The Mystical Positivist: September 2022

Sunday, September 18, 2022

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #403 - 24SEP22

Podcast:

This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with OM C. Parkin about his upcoming October West Coast US visit and his recent book, Intelligence of Awakening - Navigating the Wisdom Path, published by Gateways Books & Tapes.

OM C. Parkin is a renowned European wisdom teacher and the founder of the mystery school, Enneallionce, and Gut Saunstorf, a modern monastery. His books also include The Birth of the Lion and The Digital Age - A Critical View from a Wisdom Perspective.

OM embodies in his work the link between Eastern non-duality and Christian mysticism, of depth psychology and philosophy, beyond the limits of religions and confessions. He often references the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, which has been revived in the 20th century by Shri Ramana Maharshi, Shri H.W.L. Poonja, the American Gangaji, and others. OM acts in the tradition of these teachers and by being rooted in early Christian teaching. His work in the tradition of silence can be described by three functions: teacher (of wisdom), healer (of the soul), seer (of the heart). He has been supporting people to find their true nature for more than 30 years and founded the modern Satsang movement in Europe.

OM will be touring the West Coast of the US in October. Public and semi-public events include a book reading at Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol, CA, on October 8th, 2022, at 7pm, a private darshan at Tayu Meditation Center in Sebastopol, CA, on October 9th at 3pm, a gathering at the Ojai Retreat Center on October 13th, and a visit to Triveni Ashram in Paulden, Arizona.

More information about OM C. Parkin's work can be found at:

OM C. Parkin website: www.om-c-parkin.com,

OM C. Parkin upcoming US visit: OM C. Parkin West Coast US Tour,

OM C. Parkin at Gateways Books & Tapes: www.gatewaysbooksandtapes.com,

OM C. Parkin previously on The Mystical Positivist: mysticalpositivist.blogspot.com.

Saturday, September 17, 2022

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #402 - 17SEP22

Podcast:

This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with returning guest Ken McLeod. Among the topics explored in this conversation are the engagement in spiritual practice with beings and deities, how to negotiate when entering into the ontology of a spiritual system, how to pray, the valuation implicit in focused attention, and the release of control in the deepening of a spiritual practice. This episode is another installment in an extended conversation that we have been having with Ken over the last couple of years.

After learning Tibetan, Ken McLeod translated for his principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, and helped to develop Rinpoche’s centers in North America and Europe. In 1985, Kalu Rinpoche authorized Ken to teach and placed him in charge of his Los Angeles center. Faced with the challenges of teaching in a major metropolis, he began exploring different methods and formats for working with students. He moved away from both the teacher-center model and the minister-church model and developed a consultant-client model. Ken is the founder and director of UnfetteredMind.org. He is the author of Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention, The Great Path of Awakening, An Arrow to the Heart, Reflections on Silver River, and his most recent book, A Trackless Path.

More information about Ken McLeod's work can be found at:

Unfettered Mind website: www.unfetteredmind.org.

Saturday, September 10, 2022

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #401 - 10SEP22

Podcast:

This week on The Mystical Positivist, hosts Stuart Goodnick and Rob Schmidt feature a podcast they recorded on July 9th, 2022, for the Western Baul Podcast Series entitled Fourth Way Magic: How Hermetic and Indigenous Traditions Interface with the Gurdjieff Work. The podcast description is as follows:

The Fourth Way is a Western spiritual tradition founded by George Gurdjieff, a mystic of Greek and Armenian origin who taught in Russia, Europe, and America and died in 1949. The system he developed out of his own spiritual search, which is shrouded in mystery, is completely unique and geared toward working with a modern mindset of “waking sleep” in the West. The Fourth Way Tradition has been considered by some to be humorless and dogmatically committed to a rigid system of practices and ideas, but this ignores Gurdjieff’s own flexibility ranging from playfulness to penetrating compassion. Today’s speakers are dharma heirs of Tayu Meditation Center’s founder Robert Daniel Ennis, whose teachings were anchored in the Fourth Way but ranged widely beyond that source material. In recent years, Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick have explored and adopted practices from the western hermetic magical traditions and indigenous traditions including African and native Californian. In this talk they will discuss how the work from these traditions can enrich and expand the indispensable foundation they honor from the Fourth Way.

Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick are the spiritual directors of Tayu Meditation Center. Rob has made contributions to the practice of anthropological archaeology and currently runs Tayu’s spiritual bookstore in Sebastopol, California, Many Rivers Books & Tea. Stuart is an executive in a Fortune 500 company and plays the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) as a spiritual practice.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Many Rivers Books and Tea Website: www.manyriversbooks.com,

Western Baul Podcast Website: westernbaul.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.