The Mystical Positivist: The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #122

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

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"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.