MuRayCourtney A. Kazembe

Author · Speaker · Transformational coach

Live with greater
awareness.
Choose with greater
freedom.

I’m MuRay, Courtney A. Kazembe. Through books, speaking, and coaching, I invite you to notice the mind, return to presence, and make conscious choices in the life you are living.

Founder of GIFTE · Lawyer · Author of I AM

Courtney A. Kazembe, known as MuRay, seated in a suit and looking thoughtfully to the side
MuRay / Courtney A. Kazembe

The Path of Presence / Free live webinar

Is there more
to life than this?

You can have millions in the bank, a successful career, a loving relationship, and people who care about you, yet still find yourself wondering: Why do I feel that something is missing?

You may be grateful for your life and still long to understand yourself more deeply. You may have achieved things you once dreamed of, yet find yourself caught in familiar worries, reactions, and patterns.

I know that longing. I lived it for decades. Along the way, I came to experience what I can only describe as “a peace that passeth all understanding.” That discovery changed how I meet life. It led me to write I AM and create The Path of Presence. I would love to share this exploration with you.

With Mu-Ray (Courtney A. Kazembe)

Beyond the
Programmed Mind

A free, live 90-minute introduction to The Path of Presence

Together, we’ll explore:

  • Who am I beneath my thoughts, roles, and expectations?
  • What is possible for my life beyond the patterns I keep repeating?
  • Am I my thoughts and feelings, or the awareness that notices them?
  • Can I experience peace and happiness while life is still imperfect?

Through conversation and guided practice, you’ll explore awareness for yourself and practice a simple way to pause before familiar reactions take over. There will also be time for your questions.

Whatever your circumstances, you are welcome. No meditation experience is needed, and you don’t need to have read the book. Come curious. Come as you are.

Thursday, November 12, 2026
7:00–8:30 p.m. Eastern
Live on Zoom · Free
Reserve my free place

Register to receive your confirmation email and Zoom joining link.

If someone came to mind while you were reading, invite them to join us.

A free invitation

Begin your journey
with I AM.

What remains when you look beyond the beliefs and identities you have learned? Read Chapter One of I AM and begin exploring the question for yourself.

Send me Chapter One

Enter your email on the next page to request the free chapter.

A question to live with

Who am I being,
and is this who I choose to be?

01 / My story

The inquiry
became my life.

Law brought precision.
Silence brought another way of seeing.

I am a lawyer by profession. Much of my adult life has also been spent exploring how we construct identity, meaning, certainty, and the idea of self. Beneath the work and the responsibilities, a question kept returning: what am I before the stories I have learned to tell about myself?

That inquiry took me into meditation, silent retreats, contemplative practice, and encounters with wisdom traditions across cultures. Over time, I became less interested in collecting explanations and more interested in what I could recognize directly in my own experience.

Ordinary life remains the place where this understanding matters. Work, relationships, disappointment, and uncertainty invite us to see our reactions and consider how we want to respond.

MuRay is the name under which I write and teach. Courtney A. Kazembe is the person behind that work: lawyer, author, transformational coach, and founder of the Global Institute for Freedom, Transformation, and Enlightenment.

02 / The book

I AMMuRay

A Guide to Awakening from the Programmed Mind and Living as Awareness

Available in paperback and Kindle

Begin with what
you can see for yourself.

I AM invites you to examine the beliefs and identities that shape your experience. Through lived experience and direct inquiry, it explores the programmed mind and the awareness in which thoughts, feelings, and the story of self appear.

The invitation is practical: pause, look, and discover how recognition can change the way you meet your life.

Public speaker / MuRay

A conversation that
continues beyond the stage.

Keynotes, interactive sessions, and facilitated conversations for conferences, organizations, schools, universities, and communities.

My speaking brings together the questioning discipline of law, the experience of contemplative practice, and the realities of everyday life. I invite audiences to examine the assumptions shaping their choices and explore what becomes possible when they meet themselves and others with greater awareness.

Personal stories, direct inquiry, moments of reflection, and audience dialogue make the ideas available to experience. Each session is shaped around the people in the room and the questions that matter to them.

01

Who Am I Being Right Now?

The Power of Presence in Leadership, Relationships, and Everyday Decisions

When pressure rises, people often focus on what they need to do while overlooking how they are showing up. A leader enters a meeting already defensive. A teacher carries frustration into the classroom. A parent responds to a child before hearing the whole story. The task matters, but so does the person we become while handling it.

Read full description

In this keynote or interactive workshop, MuRay invites participants to examine a practical question: Who am I being right now, and is this who I choose to be? Drawing on his experience in legal practice and contemplative inquiry, he explores the space between a familiar reaction and a deliberate response. Participants consider how assumptions, emotional pressure, and the need to be right can influence their decisions and relationships.

The session combines personal stories, guided reflection, and audience dialogue. Participants are invited to notice their reactions without immediately defending or condemning them, return their attention to the situation at hand, and identify a useful next action. Presence becomes something they can practice in a difficult conversation, a demanding workday, or a moment of uncertainty.

For organizational audiences, the emphasis is on listening, accountability, and leadership through conduct. For educators and parents, the focus shifts to the quality of attention they bring to others and the example their behavior provides. The content can be adapted to the audience’s responsibilities and the challenges identified by the event organizer.

Participants leave with questions and practices for recognizing habitual responses, listening more carefully, and acting with greater clarity, courage, and compassion. They are encouraged to choose one recurring situation in which to apply the learning immediately. The aim is to make conscious participation available in ordinary moments, especially when circumstances are difficult and a decision affects others.

02

Awakening from the Programmed Mind

Recognizing Inherited Beliefs and Discovering Greater Freedom to Choose

Many of the beliefs that shape our lives were learned before we were old enough to question them. Ideas about success, belonging, authority, identity, and personal worth can become so familiar that we mistake them for facts. Those assumptions influence what we attempt, what we avoid, and how we interpret the people around us.

Read full description

Based on the central inquiry of his book I AM, MuRay invites audiences to examine the patterns he calls the programmed mind. This session explores how learned narratives can operate beneath decisions and how observing those narratives can create room for different choices. The emphasis is on recognition through personal experience, with participants encouraged to test the ideas against their own lives.

Through storytelling, reflective questions, and facilitated discussion, participants consider the difference between an event and the meaning they give it. They examine a familiar belief, ask where it came from, and explore whether it still serves the life or work they want to create. The session also addresses the discomfort of questioning an identity that once offered security or approval.

For workplace audiences, this inquiry can illuminate assumptions about leadership, conflict, achievement, and collaboration. For students, it can open discussion about labels, comparison, expectations, and the perceived limits of their future. For community audiences, it offers a starting point for exploring authenticity, belonging, and personal responsibility.

Participants leave with an accessible process for noticing an assumption, distinguishing interpretation from observation, and considering an alternative response. They identify one belief worth examining further and one action that would become possible if that belief loosened its hold. The session invites curiosity without demanding agreement. Its purpose is to help people see more clearly how they participate in their own experience and bring greater awareness to the choices available to them in work, relationships, and learning.

03

Attention Is Your Life

Reclaiming Focus and Agency in a World of Digital Distraction

Attention shapes what we learn, the relationships we build, and the work we complete. Yet much of the day can disappear into notifications, habitual checking, comparison, and the pressure to remain available. By evening, we may have responded to everyone else’s priorities while giving little attention to what matters most to us.

Read full description

In this keynote or interactive workshop, MuRay explores the relationship between attention and personal agency. The session invites participants to examine where their attention goes, what repeatedly pulls it away, and how those patterns affect their participation in everyday life. Digital habits become a practical entry point into a wider inquiry about presence, purpose, and choice.

Participants reflect on moments when they reach for a device automatically, divide their attention during a conversation, or postpone meaningful work. Through guided exercises and discussion, they consider the needs beneath those habits, including stimulation, reassurance, connection, and escape from discomfort. The emphasis is on observing their experience honestly and making changes they can sustain.

For schools and colleges, the session connects attention to learning, academic engagement, peer comparison, and responsible participation online. For professional audiences, it addresses competing demands, meeting habits, and the quality of attention brought to colleagues and clients. For parents and educators, it creates space to examine the digital example adults provide as well as the expectations placed on young people.

Participants leave with a personal attention audit, questions for evaluating recurring distractions, and a plan for protecting one meaningful activity or relationship. They choose a practical boundary and consider how to maintain it when the initial motivation fades. The invitation is to use technology with greater intention and recognize that each return of attention is an opportunity to participate more fully in the life already here, one conversation and one decision at a time.

04

The Courage to Say “I Don’t Know”

Opening the Door to Curiosity, Better Questions, and Deeper Listening

Certainty can be useful, but it can also close a conversation before anyone has understood the problem. A professional assumes what a client needs. A manager dismisses an unfamiliar suggestion. A student avoids asking a question for fear of appearing uninformed. In each situation, the desire to know can interfere with the willingness to learn.

Read full description

MuRay explores the practical value of admitting uncertainty and remaining curious. Drawing on the questioning discipline of law and his own contemplative inquiry, he invites participants to distinguish what they have observed from what they have assumed. The session considers how confident interpretations become entrenched and how a sincere question can reveal information that certainty overlooked.

Through personal stories, guided reflection, and audience conversation, participants examine a situation in which they reached a conclusion too quickly. They practice identifying the unanswered question, listening without preparing an immediate rebuttal, and considering an interpretation different from their first one. The discussion also addresses how to remain decisive when complete information is unavailable.

For leaders and professionals, the session connects curiosity to judgment, collaboration, and conversations across differences. For educators and students, it explores the learning environment created when questions are welcomed and mistakes can be examined. For community audiences, it offers a way to approach disagreement with openness while retaining personal discernment.

Participants leave with practical questions for testing assumptions, clarifying meaning, and discovering what they still need to understand. They identify one conversation in which curiosity could change their approach and prepare a question they are willing to ask. The aim is to support thoughtful action grounded in honest inquiry. Saying “I don’t know” becomes a beginning: a chance to listen more closely, learn something unexpected, and make a decision that reflects the situation more accurately than their first answer did.

05

Freedom, Leadership, and the Examined Life

Aligning Who You Are Being with the Impact You Want to Have

Leadership is expressed in ordinary conduct: how a person handles disagreement, responds to a mistake, keeps a commitment, and treats someone with less authority. Titles and intentions matter, but people experience the choices made in their presence. A leader’s unexamined habits can therefore shape a team as powerfully as any stated organizational value.

Read full description

In this keynote or facilitated workshop, MuRay invites participants to examine the relationship between inner awareness and outward responsibility. The central question is practical: Does the way I am showing up support the impact I say I want to have? Participants explore how identity, approval, defensiveness, and the need for control can influence leadership decisions.

Drawing on legal practice, coaching, and contemplative inquiry, MuRay uses personal stories and reflective exercises to bring the discussion into everyday situations. Participants consider a difficult conversation, an unmet commitment, or a recurring tension and examine their own contribution. They explore how to acknowledge that contribution, listen to the people affected, and identify an action consistent with their responsibilities.

The session can be adapted for organizational leaders, professional teams, educators, and community stakeholders. Workplace applications include accountability, collaboration, and the gap between stated values and daily behavior. In education and community settings, the emphasis includes example, shared responsibility, and the influence adults have on the people who depend on them.

Participants leave with a clearer view of one leadership pattern they want to change and a practical commitment they can communicate and review. They consider whose perspective they need to hear and what evidence would show that their conduct has changed. The invitation is to treat leadership as a practice of awareness and action. Greater freedom begins with recognizing the response available now and choosing it with regard for the people, commitments, and consequences involved .

Planning an event? Share your audience, purpose, proposed date, location, and preferred format.

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Find your audience

A session shaped
for your community.

Schools & Colleges

Student sessions, teacher development, parent workshops, and the wider school community.

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Churches & Spiritual Organizations

Awareness, being, presence, and compassion explored through reflection and dialogue.

Explore spiritual sessions

Corporations & Professionals

Selling with integrity, individual contribution, teams, and conscious leadership.

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04 / Work with me

A conversation
about your life.

Sometimes a recurring conflict, a difficult decision, or a sense of being stuck becomes an opening to look more closely. What are you assuming? What are you resisting? What choices have you stopped seeing?

Our coaching conversations offer space to notice those patterns, clarify what matters, and explore the actions available to you. The work brings awareness into relationships, purpose, responsibility, and everyday life.

Is coaching a good fit?

These conversations may suit you if you are navigating a transition, facing a recurring relationship or work pattern, or seeking greater clarity about how you want to live.

How do we begin?

Email a little about your situation and what you would like to explore. We will discuss fit, session arrangements, availability, and fees before you commit.

What happens in a session?

We begin with what is happening in your life, examine assumptions and habitual responses, and identify choices you can put into practice. Each conversation is shaped around the issue you bring.

Ask about coaching

05 / The wider work

GIFTE

Global Institute for Freedom,
Transformation, and Enlightenment

I founded GIFTE as a space for inquiry into human freedom and transformation. Through conversation, teaching, and contemplative practice, the work invites us to examine our experience and live with greater presence, compassion, and responsibility.

Let’s connect

What would you like
to make possible?

For speaking, workshops, coaching, or a conversation about the work, tell me a little about yourself and what you have in mind.

Email Courtney