Nondual Awakening on the Waking Up App
2026/01/20
MT:
Welcome, Nate Green of the Waking Up app. I’m super excited to actually meet you for the first time kind of face to face. We’ve only talked on the phone a bit and conducted business via email and so on, so it’s really nice to see your smiling face. Now, you have a new house. I have a new house.
NG:
Thank you. Yeah. My wife and I, rather than spending the holidays with family or friends, spent it laying down floor and moving everything in. So I’m happy to finally be settled.
MT:
Sweet. And this is a new video setup, I presume?
NG:
Yeah—new everything. It feels very fresh right now, which is nice.
MT:
That’s so great. Well, congratulations on a new home. That’s awesome.
NG:
Thank you. And thank you—keep the thank-yous going. Thanks for your contribution to the app recently. I know that’s the main reason we’re here. I just want to say I’ve been a fan of yours for many years. I’ve listened to at least a few dozen conversations on your podcast. I think you’re doing great work, and I’m really happy you’re finally in the app with one-hour-long meditations. This is breaking the app—these are the longest meditations we now have.
MT:
Well, I like long meditation, so I feel honored to break the app in that way. So let’s talk about the app. This is Sam Harris’s Waking Up app. You’re the head of production there. Tell me a little bit about the app, because people might not be aware of it, and also about the series.
NG:
Yeah, great. I’ve been here for five years, and I believe the app is seven years old. It was created by neuroscientist, author, philosopher—lots of things we can put in front of his name—Sam Harris. He probably wouldn’t call himself a meditation teacher, though he certainly introduced a lot of people to meditation.
He wrote Waking Up back in 2014, and the app is based on the insights from that book. What’s interesting about Sam is that people mostly knew him as one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, but what they didn’t know is that he spent much of his twenties going back and forth between Nepal and India studying primarily with Tibetan Buddhist teachers, also Advaita traditions.
When he created the app, he wanted to present teachings from many traditions in a secular way so people in the modern age could connect with these deep wisdom teachings. My role is helping steward content for the app. I’m deeply involved in meditation practice myself, and I was a user of the app before joining the team. It’s great work.
MT:
You do great work. I think it’s the premier app in the meditation space—practically everyone I work with uses it at some point. I was beyond tickled to be invited to do a series on the app. We did an interview a while ago, but now you asked me to do this ten-part series.
NG:
Yes—Non-Dual Awakening.
MT:
Right. The title says it all. When is this coming out, and how can people check it out?
NG:
The best way is to go to wakingup.com/michaeltaft. Anyone who goes there gets a free 30-day trial—no credit card required. They can listen to your series and everything else on the app. We have the entire Alan Watts collection and many of your colleagues and contemporaries.
Your series launches January 20th. Part one goes live then. Half the sessions are available now, and the rest will roll out in a month or two.
MT:
And just to be clear, I’m not getting any affiliate fee for this. This is just a gift from Waking Up to let people explore the app.
NG:
And let me add something on that point. We are simultaneously the highest-paid meditation app and also completely free for people who can’t afford it. Over 100,000 people use the app entirely free. Anyone who pays is essentially subsidizing those who can’t. We grant 100% of scholarship requests. We don’t want money to be a barrier.
MT:
That scholarship model is one of the main reasons I think the app is fabulous. It’s rare and really cool. I’m incredibly honored to be included among the teachers there.
Let me briefly describe the Non-Dual Awakening series. I wanted to cover the full spectrum of what I teach, including some things I don’t see much on the app. We start with resting, spaciousness, stillness, silence. Then vipashyana practices to see the emptiness of various aspects of experience, tonglen and love-and-kindness practices.
But then I went in a direction I don’t hear much on the app: working with energy in a non-dual way. I leaned all the way in. Three or four of the ten meditations are very energy-focused.
NG:
Yeah, and you’re right—we don’t have a lot of that. One critique we hear from people “in the know” is that Waking Up is very headless, very awareness-focused, and that energetics are missing. I think that’s a fair critique on some level. I really appreciate you bringing that dimension forward.
In my own practice, working with energetic patterns and seeing their emptiness has been very useful. You saw a spot that needed filling and did it beautifully.
MT:
If we look at Mahamudra, Dzogchen, Vajrayana Tantra, they’re very energy-based. Those practices are there. There’s a way to talk about energy secularly, and I gave it my best shot.
NG:
I think you succeeded. You used the term “central channel,” and we let that fly. These experiences are here for the experiencing—so we might as well talk about them.
MT:
Exactly. And one of the first meditations I ever heard from you that I thought was brilliant was Dropping the Ball. That’s in here. I was listening to Energy Turns to Space before this call, and your pointers are incredibly precise. The way you talk about not just energy in the body, but the energy behind the breath—it collapses a lot of things beautifully.
NG:
Thank you. That means a lot.
MT:
Okay, let’s wrap up. How do people sign up?
NG:
Go to wakingup.com/michaeltaft. Free 30 days, no credit card required. Stick around if you can.
MT:
Excellent. Thank you so much, Nate. Hope to talk to you again soon.
NG:
Thanks, Michael.
