Joe Perez is an author, writer, independent researcher, and ordained Integral Minister whose work explores spirituality, philosophy, language, symbolism, human development, and contemplative practice.
He is the author of Soulfully Gay, published by Integral Books/Shambhala in 2007. In 2016, he published The Kalendar: The Black Stone with Integral Publishers, a work of fantasy fiction and poetry imbued with Integral spirituality and philosophy. In 2025, he wrote Nondual Recovery, synthesizing his work in the recovery community with a nondualistic spirituality and helping others explore how the two might be brought together in practice.
Alongside his books, Joe has written hundreds of short commentaries online on Integral Theory, philosophy, spirituality, and politics over nearly twenty years. His writing ranges across memoir, spiritual philosophy, cultural commentary, poetry, fiction, contemplative practice, and experimental approaches to language and symbolic systems.
For more than a decade, Joe’s personal practice has included contemplation of Master Yang Xiong’s Taixuanjing (The Canon of Supreme Mystery). His experiments with its ternary symbolic system have included language modeling, poetry, contemplative practice, and divination.
Joe holds a B.A. with Honors from Harvard University and later earned an M.Div. from an interfaith seminary, with additional study at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
He has no formal training in linguistics. His work in linguistics, phonetics, and related areas is self-taught, and he considers himself still learning from professionals whose expertise exceeds his own. He welcomes correction, criticism, and collaboration from linguists, phoneticians, semioticians, scholars of sacred language, and other specialists.
He lives in Seattle and works professionally in the software industry.