Bio
Bio
Justin Forrest Miles is a brilliant polymath recognized for his intellect at an early age. He was placed in the fifth grade at the age of four and throughout his life continued to display an ability to understand and synthesize the teachings of seemingly disparate disciplines into workable growth centered models.
Psychology
Justin Forrest Miles, MA LCPC-S, LCADA-S, has worked in the field of community and clinical mental health for 25 years. He is a licensed psychotherapist with a thriving private practice located in Baltimore, Maryland. Justin is the founder and Director of the Miles Institute of Integral Living LLC, a multi-faceted organization that primarily provides contemplative psychotherapy but also utilizes meditation, horticulture, photography, music production and other therapeutic activities connected to everyday life. He utilizes a metatheory called Integral Philosophy that integrates Earth based indigenous wisdom and traditional Eastern spiritual systems with the findings of modern Western psychological systems. Justin is the only African American in the world currently listed through MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) as a provider of Psychedelic Integration Therapy for individuals seeking to use and integrate entheogens as a part of their healing process and has done so since 2017.
Wellness and Integral Spirituality
For over 33 years Justin has been an active member and student of the world’s wisdom traditions and engages in Buddhist, Contemplative Christian, Taoist, and Lakota indigenous practices. Since 1998 Justin has practiced with a Lakota community that resides in Rosebud South Dakota, and has learned first hand from native elders what is called the Red Road or the Lakota way and engages in practices such as sweat lodges four times per year and solitary vision quests every other year. Since formally becoming a Buddhist in 2000, he has engaged in short and long term retreats and graduated from Buddhist Seminary in 2005. In 2006 he was permitted to become a certified meditation instructor through the Shambhala Buddhist Community and has taught meditation for 19 years to individuals, families, community groups, schools and conferences. He currently facilitates short and long term meditation retreats as well as courses on Buddhism and Integral Spirituality. Justin founded the Black Power Meditation group in 2014 as a response to the Freddie Gray uprising in Baltimore, Maryland to explore the application of innate wisdom to the path of activism and militancy. The group continues to meet bi-weekly in Baltimore. His primary interest is the organization, mobilization, education and upliftment of Black people based on stability, clarity and strength of mind. To help to bring this about, Justin created the world’s first Black Liberation Meditation Liturgy titled “The Sadhana of Awakened Melanin: Black Power Meditation Liturgy” which is currently used around the world by Afrikans in the diaspora seeking to experience the enlightenment found within our own nature. To inspire confidence within Black people Justin also created the world’s first Buddhist practice using a Black person as the central character titled, “The Light of the Black Prince of Shabazz that Illuminates Confidence.” Prior to the Covid pandemic, Justin taught meditation bi-weekly to inmates at the Harford County Detention Center. In 2019 Justin was invited by Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams to a gathering of 80 Black Buddhist teachers from around the globe. He is currently a mentor for fellows accepted to Howard University’s Howard Thurman Contemplative Justice Fellowship Program.
Hiphop
Also known as J-Who? Worldwise, Justin has been involved in Hiphop Culture for over 30 years and is a proficient freestyler, emcee, DJ, vocal turntablist, beatboxer, journalist, and producer. Instead of defining a consistent production style, Justin prefers to explore different moods and atmospheres to provide listeners with a space in which to feel beautiful. As an avid record digger of rare records for 30 years, Justin treats his relationship with music as a curator of rarely heard artifacts and his music reflects a dedication to the art of sampling. He has released several albums and mixtapes (links attached to CV) and produced, mixed and mastered albums for local Baltimore Hiphop artists as well as artists in Perth, Australia and Benin. As an emcee Justin has shared the stage with artists such as Mike Ladd, Beans of Anti Pop Consortium, Doodlebug of Digable Planets, Akrobatik and Subconscious. Justin sells records via his online store and has a brick and mortar Contemplative Record Store called Black Wax Idol set to open in 2024. In 2010, Justin and friends from college started a record label called Mystery Sound Recordings where he serves as the Vinyl Sales and Procurement Manager and where he has released 10 albums and contributed production to many more. He is currently the Music Director for a film in development by Buddhist teacher Pamela Ayo Yetunde titled Birdsong slated for release in 2025.
In 2000, Justin founded Hiphop Alive, the world’s first organization dedicated to studying and using the elements of Hiphop as tools of enlightenment. He cultivated an approach called Integral Hiphop that integrates Eastern and Western spiritual and psychological methods of development with the elements of Hiphop.
Since the year 2000, his work, writing and research has concerned the intersections of Integral Philosophy, non-duality, psychology and Hiphop as a practice of self, other and global awakening. As a “guerilla journalist”, he has interviewed numerous Hiphop legends including Afrika Bambaataa, Souls of Mischief, Casual, DJ Q−Bert, Mix Master Mike, People Under The Stairs, Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, Guru, Saul Williams, A Tribe Called Quest, Dudley Perkins, The Black Eyed Peas, Wycleff Jean, Canibus, The Micranots, DJ Muggs and several prominent underground artists concerning Hiphop, spirituality and human development.
Additionally, he has received two grants to create and facilitate psychoeducational music and freestyle cypher programs for Baltimore youth in 2002 and 2003. In 2003, Justin was a featured presenter at the National Blacks in Criminal Justice conference where he educated attendees about how to create a therapeutic Hiphop based psychoeducation group for youth and facilitated therapeutic freestyle cyphers utilizing an African-centered form of therapy called NTU psychotherapy.
Furthermore, Justin has been published in Beautiful Decay magazine, The Journal of Hiphop Studies, The Journal of Integral Hiphop, as well as on the websites nonduality.com and hiphopgoldenage.com. He was the first Hiphop artist featured on, and is currently an author for the world's most translated philosopher Ken Wilber's website Integral Life, which also features Deepak Chopra, Michael Crichton, Rick Rubin and Saul Williams. Justin has lectured at colleges and national conferences about psychology and Hiphop, is the world’s foremost writer concerning Integral and Non Dual Hiphop. He is working on three books; Hiphop Alive: The Ground, Path and Fruition of the Four Elements, The Contemplations, and The Physics of Hiphop with Theoretical Physicist and Johns Hopkins professor David Kaplan.
Black Liberation, Preparedness and Horticulture
Since 1998 Justin has been a member of the original Baltimore Black Panther Party for Self Defense and much of his work is informed by Panther ideology and the lives of the lineage of Pan Afrikanists and Black Liberators. To help to eliminate food insecurities and food shortages in Zimbabwe, Africa the Miles Institute partnered with the Ubuntu Permaculture community in Harare Zimbabwe to purchase 12 acres of land to develop a Food Forest and Tree Nursery. The long term goal is to create an eco village that would house residents, teach and promote sustainable permaculture, incorporate water management, soil preservation and enrichment, cultivate seedlings, plant trees, and create a food forest that could provide a year-round supply of fruits, nuts, beans and vegetables to local villages. The village would also house a retreat center where participants can learn permaculture and meditation and an orphanage where youth will live in a safe and loving environment and where they can learn gardening skills. The Food Forest and Tree Nursery is named after his father Clyde A. Miles.
Justin became a certified Baltimore City Master Gardener in 2013, teaches horticulture to his psychotherapy clients to anyone willing to learn and gardens daily. He is adept at teaching others how to plan and grow gardens, compost, rehabilitate plants, save seeds and plant propagation. Additionally, Justin is a preparedness expert, has extensive training in indigenous technologies, emergency preparedness, firearms, self defense, aquaponics, wilderness survival and has developed a theory and practice called Integral Preparedness which readies individuals for the inevitable material, psychospiritual, emotional, cultural and social changes of human life.
Music
Always Already LP | Ascience Gnown and the Ether Orchidstra (J-Who? Worldwise)
Around The World In 80 Fades Mixtape
Love Breaks From Unknown Crates (mixtape)
Justin F. Miles Publications
The Towerlight Magazine (Towson University)
Black Voices Magazine (Towson University)
Beautiful Decay Magazine: Shambhala Interview, 2004
Hiphop Golden Age: https://hiphopgoldenage.com/dj-q-bert-true-master/
Integral Naked
Integral Life: Author: https://integrallife.com/author/justin-miles/
NonDuality.com: freestyle Gateway to the Beyond Within
The Journal of Integral Hiphop: http://hiphopalive.org/the-journal-of-integral-hiphop
Sadhana of Awakened Melanin: Black Power Meditation Liturgy (self published), 2021
Afrikan Wisdom; New Voices talk Black Liberation, Buddhism and Beyond: Valerie Mason John, North Atlantic Books, 2021
A Gathering Together: Literary Journal, Spring 2021
Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition by Rima Vesely-Flad, NYU Press, 2022
Lions Roar Magazine; The Spiritual Leadership of Malcolm X, May 20, 2022
Diunital Living, Self-Knowledge, Divine Infinite Mind: An Afrocentric Path to "Everlasting Peace and Happiness", 2022
“The Heart of Who We Are”, Caverly Morgan, Book Review and Header Ch. 11
Bridging the Inner Life of Personal Transformation with Social Liberation
by Rashani V Réa and Angel Kyodo Williams (2023)
Lion’s Roar Magazine, Black and Buddhist Issue,10 Ways to Happiness (March 2024)