The Just One Look Method is an extremely simple approach to mental suffering unlike anything you have ever tried. It will rid you of the root cause of your dissatisfaction with life and the painful yearning for peace and fulfillment that seems never to be fully satisfied.
The Just One Look Method is the result of more than twenty years of experience working with people around the world who have seen their relationship with their own lives change dramatically for the better.
The method consists of two parts.
The first and most important step is a simple act of inward looking called "Look at Yourself." The purpose of this act is to bring your felt sense of self — the simple me-ness that has been present throughout your life — into direct experience by looking directly at it with your attention.
The second step is the Self-Directed Attention Exercise. This exercise develops the ability to direct and focus attention deliberately. It is used to support the changes that follow the inward look and to help cultivate greater self-reliance and intelligent use of attention.
Together, these two steps form the Just One Look Method.
For complete instructions for the Just One Look Method, see:
The Just One Look Method – Complete Instructions (PDF Download)
The work began with John Sherman’s long investigation into the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi. While in prison, John struggled to follow Ramana’s invitation to turn to the ordinary personal sense of self, the same self he had long before dismissed as false and beside the point. The change that followed became the starting point for the work that John and Carla Sherman would later develop together.
After John’s release from prison in 1998, John and Carla began travelling throughout the United States, holding public meetings in the tradition of satsang. In 2000, they established the River Ganga Foundation, later renamed the Just One Look Foundation, to support and make their work available to others.
Over time, John and Carla became less interested in spiritual teachings and explanations and more interested in finding a direct, practical instruction that anyone could try. A meeting in Boulder in 2006 marked a decisive turn away from traditional spiritual language. The meetings at their 2007 retreat became the basis of the book Look at Yourself, edited by Carla and published in 2010.
Through years of conversations and reports from people who tried the act, their understanding and way of presenting it continued to develop. They came to describe the underlying source of all purely psychological suffering as a kind of fear of life itself, and the simple movement of attention toward the feeling of being “you” as the act that removes its foundation. The emphasis shifted from explaining the nature of reality to giving one practical invitation: look at yourself and get free of the fear of life.
In 2012, John and Carla launched the Just One Look project to bring this invitation beyond spiritual communities and make it freely accessible to people everywhere. The Self-Directed Attention Exercise was developed as a very useful tool for the period of change and recovery that follows the first inward look. Together, the inward look and the attention exercise became the Just One Look Method.
The Just One Look Foundation developed and supported this work through publications, meetings, retreats, videos, podcasts, personal guidance and an international online community. It also preserved the reports and conversations through which the method was used, clarified and refined over many years.
In his later years, John became seriously ill. He died on September 29, 2021, and Carla Sherman then took over as president of the Just One Look Foundation. She continued the work of the Foundation until 2025, when she decided to step down as president. The Just One Look Foundation concluded its work in 2025.
Today, the Just One Look Method continues through the efforts of a small international team dedicated to preserving, developing, and sharing the work.
This website serves as the central home of the Just One Look Method. Here you will find access to the method itself, original source materials, support, news, resources, and ongoing developments related to the work.
This new and updated website is built on one simple idea: that the invitation to Look at Yourself is presented first.
Visitors are invited to try it before reading about it.
The intention is to make the inward look as accessible as possible.
All material on the website is considered important. But first and foremost, the website offers a direct invitation to Look at Yourself.