Saturday, September 10, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #235 - 10SEP16

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 Christopher Hareesh Wallis, author of Tantra Illuminated. Christopher Wallis, also known as Hareesh, was introduced to Indian spirituality at the age of seven and initiated into the practice of yogic meditation at sixteen. His degrees include a B.A. in Religion and Classics from the University of Rochester, an M.A. in Sanskrit from U.C. Berkeley, an M.Phil. in Classical Indian Religions from Oxford, and a Ph.D. on the traditions of Saiva Tantra from Berkeley. He received traditional education at yoga ashrams in upstate New York and India in meditation, kirtan, mantra-science, asana, karma-yoga, and more. He currently teaches meditation, yoga darsana (philosophy), Tantrik philosophy, Sanskrit, mantra-science, and offers spiritual counseling. 
    Hareesh is the Founder and Head Faculty of the Mattamayura Institute. His teachers, mentors, and gurus, in chronological order, include: Gurumayi Chidvilasananda (diksha-guru and mula-guru), Paul Muller-Ortega (Shaiva Tantra and Classical Yoga); Alexis Sanderson (Shaiva and Shakta Tantra and Sanskrit); Marshall Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication); Somadeva Vasudeva (Shaiva Tantra), Dharmabodhi Sarasvati (Tantrik Yoga); and Adyashanti (Meditation). Hareesh is the author of     Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition. This conversation was recorded at Tayu Meditation Center in Sebastopol, CA.
More information about Hareesh's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, September 3, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #234 - 03SEP16

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 Andrew Harvey, Founder Director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Andrew was born in south India in 1952, where he lived until he was nine years old. It is this early period that he credits with shaping his sense of the inner unity of all religions and providing him with a permanent and inspiring vision of a world infused with the sacred. He left India to attend private school in England and entered Oxford University in 1970 with a scholarship to study history. By 1977, Harvey had become disillusioned with life at Oxford and returned to his native India, where a series of mystical experiences initiated his spiritual journey. Over the next thirty years he plunged into different mystical traditions to learn their secrets and practices. In 1978 he met a succession of Indian saints and sages and began his long study and practice of Hinduism. In 1983, in Ladakh, he met the great Tibetan adept, Thuksey Rinpoche, and undertook with him the Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva vows. Andrew’s book about that experience, Journey in Ladakh, won the Christmas Humphries Award.

    In 1984, Andrew Harvey began a life-long exploration and explication of Rumi and Sufi mysticism in Paris with a group of French Sufis and under the guidance of Eva De Vitray-Meyerovitch, the magnificent translator of Rumi into French. Andrew has written three books on that subject: The Way of Passion, The Celebration of Rumi, and Perfume of the Desert, an anthology of Sufi mysticism. In 1990, he collaborated with Sogyal Rinpoche and Patrick Gaffney in the writing of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. In 1992, he met Father Bede Griffiths in his ashram in south India near where Andrew had been born. It was this meeting that helped him synthesize the whole of his mystical explorations and reconcile eastern with western mysticism.

    Andrew has since lived in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco, and has continued to study a variety of religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. He has written and edited over 30 books. Among Harvey’s other well-known titles are: Dialogues with a Modern Mystic, Hidden Journey, The Essential Mystics, Son of Man, The Return of the Mother, The Direct Path, and The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism.
  • Hour 2: Hosts Stuart Goodnick and Robert Schmidt review themes of the conversation in Hour 1 with Andrew Harvey with a particular focus on the nature of Sacred Activism and the Student/Teacher relationship in spiritual practice and development.
More information about Andrew Harvey's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, August 27, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #233 - 27AUG16

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:
More information about Jill Nephew's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, August 20, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #232 - 20AUG16

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 Siddhartha V. Shah. Siddhartha Shah received his BA in art history from The Johns Hopkins University (2000) and his MA in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (2003) with an emphasis on Hindu philosophy from a Jungian perspective. He has been an art dealer for 15 years, specializing exclusively in Hindu and Buddhist art of the Kathmandu Valley since 2005, and has written for numerous publications including Art Asia Pacific Magazine, Marg, Namarupa, and Orientations. Siddhartha is currently a Ph.D student at Columbia University. His academic interests include theories and uses of Indian ornament in Britain and British India, Tantric cults of the Divine Feminine, and late 19th century French and British painting. Siddhartha is also a yoga instructor and serves on the Editorial Board of Illumine, a Chicago-based publication focused on yoga, wellness and psycho-spiritual development. He is a recipient of the Steven Kossak Graduate Fellowship in South Asian/Indian Art (2014 & 2016), the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Doctoral Summer Fellowship (2015), a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship (2015), and an Honorary Mention for the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by Graduate Students (2016). This conversation was pre-recorded at Tayu Meditation Center in Sebastopol, CA.
More information about Siddhartha Shah's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, August 13, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #231 - 13AUG16

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 by telephone with author, entertainer, and two-time former guest on the show, Rick Lewis, in which Rick turns the tables and interviews hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick about aspects of their Tayu spiritual practice, including the admonition Follow Your Dread. 

    Rick Lewis is an author, speaker and entertainer who has taken the title “professional misbehaver” to describe what he sees as his role in the world - reminding others that we are born to break our own rules and the unconscious limits of our culture. Rick is a father of 3, the husband of 1, and an over-fastidious control-freak who meditates regularly so he can appear to be a normal person when not on stage. Rick travels extensively presenting to corporate and non-profit organizations on the subject of professional and personal growth. He is the founder of Break a Rule Presentations and Trainings, www.FreedomHabits.com, and is always working on finishing his next book.
More information about Rick Lewis' work and interests can be found at:
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, August 6, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #230 - 06AUG16

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 on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick discuss the topic of Hope as inspired from a variety of sources including the Gurdjieff Work, the Prayer of St. Francis, and the writing of Andrew Harvey. Originally we were scheduled to be in conversation with Andrew Harvey himself today, but he had to reschedule until September 3rd due to a family situation in India.

    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 October 2016 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, 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 2016.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, July 16, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #229 - 16JUL16

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 by telephone with Alan Francis, author of the book Secrets of the Fourth Way. In his preface to the book, Francis writes: “For many years now, I have sought out and spoken to people who actually knew Gurdjieff, and others whom I respect for their dedication to the Work. Of course I asked them questions that were important to me personally, but I also tried to find out what in the Work was most vital for them. What was, in their opinion, the most important idea, method, form, direction, meaning, and how did they weight them? Finally, what was the sense and aim of this Work? Why does it, and why should it, continue to exist? What is, as Michel de Salzmann asked, the specificity of the Work? What does the Work touch and develop that the many other teachings do not? This inquiry inevitably led to trying to understand this particular phase of our Work and what is required of you and me if the Work is to evolve, that is, to continue. This moment is connected with the whole life of the Work, yet it cannot all be lumped together. It is like building a house or raising a child; each phase must be attended to and respected."

    Alan Francis began Fourth Way work with Jim and Norma Flynn in 1969 at the Los Angeles Gurdjieff Foundation. In 1999 he founded the Oregon Gurdjieff Foundation with Norma Flynn, with the approval of Michel de Salzmann. Commensurate with his work with the Foundation, Alan was the founding director of Turnaround, a skid row social services center that specialized in the treatment and rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts. In 2006, Alan founded the Russian Center for Gurdjieff Studies and now leads groups in Moscow.
More information about Alan Francis' work can be found at:
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Saturday, July 9, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #228 - 09JUL16

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 by telephone with John Francis, author of the 1998 book The Mystic Way of Radiant Love: Alchemy for a New Creation. John Francis, has been meditating and practicing hatha yoga consistently for the past forty years. He has had many influential teachers, both Eastern and Western, during that time. John’s spiritual journey began with a near-death experience in 1975. Since then he has been decoding the Bible’s hidden teachings through heart-centered meditation and esoteric numerology. In 1978 he cofounded the Spiritual Healing Center in San Jose, California. At the Chicago “Parliament of the World’s Religions” in 1993 he gave a talk entitled: “The Biblical Symbols of the Soul.” His book, The Mystic Way of Radiant Love, postulates that the Bible conveys contemplative-practice teachings using metaphors, numbers, allegories and parables. He has given many talks on the radio, at expositions and in bookstores on the subject of contemplative practices. He has also been active in Buddhist-Christian dialogues in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Several years ago John retired from his thirty-year position as a college mathematics professor. His specialty was experimental design and statistical analysis. He did come out of retirement from mainstream-academic education to teach a semester-long course in sacred geometry at Ananda College. He has also written several e-books on contemplative practice, which will soon be published.
John Francis can be contacted at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, June 25, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #227 - 25JUN16

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 by telephone with Solala Towler, author of a book recently published by Sounds True called Practicing the Tao Te Ching: 81 Steps on the Way. Solala Towler has taught and practiced Taoist meditation and qigong for more than 25 years. In addition to Practicing the Tao Te Ching, he is author of Tales from the Tao, Tao Paths to Love, and more. Solala is the editor of The Empty Vessel, a widely respected journal of Taoist philosophy and practice. He teaches qigong and sound healing at conferences and workshops around the country.
More information about Solala Towler's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, June 18, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #226 - 18JUN16

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 in the studio with Aaron Krumins and Thad Malik. After visiting India in 2004, Aaron Krumins decided to stay and continue his pilgrimage which has been a story of words and paintings. Traveling from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, he has been painting his experiences and his stories of India. Aaron settled for seven years to practice his art form in the pilgrimage town of Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, home to mystics such as Ramana Maharishi, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, Seshadri Swami, and many others. Aaron presently splits his time between Austin Texas and Tamil Nadu.

    Thad Malik is an inspired yogi and poet. He has practiced and taught yoga in the suburbs of Detroit and remote Himalayan Hideaways. He is a former yoga studio owner and a current nomadic yogi gypsy. Wherever Thad’s adventures or heartfelt yoga classes lead (which is many places) they invariably come again to the juiciest of moments: Now!
More information about Aaron Krumins and Thad Malik's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, June 4, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #225 - 04JUN16

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 in the studio with Daniel Terragno Roshi, and Christine Skarda. Daniel Terragno, a native of Chile, is a teacher in the koan tradition of the Diamond Sangha, which was founded by Robert Aitken Roshi. Daniel is the dharma heir of John Tarrant Roshi of the Pacific Zen Institute. Daniel started his spiritual practice in 1967 studying the Gurdjieff Work with W.A. Nyland before taking up Zen. Daniel received authorization to teach Zen in 1995, and in 2001 received dharma transmission from Tarrant Roshi. Daniel also teaches and leads sesshin in Ohio with Yellow Springs Dharma Center and Zen on High in Columbus, Ohio; with Grupo Zen Viento del Sur (Southern Wind) in Argentina, based in Buenos Aires, and also in Santiago, Chile.

    Christine Skarda is an ordained Tibetan Buddhist nun, a philosopher and scientific theorist whose professional career has spanned the fields of philosophy, neurophysiology, and cognitive science. She has both drawn on and contributed to the insights of these fields in her quest to understand the nature of perception. This quest eventually propelled her out of the research laboratory and onto a meditation cushion, where Skarda turned to methods of inquiry drawn from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition to study the perceptual process from another angle. An ordained nun, Skarda has by now spent over a decade and a half in meditation retreat in the United States and India under the guidance of some of the greatest living members of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness Chetsang Rinpoche. She returned to America in 2007 and continues her retreat in California. Occasionally she leaves retreat to lecture or teach to a diverse audience, offering her scientific background to Buddhists and her Buddhist insights to scientists and philosophers.

More information about Daniel Terragno and Christine Skarda's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, May 28, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #224 - 28MAY16

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 pre-recorded conversation with Brother John Martin Sahajananda, a member and present superior of Shantivanam ashram community in Tamil Nadu, India. This ashram was founded by two French priests Jules Monchanin and Henri Le Saux in 1950. Fr. Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk and well-known author, took the leadership of the ashram in 1968. Brother Martin has been very much inspired by the vision of Shantivanam. He was one of the close disciples of Bede Griffiths. His passion is inter-religious dialogue, particularly Hindu-Christian dialogue. He is invited to Europe every year to lead seminars and retreats on the vision of Christianity for our times and on inter-religious harmony. He has written several books, including: You Are the Light – Rediscovering the Eastern Jesus; Truth Has No Boundaries; Fully Human Fully Divine; New Annunciation - A Universal Call to be Virgin Mothers of God; The Ganges and the Jordan Meet: Reincarnation and Resurrection.
More information about Brother John Martin Sahajananda's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #223 - 21MAY16

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:
  • Our guests in the studio today are Kelsang Chogyop and Kelsang Labsum, both of the Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center in Penngrove CA. Kelsang Chogyop is a modern Buddhist nun and 13 year practitioner in the New Kadampa Mahayana Buddhist tradition. She is the resident teacher at the Penngrove Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center. Kelsang Labsum is the Administrative Director of the Penngrove center and has been studying under the guidance of Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso since 2007. He has been ordained since 2012. He demonstrates how a modern Kadampa monk integrates Buddhist wisdom into one's daily life. The main emphasis of New Kadampa Buddhism is to maintain the purity of Buddha's teachings and to make these teachings very practical, accessible, and relevant in the modern world. The New Kadampa Tradition was founded by Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso in 1991. Geshe Kelsang has written 22 books and in each of them he strives to make Buddha's very profound teachings practical and tangible so that anyone, Buddhist to not, can benefit from them, whether by simply learning how to meditate or by studying very closely in a teacher-guided study program.
More information about Kelsang Chogyop and Labsum's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, May 14, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #222 - 14MAY16

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 on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick speak in the studio with one another on spiritual news and other topics relevant to the show that have been on our minds in recent weeks. Some of the books and topics discussed include:
    • An obituary for Zenkei Blanche Hartman Roshi
    • Whether spiritual growth requires a teacher or if no teacher is necessary
    • The topic of “spiritual children” and what that term might mean
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 October 2016 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, 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 2016.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, May 7, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #221 - 07MAY16

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 Mystical Positivist co-host, Rob Schmidt, is joined in the studio by Albert Flynn DeSilver, author of the forthcoming book called Writing as a Path to Awakening, as well as the autobiographical Beamish Boy. Albert Flynn DeSilver is an author, poet, artist, teacher, speaker, and publisher, born 1968 in Norwalk, Connecticut. In addition to the book titles already mentioned, he is the author of several books of poetry including Letters to Early Street, and Walking Tooth & Cloud. His writing has appeared in more than one hundred literary journals worldwide. He taught for many years as a California Poet in the Schools, and at numerous venues nationwide; from Creedmore Psychiatric Institution, in New York, and San Quentin State Prison, in California, to the British Institute in Paris—from an Alzheimer’s Clinic in Marin County, to The University of California—Davis. He has also taught for many years in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. In 2008 he was named the very first Poet Laureate of Marin County, California. He is currently the Director of Visiting Angels, a Senior Homecare agency franchise in Santa Rosa, California.
More information about Albert Flynn DeSilver's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #220 - 30APR16

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 on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick speak in the studio with one another about perspectives regarding spiritual practice that have arisen for us recently in meditation, in readings, and in conversation. Some of the books and topics discussed include:
    • After Buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age, by Stephen Batchelor
    • An Arrow to the Heart: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra by Ken McLeod
    • The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving by Lisa Miller, Ph.D.
    • Julian’s Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich by Veronica Mary Wolf
    • Daughter of Fire, by Irina Tweedie
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 October 2016 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, 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 2016.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, April 23, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #219 - 23APR16

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 the Mystical Positivist features an in-studio with Tatiana Ginzburg, a Breathworker and transpersonal psychologist originally from Russia, and the inventor of a methodology of integration and self-exploration called Igratechnica (aka Game Mastery). Born in 1971 in Leningrad, now St. Peterburg, she has been a professional breathworker since 1993, and was founder of the Game Mastery School in 1998. In 2004 she received a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology. In 2015 she and others created the Russian House #1 self-actualization project in a restaurant at the mouth of the Russian River in Sonoma County, California. Tatiana is joined in the studio with her student and colleague in the Russian House #1 project, Polina Krasikova.

    Tatiana is the author of the concept of Knowability of the Human Psyche. This concept is an integration of the actual infinity principle created in a philosophy and mathematics towards new approach for the human development and transpersonal psychology basis.

    Based on the idea of Psyche Knowability described in her Doctor’s thesis, Tatiana created a methodology of integration and self-exploration called Igratechnica (Game Mastery). Igratechnica (Game Mastery) itself is the modern system of creating developing environment that provides its participants the maximum support for the personal growth. After going through the transformational process, depending on the personal free choice, he or she either discover a new quality of life or reinforce their current position.

    Igratechnica is the human development system that includes the self-awareness process and its actualization methods. Those methods present the collection of games, which individually configured for the participants who play those as the real process solving their current actual issue.

    Thus, Igratechnica is a methodology of the personal free will development and making free choice from potential the actual.
    The Basis of Igratechnica:

    1. The Conscious 7x7 matrix (diagnostics tool);

    2. System of games and practices;

    3. Game Master - the leader, who represents the model, technics and the transcendence spire.

    Tatiana is a Breathworker (Rebirther, Holotropic breathwork, Vivation, Free Breathing facilitator) from 1993. She is the author of a unique methodology of integration during the breathwork and of a unique breathing technique – DA-breathing.

    From 1995, she has been a professional instructor of western breathing technics. She is one of the founders of the European breathwork school www.breathe.ru.
More information about Tatiana Ginzburg's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, April 2, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #218 - 02APR16

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 the Mystical Positivist features a departure from our usual format, as The Mystical Positivist, Stuart Goodnick, travels to Europe on business. In his place, co-host Rob Schmidt is at the controls, playing selections of spiritual music and reading wise and interesting words from a variety of spiritual sources.

    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 October 2016 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 Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Saturday, March 26, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #217 - 26MAR16

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 with Sonoma county Zen practitioners and teachers Elizabeth Sawyer and Barton Stone. Elizabeth is an Interfaith Minister, co-founded Back Porch Zendo, and is a lay ordained dharma teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi. Myozen Barton Stone studied with Suzuki-Roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center, and was ordained by Jisho Warner Roshi of Stone Creek Zen Center in 2010.
More information about Elizabeth Sawyer and Barton Stone's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, March 19, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #216 - 19MAR16

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 Leza Lowitz, author or co-translator of a wide-ranging set of over twenty books, including Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By; Sacred Sanskrit Words: For Yoga, Chant, and Meditation; Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections; Designing With Kanji: Japanese Character Motifs for Surface, Skin and Spirit; Jet Black and The Ninja Wind, and more. Our discussion today will focus on her two latest books: Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras, a personal memoir about how she fell in love with and married a Japanese man, and came to adopt a child with him in Japan; and Up From The Sea, a young adult novel in verse about a Japanese boy whose life was overturned by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

    Leza is a California girl who lives in Tokyo. Always willing to go to any length and travel any distance to discover who she was and how to be happy, she met her soulmate at a jazz club in Yokohama, and moved to Japan to be with him. Ten years later, Leza and Shogo undertook the crazy project of opening a yoga studio in Tokyo. Three years after that, they adopted a beautiful boy and rescued two dogs, starting a family in their mid-forties.

    Leza and Shogo often write together, and only occasionally drive each other crazy. Building a bridge from East to West, they’ve collaborated on a book about kanji, a collection of poetry by a pacifist Japanese soldier, and a trilogy about a young female ninja. Other couples finish each other’s sentences. They finish each other’s books.

    From an early age Leza dreamed of being Bruce Lee or Joan Didion. She’s still working on that combination.

    For over two decades, she’s been bringing together the worlds of writing and spirituality, charting her quest in over seventeen books and in the New York Times online, Yoga Journal, Shambhala Sun, The Best Buddhist Writing 2011, The Huffington Post, The Japan Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Her award-winning poetry has been translated into Japanese, French, Spanish, Burmese and Farsi. Leza is a long-term member of SCBWI Japan (the Society for Children’s Books Writers and Editors, Japan).
More information about Leza Lowitz's can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA
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