Saturday, March 31, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #287 - 31MAR18

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’s show features a conversation with David Kherdian and Nonny Hogrogian, editor and art director, respectively, of Stopinder, A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time. David Kherdian is an award-winning Armenian-American writer, poet, editor. He is the author and editor of over seventy books that include poetry, novels, memoirs, biographies, bibliographies, children’s books, as well as critical studies, translations, and retellings. His Armenian-American wife, Caldecott Award winning children’s book illustrator, Nonny Hogrogian, was the art director for Stopinder and many other joint projects; together they operated three small presses, that included books handset and hand-bound, and published in limited editions by letterpress. Kherdian wrote about his experience of working in the Fourth Way in his book On a Spaceship with Beelzebub By a Grandson of Gurdjieff.
More information about David Kherdian and Nonny Hogrogian's work can be found at:

Saturday, March 24, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #286 - 24MAR18

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’s show features a conversation with two intuitive healers, Trina Marie Vega and Anna Felciano. Trina Vega a Native American Pomo Indian, a mother to 3 grown sons, 1 daughter and a loving grandmother to 18 beautiful grandchildren. An intuitive reader for most of her life, Trina has offered readings on a professional basis for over 10 years. She is a Reiki master and teacher, earned her doctorate in metaphysical studies, and is an Angel Therapy Practitioner®, certified by Doreen Virtue, and is an ordained minister. Sonoma County native Anna Felciano is the proud mother of a son and 3 grandchildren, and is an intuitive reader who has been studying with Trina Vega since 2012. She has been certified as an Angel Card Reader and is a Reiki Master. She writes: "I have always been aware that my intuition is strong, but since studying with Trina, I have been able to focus the intention and help others and myself in everyday life."
More information about Trina Vega and Anna Felciano's work can be found at:

Saturday, March 17, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #285 - 17MAR18

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’s show features a conversation via Skype with Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel about her new book The Logic of Faith – A Buddhist Approach to Finding Certainty Beyond Belief and Doubt published by Shambhala in 2018. Elizabeth has studied and practiced the ancient wisdom of Mahayana Buddhism, as well as the Vajrayana tradition of the Longchen Nyingthik, for over 30 years under the guidance of her teacher and husband, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. After meeting Rinpoche in Nepal in 1985, she became his first Western student. She has been intimately involved with Rinpoche’s work in bringing Buddhist wisdom to the West, in particular the development of Mangala Shri Bhuti, an organization dedicated to the study and practice of the Longchen Nyingthik lineage. She is also a founding member and teacher of Wilderness Dharma Movement and on the advisory boards of Prison Mindfulness Network and the Buddhist Arts and Film Festival.

    Elizabeth has an academic background in both Anthropology and Buddhist Studies, but her learning is also grounded in practice. After many years of solitary retreat, Rinpoche appointed Elizabeth as Retreat Master at Longchen Jigme Samten Ling, Mangala Shri Bhuti’s retreat center in southern Colorado. Elizabeth is also the author of The Power of an Open Question: The Buddha’s Path to Freedom. She has edited Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche’s two books, It’s Up to You and Light Comes Through, and teaches the Buddhadharma throughout the United States and Europe.
More information about Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel's work can be found at:

Saturday, March 3, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #284 - 03MAR18

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, co-host Rob Schmidt flies solo this week while Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, is away on business in Europe. Rob reads passages from the manuscript of a book that he is putting together, and offers some personal comments and recollections. The book collects talks and writings of Robert Daniel Ennis, founder of Tayu Meditation Center, and Stuart and Rob's spiritual teacher.

    Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

    Currently he’s collaborating with Stuart Goodnick on an edited volume of talks and writings of Tayu Meditation founder, Robert Daniel Ennis. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at: