Saturday, July 29, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #269 - 29JUL17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the show we speak by telephone with Livia Kohn, Ph. D. Livia Kohn graduated from Bonn University, in Germany, in 1980. After six years at Kyoto University in Japan, she joined Boston University as Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies in 1988. She has also worked variously as visiting professor and adjunct faculty at Eötvös Lorand University in Budapest, the Stanford Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, San Francisco State University, and the Taoist College Singapore.

    Her specialty is the study of the Daoist religion and Chinese long life practices. She has written and edited 35 books and over 100 articles, as well as translated works from the German, French, Chinese, and Japanese. She retired from active teaching in 2006 and now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, from where she continues to write books, serves as the executive editor of the Journal of Daoist Studies, and manages Three Pines Press, the Western voice of Daoism. In addition, she still serves on numerous committees and editorial boards, leads Daoist Qigong and Core Health workshops worldwide, and is the lead organizer of a series of major international conferences on Daoism, the latest of which took place at Boston University in May 2014; the next conference is scheduled for Beijing in 2018.

    Her books include Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (1989), Early Chinese Mysticism (1992), God of the Dao (1998), Daoism Handbook (2000), Monastic Life in Medieval Daoism (2003), Cosmos and Community (2004), Daoist Body Cultivation (2006), Meditation Works (2008), Sitting in Oblivion (2010), Daoist Dietetics (2010), A Source Book in Chinese Longevity (2012), Zhuangzi: Text and Context (2014), and —most recently— Pristine Affluence: Daoist Roots in the Stone Age (2017).

    In terms of self-cultivation, she began practicing Taiji quan in the 1970s and dedicated herself to Vipassana Meditation for 20 years, beginning in 1981. She is also a certified instructor of Kripalu Yoga, Qigong, and Scottish Country Dancing. Most recently, she is a leading facilitator of Core Health and co-author of Core Health: The Quantum Way to Inner Power (2012).
More information about Livia Kohn's work can be found at:

Saturday, July 22, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #268 - 22JUL17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the show we speak by telephone with spiritual teacher J. Jaye Gold, author of Justin Time: Autobiographical Stories from an American Spiritual Master, Another Heart in His Hand: A Spiritual Anomaly, and Highway of Diamonds. In his younger years, J. Jaye Gold studied at a 500-year-old experimental Naqshbandi Sufi school in northeastern Afghanistan. He believed that the methods he learned in this school needed to be modified for people in affluent Western cultures. He took on this challenge, developing tools, dynamics, and explorations of consciousness to help lead Westerners toward “intimacy with the ultimate reality, in order to become true servants.” J. Jaye Gold has been assisting people in their search for inner meaning for 35 years.

    He is currently living in the Sierra foothills of Northern California where he works with several dozen seekers of truth. Over the years he has deliberately resisted the trend to become a “traveling guru” with thousands of followers around the world in favor of preserving an element that he considers precious — that of maintaining opportunities for developing an actual teacher/student relationship. He is available to anyone who seeks his guidance.
More information about J. Jaye Gold's work can be found at:

Saturday, July 15, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #267 - 15JUL17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the show we speak in the studio with Jeff Tipp, a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher and practitioner in Sebastopol, CA. Jeffrey Tipp was ordained as a monk in an order of Christian mystics in 1968, entered into the Dharma with Lama Tsultrim Allione in 1973, met Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1978, and founded Blue Heron Zen Community, an urban residential Zen Center in Seattle, in 1980. He received Inka from Zen Master Ji Bong in 2006, and permission to teach from Lama Tsultrim in 2010. Jeff is an authorized Feeding Your Demons Psychotherapist.

    Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Kilung Rinpoche have both trained Jeff in the highest Dzogchen practices, having completed the Barchey Kunsel Ngondro and many extended group and solo retreats. Jeff’s 45 years of contemplative practice and teaching inform his whole life and his Psychotherapy practice. He is a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice and lives with his wife Roberta in Sebastopol, CA.
More information about Jeff Tipp's work can be found at:

Saturday, July 8, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #266 - 08JUL17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the show, we converse in the studio with Sam Webster and Jim Wilson on the subject of Immanence and Transcendence in spiritual practice.

    Sam Webster, PhD, M.Div., Mage, has taught magick publicly since 1984. He graduated from Starr King School for the Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley in 1993 and earned his doctorate at the University of Bristol, UK, with a thesis on the History of Theurgy from Iamblichus to the Golden Dawn. He is an Adept of the Golden Dawn, and an initiate of Wiccan, Druidic, Buddhist, Hindu and Masonic traditions, publisher at Concrescent Press, and author of Tantric Thelema. In 2001 he founded the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn, in 2013 founded the Pantheon Foundation, and serves the Pagan community principally as a priest of Hermes.

    Jim Wilson studied Buddhism in Korea, Japan, and the US, principally under his teacher in the Chogye Zen tradition, Seung Sahn. Jim is a former Prison Chaplain, and one of the founders of Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol. Currently a practicing Quaker, Jim has published a critical edition of A Guide to True Peace, a manual for the practice of Quaker Silent Prayer and an Annotated Edition of A Guide to True Peace, which traces both sources to and changes in this foundational text. He has published many books of poetry, and his most recent title is On Trusting the Heart: A Commentary on the Xin Xin Ming.
More information about Sam Webster and Jim Wilson's work can be found at: