Saturday, August 29, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #194 - 29AUG15

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:
  • Hour 1: A telephone conversation with Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author of The Way of Tenderness: Awakening Through Race, Sexuality, and Gender. She is the guiding teacher of Still Breathing Meditation Community in East Oakland, California, and is a Zen Buddhist priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, ordained and invited to teach by Zenkei Blanche Hartman. Zenju combines Zen meditation, intuitive knowing, and indigenous ritual in a path of liberation. She has a keen capacity to apply spiritual teachings to our lived experiences in the context of race, sexuality, and gender and at the same time hold these experiences as gateways to absolute freedom.

    Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Marselean Manuel was born in Los Angeles, California to parents that migrated from Creole Louisiana. With the deep suffering of violence experienced as a child she became a poet at the age of eight. In college she joined a community of Pan-Africanists where there was deep healing for her. This led to the next spiritual gate opening within the African tradition of Yoruba, which was the beginning of her experiencing the vastness of things unseen and the world of divination. Forever grateful for their blessings, her deep experiences of suffering led her to the path of Buddha, without any desire to be Buddhist. After 15 years in the Nichiren tradition/Soka Gakkai, she eventually followed the path of Soto Zen for many years and was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest in the Suzuki Roshi lineage.

    Her spiritual writing is steeped in ancient memories of her ancestors and therefore explores the deep inner spiritual journey of our human existence. She is the author of a popular Kindle free e-book Be Love: An Exploration Of Our Deepest Desire. In addition to her most recent published book, The Way of Tenderness, she authored Tell Me Something About Buddhism, which includes a foreword written by Thich Nhat Hanh, with poetry and illustrations by her. In addition, she is contributing author to many books, including Together We are One (Parallax), Dharma, Color and Culture: Voices From Western Buddhist Teachers of Color (Parallax) and Hidden Lamp: Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women (Wisdom Publications). She holds Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

      
  • Hour 2: Hosts Stuart Goodnick and Robert Schmidt continue to discuss themes raised in the conversation with Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel.
More information about Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel's work can be found at:
  • Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel's website: zenju.org
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, August 22, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #193 - 22AUG15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Rick Whitney, author of AlignIt: A Tale of a New Civilization. This sophisticated utopian novel, set in an imagined context on San Francisco Bay, posits a kind of reformed university that brings together ancient sacred sciences with contemporary, cutting edge sciences. The novel discusses many alternative ideas about economics, society, community, human nature, and the ultimate concern of human life.

    Rick Whitney is a pseudonym adopted for publication of AlignIt. Regarding the adoption of a nom-de-plume, on the AlignIt website Rick writes: “I chose a pseudonym to keep a fire wall between my public role at the university I work for and my private interest in writing and developing the ideas expressed in AlignIt…. At the university, I have a public role as director of an office. It's an externally facing role. People around the world Google me or look me up on LinkedIn prior to calling or meeting. And I have colleagues at the university itself, of course. It seemed prudent to keep the two distinct--my professional life and my writing life… AlignIt is fiction, not a guide for how I run the office, do my work, or meet with guests…. I articulated expansive views in AlignIt, including alternative models of university structure, research and technology transfer. They're experimental, hypothetical, fictional. To me, this is a worthwhile private endeavor. ”
More information about Rick Whitney's work can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, August 1, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #192 - 01AUG15

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 telephone conversation with Dr. Michael Changaris, a clinical psychologist and a Zen practitioner with a specialty in the biological bases of behavior, stress physiology, and the neuro-anatomy of PTSD. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship with the child, family and adolescent intensive outpatient program with Kaiser Permanente. He continues to deepen his own practice through his work and his relationships with family. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Conscious Family Festival, which is one of the ways that Rob and I have come to know and appreciate his quick intelligence, his copious energy, and his generosity of spirit.. We’ll be discussing his soon to be published book called Touch: The Neurobiology of Health, Healing, and Human Connection.

  • A review of the 2015 book, The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Harvard Law School, Massachusetts, and Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada. Cambridge Books writes:

    Cosmology is in crisis. The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas. There is only one universe at a time. Time is real: everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later. Mathematics, which has trouble with time, is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science; it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations. The argument is readily accessible to non-scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges.
More information about Mike Changaris' work can be found at:
More information about The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, July 18, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #191 - 18JUL15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Trina Marie Vega, a Native American Pomo Indian, a member of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians in Hopland, California, a mother to 3 grown sons, 1 daughter and a loving grandmother to 17 beautiful grandchildren and 1 precious grandchild on the way! An intuitive reader for most of her life, Trina has offered readings on a professional basis for over 10 years. She is a Reiki master and teacher, earned her doctorate in metaphysical studies, and is an Angel Therapy Practitioner®, certified by Doreen Virtue, and is an ordained minister.
More information about Trina Vega's work can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, July 11, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #190 - 11JUL15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Barbara DuBois, formerly a social scientist, psychologist and visual artist, for many years a practitioner and teacher of Tibetan Buddha-Dharma, and to many, a spiritual friend. She is the author of Light Years: A Spiritual Memoir. Now in her seventies, she holds no fixed points of reference, and experiences sweet, wild freedom.
More information about Barbara DuBois' work can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #189 - 27JUN15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Peter Russell, a faculty member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a fellow of The World Business Academy and The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest.

    At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation. He also has a post-graduate degree in computer science, and conducted some of the early work on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual reality.

    In the 1970s, he was one of the first people to introduce human potential seminars into the corporate field, and for twenty years ran programs for senior management on creativity, stress management, personal development, and sustainable development. Clients have included IBM, Apple, Digital, American Express, Barclays Bank, Swedish Telecom, ICI, Shell Oil and British Petroleum. In 1982 he coined the term "global brain" with his 1980s bestseller of the same name in which he predicted the Internet and the impact it would have. His other books include -- The TM Technique, The Upanishads, The Brain Book, The Creative Manager, The Consciousness Revolution, Waking Up in Time, and From Science to God.

    His principal interest is the deeper, spiritual significance of the times we are passing through. His work seeks to distill the essence of the world's spiritual traditions and present it in ways relevant to the current times.
More information about Peter Russell's work can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, June 20, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #188 - 20JUN15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Christine Skarda. Born in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1952, Christine Skarda was educated in the United States and Europe. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy in 1982 and subsequently taught internationally. In 1982, Skarda was invited to join the innovative Sloan program at UC Berkeley and MIT that brought together experts from diverse fields to study intelligence; she thus became a pioneer in the movement later known as cognitive science. Skarda's interest in perception led her to investigate its physiological basis. She held post-doctoral positions in a neuroscience lab at UC Berkeley from 1984 to 1992 and a fellowship in Cognitive Science at the École Polytechnique in Paris between 1986 and 1988.

    By the early 1990s, Skarda's own neuroscience research and her analysis of decades of data from the research of others convinced her that the theoretical model of perception prevalent in neuroscience was flawed. Instead of the perceptual system constructing internal representations of a fundamentally separate external world, Skarda presented an alternative model. Reality starts out as an unbroken web, which a perceptual system breaks up. All the data she had analyzed convinced her that our sense of ourselves as subjects completely independent from objects is created by perceptual activity; it is not an actual state of affairs. In fact there are no gaps between the perceiver and the world.

    To gain access to this undifferentiated level and to understand how the perceptual process breaks it up into the world we experience, Skarda then turned to Tibetan Buddhism. This tradition offers systematic methods to explore this foundational state. Since 1992, she has been using these methods to investigate where the model prevalent in neuroscience has gone wrong. To this end, Skarda has spent the last sixteen years in meditation retreat in India and the United States under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness Chetsang Rinpoche, and Khen Ngawang Jimpa Rinpoche. She now also teaches Buddhism, drawing from her background in Western thought and science to explain even the most subtle and difficult points of Buddhist philosophy by using the language of the modern world.
More information about Christine Skarda's work can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, June 6, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #187 - 06JUN15

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 and on the Mystical Positivist we continue our conversations with a panel of guests who are all presenters at the Conscious Family Festival 2015 event coming up in Santa Rosa on Saturday June 13, 10am—5pm at the Finley Community Center at the corner of College and Stony Point avenues. The diversity of the work that our panelists offer at the Conscious Family Festival bespeaks the amazing array of contributions that the Festival is bringing together.

    In the first hour we’ll speak in person with Myosho Virginia Matthews, Zen Teacher and Mother. Myosho finds her life support in the three pillars of family life, spiritual practice and her work as dancer/choreographer/teacher. Also in the first hour, we’ll be speaking by telephone with Regina Sara Ryan, author, editor, and seminar/retreat leader. A former Catholic nun, Regina has studied contemplation and mysticism throughout her adult life. In the second hour, we will speak by telephone with Theresa C. Dintino, a 20 year practitioner of earth-based spirituality, who was initiated in 2011 as a diviner in a West African tradition, and Jill Nephew, founder and creator of Life Constellation, a software platform for discovering, articulating and sharing life wisdom.

    • Myosho Virgina Matthews finds her life support in the three pillars of family life, spiritual practice and her work as dancer/choreographer/teacher. She has been a student of Rinzai Zen master, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki for 40 years, taking ordination in 2000 and dedicating the last 14 years to co-creating family Zen practices and leading women’s retreats. Concurrently she has had a professional dance career and has taught dance to all ages, from 3 to 73. She is the director of The Downtown Dance/Art Space in Sebastopol where she teaches dance, Pilates mat class and offers meditation through Dharma Heart Center. She is a graduate of The Buddhist Chaplaincy Program and is featured in the book, The Unknown She: Eight Faces of Emerging Consciousness. She is in a committed 43 year marriage and the mother of 3 grown sons.

    • Regina Sara Ryan is an author, an editor, and a seminar and retreat leader. A former Catholic nun, Regina has studied contemplation and mysticism throughout her adult life. After leaving the convent in 1971, she explored other religious traditions and was inspired by the lives of the great women of Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Sufism who had lived these ways. Since meeting her own spiritual teacher, the Western Baul master Lee Lozowick in 1984, Regina continues to follow what she calls a path of “unashamed devotion” in which she works to bring her life of contemplation into action. Her books include: Wellness Workbook, co-authored with John W. Travis, M.D.; The Woman Awake: Feminine Wisdom for Spiritual Life; and Praying Dangerously: Radical Reliance on God. Regina is the managing editor for Hohm Press/Kalindi Press, and a writing coach for aspiring authors of all ages. She lives in Paulden, Arizona with Jerome Pramuk, her husband of 42 years. While she has no biological children, Regina is a former HeadStart, elementary school, and homeschool teacher dedicated to all children, and brings to the Festival her passion for bringing sacred form into all aspects of our lives.

    • For more than 20 years Theresa C. Dintino has studied and practiced an earth-based spirituality. In 2011, she was initiated as a diviner in a West African tradition. She currently helps others reclaim their personal lineages through her divination work. Theresa is the author of The Strega and the Dreamer, a work of historical fiction based in the true story of her great grandparents, and Ode to Minoa and Stories They Told Me, two novels exploring the life of a snake priestess in Bronze Age Crete. Her latest title, just released, is Welcoming Lilith: Awakening and Welcoming Pure Female Power. For more on Theresa or her work, visit thestregaandthedreamer.com and ritualgoddess.com.

    • Jill Nephew is the founder and creator of Life Constellation, a software platform for discovering, articulating and sharing life wisdom. She is very passionate about hacking social interactions so that every voice is heard, every life imagined into, and everybody spirited - young and old. Her work is deeply informed by the actual wisdom part of wisdom traditions, and highly constrained by the latest research and scientific understanding of human social dynamics and cognitive evolution. She brings to her work a 30 year meditation practice, extensive training in physics and scientific modeling, and a career in developing complex software systems and models to tackle some of the world’s hardest problems.

More information about The Conscious Family Festival can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #186 - 30MAY15

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 and next week we interview a panel of guests who are all presenters at the Conscious Family Festival 2015 event coming up in Santa Rosa on Saturday June 13, 10am—5pm at the Finley Community Center at the corner of College and Stony Point avenues. The diversity of the work that our panelists, both this week and next, will offer at the Conscious Family Festival bespeaks the amazing array of contributions that the Festival is bringing together. In the first hour we’ll speak with Elyse April, author of several books for children and parents, and the director of the Baul Theatre Company. In the second hour, we will speak with Beth Rachel, founder Intuitive Kids, and Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center and co-chair of The Conscious Family Festival.

    • Elyse April is a licensed (New York State) early-childhood educator, with a degree in Theatre Arts and an M.A.in Early Childhood Education. A private school elementary teacher for ten years, Elyse has more recently taught theatre classes in a special program for youth-at-risk. She is a freelance publicist working on books for children and parents on family health issues. She is committed to the promotion of breastfeeding as a national priority. She is the author of several books for children and parents, including bi-lingual editions of We Like to Read, We Like to Eat Well, We Like to Move and most recently, Ready to Wean.

      A thirty-year student of Lee Lozowick, author of Conscious Parenting, Elyse is the director of the Baul Theatre Company, which has performed for years at a Renaissance Festival in Arizona, as well as in venues the U.S. and Europe. An actor and screenwriter, Elyse continues a serious study of improvisation with Alan Arkin, and conducts workshops in this field.

    • Beth Rachel writes: “Growing up I was a sensitive child and I experienced a barrage of what many would consider paranormal or psychic phenomenon. I would see my teachers aura and have preemptory moments like the time my dad forgot to turn his headlights on and I saw that we would be pulled over. I saw beings without bodies, I experienced frequent overwhelming emotions that made knots in my belly and regular tingling at my third eye and palms of my hands which was uncomfortable and itchy. My mom would try to help, she introduced me visualization and grounding. As I grew older I chose to study these things on my own. At age 17, I began a more formal education starting with dream work, tarot and stone study. I went on to attend the Berkeley Psychic Institute, deepening my ability for psychic reading. I was then certified as a Bikram yoga instructor and massage therapist, with complimentary elective courses in cranio sacral work, Breema shiatsu, and jin shin Jyutsu. I then went on to expand my education in metaphysics, intuitive anatomy and energy healing with 3 teaching certifications in Theta Healing TM. I have also been licensed to teach Vianna’s Rainbow children course. Since 2006 I have held a private practice consisting of private bodywork and Theta Healing TM sessions as well as teaching workshops in Theta Healing TM. It is a core belief of mine that energy awareness is the healing our world needs. As we become more attuned with ourselves, so do we with each other and nature, making the world a more harmonious place.”

    • Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

      Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for 2015 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.
More information about The Conscious Family Festival can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, May 23, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #185 - 23MAY15

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 telephone conversation with Taigen Dan Leighton, a Soto Zen priest and Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Taigen first studied Buddhist art and culture in Japan in 1970, and began formal everyday zazen and Soto practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center with Kando Nakajima Roshi. This led to his returning to graduate in East Asian Studies and study Japanese language at Columbia College. Through the 70s Taigen was also an award-winning documentary film editor in New York and San Francisco, including work for NBC News and Bill Moyers Journal. While editing TV news, it was necessary for Taigen to learn about the one who is not busy. Taigen left his filmmaking career in 1979 to work full time for the San Francisco Zen Center at the Tassajara Bakery, and he was ordained in 1986 by Reb Anderson Roshi.

    Taigen practiced and resided for years at San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara monastery, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. He also practiced for two years in Kyoto, Japan, 1990-92, translating Dogen with Rev. Shohaku Okumura, and practicing with several Japanese Soto Zen teachers, including one monastic practice period. Taigen founded the Mountain Source Sangha meditation groups in Bolinas in 1994, then added branches in San Rafael and San Francisco. He received Dharma Transmission in 2000 from Reb Anderson.

    Taigen is author of Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen, and the Spirit of Creative Inquiry, Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression, and Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra. He is co-translator and editor of several Zen texts including: Dogen's Extensive Record; Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi; The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Dogen's "Bendowa" with Commentary; and Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of "Eihei Shingi". He has also contributed articles to many other books and journals. His latest title is Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness.

    Taigen teaches online at the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, from which he has a Ph.D., and he has taught at Saint Mary's College, the California Institute of Integral Studies, University of San Francisco, University of Creation Spirituality, and in Chicago at Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary and most recently for four years at Loyola University Chicago. Taigen was an elected member of the Board of San Francisco Zen Center, which he chaired for three years. He has been active in many interfaith dialogue programs, including conducting Buddhist-Christian dialogue workshops, and he also has studied Native American spiritual practice. Taigen has long been active in various Engaged Buddhist programs for social justice, including work against the Death Penalty and sustained Peace and Environmental activism.

    At the beginning of 2007 Taigen relocated to Chicago, and now is Guiding Dharma Teacher for Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. He lives with his wife in the north side of Chicago, and enjoys the lively cosmopolitan qualities of Chicago. Through his sangha, Taigen works to develop accessible practice and training programs in the Chicago area.
More information about Taigen Dan Leighton's work can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, May 2, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #184 - 02MAY15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Andy Ferguson, author of Zen’s Chinese Heritage: The Masters and their Teachings, a book in which he translated the teachings of more than 150 ancient Chinese Zen masters. The book is widely used as a reference book in academic and religious culture circles. Andy Ferguson graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Chinese studies from the University of Oregon in 1973. The same year he moved to Kyoto, and subsequently to Taipei, where he studied Japanese and Chinese respectively. He first entered and traveled in mainland China in 1978, before the economic reforms, and subsequently lived in Singapore and Hong Kong where he worked as the Manager for East Asia for a US company. At that time he began locating and studying a wide variety of Chinese historic cultural sites, especially temples related to the Chinese Chan tradition. 
    He has also produced a two hour video DVD about Chinese history and culture. He lectures frequently on Chinese culture to community groups in North America and is one of a few Americans who gives lectures in China to groups on topics of historical interest. With his long-time friend, author and translator Red Pine, Andy has photographed sites for virtually all the early Zen masters of the Chinese Chan tradition, from Bodhidharma down through many generations of teachers. He was the first American to attend the annual ceremony honoring Bodhidharma at his burial temple, Empty Form, in North China. His recent book,     Tracking Bodhidharma: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture, traces the life and influence of Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch of Chinese Zen.

    Currently Andy is working on climate change issues, especially issues related to Sonoma Clean Power. He advocates for new heat pump technologies that could transform the energy scene in the West County area, making people’s lives more comfortable while moving off fossil fuels entirely.
More information about Andy Ferguson's work can be found at:
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Saturday, April 25, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #183 - 25APR15

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 The Very Rev. Donald P. Richmond, a Priest-Oblate with the Reformed Episcopal Church and Order of Saint Benedict. He is a graduate of several colleges and seminaries as well as the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies and the Maryvale Ecclesiastical Institute. Having trained in Byzantine Iconography, Father Richmond has a keen interest in the intersection of Theology & Liturgical Arts. A widely published author, Father Richmond has published extensively on the Ancient Future Faith Network (and elsewhere, also) under either "The Abbey" or "The Inner Monk." Of note most recently is Father Richmond's article on the New Monasticism, "Under Authority: The Challenge of Evangelical Monasticism."
More information about Rev. Richmond's work can be found at:
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Saturday, April 18, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #182 - 18APR15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Ji Hyang Padma, author of Living the Season: Zen Practice for Transformative Times. Ji Hyang Padma combines an academic career with her role as a Zen teacher. She has done intensive Zen training and teaching in Asia and North America for 20 years, 15 of these as an ordained nun, and has completed several 90-day intensive retreats in Korea and North America. She also teaches Zen workshops annually at Omega Institute and Esalen Institute. While her practice has been situated within the Korean Zen tradition, she has had the benefit of studying with teachers across a wide spectrum of Buddhist lineages.

    Ji Hyang has served as Director and Abbot of The Cambridge Zen Center, one of the largest Zen Centers in the country. Additionally, she has served as a meditation teacher at Wellesley College, Harvard University and Boston University. She is gifted at finding an entry-point into practice for people who are just beginning their journey.

    Ji Hyang is soon to complete a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology at Sofia University with a research focus on Buddhist practices of healing. She serves on the board of Education as Transformation, an international organization that works with educational institutions to explore the impact of religious diversity and the role of spirituality in the learning process.
More information about Ji Hyang Padma's work can be found at:
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Saturday, April 4, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #181 - 04APR15

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 telephone conversation with Mikaelah Cordeo, Ph.D., author of Live in Love: A Life Handbook for the New Golden Age. Her search for a direct experience of God began with her devout Catholic upbringing. She went on to become, in her own words, an over-achiever in a career in science. As a result of a mid-life crisis, she was introduced to basic energy tools, guided visualizations, and the capacity to see, hear, and feel light. Mikaelah had found her life’s work, and gave up her previous career. Today she describes herself as a mystic, a channel for the Ascended Hosts of Light, a Messenger for Mother/Father God, an author, a spiritual traveler, an Ascension teacher, and as a healer(both personal and planetary), mother and grandmother.
More information about Mikaelah Cordeo's work can be found at:
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Saturday, March 28, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #180 - 28MAR15

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with M. Amos Clifford, M.A. Amos Clifford is one of the leading voices for Shinrin-Yoku-inspired Forest Therapy in the United States. He began his career as a wilderness guide in 1972, and taught his first nature connection class to troubled teens in 1973. He served for many years in wilderness adventure programs in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He is founder of Turning Point Youth Services in Tulare County, California, where he developed and managed programs that included pioneering approaches to eco-therapies connecting troubled teens to nature. He moved to Sonoma County, California where he served as Executive Director of Restorative Resources, an NGO focusing on the use of restorative justice and related practices in Northern California. In recent years his emphasis has been on nature connection and restorative dialogue. Amos has practiced Zen meditation and been a student of Buddhist philosophy for over 20 years. He is a founder of Sky Creek Dharma Center in Chico, California. He has trained as a rites of passage guide with School of Lost Borders, and has extensive experience as a trainer and facilitator in the Way of Council. Amos is author of many publications, including A Little Handbook of Shinrin-Yoku, available on his website and through Amazon Kindle. Amos holds a B.S. in Organizational Development and a M.A. in Counseling from the University of San Francisco.
More information about Amos Clifford's work can be found at:
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Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #179 - 21MAR15

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:
  • Today hosts Stuart Goodnick and Robert Schmidt tackle a number of topics including a recognition of the first full day of Spring and the esoteric significance of Spring as a spiritual principle in the larger context of the cycle of creation, the changing of personal experience as a consequence of spiritual practice, and the organization of consciousness along the lines of the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

    Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

    Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for 2015 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

    Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist. Stuart has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the electronics and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

    A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2015.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Saturday, March 7, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #178 - 07MAR15

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:
  • An engaging conversation with Nicholas Egan, Ph.D. on the Buddha Dharma. Nicholas Egan is a Dharma teacher in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies. A student of Tibetan teachers Anam Thubten Rinpoche and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, he is known for his clear and accessible teaching style and is the founder of the Advaya Institute. He has been leading pilgrimages to Asia since 2005, and has lead groups to Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Mongolia, China, and Thailand. Dr. Egan is the Head of School at The Healdsburg School, in Healdsburg, California. For a couple of years, Nick was our colleague in The Mystical Positivist radio show project.

More information about Nick Egan's work and interests can be found at:
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Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #177 - 21FEB15

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 discussion with Grace Kelly Rivera, artist, dancer, actress, entrepreneur, and author of the book Journey to the Heart of the Maker. In today's conversation we discuss the process of the creation of sacred art including Kelly's recently completed piece, The Suffering of the Absolute and the Alleviation of the Suffering of the Absolute.

    Grace Kelly Rivera was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico and grew up in Maryland. After meeting her mentor E.J. Gold, her life-long interest in art's relationship to the spiritual was transformed as she came to understand different art forms as perceptual tools for the pursuit of self knowledge. She articulates some of these perspectives in her book Journey to the Heart of the Maker, based in part on her work on her online show on JustinTV/GorebaggTV called "Dear Oobe" in which she provides readings, discussion, and feedback to viewers about issues of concern to those who are serious in their wish to remain awake and alive in the real world.

    As a master perfumer, Kelly also operates "The Perfumerie" through which she offers intentionally created, alchemically balanced fragrances and essential oils, custom blended fragrances tuned to an individual's unique character, and training in the creation of atmospheres of intention.
More information about Kelly Rivera's work and the Work of IDHHB can be found at:
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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:
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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:
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