Dangerous Wisdom (nikos patedakis)

An exploration of the ethics of consciousness—what that means and how it relates to the medicines of our world, including psychedelics.

Composer and musician Carole Nelson helps us contemplate the dangerous wisdom of jazz and her new album, Night Vision. In honor of our dialogue, Carole and I collaborated on a meditative video project. You can check out the two takes we released here:

https://youtu.be/aWN6UDYp86E

https://youtu.be/OrnoYWUkVBw

In our dialogue, we make reference to Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, as well as The Diamond Sutra.

We also make reference to an older podcast episode titled, “This Changes Everything”. Look for the re-release of that episode soon. 

Carole Nelson is a Londoner who has lived in Ireland for nearly 40 years. She is a multi-award winning composer, a jazz and improvising musician, pianist, saxophonist and songwriter. Her most recent work is with the Carole Nelson Trio, with whom she has recorded 3 acclaimed albums. Her music reflects the natural world – the woodlands, river and wildlife in her home in southern Ireland. She endeavours to integrate an authentic ecoliteracy into her creative practice and into her engagement with the world.

She is a long-time meditation practitioner in the tradition of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s socially engaged buddhism and she facilitates days of mindfulness.

Leia Friedwoman is a psychedelic integration facilitator, a trainee in restorative and transformative approaches to conflict, and the host of a podcast called The Psychedologist: Consciousness Positive Radio. Leia holds her permaculture design certificate from Starhawk’s Earth Activist Training, a program that emphasizes social permaculture and spirituality in activism.

In this dialogue, we touch on a wide range of subjects related to psychedelics and the soul.

You can learn more about Leia at thepsychedologist.com

Is trauma real? In what sense? These questions don't in any way deny the real suffering of people diagnosed with trauma. Instead, they ask how we might take a broader and deeper look at trauma, in order to heal and transcend it. How can we do better in reducing the emergence of traumatizing experiences, and how can we do better in supporting ourselves and other in healing from these experiences, and opening up new possibilities for evolutionary learning?

In her book Spacious Minds, anthropologist and clinical psychologist Sara E. Lewis invites us to see that resilience is not a mere absence of suffering. Sara's research reveals how those who cope most gracefully may indeed experience deep pain and loss. Looking at the Tibetan diaspora, she challenges perspectives that liken resilience to the hardiness of physical materials, suggesting people should "bounce back" from adversity. More broadly, this ethnography calls into question the tendency to use trauma as an organizing principle for all studies of conflict where suffering is understood as an individual problem rooted in psychiatric illness.

Beyond simply articulating the ways that Tibetan categories of distress are different from biomedical ones, Spacious Minds shows how Tibetan Buddhism frames new possibilities for understanding resilience. Here, the social and religious landscape encourages those exposed to violence to see past events as impermanent and illusory, where debriefing, working-through, or processing past events only solidifies suffering and may even cause illness. Resilience in Dharamsala is understood as sems pa chen po, a vast and spacious mind that does not fixate on individual problems, but rather uses suffering as an opportunity to generate compassion for others in the endless cycle of samsara. A big mind view helps to see suffering in life as ordinary. And yet, an intriguing paradox occurs. As Lewis deftly demonstrates, Tibetans in exile have learned that human rights campaigns are predicated on the creation and circulation of the trauma narrative; in this way, Tibetan activists utilize foreign trauma discourse, not for psychological healing, but as a political device and act of agency.

Sara Lewis, PhD, LCSW is co-founder and Director of Training and Research at Naropa University's Center for Psychedelic Studies. Sara earned her PhD at Columbia University in medical anthropology and public health; her research sits at the intersection of religion, culture and healing with an emphasis on non-ordinary states. As a Fulbright scholar, she conducted long term ethnographic research in India, culminating in her book, Spacious Minds: Trauma and Resilience in Tibetan Buddhism, which investigates how Buddhist concepts of mind shape traumatic memory and pathways to resilience. As a contemplative psychotherapist, she specializes in intergenerational trauma and healing through Somatic Experiencing and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

What is the truth that human credulity covers over, and what is the truth that the wild honesty of wolves seeks to reveal?

It's something the self-help-industrial complex covers over, turning our sincere search for healing and success into the self-help catastrophe. What does our soul really want? How can we get on a path of sanity and sacredness, a path of true healing and happiness? Wisdom can help us find our way---but first we have to see things as they are, which means seeing our deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret.

Bob Thurman, known in the academic circles as Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, is a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings and the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

A charismatic speaker and author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, Bob was named by The New York Times the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, and was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 2020, for his help in recovering India’s ancient Buddhist heritage. Time Magazine chose him as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.”

Bob served as the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University for 30 years, until 2020. A very popular professor, students always felt his classes were “life-changing”. Bob is the founder and active president of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan culture, and of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific Tibetan treatises.

His own search for enlightenment began while he was a university student at Harvard. After an accident in which he lost the use of an eye, Bob left school on a spiritual quest throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He found his way to India, where he first saw His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1962. After learning Tibetan and studying Buddhism, Bob became a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the first Westerner to be ordained by the Dalai Lama. Some years later, however, he offered up his robes when he realized he could be more effective in the American equivalent of a monastery: the university, returning to Harvard to finish his PhD.

As part of his long-term commitment to the Tibetan cause, at the request of H.H. the Dalai Lama, Bob co-founded Tibet House US in 1987 with Tenzin Tethong, Richard Gere, and Philip Glass, a nonprofit organization based in New York City and dedicated to the preservation and renaissance of Tibetan culture.

Inspired by his longtime good friend the Dalai Lama, Bob takes us along with him into an expanded vision of the world through the prism of Tibetan Buddhism. He shares with us the sense of refuge in the Dharma, which unfailingly helps us clear away the shrouds of fear and confusion, sustains us with the cheerfulness of an enriched present, and opens a door to a path of realistic hope for a peaceful, kind, and wise future. 

Learn more:

https://bobthurman.com/

https://menla.org/

https://thus.org/

https://wisdomexperience.org/treasury-buddhist-sciences/

The practice of magic is taboo precisely because it draws from the experience of mind as a process that transcends the skin, and the experience of self and world as profoundly relational—which means ecological—rather than solid, or, we could say, economic.

A contemplation of healing, wholeness, the challenges of suffering, and the paradoxes of success. We consider some of the essential questions: In what sense is life a self-healing truth? What is the nature of health and healing? What is the nature of sickness—our cultural sickness and our own mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical sickness? What is the role of nondoing in our healing and in our life?

We begin with a story, and thread all the way through the meaning of enlightenment, and the need to receive initiation into the mysteries of life, follow a path of joy, cultivate reverence for wisdom and wildness, and truly realize the inconceivable interwovenness of all things.

The Mind of Nature and the Nature of Mind

Part 2 in an Introduction to Ecological Thinking—A Wisdom-Based Approach

What is the nature of mind? What is the mind of Nature? We inquire into some radical and revolutionary aspects of mind and ecological thinking.

Picking up our contemplation on the feedback loop of Mind and Nature, we enter into insights and suggestions from Nietzsche and the poet-philosopher-farmer Wendell Berry. These thinkers help us to face some troubling questions:

What are we not likely, or not able, to become conscious of, simply by living in the dominant culture?

What does the culture make likely as our experience?

What does it make likely as our world?

The general answer to the latter question seems to be something degraded, limited, limiting.

The philosophy of the dominant culture encourages the practice and realization of the very things that cut us off from our fuller potentials, and philosophers in the university do little to teach students how to transform. The cultivation of states of anger, greed, aggression, and deceit go altogether with conquest, and this leads to the total breakdown of more empowered and empowering forms of awareness.

We in the dominant culture live in a context that encourages the invisibility of these other forms of awareness, discourages their cultivation, and then encourages and even insists upon their dissolution if they were to somehow arise. How can we transform all of this, for the benefit of the whole community of life?

In this dialogue with Lia Helena Rubinoff, a philosopher and certified nutrition consultant, we consider how craving itself can lead to liberation and healing.

Enlightened craving means our craving itself is enlightened—it’s just encumbered. When we look directly at it, we can bring the medicine of awareness to our craving and liberate it into bone fide wisdom. In particular, craving has to do with the wisdom referred to as the wisdom of discernment, which helps us to know exactly what we need to eat, based on the ecological intelligence of our mind and body in relation with the world.

Similarly, triggers are an encumbered wisdom. We call that wisdom the mirror-like wisdom that reflects things as they are.

Everybody has cravings and triggers, and most people are ruled by them. But they actually provide us with unique opportunities for liberation—to achieve genuine freedom, happiness, and wellbeing.

The Enlightened Craving process teaches us how to liberate the energy of cravings and triggers and restore our body’s and your mind’s innate wisdom about how to live well, including how to eat well and how to maintain holistic wellbeing. The process is based on the best science we have, and it’s also based on the single greatest untapped cultural resource we have for health and wellbeing, namely the wisdom traditions of the world.

A super special episode with the magical yogini Drukmo Gyal, a sonic shaman and practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism who bridges Tibetan traditions and global healing. Born into a family of Ngakpas in the culturally rich Amdo region of Tibet, Drukmo Gyal's life has been steeped in the practices of mantra and meditation from a young age. Growing up in a diverse community in Rebgong, she was immersed in an environment where spiritual practices were a daily ritual.

Her journey in traditional healing began with studies in Tibetan medicine in Amdo, after which she furthered her expertise by working for Sorig Khang Estonia (EATTM) and studying under Dr. Nida Chenatsang, a renowned Tibetan physician and lineage holder of the Yuthok Nyingthig - the spiritual healing tradition of Tibetan Medicine.

Combining her passion for singing with her knowledge of Tibetan medicine, she has sought to create healing concerts that nurture the body, speech, and mind. She has collaborated with musicians worldwide, producing five albums of Tibetan Healing Mantras and Prayers, and she has shared her work in over 30 countries through concerts, lectures, and courses.

Drukmo Gyal also serves as an international teacher and guide for Sorig Khang International and as the lead organizer of SKY Estonia. Their team is committed to establishing a Tibetan Medicine Healing & Education Centre in Estonia to bring this ancient wisdom to the Baltic states and Finland, focusing on learning, healing, and cultural exchange.

https://www.drukmogyal.com/

With a little help from Aldous Huxley, we embrace the fact that love is the soul’s compass as we journey the landscape of mystery. We need that love to acknowledge our fear, and to rouse the great passion needed to understand (and wonderstand) reality.

When we look around and see conflict, aggression, and injustice, to what degree can we attribute it not merely to fear, but to fear of reality? And how can we begin to turn toward a reality we may unconsciously fear?

As Aldous Huxley pointed out: When we look at water, nothing about it tells us it’s made up of two gasses. Why would we guess that water is made of stuff that appears as gasses in ordinary conditions?

Our spiritual life is like this. We use our minds all the time, but we don’t know the nature of our mind or the nature of reality. We need education, and we need the tremendous energy of a meditative mind, a passionate mind and heart, in order to experiment in ways conducive to insight.

More Dangerous Wisdom at https://dangerouswisdom.org/

In this episode of The Dangerous Wisdom Podcast, artist Nica Quinn and I reflect on art, symbolism, synchronicity, magic, and the natural world. Before the dialogue begins, we consider the nature of symbols, their potential role in our spiritual/philosophical development, and some of the special symbolic and magical potency of the horse in particular.

The video version of this episode includes images of Nica's artwork:

https://youtu.be/OInMqIrQUYw

Nica Quinn is a visionary artist, perpetually inspired by nature and horses and the roles they play in deepening our understanding about ourselves. Her mission is to bridge the gap of the spiritual, ethereal realms with the physical, to inspire others to tap into the magic that lies beyond the tangible. Horses have been her gateways, her guides, and her muses throughout her life and artistic journey, and continue to lead her down this path.

She began sharing images on social media with what was going on in her internal world with horses, and found that there were a lot of people resonating with what she depicted; it has now evolved into horses at the forefront, but really the interconnection of everything. She has been a digital freelance artist since 2020, offering custom pet portraits, intuitive personal portraits which has led her to other amazing collaborations with horsewoman around the world. She has also hosted online creative workshops, and co-hosted retreats weaving together creativity and horse wisdom.

You can find the majority of her work on instagram at nica_draws_nature, and also her website https://www.nicadrawsnature.com/

You can support Nica's art via her website or her Etsy store:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/NicaDrawsNature?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=1130192829

You can get in touch with her most easily via Instagram.

The drawings in the video are by Nica Quinn, the photographs are by nikos patedakis, and the film footage comes from image databases such as Pixabay.

A dialogue on the wisdom, love, and beauty of DMT with Rick Strassman, author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy, and The Psychedelic Handbook.

Video version here: https://youtu.be/FtDBx1IBkoA

A spiritual pioneer, Phyllis Curott is an attorney, writer and one of America’s first public Witches. Her international best-selling memoir Book of Shadows, 5 other books and groundbreaking Witches’ Wisdom Tarot have been published in 14 languages, making her the most widely published Wiccan author in the world. An outspoken advocate in the courts and media, she handled or consulted on groundbreaking cases securing the legal rights of Witches, including cases of child custody, religious assembly, organization, expression, and free speech.

Phyllis was named one of The Ten Gutsiest Women of the Year by Jane Magazine and inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Clergy and Scholars. She received the 2018 Service to Humanity Award from the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary and the 2020 Person of the Year Award from Kindred Spirit. Phyllis is a Trustee of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, serving as Vice Chair of the 2015 Parliament, and Program Chair for the historic 2021 Parliament blessed by Pope Francis, and the 2023 Parliament with its theme of religious responsibility to resist the growing scourge of fascism. New York Magazine has called her teaching on Witchcraft the culture’s “next big idea” and Time Magazine has published her as one of America’s leading thinkers. Her You-Tube series on Wicca has almost 3 million views. Phyllis is teaching online and working on her next book on the embodied spiritual wisdom of Mother Earth, Nature’s “secret magic” and why the world needs its Witches.

Website: https://www.phylliscurott.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phylliscurott

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phylliscurott/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PhyllisCurottWitchcrafting

If Nature is super, if superness belongs to the very character of the Cosmos, then our attempts to exclude the super and the "impossible" may contribute in fundamental ways to the mess we find ourselves in (politically, economically, spiritually, and of course ecologically). We may claim that we want to exclude the impossible because we insist on excluding "superstition" and "woo," but in fact we may discover that we have thereby excluded the superness that belongs to the nature of Nature, and thus created and perpetuated confusion about what we are and what reality is.

Jeffrey J. Kripal, a delightful and insightful scholar of religion, joins us to discuss these matters, especially in relation to his new book, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities. This is a fun yet sober discussion of exciting yet sobering ideas, data, and experience, shifting our perspective from "the supernatural" to the Superness of Nature , the Super Natural.

You can learn more about Jeff here: https://jeffreyjkripal.com/

What is it to think like a mountain? How is it that many of our decisions go wrong, sometimes producing negative side-effects?

You might remember hearing about a hole in the ozone layer that appeared last century. No one intended to create that hole. But we did it.

We didn’t intend to put mercury in our brains and lead in our bones. A recent study tested 62 samples of human placenta and found microplastics in every single one of them.

How do things go wrong on personal and planetary scales? And how can we do better?

On the Winter Solstice of 2023, U.S. President Biden will sign a law that could move our entire planet a step closer to global transformation--or not. It's up to us. But the law will require the disclosure of UFO/UAP and alien encounter information held as some of the deepest secrets of the U.S. government. What does this mean for us? It may surprise you to learn that even the Vatican has formally acknowledged the existence of advanced life outside our solar system, and the need to come together to discuss the implications for us in terms of our religious, spiritual, philosophical, and political ideas and practices. How might we have to change in order to integrate the reality of extraterrestrial life? And what happens when we find out those beings seem more advanced not only technologically, but also in some sense more advanced in terms of consciousness itself?

Daniel Sheehan joins us to discuss these questions and to go over the legislation. He's an insider. Danny is a Harvard-trained lawyer who has argued high-profile cases such as the Greensboro Massacre, the Silkwood case, the Three-Mile Island case, and even appeared before the Supreme Court in the famous Pentagon Papers case. As part of his work at the Romero Institute, he works with the New Paradigm Institute, to help empower all of us for a post-contact reality.

https://newparadigmproject.org/

https://www.danielpsheehan.com/

The secret of entering the Way of the Wolf, the Way of the Wild, the Way of the Soul; a celebration of the Gospel of Mountains and Wolves; and a path to creating a vitalizing civilization, based on a nonduality of Nature and Culture.

Part of A Philosopher's Guide to Working with the Medicines of Our World, this is the single most important recommendation I can make, for those facilitating work with the medicines of our world, and also for those seeking healing and insight from those medicines. This is a two-part discussion of compassion as a skill that requires training. Learn how compassion differs from empathy, and how it presents a revolutionary challenge to central aspects of the dominant culture. This is part of the shift from conquest consciousness to a culture of wisdom, love, and beauty.

What can Plato and Socrates teach us about working with the medicines of our World? In this first chapter of a philosopher's guide to working with psychedelics and other medicines, we look at what Plato and Socrates, and their relationship with psychedelics, initiation, and walking a path of healing, a path of wisdom, love, and beauty.

Picking up the thread of compassion training, as part of A Philosopher's Guide to Working with the Medicines of Our World, we contrast compassion with empathy distress. We also introduce the notion of the tonglen attitude, a special mindset that can empower and liberate our practice with any of the medicines of our World. Finally, we look at one way to understand one aspect of how compassion and tonglen function: a kind of magic mind synchrony in which self-regulation and co-regulation become integrated.

Instead of becoming more “embodied,” we, in some crucial sense, need to become more . . . ecologied, encosmosed, and liberated into the mysteries of interwovenness, liberated into sacredness and wonder. If “embodied” signifies getting “into” our “body,” it misses our true need in a variety of ways.

For a free pdf of practices to help facilitate ecosensual awareness and a more ecological embodiment, visit the Dangerous Wisdom website:

https://dangerouswisdom.org/practices-of-a-sacred-place

The biggest bite of knowledge fruit humanity has taken in the past millennium or two has to do with complex systems—the very stuff of life. Neil Theise has written an excellent, accessible introduction to complex systems, and we discuss the basic elements.

Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr. Theise’s studies in complexity theory have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields such as integrative medicine, consciousness studies, and science-religion dialogue. He is a senior student of Zen Buddhism at the Village Zendo in NYC. His most recent book is, Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being.

Where do we find Sophia's wild garden of awakening and love? We're it. And we can see that garden in every direction, if we look with awakening eyes, eyes of love, eyes of wisdom, eyes of beauty.

And we need to cultivate that garden, with "Acts of Restorative Kindness". We find references to Sophia as a presence in the Earth, a presence in soil and soul. She calls to us to attend to Her, and to all Her sacred beings.

In this episode, we enjoy a deep dialogue with Mary Reynolds, emissary of Sophia, and botanical bodhisattva of magic and grace—one of my favorite guests! She helps us reflect on the living loving world as our path of wisdom and wonder, and invites us to become the Ark of Being through Acts of Restorative Kindness.

Mary Reynolds is a reformed international landscape designer who launched her career by achieving a gold medal for garden design at the Chelsea flower show in London in 2002, the story of which was made into a 2016 movie called “Dare to be Wild”. Bestselling author of The Garden Awakening, and We are the ARK, she is an occasional television presenter and the founder of the global movement “We are the ARK”. She’s not the worst cook and she likes to campaign against evil corporate/political efforts to cull us all off with pesticides, herbicides, GMO’s, greenwashing, and fossil fuel craziness. Her aim in life is to restore the Earth's native plant and creature communities (her clothing of choice), and remind people that our role here on this beautiful home of ours is one of guardian, not gardener. Find out more:

www.marymary.ie

www.wearetheark.org

Jung made at least two incredible discoveries. He wrote about one of them, and we discussed it in our first episode in this series. The other discovery appears nowhere in his writings, but it may have been his greatest by far.

In this contemplation of the shadow we ask some questions, take a kind of inventory, that can help us detect the presence of the shadow so that we could begin to bring light to its contents. But first we consider some of what we need to have in place in order to work skillfully with our unconscious, including a sense of the soul or psyche that transcends even Jung's vision.

As part of our contemplation, we consider an artefact related to Jung that many people haven’t heard about, but which we should take time to consider. This is an episode you don’t want to miss, as it brings us to the place where philosophy, psychology, and spirituality (including ecology and a sense of the Cosmic and the mysterious) come together.

We consider wolves as a spiritual keystone species. We have considered the horse as a spiritual keystone species, and we can learn a lot from both Wolf and Horse as archetypal currents in the soul. Wolf is part of the mandala of the Dangerous Wisdom curriculum. In light of recent events in Wyoming and more broadly, this contemplation on the spirit of Wolf seems important and overdue. Includes reflections on the books, The Philosopher and the Wolf (by Mark Rowlands), Beyond Words (by Carl Safnia), and the books on the Yellowstone wolves by Rick McIntyre, which start with The Rise of Wolf 8.

https://dangerouswisdom.org/

How can we practice with Earth? How can we think with Earth? Can we allow our thinking and our practice of life to become undomesticated, wild, and indigenous again? In this dialogue, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, philosopher in the academy and Zen priest, joins us to discuss Dogen, Gary Snyder, and the possibilities for a practice of the wild that can heal self and world in mutuality.

In this episode we rewrite the headlines: Massive Harvard Study Reveals the True Wealth of Nations. What is the true wealth of nations? Isn’t it gross domestic product?

And if nations are comprised of people, what is our true wealth?

We’re thinking through the true wealth of nations in relation to our last contemplation. At that time, we considered the famous Grant Study, more formally known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development. If you haven’t heard about the study, it’s worth listening to that other contemplation of it first.

The present contemplation considers the paradigm shift we would need in order to make sense of the Harvard study—a revolution in our science and society, all in relation to the Gospel of Love that our science and our wisdom traditions now agree on.

Derrick Jensen's new book is called, Marijuana: A Love Story. It details his wild romance with this oft misunderstood plant teacher and medicine, and how the dream the Marijuana once offered people (a version of "the American Dream") became ruined by the corporatized capitalistic system.

From the book description: "In state after state, the wealth-building capacity of this extraordinary plant is now concentrating into the control of the already rich. From seed to smoke, legalization is eroding the lives and livelihoods of the people it was supposed to help: the patients, growers, trimmers, "mules," and activists who created the colorful and committed culture that is now under threat.We can end the war on weed without turning it into a war on small family growers-but it will depend on how much pressure we are willing to apply to force law makers to serve local communities rather than corporate interests. Marijuana: A Love Story is a report from the front, a reminder of how and why we fell in love with this plant, a cautionary tale of corporate power, and a call to once more "Free the Sacred Herb."'

Derrick Jensen is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Bright Green Lies, A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He is also a teacher, activist, and small farmer, and was named the poet-philosopher of the ecological movement by Democracy Now! In 2008, he was chosen as one of Utne Reader's 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World and won the Eric Hoffer Award. He is a cofounder of the organization Deep Green Resistance. Jensen has written for the New York Times Magazine, Audubon Magazine, and The Sun, and was a columnist at Orion Magazine. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University and a BS degree in mineral engineering physics from the Colorado School of Mines, and has taught creative writing at Eastern Washington University and Pelican Bay State Prison. He lives in Northern California on a property frequented by bears.

The poet William Butler Yeats had a passion for magic, and he offers us three principles of magic that we will explore through philosophical and scientific perspectives. Can we arrive at a scientific understanding of magic, beyond woo-woo? Following these principles will bring us into an exciting and mind-expanding journey.

Leslie Ellis, Ph.D.,RCC

Author, A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy

https://drleslieellis.com

A delicious discussion of the importance of dreams and some of the basics of how to approach them. Dr. Ellis wrote a book called, A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy that provides a highly accessible, yet insightful education on the nature of dreams and how to work with them. By offering a unified model, Dr. Ellis makes it possible for all of us (clinicians and non-clinicians) to begin to understand the importance of dreams, and to begin to work with them so as to receive the profound gifts they can bring to our own life and the life of the world we share.

Dr. Leslie Ellis is a leading expert in the use of experiential and somatic approaches in psychotherapy, in particular for working with dreams and nightmares. She is the author of A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy, has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and worked as a therapist in private practice in Vancouver, BC for more than 25 years.

She is a certifying coordinator and former president of The International Focusing Institute, and incorporates this gentle yet profound method of internal inquiry into her method of engaging with dreams. Leslie now offers dream study programs online, certifying clinicians in her unique method of embodied experiential dreamwork. She also teaches with the Jung Platform and the Polyvagal Institute.

Find out more: https://drleslieellis.com

Horses are both a mirror for the soul and a vehicle for the soul. Even if we don't think of ourselves as being really "into" horses, they are still a spiritual keystone species, and they can teach us a lot about ourselves, and lead us into the great mystery.

In this episode, we consider how horses threaten certain aspects of our identity, our sense of love, and in some ways our whole way of life in the dominant culture. Whether you have horses in your life or not, there's a lot to learn here.

Another installment in one of our ongoing pathways of contemplation: How to bring a little more wisdom, love, and beauty into our work with the medicines of this world.

In this episode, Sunny Strasburg, LMFT joins us to discuss ketamine, magic, and more.

Sunny Strasburg, LMFT is a psychedelic trainer, consultant, therapist, and presenter. Mrs Strasburg is an EMDR-certified trauma specialist, experienced and certified in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and trained in Internal Family Systems.

Mrs. Strasburg is a graduate of the Certification for Psychedelic Assisted Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies, trained in Ketamine, MDMA, and Psilocybin Assisted Psychotherapies. Sunny is the Clinical Director at TRIPP PsyAssist, developing virtual reality psychedelic support for therapists.

Sunny offers Ketamine therapy retreats, which she co-leads with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the originator of Internal Family Systems. She is a Senior Trainer at the Ketamine Training Center, co-facilitating KAP training with Bessel van der Kolk, Phil Wolfson, and other leaders in psychedelic and trauma psychology. Mrs. Strasburg also leads psychedelic therapy workshops and trainings around the world.

Sunny also specializes in attachment trauma, using an eclectic approach with the Gottman Couples Method and Jungian psychology. She offers Ketamine Assisted Therapy with individual sessions and group therapy retreats.

Sunny has developed original protocols using ketamine-assisted therapy and other trauma treatment methods, which she presents at conferences such as the 2021 EMDRIA Worldwide Virtual Conference, EMDRIA UK, and the Boston Trauma Conference. Sunny co-founded the nonprofit organization, Indra’s Net Coalition.

She is trained by MAPS, Compass Pathways, Ketamine Research Foundation, and Synthesis. Sunny hosts therapy retreats in Utah, Maryland, California, Wyoming, and Costa Rica. You can find out more at https://sunnystrasburgtherapy.com/

In our culture, we have placed a set of habitual notions about time on top of the soul’s instincts and intuitions about rhythm and temporality. The physicist David Bohm said that, “. . . every thought assumes time. Whether we discuss thought or anything else, we always take time for granted. And we take for granted the notion that everything exists in time. We don’t take for granted that time is an abstraction and a representation, but we take for granted that time is of the essence—reality—and that everything is existing in time, including thought.” What if we have some very unskillful notions about time? What if the evolution of our culture depends on shifting our relationship with time?

If you struggle with getting enough sleep, you aren't alone. Keep in mind: six hours or less per night on an ongoing basis seems about as bad as getting zero for two days straight.

As much as 41% of adults in the U.S. report short sleep, and as much as 84% of high school students report short sleep. Worse yet, 50-70 million U.S. citizens (perhaps more) qualify for a formal diagnosis of sleep disorder, ranging from insomnia to sleep apnea.

All of this should create a sense of urgent compassion for ourselves, each other, and the world. That has to do in part with the many mental and physical ailments connected with sleep disruption. Not getting enough quality sleep AND dream seems to go together with a concerning list of illnesses, including cognitive decline.

Moreover, a lack of quality sleep and dream can limit our skill and our potential in life, leaving us less capable to take skillful, creative, wise, compassionate, and beautiful action in our lives, on behalf of our own wellbeing and also on behalf of the whole community of life. Sleep and dream go fully together with our life and our world, and the problems we see in our own life and world thus go together with the crisis of sleep and dream we now face.

The present dialogue goes together with the dialogue with psychologist and dream tender Dr. Leslie Ellis, released as Episode 44. If you missed that one, I encourage you to check it out.

In the present episode, Dr. Rubin Naiman joins us to contemplate the dangerous wisdom of sleep and dreams, reflecting on some of the things we need to begin to open to and keep in mind if we want to allow the power of sleep and dreams help us to heal self and world at the same time.

But the episode begins with some reflections on Hermes from your friendly neighborhood soul doctor. Hermes is, after all, a guide of souls, a lord of dreams, and a magician with the capacity to carry lead us into the realm of sleep and dream. Then we move into a delightful dialogue that I think you will enjoy. You can find Rubin's bio and contact info below.

Rubin Naiman, PhD, FAASM, is a psychologist, author, Fellow in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine where he has taught seminars on sleep and dreams to physicians for twenty-five years. Rubin pioneered the development of integrative approaches to sleep and dreams, integrating scientific with depth psychological, transpersonal, and spiritual perspectives. He has taught and consulted about sleep and dream matters in a dozen countries around the globe.

Over the years, his work has included training doctoral psychology students, dreamwork with hospice patients and survivors, and establishing and directing sleep and dream health programs for Canyon Ranch and Miraval Resorts. Rubin has also served as a creativity consultant for the entertainment industry, which included travel with a world-renowned rock band for two years.

Rubin is the author of numerous consumer and professional works on sleep and dreams including Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming and Awakening, Hush: A Book of Bedtime Contemplations, Healthy Sleep, an audio program co-authored with Andrew Weil.

More recently, he published a seminal paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences entitled, Dreamless: The Silent Epidemic of REM Sleep Loss as well as Oxford University Press Medical text chapters entitled, Dream Medicine and The Future of Sleep Medicine.

In his spare time, Rubin is an avid hiker and amateur photographer. He has about seven grand kids and believes that children and dogs offer the greatest hope for the betterment of our planet.

Rubin Naiman, PhD, FAASM

Director, NewMoon Sleep, LLC

Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine

  Andrew Weil Center for Integrative...

What happens when two philosophers and a neuroscientist walk into a podcast? They talk about things they wish more people knew. If people only knew how magical the world is, they might take better care of it, and relate to it with a greater sense of reverence and wonder. It's not that our reverence and wonder should depend on the existence of woo-woo phenomena, but that nature's superness is palpable in every direction if we would only slow down, brush the cobwebs of dogmatism away, and relax into the mind of Nature and the nature of mind. Mystery and magic abound.

Two of my favorite people return to talk about that magic and mystery. Mona Sobhani and Sharon Hewitt Rawlette each joined us earlier in the year, and now they have come together to create a larger ecology of mind and swap stories about the superness of Nature.

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette is a philosopher and interdisciplinary researcher specializing in anomalous phenomena and their implications for our understanding of consciousness. She earned her PhD from New York University in 2008, studying under Thomas Nagel, and taught at Brandeis University before leaving academia for an independent writing career. She currently serves on the advisory board of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies and is a supporting researcher for the International Centre for Reincarnation Research. Her books include The Source and Significance of Coincidences, Beyond Death, and The Feeling of Value.

sharonrawlette.com 

Mona Sobhani is a cognitive neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. She is the author of Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe.  Her work has been featured in the New York Times, VOX, and other media outlets. She lives in Los Angeles.

To support Mona's neuroscience of consciousness symposium go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-science-spirituality-consciousness-event

A dialogue with the poet Grace Wells, in relation to her latest book of poetry, The Church of the Love of the World (https://www.dedaluspress.com/). Grace is an award-winning eco-poet and nature writer living on the West Coast of Ireland. Nature, spirit-of-place and environmental concern are the large themes of her writing. She is an organic gardener and orchard-planter who hosts The Little Sanctuary a small retreat space for human, plant and creaturely species, and she regularly volunteers with Hometree a native woodland charity, which looks after biodiversity and encourages the reforestation of large landscape areas.

We speak about wonder, grief, the sacredness of the world, the fierceness of love, and the mysteries of grasses. A few references from our dialogue:

Grace refers to the name the Irish call themselves: Tuath Dé. Long before the publication of her book, Grace and I spoke about this name, and I elaborated it briefly in an essay—an elaboration Grace enjoyed very much, so here it is:

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As the poet Grace Wells recently reminded me, the indigenous Irish called themselves Tuath Dé—one of the most wonderful things a human people have ever called themselves, for the word “Tuath” signifies both people and place, and “Dé” signifies the goddess. Therefore, in a gesture of intimacy, in a gesture of wisdom, love, and beauty, they called themselves “the people of the goddess” and simultaneously called themselves “the place of the goddess”. They wonderstood power and place, wonderstood rootedness in place and intimacy with the vast Cosmos. 

They wonderstood that Sophia abides as landscapes, as ecologies, as the sacred powers and inconceivable causes flowing as “power-and-place,” and they wonderstood that when we attune with sacredness and with living places, Sophia abides in us, through us, as us. Meanwhile, the dominant culture seems characterized by, as Underhill put it for us, those who “stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have never truly known.”

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https://dangerouswisdom.org/dw-blog/who-is-sophia

The fuller contemplation of, “Who is Sophia?” may resonate with you.

We also discuss Dōgen and his insights into, and pointings toward, the teachings of the world—all beings, including supposedly “insentient” beings—and the essence of meditation. These insights and pointings appear in Keisei Sanshoku—Velley Sounds, Mountain Forms—and Jisho Zanmai. That latter term resists translation, signifying something like Self-Experience or Self-Verifying of Well-Put-Togetherness, or, Well-Put-Togetherness of Self-Experience or Self-Verifying. It is like the meditative state of self-arising experience, not dependent on subject or object, or the self-verification of the mystery of the cosmos by means of intimacy—the mystery verifying or experiencing itself.

The following essay discusses this meditative state in relation to other themes of the dialogue between philosopher and poet, including the seductions of Indo-European languages and worldviews, and the need for all of us to reindigenize:

https://dangerouswisdom.org/dw-blog/hologram-ecogram-mandala-part-iv-drawing-closer-to-visionary-lovewisdom

Dōgen offered related lessons that we can work with as an elaboration of, and invitation into, the special meditative mind that allows us to fully receive the teachings of the world, and receive the magic and medicine of the world as well. Dōgen there refers to the properly well-put-together mind as 自受用三昧, which has to do with the well-put-togetherness of our true mind. 自...

Embodiment and somatics are big business. But do our practices of embodiment and somatics subtly maintain the duality between mind and body, Nature and culture, human and the larger community of life? And do we lose track of the fact that what we refer to as "my body" is usually an abstraction?

In the worst case scenario, “embodiment” becomes another form of spiritual materialism, in which we bypass the more serious demands of a philosophical life with rationalizations so perfect they sound like the voice of liberation. An expansive (skillful and realistic) vision can help us to liberate mind and body (mind and Nature), and let the magic that can flow through them begin to find us again.

How can Buddhist philosophy empower us to work more skillfully with the medicines of our world—including psychedelic medicines like DMT, LSD, MDMA, and others?

Psychedelic medicines have a burgeoning presence in our culture. People have experienced healing and transformation with them. How can we work with them, and with our whole lives, in accord with wisdom, love, and beauty? With a more holistic approach, these medicines could empower us in ways that might yet surprise us.

In this contemplation we begin with the source of the term, “psychedelic”. By looking at where it came from, and what its fuller meaning points to, we can consider more deeply how a holistic philosophy of life like Buddhism can open up potentials for us to become the medicine the World needs right now.

Among other things, we will discuss one of the most psychedelic texts in the history of world philosophy: The Avatamsaka Sutra, or Flower Ornament Scripture. This is one of my favorite books of all time, and I think you will appreciate the way it expands the imagination and vibrates with a kind of field of enlightenment energy.

The nature and scale of ecological degradation can provoke empathy distress that devolves into depression, despair, anxiety, antipathy, avoidance, and outright denial. But ecological awareness and ecological education can help us to see how much power we have when we become attuned to spiritual and ecological realities. We can actually help to heal the world—each and every one of us, wherever we live.

Imagine a national park bigger than Yosemite, bigger than Yellowstone, bigger than the Grand Canyon. Imagine a national park bigger than all three of those combined. Now imagine a national park bigger than those three combined with the addition of the Adirondacks, the Grand Tetons, the Great Smoky Mountains, Denali, Olympic, and Sequoia—bigger than all of those put together!

Imagine all the wild beings doing the work they do to further the conditions of life, all the work they do to make your life and my life possible. Imagine those beings thriving, and imagine humans thriving more in the process.

Finally, imagine that this park can become a reality—and that reality depends on you. It doesn’t depend on you in some burdensome, terrible way. You don’t have to give yourself a spiritual or physical hernia. Rather, it depends on things you can do at your own scale, something enjoyable and rewarding. And something done in the key of wonder, something that can open up the ecology of your own mind.

This describes Doug Tallamy’s project, detailed in his book, Nature’s Best Hope. This is a good news kind of book, and it can dispel our feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, replacing them with beauty, wonder, wildness, and mutual empowerment.

Doug is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 112 research publications and has taught insect related courses for over four decades. His principle research goal involves arriving at a better understanding of the many ways insects interact with plants, and how these interactions create diversity in animal communities.

Doug’s books include Bringing Nature Home, The Living Landscape (co-authored with Rick Darke), The Nature of Oaks (winner of the American Horticultural Society’s 2022 book award), and Nature’s Best Hope (a New York Times Best Seller). In 2021 he cofounded Homegrown National Park with Michelle Alfandari (HomegrownNationalPark.org).

https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org/

What is ecological thinking? Why does it matter? A contemplation for everyone—a series of contemplations for everyone. It’s an incredibly important series, because the idea of ecological thinking as we will approach it relates to the basic question of why we have so many problems in our world, and how we can resolve them, and it relates to the nature of mind and the mind of Nature, and how we realize our highest potentials. In other words, it’s about what we are.

The dominant cultural worldview is based upon extraction and exploitation practices that have brought us to the precipice of social, environmental, and climate collapse. Braiding poetic storytelling, climate justice and deep cultural analyses, and the collective knowledge of Earth-centered cultures, The Story is in Our Bones opens a portal to restoration and justice beyond the end of a world in crisis.

Author, activist, and changemaker Osprey Orielle Lake weaves together ecological, mythical, political, and cultural understandings and shares her experiences working with global leaders, systems-thinkers, climate justice activists, and Indigenous Peoples. She seeks to summon a new way of being and thinking in the Anthropocene, which includes transforming the interlocking crises of colonialism, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and ecocide, to build thriving Earth communities for all.

Lake calls forth historical memory of who we are in the Earth's lineage to bring into being the world we keenly long for, at the delicate threshold of great peril or great promise.

For anyone grieving our collective loss and wanting to take action, The Story is in Our Bones is a vital guide to remaking our world. This hopeful, engaging, and creatively lyrical work reminds readers that another world is possible, and provides a desperately needed antidote to the pervasive despair of our time.

Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). She works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Osprey’s writing about climate justice, relationships with nature, women in leadership, and other topics has been featured in The Guardian, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist, Ms. Magazine and other publications. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area on Coast Miwok lands.

To learn more, go to:

https://ospreyoriellelake.earth

www.wecaninternational.org

It may seem strange to ask it, but one way to put the most important question for humanity right now is this: Can we learn to inhabit reality?

By implication, this question suggests we currently inhabit delusion. That’s what the wisdom traditions of the world—including many indigenous traditions—try to make rather clear to all of us living in, or infected by, the dominant culture.

This divergence from reality appears in many ways and in a variety of forms. One of the most crazy-making forms comes to us in the economic and political realm, when business and political “leaders” tell us that our need for a thriving and just world isn’t “realistic”. When it comes to justice and ecological health—on which our personal well-being depends—the “leaders” tell us that reality itself isn’t “realistic”. 

When reality itself becomes “unrealistic,” we face the potential for grave catastrophe—not to mention general unwellness. Sadly, we have become rather accustomed to thinking of reality as “unrealistic”.

The greatest experiment of our time will is the one to find out if inhabiting reality is possible for us, before it's too late.

It’s an impressive study, the longest scientific study of adult development, conducted across decades (it started in 1938). Referred to as the Grant Study or the Harvard Study of Adult Development, this famous research program has gotten several rounds of press.

But the press coverage seems to miss something incredibly vital and far-reaching in this study. Even the books have failed to make it clear. In a way, we could suggest the lead researchers of the study missed this finding—didn’t notice it, didn’t fully grok it, or didn’t understand how crucial it is.

This unstated finding is the most important finding about happiness and a meaningful and fulfilling life that we have.

Wisdom and love can bring us profound revelations about ourselves, our world, the nature of reality, and the meaning of life. But a special kind of fear—sometimes conscious, but mostly operating unconsciously—can keep those revelations at bay.

Do we put up scarecrows to keep away reality, intimacy, and wonder—perhaps even magic?

In this contemplation we inquire into this spiritual or existential fear and the challenges it presents. It's active in our lives and in our world, right here and right now. Facing it can empower and liberate us and our world at the same time. Time to take down the scarecrows, embrace the mystery, and let the magic start to work.

Lars Chittka is the author of the book The Mind of a Bee and Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary College of the University of London. He is also the founder of the Research Centre for Psychology at Queen Mary. He is known for his work on the evolution of sensory systems and cognition using insect-flower interactions as a model system. Chittka has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of animal cognition and its impact on evolutionary fitness studying bumblebees and honeybees.

I often say that human beings have lost the sense of the mindedness all around us—that we exist fully embedded in mind. In this episode we cultivate an appreciation of the remarkable mind of a bee.

How can Buddhist philosophy empower us to work more skillfully with the medicines of our world—including psychedelic medicines like DMT, LSD, MDMA, and others?

This contemplation was inspired in part by the surge of interest in psychedelic medicines in the past decade or so, and also in part by the dialogue I had with Rick Strassman, author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, and DMT and the Soul of Prophecy. Rick found himself turning away from Buddhist philosophy as a framework for modeling and working with psychedelic experiences. While I applaud his work to show how the Hebrew Bible can help support working with psychedelic medicines, I disagree with his suggestions that Buddhist philosophy doesn’t provide every bit as skillful a support for us.

In this contemplation we begin to consider the relevance of Buddhist philosophy for maximizing the benefits psychedelic—or any other medicines—offer us. Whether we work with horse medicine, forest medicine, the medicine of music, the medicine of dance, or any one of the psychedelic medicines, we will find profound guidance in Buddhist philosophy for realizing the fullest potentials of our path of healing and transformative insight.

After we lay out some juicy philosophical reflections in this and a following contemplation, we will consider a kind of philosopher’s guide to working with the medicines of our world. What are the practices we should have in place as we approach the work we need to do to heal self and world at the same time?

From the Wisdom, Love, and Beauty archives. A breath of fresh air, even if you listened to this one last year.

Sometimes we get lucky enough to experience a shocking moment when the great mystery confronts us so directly that we have to say, "This changes everything!" In this contemplation, we consider the nature of "this changes everything," how the dominant culture tries to keep those experiences at bay, and how we can begin to think about them with greater care—perhaps even begin to invite them in.

Our guide is Dr. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. We reflected on some of her work in our very first episode this year, the one on Apocalyptic LoveWisdom. Her experiences and ideas came up again in a recent dialogue with the composer and jazz musician Carole Nelson. That dialogue is already available, and I promised to make this one available here as well. Enjoy!

The Burning Man phenomenon involves a lot of good intentions and a lot of wonderful experiences—aesthetic, gastronomic, social, and even spiritual. It emerges from, and thus expresses, the incongruencies and general confusion of the pattern of insanity, even as it stands in defiance of that pattern of insanity. In some sense, it gives us an image of conquest consciousness wrestling with itself.

Lia Helena Rubinoff, a friend and fellow philosopher, went to Burning Man this year. She joins us for some reflective dialogue about the wonders and the dangers of the Burning Man phenomenon. We try to honor the good while getting as honest as possible about the not-so-good.

One of Sophia's owls of wisdom made friends with a delightful and insightful human, the author and ecologist Carl Safina. If you enjoyed My Octopus Teacher, you will love hearing about Carl Safina's fabulous feathered friend, Alfie. Carl's book, Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, is a wonderful work of philosophy and ecology, and I think you'll enjoy this dialogue as much as I did. It was a great pleasure to speak with him.

Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. His writing has won a MacArthur “genius” prize; Pew, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundation Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. He grew up raising pigeons, training hawks and owls, and spending as many days and nights in the woods and on the water as he could. Safina is now the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean, which can be viewed free at PBS.org. His writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, Audubon, Yale e360, and National Geographic, and on the Web at Huffington Post, CNN.com, Medium, and elsewhere. Safina is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent books are, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, and Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends.

Find out more at https://www.carlsafina.org/

For photos of Alfie:

https://www.instagram.com/meetalfietheowl/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551548969047

Adam Smith's ignorance remains a major danger--at this point, a danger to life as we know it. We will also consider one more gem of Adam Smith's dangerous wisdom: class war. Long before Karl Marx, Smith recognized class war, and tried to warn us. We look at how that relates to the shift from moral statistics to market statistics, and how infection with the capitalistic style of consciousness and thought begins to shape our world. Examples include slavery, Exxon (and the fossil-fuel industry in general), Ford (and other car makers), and more.

Our need for wholeness has revealed itself clearly in many ways, and one of them relates to trauma. And, that puts us in dangerous wisdom territory, because talking about trauma can provoke anxiety and confusion. How can we relate most skillfully to the experiences we consider traumatic, and to our lives and our world as we metabolize those experiences?

What is the great field of new discoveries? Where will the truly paradigm-shifting breakthroughs come from?

The great psychologist and philosopher William James invites us to see how our next big breakthrough will come from what we now see as noise in the data, as impossible, as absurd.

In this suggestion, James joins a vast group of philosophers who understand the true spiritual meaning of the impossible. He also points us directly at a vast collection of data that right now doesn’t fit in the paradigms that rule the science of the dominant culture. 

James himself became one such datum, one such gift to our possible transformation. But it terrified him. Together, we will try to understand why, and what it all means for our mutual insight, mutual liberation, and mutual health and healing.

Dean Radin joins us to discuss some of his paradigm-busting research, and he shares a wild story about the magical power of love and the benefits of a trained mind. A dialogue you don't want to miss.

Peer-reviewed papers we discuss or that might be of interest:

Consciousness and the Double-Slit Interference Pattern

Compassionate Intention As a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Cancer Patients

Metaphysics of the Tea Ceremony: A Randomized Trial Investigating the Roles of Intention and Belief on Mood While Drinking Tea

Electrocortical Activity Prior to Unpredictable Stimuli in Meditators and Nonmeditators

You can learn more about Dean at his website:

https://www.deanradin.com/

It's worth your time to look up some of Dean's other research in your favorite database.

We live in a fragmented culture. That means our attempts at holism, including any supposed holism of body and mind, could involve significant fragmentation and ignorance. We need holism and vision in order to make sure our practices of embodiment heal self and world at the same time.

In honor of Interdependence Day, celebrating the total interwovenness of all things, we speak with Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, a philosopher specializing in the anomalous.

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette is a philosopher and interdisciplinary researcher specializing in anomalous phenomena and their implications for our understanding of consciousness. She earned her PhD from New York University in 2008, studying under Thomas Nagel, and taught at Brandeis University before leaving academia for an independent writing career.

She currently serves on the advisory board of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies and is a supporting researcher for the International Centre for Reincarnation Research. Her books include The Source and Significance of Coincidences, Beyond Death, and The Feeling of Value.

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, PhD

sharonrawlette.com 

Author of:

Psychology Today blog Mysteries of Consciousness

BICS award-winning essay Beyond Death: The Best Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness

The Source and Significance of Coincidences: A Hard Look at the Astonishing Evidence

The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness

The Supreme Victory of the Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Synchronicity

One of Smith's biggest philosophical blunders. We continue with the key elements of Adam Smith's dangerous ignorance, focusing on a major case of that ignorance--one that still haunts us today--and how it relates to his idea of "the invisible hand".

Yeats tells us, "the borders of our memories are as shifting as the borders of our mind, and that our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself." In this contemplation, we consider how that relates to horses, trauma, and the mysteries of remembering something that hasn't happened yet.

An essential aspect of philosophy or LoveWisdom: How do we move forward in our lives? Maybe you have some problem or challenge in your personal life, or in your professional life. Or maybe you can sense the general stuckness of humanity, and maybe you even take that to be your own stuckness. Given all the confusion of the world, all the fear and uncertainty within our own soul and in the soul of the world, how can we find genuinely creative and beautiful ways to cultivate our lives forward, and cultivate the life of the world forward at the same time?

It turns out we can only move forward in the most vitalizing and liberating ways if we also move backward at the same time. It’s an aspect of one of the basic paradoxes of LoveWisdom, and we’re going to explore it in today’s episode.

If we live in a magical way, if we know the world in a magical way, then we can know things that must remain unknowable to someone not living that way.

We might think it has to do with mere belief, as if believing in magic becomes a self-fulling prophecy. Not so. A properly philosophical practice of magic seeks experience, not belief.

The fundamental wholeness of the Cosmos makes magic possible. Practicing in accord with this wholeness allows magic to happen. Magic is the practice of wholeness.

The Artefact: Holographic Habits and Healing, Part 1

We inquire into the nature of habit and freedom, the meaning of life, and how we can do our jobs and live together while feeling good in our mind, heart, and body, and feeling good about ourselves, about how we are living and loving.

We arise embedded in mind, with mind in every direction. Human beings in the dominant culture seem to miss the mindedness all around them.

The “modern” human walks around with “ideas” “in” their head. This localization of mind remains untenable on scientific grounds, and does not fit with most of the spiritual/philosophical traditions we have inherited.

 Nature is already Minded. Because of this, we need to mind Nature—that is, attend to Nature, and also allow Nature’s mindedness to spontaneously presence itself in/through/as us and our World.

We likewise need to allow Nature to mind us. That will mean liberating ourselves into the nonduality of Nature and Culture—liberating ourselves into larger ecologies of mind. We can’t really let Nature care for us, guide us, teach us, and even liberate us if we maintain a false duality between Nature and culture.

Engage with your philosophical self by checking out part two on The Others and the Interwovenness of Earth and Soul. These two contemplations belong to a larger mandala revealing pathways to better ways of knowing and being, living and loving.

UFOs, UAPs, Alien Abduction Experiences…What can they tell us about the nature of reality, the nature of mind, and the mind of Nature? How can we relate to these experiences as a call to journey into mystery and discover deeper truths about ourselves and the vast Cosmos? We can learn a lot just by dropping the dualistic notion that these experiences are either literal “space creatures,” or they are a matter of delusion, deception, hallucination, superstition.

In this episode, we consider UFO and abduction experiences as the mystery itself trying to get our attention, inviting us into the superness of Nature, and our own superness too.  

UFOs have become more widely accepted as presenting an exceptional set of phenomena that defy our currently available science and technology. Abduction experiences are both vividly real for those who undergo them, and far more widespread than many of us might guess. This is a set of phenomena worth learning about.

Adam Smith's not exactly the most brilliant philosopher, even though he’s rather perceptive and clever in some ways. He’s not even really a philosopher so much as a professor of philosophy, and that kind of writing rarely interests me.

But what shocked me about his writing was both the nature of his ignorance and the nature of some of his insights. His writing seems perfectly symptomatic of the dominant culture.

By thinking through economic ideas from a philosophical viewpoint, we can come to a little better understanding of the dominant culture, its influence on the world, how we got to this tragic historical moment, and how we can potentially create a shift.

Because of the importance of this subject matter, and the central role of capitalism in our lives, we will have a series of contemplations and interviews about all of this, and try to creatively imagine ourselves forward, into a truly wiser, more loving, more beautiful world.

Our best science and philosophy suggest very clearly that we don't know what thinking IS. If large ecologies are mind, what is thinking? If mountains think better than most human beings, how can we learn to think like a mountain?

Dialogue with a spiritual visionary. Cynthia Jurs experienced that almost comical spiritual archetypal pattern of meeting a wise old yogi in a mountain cave. She thought long and hard about what to ask him. His reply sent her on a remarkable spiritual pilgrimage.

In this very special episode of Dangerous Wisdom, Cynthia shares her incredible journey, which she documents in her book, Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World. This is one of my favorite guests!

Cynthia Jurs received Dharmacharya transmission from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh to become a teacher in his Order of Interbeing in 1994. In 2018, she was made an honorary lama in the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in recognition of her thirty years of pilgrimage into diverse communities and ecosystems around the world to carry out the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Practice. Today Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia that is deeply rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous cultures, and devoted to collective awakening. Cynthia leads meditations, retreats, courses, and pilgrimages to support the emergence of a global community of engaged and embodied sacred activists.

You can find her teachings and connect with her global community at: www.GaiaMandala.net

and learn about her book at: www.summonedbytheearth.org

Derrick Jensen brings his unique style of dangerous wisdom to a dialogue about the bright green lies of the mainstream environmental movement. We can think of that movement as an attempt to establish solar-powered samsara, solar-powered suffering, or even solar-powered insanity.

We need to get beyond this style of consciousness, but to do that we first have to confront our situation with clarity. Derrick Jensen is the author of more than 25 books, including most recently Bright Green Lies, which he co-wrote with Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert.

If you don’t look for Sophia in the shadows, She might come leaping out of them. The consequences can become severe.

“Shadow work” has gotten increasing attention in the dominant culture. This tends to carry the risk of trivialization and increasing spiritual materialism. Here we take a philosophical look at the unconscious and the nature of shadow work. Generally speaking, the dominant culture and most of the people of that culture haven’t come to terms with the unconscious, even though the spiritual and philosophical traditions warn us of its power to keep us in delusion. We avoid in the unconscious in part because, as Freud put it, the revelation of its presence and significance struck a major blow to the western ego. How can we more fully face up to the unconscious and begin to more skillfully work with it? We begin a short series of contemplations into these matters, building up to the sheer terror that the vastness of the psyche can evoke in us. In this first contemplation, we won’t rush into that terror, but begin to gather our senses and our sensibility to consider the questions and challenges the unconscious presents.

This episode relates to a whole series on transforming our sense of right lifestyle and right livelihood. Check out others in the series: The Magnificent Swindle (56); The Others and the Interwovenness of Earth and Soul (55); The Feedback Loop of Earth and Soul (54); The Deepest, Darkest, Dirtiest Secret of Our Stress, Strain, Trauma, Anxiety, Depression, Imposter Syndrome, Burn Out, and Loneliness (53); Famous Harvard Study misses the most Crucial Finding (47); Massive Harvard Study Reveals the True Wealth of Nations (48); Love, Luck, and the Tue Wealth of Nations: Seeds of a Gaia Scienza (49); and others--with more to come!

In this dialogue we continue our inquiry into capitalism, its problems, and the possibilities for evolving ourselves beyond it. Della Z Duncan joins us offer her keen perspective and insights. If you find economics boring, Della will bring it back to life. If you feel very much at home with economic theory . . . Della will bring it back to life.

Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist who supports individuals working to better align their values with their work as a Right Livelihood Coach, helps transition businesses and organizations to more sustainable, equitable, and democratic forms as a post-capitalist consultant, hosts the Upstream Podcast, challenging mainstream economic thinking through documentaries and conversations including most recently, The Green Transition Pt 1: The Problem with Green Capitalism, and teaches and facilitates retreats and workshops on Systems Change and Economics all over the world.

Della is also a Senior Fellow of Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute in the London School of Economics, the Course Development Manager of Fritjof Capra’s Capra Course on the Systems View of Life, a Gross National Happiness Master Trainer, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and a Senior Lecturer at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Santa Cruz Permaculture, Vital Cycles Permaculture, and Gaia Education. She holds an MA in Economics for Transition with Distinction from Schumacher College, a BA in International Relations and Sociology with highest honors from the University of California, Davis, a graduate certificate in Authentic Leadership from Naropa University, and has completed Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects Intensive Program.

Dangerous Wisdom with a friend from the Emerald Isle. Take a journey to Ireland without leaving home, and take a leap into the sacred wells of wisdom, wonder, and magic.

Join us as we contemplate the power of place and the places of our empowerment. The delightful and insightful Manchán Magan and I read and reflect on passages from his book and other sources of wisdom, inviting you into your own practice of sacred place.

In addition to reading Manchán's beautiful book, you can get some extra, free support on reconnecting to the land using the link below for a free download of "Practices of a Sacred Place," from the Wisdom-Based Teaching, Learning, and Evolution handbook. The wisdom traditions can offer us beautiful guidance on how to begin to reconnect with the mind of Nature and the nature of mind, and this set of practices provides an excellent foundation:

https://dangerouswisdom.org/practices-of-a-sacred-place

About our guest:

Manchán Magan has written books on his travels in Africa, India and South America. He writes occasionally for The Irish Times, and presents the Almanac of Ireland podcast for RTÉ. He has made dozens of documentaries on issues of world culture for TG4, RTÉ, & Travel Channel. His books include Thirty-Two Words for Field; Listen to the Land Speak; Tree Dogs, Banshee Fingers and Other Words For Nature; and Wolf-Men and Water Hounds. With Antic-Ham, he’s collaborated on two art books for Redfoxpress. https://www.manchan.com/

And if you're listening close to the time this episode was released, Manchán's making bread and butter :

https://www.manchan.com/arán---im

Embodiment and somatics are big business. We need to recover our balance and our sanity, and heal our wounding in relation to embodiment. How can we do it in a way that minimizes spiritual materialism and prevents all these practices from becoming part of the self-help catastrophe and the continued elaboration of the pattern of insanity? Reflecting on some common errors of embodiment and how we can transcend them might give us some much needed nourishment.

How can we inhabit interwovenness? This is like asking:

Can truth be inhabited?

Can truth be embodied?

We consider these deep questions (in relation to DIY architecture) with Dr. Sarah Breen Lovett. Sarah is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Manager of the Future Building Initative at Monash Art, Design & Architecture MADA. Breen Lovett has instigated and been included in many exhibitions, symposiums and publications at the interdisciplinary meeting point of art and architecture. Her PhD dissertation was titled, “Expanded Architectural Awareness: Exploring Intersections of Architecture and Expanded Cinema.” Recent publications include "Expanded Architecture: Temporal Formal", published in cooperation with the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, by AADR; and a chapters in "Flow: Between Interior and Landscape” published by Bloomsbury;  "Inter and Transdisciplinary Relationships in Architecture" by AITNER'; "Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures" by Springer; and "Architecture Filmmaking" by Intellect.

Love is a trainable skill, and luck is an inevitable ingredient in our lives. Our current science challenges the notion of the sovereign individual, the importance of love, and the need for a paradigm shift. The Harvard Study of Adult Development goes together with other data to invite us to question the nature and the role of love, luck, and the true wealth of nations. The Harvard Study also supports the need for a new kind of science.

Socrates was initiated by a priestess into the mysteries of wisdom, love, and beauty. A modern-day priestess joins a modern-day philosopher for dialogue and dangerous wisdom.

Mona Sobhani joins us to discuss her book, Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe. Mona is a cognitive neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, VOX, and other media outlets. She lives in Los Angeles.

Part 2 in a short series. The dominant culture tends to trivialize many of the spiritual teachings and practices that present a threat to it, or a threat to the egos within it. We get McMindfulness because a genuine practice of meditation, as part of a holistic and skillful philosophy of life, results in citizens who want nothing to do with many of the core practices of the dominant culture.

Shadow work runs the risk of the same kind of trivialization, such that we'll end up nibbling on McShadow nuggets and thinking we've confronted the vastness of the psyche. Meanwhile, the pattern of insanity will continue to unfold.

In this contemplation we try to consider a few things about the shadow and the psyche that help us to understand its importance, and to get some sense of the consequences of any kind of avoidance on our part of the sometimes unpleasant or even frightening work of freeing ourselves from deception—both self-deception and the deceptions of the dominant culture.

Note: For most listeners, it will be helpful and even essential to start with episode 1 :-)

What is the difference between the way human beings think and the way Nature functions? What is the patterning that connects all things? What is the meaning of the phrase, “We are a patterning of primordial awareness?”

Patterning. Isn’t an object. In fact, we suffer because we turn our patterning into objects. We mistake primordial awareness, which is open and spacious, for something solid.

We treat the manifestations of patterning as objects, rather than as a dance of patterning, a dance of pure relationality, which we ourselves are—intimately.

Jay Tompt joins us for some economic reflections in the spirit of E.F. Schumacher. As part of our dialogue, Jay shares an inspiring idea you can put top use in your own community, to germinate sprouts of wisdom, love, and beauty: The One-Day Incubator.

Jay is a co-founder of the Totnes REconomy Centre, a lecturer for Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College, an associate lecturer in economics at Plymouth University as well as a regular teacher on our post-graduate economics programmes.  He co-developed the Transition Network REconomy Project’s Local Economic Blueprint course and handbook, co-founded the REconomy Centre, and developed the Local Entrepreneur Forum model.

https://campus.dartington.org/schumacher-college/

https://www.dartington.org/

https://reconomycentre.org/author/jtompt/

We can only overcome fragmentation if we can begin to admit how much it has infected us, and if we can admit that we don't fully understand holism. Psychedelics and other medicines demand a revitalized sense of healing and wholeness, learning and culture, mind and Nature, self and World.

In this contemplation, we try to sense the ways we may not understand, let alone wonderstand, the notion of a holistic approach to life and love, to healing and transformation. On this basis we can then move on to outline some of the basic elements of a holistic philosophy of life.

Dr. Tawni Tidwell is an exceptional—and exceptionally interesting—person. She is the first person from the dominant culture to go through the whole Tibetan medical curriculum and earn a Tibetan medical degree. She also has a Ph.D. in bio-cultural anthropology. And her impressive experience and insight go beyond even this already remarkable education. We discuss her education and some aspects of Tibetan medicine. This is one of my favorite dialogues with one of my most favorite guests, and I look forward to having Tawni-la back to inquire further into the nature of health, healing, and liberation.

A little singing and swearing, to help us arrive at our awesome presence.

Humus, humility, homo sapiens, and Om share a common root, and considering their interwovenness can help us to touch our basic dignity. In this contemplation, the first to have both swearing and singing, we look at some elements of the dominant culture’s way of living that indicate how Nature has gotten pushed into the shadow. We consider the architectural manifestos of Hundertwasser, the memories of Jung, and the teachings of world philosophers who seek to help us find our awesome presence, even in the most mundane or seemingly profane activities of life.

The megafire narrative . . . Wherever you live, you likely depend on forest ecologies. Even though the western U.S. has gotten a lot of press for wildfires, fire affects us all, forest integrity affects us all, and ecological ignorance affects us all.

In this dialogue with Chad Hanson, forest ecologist and director of the John Muir Project, we confront the megafire myths and the bad science done in the name of forest ecology. Chad's book, Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate (University of Kentucky Press), serves as the framework for our dialogue.

This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it. It reads like a great mystery tale, and Chad gets to the bottom of the downright dastardly intrigues that perpetuate and sow seeds of ecological ignorance while putting us all at risk.

This dialogue covers some of the most important ideas in the book, and it serves as an excellent way to begin to heal from unskillful views and limited perceptions. You're in for a treat.

A magnificent swindle attempts to keep us from realizing true peace and happiness. How can we overcome it? We must begin by seeing through it, with the help of Lewis Mumford, Walter Kaufmann, C.G. Jung, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. We consider addiction, domestication, distraction, and the material bribe we all must keep ratifying in order for the pattern of insanity to perpetuate itself. We can stop ratifying it here and now.

A philosophical story, based in fact and imagination, a rooted in the nature of mind and the mind of Nature.

Kate Rudd joins us to talk about a short and highly accessible chapter from the classic book seeking to integrate economics and wisdom: Small Is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Small Is Beautiful, Dangerous Wisdom will host a series of dialogues with faculty and alumni of Schumacher College.

Schumacher's book is exceptionally relevant today, as we have continued the pattern of insanity he sought to question, and his insights and suggestions still offer us the possibility to arrive at better ways of knowing and being, better ways of organizing our culture, and better ways of relating with each other and the larger world. Kate joins us to discuss the chapter on scale, and to discuss her own work in regenerative economics.

Kate is a multilingual research consultant, facilitator and writer working at the intersection of inner development, social innovation and transformational change. She supports organisations contributing to social and ecological regeneration to catalyse transformative change through insight, strategy and communication.

She holds and MA in Regenerative Economics with Distinction from Schumacher College and first-class undergraduate degrees in Applied Languages, Economics, and Law from universities in France, Spain and the UK.

At present Kate is:

· Collaborating with the UNDP’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance as a Local Food Systems Leadership Consultant.

· Conducting her own academic research at the intersection of food systems transformation and the inner dimensions of transformative change.

· Engaged in business incubation projects and content creation projects for several grassroots orgs promoting regenerative agriculture in Africa and Latin America.

Here's a link to Kate's research: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DIVaeZu8BjPVBbDK4lveTq0YTlKO5-Au/view

In this episode, we go into the wisdom, love, and beauty archives to re-release our series on magic. If you haven’t heard this series, I think you’re in for a treat. It’s like a box of wisdom donuts—paleo superfood wisdom donuts for the soul.

We begin with events from my own life, in which the experience of magic transformed a situation of tension and aggression into spaciousness and wonder.

If you have listened to some or all of this series before, these podcasts usually require more than one listen. We go into ideas that we try to consider in a very accessible way, but those ideas have a lot of nuance and depth in them. Extensive contemplation will bring a lot of benefits, including some inspiration and insight into the nature of magic.

In this series, we try to take a sober look at magic. Can we come to a truly skillful and vitalizing understanding of magic?

As we go along, we begin to see magic is an attitude—an attitude of reverence for the Cosmos.

The experience of magic arises as we enter into the sacredness and interwovenness of life.

Whether we love horses or not, whether we have contact with horses or not, they can teach us a lot about wisdom, love, and beauty. How do we get close to an honest openness to the potential magic of horses? And what does it even mean?

The horse as a mirror for the soul and a vehicle for the soul could show us our true nature, and carry us into sacred spaces, initiating us into transformational healing and insight. Horses could heal conquest consciousness and help us reindigenize. But, for that to happen, we would have to become initiates. How can we properly seek initiation into the great mystery of life?

Be sure to listen to the full series, starting with How Magic Saved My Life

https://dangerous-wisdom.captivate.fm/episode/dangerous-magic-1-how-magic-saved-my-life