The Mystical Positivist: September 2019

Saturday, September 28, 2019

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #339 - 28SEP19

Podcast:

This week on The Mystical Positivist, we present a conversation pre-recorded on September 22, 2019 with Fourth Way practitioner Trevor Stewart. Trevor is a student of psychology, meditation, and the Gurdjieff Work. As a young adult, he worked with Buddhist teachers, practicing in an intensive monastic setting for 2 years. Trevor has studied Gurdjieff’s masterwork Beelzebub’s Tales intensively, employing textual, historical, and grammatical criticism, and has authored papers at the All and Everything conference and in other venues. A member of Two Rivers Farm in Oregon, he has worked with the Gurdjieff Movements in both America and Europe, and is an amateur pianist who studies the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music. In daily life, Trevor runs a Design and Build Construction Firm based in Portland, Oregon. Among other things, this discussion provides a fascinating comparison and contrast between intensive monastic Buddhist practice and the Fourth Way Work of Self-Development in the context of daily life. It touches on the relative nature of deep mystical experiences while at the same time critiquing the sometimes overly intellectualized understanding of the "Awakening Experience" found in some strains of Fourth Way practice.

More information about Trevor Stewart's work can be found at:

The Seeker's Café website: seekerscafe.org,

Two Rivers Farm website: www.tworiversfarm.org,

Lucid Cubed blog: lucidcubed.wordpress.com,

JNT Design & Build website: www.jntdesignandbuild.com.

Saturday, September 21, 2019

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #338 - 21SEP19

Podcast:

This week on The Mystical Positivist, we speak by telephone with Mark Matousek, author of the recent book, Mother of the Unseen World: The Mystery of Mother Meera. He is the author of two acclaimed memoirs, Sex Death Enlightenment and The Boy He Left Behind, as well as When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living, and Ethical Wisdom: The Search for a Moral Life. A former editor at Interview magazine, he is a featured blogger for PsychologyToday.com and HuffPost, and has contributed to The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine (as contributing editor), Harper’s Bazaar, Yoga Journal, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and The Saturday Evening Post, among other publications. Internationally, he offers courses in creativity and spiritual growth based on his book, Writing to Awaken: A Journey of Truth, Transformation, and Self-Discovery. He is a founding member of V-Men, an organization devoted to ending violence against women and girls, and lives in East Hampton, New York.

More information about Mark Matousek's work can be found at:

Mark Matousek's Website: www.markmatousek.com,

Mother Meera's Website: www.mothermeera.com,

Saturday, September 7, 2019

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #337 - 07SEP19

Podcast:

This week on The Mystical Positivist, we present a conversation pre-recorded on August 18, 2019 with long-time Fourth Way practitioner Federico Balsa. Federico Balsa is a retired Argentine high school teacher, who has been a sincere and persistent practitioner for over thirty years, and is a founding member of The Seeker’s Café website. He began his Fourth Way practice through the lens of an absolutely skeptical, formatory-mind, "intelligentsia worshiping” personality. After 11 years of practice, he had the Fourth Way equivalent of a kensho or satori, which was the point at which his skillful practice of intentional suffering really began, as he realized that his previous arrogant, self-aggrandizing views had no reliable foundation. His subsequent Fourth Way practice deeply informed his work with his high school students, and his own children. His passion, humility, and humor, makes this an energetic and often surprising conversation.

More information about Federico Balsa's work can be found at:

The Seeker's Cafe Website: seekerscafe.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.