Letting Go Workshops

In this talk, we explore death not as a morbid topic, but as the most honest teacher we have. Not just physical death, but the small, daily deaths we experience when expectations collapse, relationships end, plans fail, or the image of who we thought we were no longer fits.
Letting go is not positive thinking. It is not resignation. It is not “acceptance” in the polite sense. It is the nervous system learning, again and again, that it can survive the death of a story.

We’ll look at why the mind treats endings like threats, why emotions feel unbearable when something is slipping away, and why resisting these inner deaths actually amplifies suffering. Using stories, images, and emotion-based exercises, we’ll see how repeatedly allowing endings dissolves fear rather than feeds it.

The paradox is simple and disturbing: the more willing you are to die psychologically, the more alive you feel. When you stop fighting endings, life stops feeling fragile.

This talk is not about becoming fearless. It’s about discovering that fear loses its grip when it is finally allowed to complete itself.

About Lecturer
Dillon Freed is a neuroscience and psychology instructor teaching Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Baruch College and Brain and Behavior at John Jay College. He conducts graduate research in cognitive neuroscience at the CUNY Graduate Center and is preparing for doctoral work.

His work focuses on emotion, fear, consciousness, and the mechanisms of psychological letting go. Drawing from neuroscience, philosophy, and lived experience, Dillon explores how suffering is amplified by resistance to internal states and how allowing emotions to complete themselves reduces distress.

He lectures and leads workshops on letting go, consciousness, and emotional regulation, using stories, humor, and direct experiential methods rather than belief systems or motivational frameworks.

More at DillonFreed.com

## Dark Nights of the Soul

A seminar on spiritual darkness, psychological collapse, and the path back to light
There are seasons in life when meaning dissolves, faith cracks, and the world feels hollow. These are the Dark Nights of the Soul. Periods when your old identity falls apart, your beliefs stop working, and every attempt to feel normal breaks in your hands. Most people think they are failures when this happens. In reality, the Dark Night is a rite of passage found in every spiritual tradition on Earth. It is the death of what you were, so you can become what you are meant to be.

This seminar explores the anatomy of spiritual darkness. Why it happens, what collapses inside you, what is actually being stripped away, and how to navigate it without losing yourself. You will learn how the Dark Night disrupts your emotions, your memory, your self-concept, and your relationship to the world. You will also learn the skills, practices, and insights that help you walk through it with clarity rather than despair. The end of the Dark Night is not survival. The end is transformation. You come out the other side with a new level of awareness, a deeper capacity for compassion, and a stronger spiritual center.

This is not therapy and it is not self-help. It is a deep study of the machinery of consciousness during collapse and rebirth. Perfect for people who are in the middle of their own spiritual confusion or who want to understand why life sometimes forces us into darkness before revealing what we were always meant to discover.

## About Dillon Freed

Dillon Freed is a professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience who teaches Mind, Brain, and Behavior and researches consciousness, perception, and emotional transformation. His work blends neuroscience with spiritual psychology in a way that is both rigorous and intuitive.

He has led more than 100 seminars on consciousness, emotional mastery, and personal transformation. He has launched or is launching multiple companies including Aligned, Same Page, and Phocused, and built a suite of mental-training platforms such as BasketballBrain, GolfMind, Letting Go Institute, DillonFreed.com, and others. He previously ran Freed Spaces, an immersive meditation and fitness center that combined sensory training, breathwork, and nervous-system work in a unique high-performance environment.

Dillon is the author of the upcoming books How to Let Go and How to Explore the Unconscious. He has also written a novel titled The Unneeded Redundancy along with several books of poetry. His teaching style is built on breaking complex ideas into intuitive, powerful frameworks that help people understand the deepest layers of the mind. He teaches from direct experience, ongoing research, and a lifetime spent studying spiritual traditions, altered states, and the dark passages that lead to awakening.

We are going to explore your Dark Side. I spent several years going into the unconscious, and this talk will be on what I found. It's an exploration of what you will find there, and some warnings.

## Spiritual Knight

A seminar on spirituality and politics in an age of chaos
We live in a world where political life has become tribal, hysterical, and fueled by fear. People cling to ideologies like they are lifeboats, and the result is anger, confusion, and a growing sense of spiritual exhaustion. Spiritual Knight is a seminar about rising above all this. It is about becoming the kind of person who can move through political chaos with clarity, strength, and an unshakable inner center.

A Spiritual Knight is not someone who retreats from the world. He or she is someone who steps into it with a grounded mind and a fearless heart. The seminar explores how modern politics hijacks the deepest parts of our psychology, how fear and identity distort our perception, and how spiritual practice can give you the courage to see clearly. We explore the difference between righteous conviction and ideological possession, the difference between genuine compassion and performative moralism, the difference between soul and propaganda.
This is a seminar for people who refuse to be dragged into the madness of the political battlefield and who want a spiritual framework for staying centered, human, and courageous. You will learn how to keep your integrity while engaging with a fractured culture, how to defend what matters without becoming consumed by fury, and how to embody clarity in a world that rewards noise. A Spiritual Knight does not fight to destroy. A Spiritual Knight fights to preserve what is true, what is sacred, and what is human.

The purpose of this seminar is not to push you left or right. It is to lift you above the old categories and help you reconnect with a higher ground where your values, your clarity, and your inner strength can guide you.

## About Dillon Freed

Dillon Freed is a professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience who teaches Mind, Brain, and Behavior and researches consciousness, perception, and emotional transformation. His work blends neuroscience with spiritual psychology in a way that is both rigorous and intuitive.

He has led more than 100 seminars on consciousness, emotional mastery, and personal transformation. Dillon is also a serial founder. He created VR embodiment experiments, launched multiple companies including Aligned, Same Page, and Phocused, and built a suite of mental-training platforms such as BasketballBrain, GolfMind, DillonFreed.com, and others. He previously ran Freed Spaces, an immersive meditation and fitness center that combined sensory training, breathwork, and nervous-system work in a unique high-performance environment.

Dillon is the author of the upcoming books How to Let Go and How to Explore the Unconscious. He has also written a novel titled The Unneeded Redundancy along with several books of poetry. His teaching style is built on breaking complex ideas into intuitive, powerful frameworks that help people understand the deepest layers of the mind. He teaches from direct experience, ongoing research, and a lifetime spent studying spiritual traditions, altered states, and the dark passages that lead to awakening.