Mitra Manesh

People call her the daughter of Rumi. She didn't learn to read and learn the way most people do. Dyslexia meant she had to find her own way into language and meaning — and somewhere in that detour, with the help of colors, numbers, and geometry, she discovered something the straight path misses. She's been teaching it ever since.

Mitra Manesh was born in Iran and has spent a lifetime crossing borders — of culture, discipline, and convention — becoming a senior mindfulness educator at UCLA Mindful, a creator of contemplative art viewing at UCLA museums, a heart-mind consultant, a poet, a painter, a podcaster, and a former human rights commissioner in Ontario, Canada.

Her writing for The Attentionist came to her in unexpected places — a 17th-century Portuguese castle, a sunlit home in Venice, and the tender quiet of caring for her 94-year-old mother. The book carries all of those rooms.

She is the mother of two liberated souls and a recipient of the Golden Jubilee Medal from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The Attentionist is for anyone who senses that something in their life is asking to be experienced differently — and is ready to begin.