The Mystical Positivist: April 2018

Saturday, April 28, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #290 - 28APR18

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’s show features a conversation in the studio with M. Amos Clifford, author of Your Guide to Forest Bathing: Experience the Healing Power of Nature. In addition to the book that is the topic of our discussion today, Amos is the author of the Kindle book Coyote Stories for Connection to Nature and Spirit: Tales From the Edges of the Untamed World. Amos Clifford is one of the leading voices for Shinrin-Yoku-inspired Forest Therapy in the United States. He began his career as a wilderness guide in 1972. He developed and managed programs that included pioneering approaches to eco-therapies connecting troubled teens to nature. In Sonoma County he served as Executive Director of Restorative Resources, an NGO focusing on the use of restorative justice and related practices. Amos has practiced Zen meditation for 20 years and is a founder of Sky Creek Dharma Center in Chico, California. Amos is accompanied by Pamella Wirth, a certified Forest Therapy Guide and longtime associate of Amos Clifford.

More information about M. Amos Clifford's work can be found at:

The Association of Nature & Forest Therapy website: www.natureandforesttherapy.org
Shinrin-Yoku website: www.shinrin-yoku.org

Saturday, April 14, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #289 - 14APR18

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’s show features a public talk that Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick gave at Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol, CA, on April 5th, 2018. The talk is titled, Living Life as a Work of Art. Swimming in the river currents of life, every thought, every emotion, and every physical act ripples outward, leaving a wake. Consider this truism along with the assertion that great spiritual adepts are notable precisely because they embody the goal of striving to put attention on every moment. What is it like to cultivate exquisite sensitivity to actions and their effects within dynamically changing conditions? Is it helpful to call that practiced sensitivity, and the effects of that sensitivity, art? Traditional views of art assume a stable canvas upon which we impose a vision and expression. Tayu Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis asserted that painting with the brush of conscious habits permits meaningful artistic expression within the dynamic currents of life. In other words, we can paint meaning within the intermixing energy currents where no configuration lingers. In so doing, we can relieve a portion of God's suffering with our own exquisite artful expression in the moment, just as when we view human art, the experience of our own suffering shifts within a vaster perspective.

Rob Schmidt, Ph.D., and Stuart Goodnick co-direct Tayu Meditation Center, owner and operator of Many Rivers Books & Tea. They studied intensively with Tayu founder Robert Daniel Ennis, and are working to complete a book of his teachings this year called, Living Life As A Work Of Art: The Spiritual Work of Robert Daniel Ennis.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Many Rivers Books and Tea Website: www.manyriversbooks.com
Conscious Family Festival Website: www.consciousfamilyfestival.org
Tayu Meditation Center Website: www.tayu.org/~tayu/
Old Many Rivers Blog: www.manyriversbooks.com/blog1/

Saturday, April 7, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #288 - 07APR18

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’s show features a conversation in the studio with Douglass Truth, artist, writer, performer, and more. Douglass writes:

I was born a long time ago in Indiana. I never knew I had any aptitude as a painter until I was in my early 40s, when I started painting pretty much by accident. As far as writing, even in junior high school I started to see myself as a writer. Decades of adventures, crap jobs, amazing jobs, and much wandering led to no marketable product, or even readable material as far as most people were concerned. I told myself I was a slow learner, a late-bloomer, and so on, and I guess I was right.

I come from a family of professionals. I was the youngest, and maybe that gave me license to do whatever I wanted, which was not always an obvious bit of data. So, a lot of wandering and washing dishes and slinging hash and pouring coffee. I did work in Alaska as a surveyor and designer for most of the 70s, but after that I couldn't fake it anymore and I ended up tearing down old buildings around Anchorage with a Jehovah’s Witness named Dwayne. We had a lot of fun, hopped freight trains together but then we started arguing about drugs and such and our relationship soured, and it certainly wasn't one you wanted to engage when around dangerous tools.

Douglass Truth is the creator and performer of the one-person show, An Intimate Evening with Death, Herself, next showing on April 19th at The Marsh (1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco). Tickets are $15.

More information about Douglass Truth's work can be found at:

Douglass Truth's website: www.douglasstruth.com
Death, Herself's website: deathherself.com
Let's ReImagine website: letsreimagine.org
Douglass Truth on YouTube: www.youtube.com

"The Mystical Positivist" Radio Show

The Mystical Positivist is a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP FM 107.3 Occidental, CA, and on the web at KOWS-LP Live Feed, Saturdays from 4 - 6pm PST. Coming up on The Mystical Positivist:

April 20: A pre-recorded conversation with Ken McLeod, Buddhist teacher and author of the newly released book, The Magic of Vajrayana. In this conversation, we plan to explore a compelling quote from Ian McGilchrist's The Matter with Things: If you had set out to destroy the happiness and stability of a people, it would have been hard to improve on our current formula: remove yourself as far as possible from the natural world; repudiate the continuity of your culture; believe you are wise enough to do whatever you happen to want and not only get away with it, but have a right to it—and a right to silence those who disagree; minimise the role played by a common body of belief; actively attack and dismantle every social structure as a potential source of oppression; reject the idea of a transcendent set of values.

One of the more innovative Buddhist teachers today, Ken McLeod is known for his clear explanations, poetic translations, and pragmatic approach to practice. He is one of the first generation of Western teachers in the Tibetan tradition and one of the few to be authorized to transmit the full scope of these teachings to students. In particular, his approach resonates strongly with those whose path lies outside established institutions.

After graduating with a degree in mathematics, Ken cycled across Europe to Istanbul and then continued his journey overland to India. In 1970 he met his principal teacher Kalu Rinpoche at his monastery near Darjeeling. There Ken began a study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism that lasted more than twenty years. He completed the traditional three-year retreat program two times, translated for many teachers, and helped set up Buddhist centers in Canada and the United States. After his teacher's passing, Ken moved away from the hierarchical structures of Asian Buddhism to explore new approaches.

In 1990, he founded Unfettered Mind in Los Angeles. His approach of one-on-one consultations roiled the Buddhist world in the early '90s, but was quickly recognized as a viable way to teach and guide students in the West. He made individual interviews a central feature of the many retreats he taught in California, New Mexico, and British Columbia. Through numerous small groups in Southern California, he developed the materials that became the encyclopedic meditation manual, Wake Up to Your Life.

Now retired from formal teaching, he lives in Northern California where he hikes and writes. His writings and translations include The Great Path of Awakening (1987), Wake Up to Your Life (2001), An Arrow to the Heart (2007), Reflections on Silver River (2014), A Trackless Path (2017), and The Magic of Vajrayana (2022), as well as a corpus of articles and translations in Tricycle and other Buddhist magazines.