The Mystical Positivist: January 2015

Saturday, January 31, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #176 - 31JAN15

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 we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Mari Angelon Young. Mari Angelon Young is a writer, adventurer, grandmother, and longtime student of the transformational path. She is the author of numerous books including an in-depth biography of the renowned south Indian saint, titled Yogi Ramsuratkumar—Under the Punnai Tree, as well as As It Is: A Year on the Road with a Tantric Teacher, and Spiritual Slavery, a biography of her spiritual teacher, Lee Lozowick. In her most recent book, The Baul Tradition – Sahaj Vision East & West, Angelon documents the Baul Path, a Tantric spiritual tradition, from its earliest roots in Bengal, to its transmission in the West in modern times.

Since 1990, Angelon traveled extensively with her teacher, exploring spiritual traditions in India and Europe; she continues to travel and write while living at Triveni Ashram in the Desert Mountains of northern Arizona. She holds a master's degree in transpersonal psychology, has taught Jungian and archetypal studies at private colleges in the Southwest, and was the editor of Tawagoto, a quarterly journal of spirituality and personal transformation, for twenty-five years. She currently enjoys leading workshops in the U.S. and Europe in the bhakti and tantric traditions of India, dream yoga, writing as a spiritual practice, and the art of growing wise with dignity, empowerment, and grace.

More information about Mari Angelon Young's work and interests can be found at:

HOHM Press website: www.hohmpress.com
Parvathy Baul website: parvathybaul.srijan.asia

Saturday, January 24, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #175 - 24JAN15

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 we present an interview pre-recorded on Skype with Gil Fronsdal. Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council.

In 2011 Gil founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. He has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a Ph.D in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. Gil is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; a book of original teaching stories called A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and he is the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications.

More information about Gil Fronsdal's work and interests can be found at:

Insight Meditation Center website: www.insightmeditationcenter.org
Audio Dharma website: www.audiodharma.org

Saturday, January 10, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #174 - 10JAN15

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 we present an interview pre-recorded on Skype with Ocke de Boer, author of Higher Being Bodies - A Non-Dualistic Approach to the Fourth Way, with Hope. Ocke de Boer is the engine of a Work-group in Holland which has been in existence since 1990. He studied esotericism in Amsterdam for 4 years at a Raja Yoga School for Universal Thinking, which is non-dualistic thinking. Mr. de Boer has gained a general education in philosophy, religion and esoteric systems without getting lost in any of them. His center of gravity is in the Fourth Way, The Work, which he refuses to call the Gurdjieff Work. In his own words: Gurdjieff was and is a very big guy in the Fourth Way, but he did not invent it.

More information about Ocke de Boer's work and interests can be found at:

Higher Being Bodies at Beech Hill Publishing: www.higherbeingbodies.com

Saturday, January 3, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #173 - 03JAN15

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 Red Hawk (Robert Moore, Ph.D.), author of seven collections of poetry, including his recent work Mother Guru: Savitri Love Poems (Hohm Press, 2014), from which he’ll read. He is also the author of Journey of the Medicine Man (August House, 1983; finalist, Walt Whitman Award); The Sioux Dog Dance (Cleveland State University, 1991; runner-up, Patterson Poetry Prize); The Way of Power (Hohm Press, 1996); The Art of Dying (Hohm Press, 1999); Wreckage With A Beating Heart (Hohm Press, 2005) and Raven’s Paradise (Bright Hill Press, 2010; Bright Hill Press National Poetry Book 2009 winner).

In addition, Red Hawk is the author of Self-Observation: The Awakening of Conscience, an Owner’s Manual (Hohm Press, 2009), a prose contemplation on the practice of self-study. He was the Hodder Fellow in the Humanities at Princeton University and is now professor of English at the University of Arkansas in Monticello.

Red Hawk earned a bachelor’s degree in English and history, and a master’s degree in English, both from Illinois State University. He earned a doctorate in Contemporary American Literature from the University of Cincinnati. He has received several awards and grants, and had poetry readings with such luminaries as Allen Ginsburg and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Miller Williams, Tess Gallagher, and Coleman Barks, and more than 70 solo-readings in the U.S. More than 80 of his poems have been published in magazines such as The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Atlanta Review, Shenandoah, and many others.

More information about Red Hawk's work and interests can be found at:

Red Hawk at HOHM Press: www.hohmpress.com
Self-Observation at HOHM Press: www.hohmpress.com
Robert Moore, Ph.D, at University of Arkansas: www.uamont.edu

"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.