The Mystical Positivist: June 2013

Saturday, June 22, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #122 - 22JUN13

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:

A conversation with Jill Nephew, founder and creator of LifeConstellation.com, an online tool for self exploration. She has been building software since 1997 and practicing self-observation based meditation since 1988.

Jill Nephew spent 25 years devoted to a meditation practice to move past the more machine-like qualities of her interactions with the world. Well, in classic form, the universe got the last laugh and Jill found her life calling in exploring the spiritual side of (gasp!), software. In late 2009 Jill quit her job to invent Life Constellation, a software tool to help people explore, articulate and share their life wisdom. She was delightfully surprised when her early testers reported interacting with the software to be profoundly transformative. This opened Jill's eyes to the immense potential for people to self heal and for software to facilitate and even amplify this process.

In this discussion we explore questions such as, how do technological interventions differ from human interventions? What unique powers might technology bring to the healing process? What could facilitated self-healing teach us about the effective use of others in healing? And how can we incorporate traditional, rare and resource-intensive healing technologies into modern, highly available, affordable and scalable technologies?

More information about Jill Nephew's work can be found at:

Life Constellation website: LifeConstellation.com

Saturday, June 15, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #121 - 15JUN13

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:

A conversation with Erik Davis, author, award-winning journalist, independent scholar, and lecturer based in San Francisco. He is the author, most recently, of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica, and The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, with photographs by Michael Rauner. He also wrote Led Zeppelin IV and TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, the latter a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages. His essays on art, music, techno-culture, and contemporary spirituality have appeared in over a dozen books, including AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man, Zig Zag Zen, The Disinformation Book of Lies, 010101: Art in Technological Times (SFMOMA), and Prefiguring Cyberculture. Davis has contributed articles and essays to a variety of publications, including Bookforum, Slate, ArtForum, Salon, Blender, The LA Weekly, and The Village Voice. For many years he was a contributing writer at Wired, and he wrote “The Analog Life” for Arthur.

A vital speaker, Davis has given talks at universities, media art conferences, and festivals around the world. He has taught workshops and seminars at the UC Berkeley, UC Davis, the California Institute of Integral Studies, the New York Open Center, and Esalen. He was one of the original minds behind Planetwork, an organization devoted to cross-fertilizaing information technology and global ecology. He has been interviewed by CNN and the BBC, and wrote the libretto for and performed in “How to Survive the Apocalypse,” a Burning Man-inspired rock opera, and occasionally plays guitar in front of microphones.

More information about Erik Davis' work can be found at:

Techgnosis website: www.techgnosis.com
Erik Davis on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Davis
Expanding Mind podcast on The Progressive Radio Network: Expanding Mind on PRN

Saturday, June 8, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #120 - 08JUN13

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:

A conversation with Travis Wernet, Projective Dreamworker, professional musician, and practicing Sound Healer. Travis received his certification from the head of the Marin Institue for Projective Dreams, world-renowned Author and Dream Worker Jeremy Taylor. Travis leads on-going groups in the North Bay in California in both Occidental and Sebastopol and also provides individual sessions via Skype and in person. He is also a Professional Musician with 3 studio albums released to date and is a practicing Sound Healer. He uses the Didjeridu, Tibetan Bowls, Native American Flutes and Percussion Instruments as a compliment to Dream Work as well as in a stand-alone offering of pure Sound Healing.

For over 15 years Travis has facilitated dream work groups and sessions exploring the possible meaning of personal and collective dream narratives. This work is rich and expansive and draws inspiration from both Jungian and Archetypal Psychology, and seeks to engage groups and individuals in a curious, whole-hearted quest for wholeness. Working with dreams allows for a unique recognition of personal authority around the deep meaning and experience of our lives.

Venues in which Travis has led Dream Work exploration and Sound Healing include Community Mental Health, Private Group Meetings, Sacred Travel in Egypt 2010, 2011, 2012 and Festival Workshops here in the U.S.

Travis has an extensive background in the helping professions and spent several years working in various social rehabilitation settings, including Crisis and Transitional levels of care working as an On-line Staff Counselor and also in Administration. During this time he received extensive training around Trauma & Recovery as well as Substance Abuse Recovery and a working knowledge of diverse Mental Health issues and treatment.

More information about Travis Wernet's work can be found at:

Travis Wernet's Projective-Style Dream Work and Sound Healing website: intuitivesound.net
Way Out West Dream Group website: WayOutWestDreamGroup
Outlaw Dervish Music website: www.outlawdervish.com

Saturday, June 1, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #119 - 01JUN13

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:

A conversation with Dharma Bodhi, Spiritual Director of DHARMA INC International. Dharma Bodhi was born in Chicago in 1962 and became deeply involved in spirituality, religion and philosophy at an early age. At seven, he began the practice of Hatha Yoga and at twelve took up a lifelong commitment to meditation and martial arts. After extensive undergraduate study in biochemistry and psychology, and clinical experience in Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, Dharma Bodhi went on to graduate with a clinical doctorate degree in chiropractic in 1986. In 1987 he met a disciple of the great master of Tantrik Yoga, Paramahamsa Satyananda Sarasvati. Later that year, Dharma recognized Satyananda to be his Root-Guru. Formal initiation followed in 1987. This marked the beginning of a very intimate mystical relationship with his guru that resulted in Dharma letting go of his chiropractic practice and contact with family and friends, in order to undertake a one and a half year practice retreat.

In 1997, his guru’s successor, Paramahamsa Niranjanananda Sarasvati, gave him the mandate to move back to the United States to form a new sect of classical Tantrik Yoga for Westerners to preserve the lineage teachings and practices which had become debased and commercialized in the West. In January of 2001, Dharma established a center for Tantrik studies in Berkeley, California, and then, in 2002, he created a community center in Berkeley called Yoga Mandala.

After fulfilling the seven-year mandate given by his Guru to bring the classical Tantrik teachings to the United States, Dharma Bodhi moved with his family to the mountains of northern Thailand to establish Kailash Akhara in 2007. This 60-acre tropical oasis, residential community, artist colony and training center is dedicated to the study, practice and preservation of non-dual cultural arts and religion, especially those of Sakta/Saiva Tantra and Yungdrung Bon Dzogchen meditation and yoga. Dharma and his wife Ajama live with their children and a community of students at Kailash Akhara and, currently, he serves as the Spiritual Director of DHARMA INC International.

More information about Dharma Bodhi's work can be found at:

DHARMA INC International website: www.dharmainc.org
DHARMA INC Oakland website: www.dharmainc-oakland.org

"The Mystical Positivist" Radio Show

The Mystical Positivist is a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP FM 107.3 Occidental, CA, and on the web at KOWS-LP Live Feed, Saturdays from 4 - 6pm PST. Coming up on The Mystical Positivist:

April 20: A pre-recorded conversation with Ken McLeod, Buddhist teacher and author of the newly released book, The Magic of Vajrayana. In this conversation, we plan to explore a compelling quote from Ian McGilchrist's The Matter with Things: If you had set out to destroy the happiness and stability of a people, it would have been hard to improve on our current formula: remove yourself as far as possible from the natural world; repudiate the continuity of your culture; believe you are wise enough to do whatever you happen to want and not only get away with it, but have a right to it—and a right to silence those who disagree; minimise the role played by a common body of belief; actively attack and dismantle every social structure as a potential source of oppression; reject the idea of a transcendent set of values.

One of the more innovative Buddhist teachers today, Ken McLeod is known for his clear explanations, poetic translations, and pragmatic approach to practice. He is one of the first generation of Western teachers in the Tibetan tradition and one of the few to be authorized to transmit the full scope of these teachings to students. In particular, his approach resonates strongly with those whose path lies outside established institutions.

After graduating with a degree in mathematics, Ken cycled across Europe to Istanbul and then continued his journey overland to India. In 1970 he met his principal teacher Kalu Rinpoche at his monastery near Darjeeling. There Ken began a study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism that lasted more than twenty years. He completed the traditional three-year retreat program two times, translated for many teachers, and helped set up Buddhist centers in Canada and the United States. After his teacher's passing, Ken moved away from the hierarchical structures of Asian Buddhism to explore new approaches.

In 1990, he founded Unfettered Mind in Los Angeles. His approach of one-on-one consultations roiled the Buddhist world in the early '90s, but was quickly recognized as a viable way to teach and guide students in the West. He made individual interviews a central feature of the many retreats he taught in California, New Mexico, and British Columbia. Through numerous small groups in Southern California, he developed the materials that became the encyclopedic meditation manual, Wake Up to Your Life.

Now retired from formal teaching, he lives in Northern California where he hikes and writes. His writings and translations include The Great Path of Awakening (1987), Wake Up to Your Life (2001), An Arrow to the Heart (2007), Reflections on Silver River (2014), A Trackless Path (2017), and The Magic of Vajrayana (2022), as well as a corpus of articles and translations in Tricycle and other Buddhist magazines.