may hold between Integral and the White-Hot Way. Very excited and hopeful.

The second alliance is I expect much less obvious, which makes me all the more happy to speak of it openly. It has quietly been growing in what I have called, in a much earlier post on this blog, the Global Living Lineage. In our time, all traditions, teachings, and transmissions appear to be functioning in a single great Lineage collective. More and more practitioners not only move from one teacher to another in a single stream or tradition at various stages of their journeys, but from one whole tradition to another, and then back, and then combine two or more in elements of their discipline and investigation at various times, and so on.

This particular connection in the Global Living Lineage is with the ancient line of Indian yogis that gave rise, in the later 20th century, to what we now know as “TM” — Transcendental Meditation.

One aspect of the connection is well established and has been growing for years. I’m so happy to acknowledge this: The one modern school that has contributed by far the greatest number of extraordinary teachers, mentors, and other awakened practitioners to the Waking Down in Mutuality work — and to my spiritual success in human terms, therefore — has been TM. By far! I won’t name names here because some people might prefer not to be spoken of in this way, for whatever reasons. Some have also contributed much for a time and then moved on to other pursuits, having enriched our work enormously.

Another aspect of the connection is just opening up. I don’t know what will come of it, but I feel it’s important to state it openly now — even if nothing else develops than what already has. It’s quite simple: I sense a specific blessing being directed to Linda, me, and our total work including the Waking Down in Mutuality network, from Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, guru to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of TM.

That spiritual perception has in turn led me to ponder the possibility that Brahmananda and other unseen lineage ancestors in his line may have had and may continue to have an active, if invisible, role in directing so many of their extraordinary living proteges into our work and community. Who knows?

In any case, to both Ken Wilber and the remarkable men and women associated with Integral Institute and Integral Spiritual Center — including, by the way, many Waking Down and White-Hot Way participants who are ardent students of the Integral approach — and to Brahmananda Saraswati, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and others in their Saraswati line of gurus, I happily give great thanks today.