Your Guide

Jan Frazier 

Until the summer of her fiftieth year, Jan Frazier lived a life typical for a well-educated, middle-class American woman. A divorced mother of two teenagers, she was making a modest living writing and teaching writing. Following a Catholic childhood in Miami in the 1960s, she had studied English in college and graduate school. In her late twenties, longing for hills and snow, she moved to New England, where she was active in the peace movement. But the inner peace she sought always eluded her.

Then, in August 2003, she experienced a radical transformation of consciousness. Fear fell away from her, and she was immersed in a state of causeless joy that has never left her. While she has continued her life as writer, teacher, and mother, she has discovered it is possible to live a richly human life free of suffering. Her wish now is to communicate the truth that within every person is a pool of calm well-being that waits patiently to be stirred to life.

When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening (Weiser Books, 2007) is Jan’s day-by-day account of the shift in consciousness and its alteration of her life. The Freedom of Being: At Ease with What Is (Weiser Books, 2012) looks at the nature of suffering and explores ways beyond it. Opening the Door: Jan Frazier Teachings on Awakening (eBookIt, 2012) is an ebook collection of essays. It opens the reader’s awareness to the possibility of a richly human life, beyond what appears possible to the ego and the mind. The Great Sweetening: Life After Thought (eBookIt, 2017 and 2016) is a collection of essays that invite the seeker to ask What am I? Is a person most truly ego and mental activity, or consciousness itself? Jan's most recent book, Love Incarnate: Twenty Years After Awakening (eBookIt, 2023), shows what life has been like for her in recent times. The reader gets an intimate acquaintance with her ordinary days, revealing both her genuine humanness and what it means to be fully awake: for although Jan cherishes her life, she is blessedly free of attachment to any of it. 

Jan’s poetry and prose have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, Greatest Hits, was published by Pudding House, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been inspired by many teachers, but the joy she lives in belongs to no particular tradition, and is available to all. Jan lives in southern Vermont.