The Mystical Positivist: September 2013

Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #131 - 28SEP13

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 Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT. Mariana Caplan is a licensed psychotherapist, professor of yogic and transpersonal psychologies, and the author of seven books in the fields of psychology and spirituality, including, The Guru Question: The Perils and Awards of Choosing a Spiritual Teacher, Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, which won five national awards for best spiritual book of 2010, and the seminal Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment. She has spent 20 years researching cutting edge and controversial topics in Western Spirituality, and dialoguing with the great spiritual teachers, scholars, and luminaries of our time. She is a leading spiritual psychologist, using somatic approaches to psychotherapy to support spiritual practitioners and teachers with the process of healing trauma and moving towards psycho-spiritual integration, and working with the complex discernments that arise in the context of spiritual practice and in spiritual communities.

She is an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies where she creates and teaches innovative public and academic programs. She has degrees cultural anthropology, counseling psychology, and contemporary spirituality, and is a teacher, lifelong practitioner, and lover of yoga philosophy and asana.

More information about Mariana Caplan's work and interests can be found at:

Real Spirituality Website: realspirituality.com
Mariana Caplan on The Huffington Post: www.huffingtonpost.com/mariana-caplan-phd/

Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #130 - 21SEP13

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 Tashi Dhargyal, and Tashi’s friend and supporter Richard Ruge. Tashi has trained and painted for over 15 years. From 2006-2010, he was the artist-in-residence at the Ganden Monastery in Dharamsala. He is both a master thangka painter and craftsman — painting and decorating statues both for the Monastery and private customers.

In the summer of 2012, he personally presented his work to HH the 14th Dalai Lama, who commended his skill and talent, and requested that Tashi continue to paint, and teach. Tashi has traveled throughout India to work in monasteries to restore and decorate statues and has been integral in the Tibetan art community. He studied under the late Ven. Sangye Yeshi, whom His Holiness the Dalai Lama personally invited to reactivate the long and rich tradition of thangka painting in Dharamsala by opening a school at the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives. When this first school was shut, due to restructuring of the Library buildings, Tashi worked with his teacher to start the Institute of Tibetan Thangka Art. Through his initiative, the ITTA was started, and staffed with the best teachers.

Tashi has shown his works along with his ITTA contemporaries at the Tibet House in New Delhi, at the Museum at His Holiness’ the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala, and at the Tibet House in New York. His thangka were featured art on TLC’s series New York Ink, at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, at the Tubac Center for the Arts (where it received Honorable Mention in a juried group exhibition), as well as at Invisible NYC Gallery in New York’s Lower East Side.

Tashi’s thangka have been auctioned by Christie’s to benefit the Tibet House; he has also donated works and lessons to benefit the Tibetan Aid Project and the Tibet Fund, who showcased his work in their PSA on the Jumbotron in New York’s Times Square. He has taught classes at the Tibet House, the Newark Museum, as well as to private groups and has completed murals for Jivamukti Yoga in New York. His works have been commissioned by the likes of Jet Li as presents for HH the Dalai Lama.

Richard Ruge is a friend and supporter of Tashi Dhargyal and the Tibetan Art Gallery and Studio in Sebastopol. Richard’s other passions include Disaster Preparedness for Vulnerable Populations, and the ROSE initiative, whose vision is to awaken an international cultural shift from dependency on others to individual, communal, and planetary self-sufficiency in the event of disasters.

More information about Tashi Dhargyal's work and interests can be found at:

Tashi Dhargyal's Website: www.tashidhargyal.com
Preserve Tibetan Art Website: preservetibetanart.org
Tibetan Gallery and Studio on Facebook: TibetanArt

Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #129 - 14SEP13

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 Rahima Baldwin Dancy. Rahima is internationally known as a midwife, Waldorf early childhood educator, and founder of Informed Family Life. She is the author of You Are Your Child's First Teacher, now in its third printing, which provides new ways for parents to see and understand their children and provide fertile ground for parents’ own creativity and confidence in making the most of those magical years from birth to age six. She herself has raised four children.

Rahima has also worked closely with the development of the LifeWays approach for nurturing families and inspiring childcare, both as a founding board member and directing Rainbow Bridge LifeWays Program for 1-5 year olds in Boulder, CO from 2008-2012.

Rahima and her husband, Agaf Dancy, are retired now and based in Boulder, Colorado, where they enjoy backpacking and online work.

More information about Rahima Baldwin Dancy's work and interests can be found at:

Waldorf in the Home Website: waldorfinthehome.org
Lifeways North America Website: www.lifewaysnorthamerica.org

Saturday, September 7, 2013

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #128 - 07SEP13

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 Anthony Blake. Anthony Blake has a background in physics, philosophy, and Fourth Way practice. He studied with the systems thinker and mystic John Bennett as well as with the physicist David Bohm and other innovators and pioneers. He has followed the principle of integration without rejection, proposed by Bennett, and focuses on how to make this possible in real life. Co-founder of The DuVersity, of which he is Director of Studies, Anthony facilitates seminars and lectures on new methods. The extraordinary range of his interests is reflected in the many subjects he has written about, including the Enneagram symbol of Gurdjieff, the meaning of time, intelligence and higher intelligence, dialogue, globalization, systematics, etc. His books include A Gymnasium of Beliefs in Higher Intelligence (2010), The Supreme Art of Dialogue - structures of meaning, and The Intelligent Enneagram (1996).

More information about Anthony Blake's work and interests can be found at:

Anthony Blake's Website: www.anthonyblake.co.uk
Anthony Blake on Wikipedia: A. G. E. Blake
The DuVersity Website: www.duversity.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.