New Dimensions

Amoda encourages us to loosen our grip and soften the way that we respond to life and how the fundamental nature of reality is open awareness. She speaks about ending our argument with reality and meeting it with kindness, tenderness, and openness. “That is the beginning of transformation.” Amoda Maa is a spiritual teacher who, after immersion in psychospiritual practices, and experiencing her own dark night of the soul, offers meetings and retreats with seekers of peace and true fulfillment. Her teachings don’t belong to any tradition or lineage although they do tap into the wisdom of many esteemed wisdom philosophies. She is the author of How to Find God in Everything: An Invitation to Awaken to Your True Nature and Transform Your World (Watkins 2008), Change Your Life Change Your World (Watkins 2012, Radical Awakening: Discovering the Radiance of Being in the Midst of Everyday Life (Watkins 2016), Embodied Enlightenment: Living Your Awakening in Every Moment (New Sarum Press 2022) and Falling Open in a World Falling Apart (Larson Publications 2020 Interview Date: 3/30/2023 Tags: Amoda Maa, nondualism, India, openness, tenderness, dualism, self-righteousness, right action, Inner authority, inherited beliefs, patriarchy, surrender, grace, Personal Transformation, Spirituality

Here we explore what it means to be in conversation with trees. Davidson hikes into an ancient redwood forest on a regular basis and practices “forest bathing”. She reminds us that when we are not bombarded with the noise, bright lights, and electromagnetic fields of a city our nervous system calms down and our capacity opens up to a wider field of perception. Ellen Dee Davidson is an advocate for the health of forests. Besides her memoir, she’s the author of a number of children's books, also worked as an elementary, piano, and creative writing teacher and raised two daughters. She lives with her husband in the redwoods of northern California where she regularly sits with trees in a form of “forest bathing”. She is the author of Stolen Voices: In a City Ruled by Silence Can One Girl’s Voice Make a Difference? (Turtleback Books Library Binding 2005), Princess Justina Albertina (Charlesbridge 2007), Zoe the Misfit (Boulden Publishing 2008), Wind (Luminare Press 2022) and Wild Path to the Sacred Heart (A Forest Bathing Memoir) (Star Tree Press 2019) Interview Date: 3/27/2023 Tags: Ellen Dee Davidson, forest bathing, Shinrin Yoku, hypnagogic state, authentic core, Suzanne Simard, Sophie Strand, dung beetle, Peter Wohllenben, trees, elementals, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Personal Transformation, Dreams

Awe gives us a break from processing and judging unwanted events and gives us the capacity to see through them—to see a larger picture and we don’t have to travel to the Grand Canyon or overlook Niagara Falls in order to access it. It’s available to us in our everyday life and we can tap into it with something called the A.W.E. Method that only takes 5 to 15 seconds. Jake Eagle, LPC, is a psychotherapist, mindfulness instructor, fellow member trainer of the International Association of Neuro‑Linguistic Programming, and cofounder of Live Conscious. Michael Amster, M.D., is a physician and faculty member at Touro School of Medicine. Jake Eagle & Michael Amster, M.D. are co-authors of The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day (Hachette Books 2023) How the A.W.E. Method can be a shortcut to three levels of consciousness: safety, gratitude, spaciousness Interview Date: 3/3/2023 Tags: Jake Eagle, Michael Amster, awe, microdosing mindfulness, attention, David Elkins, Dacher Keltner, depression, timelessness, pro-social experience, Viktor Frankl, loss, grief, safety, gratitude, spaciousness, wonder, microdose awe, beauty, Personal Transformation, Meditation, Health & Healing

All complex systems share limited randomness, whether it’s human society, ants in an ant colony, cells in a body, there's got to be a limited range of randomness. This randomness in biological life makes us different from machines. Also included is a discussion about how the brain does not create consciousness and consciousness is fundamental in the universe. Neil Theise, M.D. is a practicing pathologist and leading stem-cell researcher as well as an explorer in the nature of consciousness and its relationship to us and the cosmos as revealed in Complexity Theory. Theise is also a senior student of Zen Buddhism at the Village Zendo, in New York City, under the guidance of Roshi Enkyo O’Hara. He is the author of Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being. (Spiegel & Grau 2023) Interview Date: 2/25/2023 Tags: Neil Theise, ant colony, ant colonies, errant ant, quenched disorder, technosphere, liver cells, stem cells, hard problem in science, complexity theory, consciousness, Max Planck, spacetime energy field, quantum physics, particles, photons, waves, complementarity, nonlocality, mass extinction, Covid, AIDS, holocaust, Buddhist relative and absolute. Science, Buddhism, Personal Transformation

Thomas Merton was an American Catholic writer, mystic, and Trappist monk who died mysteriously in Bangkok, Thailand when he was 53 years old. The gifts he left behind from his short life were immense. He combined deep contemplation with social action. Here Fr. Matthew Fox shares his profound intersection with Merton via Creation Spirituality. Tags: Matthew Fox, Thomas Merton, Michael Toms, activism, Dan Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Karl Marx, Pere Chenu, Saint Augustine, Second Vatican Council, original sin, D.T. Suzuki, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, prophetic Christian, Augustinian Christian, Dalai Lama, mysticism, Thomas Berry, hermitage, New Grange, spiral, Hildegard of Bingen, Hagia Sophia, Feminine side of god, Doctor of Spirituality DSP, Cosmic Mass, African mass, Spirituality, Religion, Social Change, Politics, History, Ecology, Nature, Environment

Humanity is poised on a threshold that could be described as a global dark night of the soul. This global crisis is not asking us to simply “make things better” or invent new ways of living. It’s demanding that we surrender to a transformation so radical that we become a new variety of the human species. Our assignment is to become sacred activists. Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. was a psychotherapist in private practice and a college professor of psychology and history. Now through her webinars, podcasts, live workshops, books, and articles, as well as one-on-one life coaching, Carolyn is touching the lives of thousands to assist them in deeply adapting and becoming resilient in the face of the unprecedented changes confronting humanity. She works closely with Andrew Harvey for the Institute for Sacred Activism. She is the author of Undaunted: Living Fiercely into Climate Meltdown in an Authoritarian World (Apocryphile Press 2022) and Radical Regeneration: Sacred Activism and the Renewal of the World (co-author Andrew Harvey) (Inner Traditions 2022). Interview Date: 2/17/2023 Tags: MP3, Carolyn Baker, Stephen Jenkinson, H.H. the Dalai Lama, sacred activism, sacred activists, Margaret Wheatley, caterpillar liquefying, rite-of-passage, shelter in place, pandemic, Willis Harman, pessimism, optimism, Paul Levy, infinite possibilities, AI, Artificial intelligence, Shoshana Zuboff, Jonathan Harari, fascism, democracy, sacredness, reverence, joy, isolation, eldership, Social Change/Politics, Personal Transformation, Spirituality

Horses are valuable teachers and healers. They show us powerful lessons in how to be effective leaders. You'll be surprised by what Resnick reveals about the secrets of how a horse becomes and maintains its leadership of a herd of wild horses. Horses’ extensive language and communication skills are a matter of survival and they do it without words. Carolyn Resnick is the founder of The Resnick Method of Horsemanship and offers many online courses, clinics, retreats, and certification opportunities that create a magical connection with horses using rituals that are innate to the horse. She is a master horse communicator who grew up with horses and spent three summers of her childhood gradually becoming accepted into a community of wild horses, culminating in her ability to ride a lead mare bareback and without a bridle. She is the author of Naked Liberty: Memoirs of My Childhood, Guided by Passion, Educated by Wild Horses (Amigo Publications, Inc. 2005). Interview Date: 10/18/2022 Tags: Carolyn Resnick, Ray Hackworth, lead mare, dominant horse, leader horse, Thomas Banyacya, Joe Brown, Lame Deer, Personal Transformation, Animals, Indigenous Wisdom

In this deep dialogue we discuss how the brain selectively filters our perception of reality through our personal histories, our beliefs, habits of mind, and our prejudices. It highlights the evidence that we are living in a “consensual realty” and our senses are reporting back to us only a very small portion of the greater reality. Howard Eisenberg, M.D. is a medical doctor with additional postgraduate training in both psychology and psychiatry. He’s also been awarded a postgraduate degree for his parapsychological research on telepathy. He is the author of Inner Spaces: Parapsychological Exploration of the Mind (Musson Book Co. 1977) and Dream It to Do It: The Science and the Magic—Decoding Reality 2.0 (Syntrek® Inc. 2021). Interview Date: 1/20/2023 Tags: Howard Eisenberg, collective illusion, love, meditation, universal mind, consciousness, Jesus, intention, imagination, the placebo effect, silo thinking, empathy, soul gazing, Philosophy, Meditation, Personal Transformation, Science

Williams tells the story of her initiation by the living land when she was 7 years old. While taking a school trip she ended up alone, in the dark, in Mount Timpanogos Cave. For a brief but powerful moment she felt the beating heart of the mountain. She says, “For the rest of my life I’ve been trying to retrieve that sacred space I felt inside that mountain alone. I have been searching for that moment when you’re part of something so old, so deep, so true.” Take a tour with Williams and find the relevance of our national parks in the 21st century and how these public commons might bring us back home to a united state of humility. It’s Terry Tempest Williams’ hope that we learn what it is to offer our reverence and respect to the closest thing we have to sacred lands.

Most of us are trapped in the stories we tell ourselves. Archetypes, such as are found in the Greek myths, can trigger a story in our brain that helps us notice opportunities, props, and characters that may have been invisible to us. They change what we are noticing and can enhance our narrative intelligence and encourage us to tap into our potential. Carol Pearson, Ph.D. is an expert in depth psychology and transformational leadership as well as archetypal narrative intelligence. She has served as professor at several universities and colleges and also served as president of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. She was the senior editor of The Inner Edge: A Resource for Enlightened Business Practice. She is the author of such classic works as: The Hero Within (republished, Harper Elixir 2015), Awakening the Heroes Within (Harper Elixir 2015),The Hero and the Outlaw (coauthor Margaret Mark) (McGraw Hill Education 2001), Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within (Harper Elixir 2016) Interview Date: 8/3/2016 Tags: Carol Pearson, archetypes, Zeus, Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, Eleusinian Mysteries, somebodies and nobodies, interdependent, sit-in strike, sharing power, Greek myths, eros, allurement, Stephen Denning, narrative intelligence, archetypal download, Mythology, Personal Transformation, Social Change

Here we look at the life adventures of a father, husband, writer, corporate marketer, world traveler, and meditation and yoga teacher. We explore the question of whether our search for spiritual fulfillment and creativity has to take a back seat to our livelihood. Bajaj takes a year sabbatical from corporate work every four years and suggests how we can too. Karan Bajaj was born and raised in India, and trained as a Hatha Yoga teacher in the Sivananda ashram in South India. He learned meditation in the Himalayas. He’s been named one of India Today’s Top 35 Under 35. He lives in New York City but soon will be returning to India with his wife and young daughter. He is the author of several novels, including Johnny Gone Down (Harper Collins 2010), Keep off the Grass (Harper Collins, India 2008) and The Yoga of Max’s Discontent (known in India as The Seeker) (Riverhead 2016). Interview Date: 6/23/2016 Tags: Karan Bajaj, habits, routines, yoga, bodhisattva, belief, Buddha, enlightenment, venture capitalist monk, flow, sabbaticals, Spirituality, Meditation, Travel, Personal Transformation, writing, work/livelihood, parenting

The heart releases its own logic, going beyond our everyday attempts to meet goals and solve problems. Mark Nepo helps us re-kindle the fire of our aliveness, and reminds us that kindness allows us to experience our connection with all things. Prepare to be deepened by his ability to be authentic as he illuminates the wisdom that is available in our own hearts. Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who, for over three decades, has been teaching in the fields of poetry and spirituality. As a cancer survivor, Mark remains committed to the usefulness of daily inner life. He devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. He is the author of 18 books including Seven Thousand Ways To Listen: Staying Close To What Is Sacred (Atria 2012), Reduced To Joy (Cleis Press 2013), Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness (Sounds True 2015), The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart (Atria Books 2016) and The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting (Sounds True 2016). His many audio learning courses include Staying Awake (Sounds True 2012) and Holding Nothing Back (Sounds True 2012) Interview Date: 7/18/2016 Tags: Mark Nepo, surrender, listening, courage, trust, choices, upaguru, e dai, kindness, kinship, regret, grace, fear of past, fear of present, fear of future, wonder, resilience, Spirituality, Personal Transformation

Executives can spend hours in daily meetings to ensure the success of a company. What if that commitment can be applied to your own personal life? May McCarthy says we should consider working with a “Chief Spiritual Officer (CSO)” whose job it is to make our goals a reality. Our part is be clear, be disciplined, pay attention, and act. She has co-founded and grown six successful companies over her thirty-year career, with the largest growing to over $100 million in annual revenues. She is a successful entrepreneur, CEO, angel investor, and philanthropist, and is the author of The Path to Wealth: Seven Spiritual Steps for Financial Abundance (Hierophant Publishing 2015) Interview Date: 7/3/2016 Tags: May McCarthy, Barbara Frederickson, CSO, Chief Spiritual Officer, C-Suite, CFO, CEO, intuition, guidance, prosperity, giving, receiving, daily meeting, opening, meditation, expression, goals, gratitude, law of attraction, doubts, denial statements, gratitude statements, fraud factor, seven steps, mantra, ritual, leads, Spirituality, Personal Transformation, Spirit Guides/Angels/Spirit, Self Help

The stereotypical man is evolving into a more balanced being, leading to a better relationship with his partner and a better expression of himself. There is a renewed understanding of both male and female qualities, and the need to respect and balance those differences, as men learn to successfully stay on their masculine side while they open their hearts. Arjuna Ardagh is a writer, public speaker, and founder of the Awakening Coaching. Arjuna Ardagh is the author of many books including The Translucent Revolution (New World Library 2005), Better Than Sex: The Ecstatic Art of Awakening Coaching (Awakening Coaching 2013), Radical Brilliance: The Anatomy of How and Why People Have Original Life-Changing Ideas (SelfXPress 2018) John Gray, Ph.D. is a leading relationship expert. His unique focus is assisting men and women in understanding, respecting and appreciating their differences. He is the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (Harper 2012). Gray and Ardagh are co-authors of Conscious Men (Self X Press 2016) Interview Date: 6/26/2016 Tags: John Gray, Arjuna Ardagh, conscious man, masculinity, femininity, relationships, sex, pornography, testosterone, estrogen, imitated masculinity, polarity, polarization, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, stereotypical roles, stereotypical male, intimacy, communication, gender equality, Relationship/Partnership/Sexuality, Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies

Here an avid researcher has brought reports of thousands of people who have experienced the phenomenon of alien encounters. When asked if nonhuman intelligence is real Gober says, “There is a lot of research out there suggesting that we are not alone, and this is probably an ancient phenomenon. There are people who do seem to have pretty amazing encounters.” Mark Gober is an avid curator and researcher of scientific papers and books about consciousness, biological processes, psychic phenomena, near-death experiences, and quantum physics. He was a partner at the Sherpa Technology Group in Silicon Valley, California, which advises technology companies on mergers and acquisitions. He has also worked as an investment banker analyst in New York and has been named one of IAM’s strategy 300 (IAM hosts the world’s leading intellectual property strategists). Gober graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University where he wrote his award-winning thesis on Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize-winning “Prospect Theory” and was elected a captain of Princeton’s Division I Tennis Team. He is the author of several books including: An End to Upside Down Thinking: Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life (Waterside Productions 2018), An End to Upside Down Liberty: Turning Traditional Political Thinking on Its Head to Break Free from Enslavement (Waterside Productions 2022) and An End to Upside Down Contact: UFOs, Aliens, and Spirits—and Why Their Ongoing Interaction with Human Civilization Matters (Waterside Productions 2022) Interview Date: 11/4/2022 Tags: Mark Gober, UFOs, near death experience, NDEs, John Mack, nonhuman intelligences, David Jacobs, empathy, Paul Levy, wetiko, mind virus, Ezekiel, Eric Von Daniken, Paul Anthony Wallace Australian Archdeacon, Frances Crick, DNA, Mike Cleland, psychedelics, DMT, Rick Strassman MD, alien hybrids, Jacques Vallee, Phoenix lights, Parapsychology/Paranormal; Spirit Guides/Angels/Spirit, History

The Covid pandemic is changing our world and changing our lives in ways that we hope will be positive, important, and enduring. The truth is that we will probably derive more pandemic insight from scrutinizing the past than from speculating about the future because no one pandemic is entirely separate from any other. Barbara E. Hort, Ph.D. is a Jungian counselor. She provides consultation and training in the theatrical practice of psychodramaturgy in which she provides material on the psychological dynamics of a play that can be used by performing artists to enhance their storytelling. She is the author of Unholy Hungers: Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves and Others (Shambhala 1996) and Hollow Crown of Fire: A Discovery of Meaning in the Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Predecessors (White Horse Wordsmithing 2022) Interview Date: 10/18/2022 Tags: Barbara E. Hort, pandemics, Black Death, Justinian, 1918 pandemic, 1918 flu, Shakespeare’s Richard the II, Persephone, abduction, Eleusinian mysteries, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Boccaccio’s Decameron, John Ronewyk, World War I, Alfred Crosby, AIDS pandemic, bubonic plague, Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus, vaccines, Health & Healing, History, Mythology, Personal Transformation

Vanhoenacker opens our vision to a more expansive landscape. He says, “I get to so see so much of the urban world, in particular, and it's a joy for me to share it as best I can… Travel is a miracle and is something that would have amazed almost all humans who have ever lived to be able to travel the way some of us do now.” Mark Vanhoenacker is a seasoned, long-haul commercial pilot and a brilliant lyrical writer about his journeys as experienced both from the air and on the ground where he chronicles for us some of the planet’s great cities. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and a columnist for the Financial Times. Born in Pittsfield, in Western Massachusetts, he trained as a historian and worked in business before starting his flight training in Britain in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world. He is the author of Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot (Alfred Knopf 2015), How to Land a Plane (The Experiment; Illustrated edition, 2019) and Imagine a City: A Pilot’s Journey Across the Urban World (Alfred Knopf/Penguin Random House, 2022) Interview Date: 11/4/2022 Tags: Mark Vanhoenacker, piloting, William Stafford, The Way It Is, Pittsfield MA, Brazilia, the color blue, place lag, clouds, Aurora Borealis, solitude, Travel, Philosophy, Writing

What constitutes dying well in a death-phobic culture? Stephen Jenkinson points out that life is a time-limited offer and our “obligation is to obey. Obey doesn’t mean submit; obey means attend to. What is this asking of me now?” There is much to ponder in this dialogue, whether or not you are actively dying. Stephen Jenkinson is an activist, teacher, author, and farmer. He has a master’s degree in theology from Harvard University and a master’s degree in social work. He was formerly a program director at a major Canadian hospital and medical-school assistant professor. He has worked extensively with dying people and their families and is a consultant to palliative care and hospice organizations. He is the founder of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada and is the subject of the documentary film, Griefwalker. Heis the author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (North Atlantic Books 2015) Date: 3/14/2016 Tags: Stephen Jenkinson, med-tech, death-phobic, death centered care for the dying, euthanasia, failure to thrive, death-phobic culture, Michael Toms dying, the death trade, palliative care, the angel of death, heartbrokenness, sorrow, grief, love, solitude, Brother Blue, Hugh Hill, prayer, Death & Dying, Personal Transformation, Philosophy

This deep dialogue explores what energy medicine is and how it encourages us to inhabit our body as a full participant in co-creating more conscious choices about what kind of relationship we want with our body, mind, and spirit. It offers us tools to help heal, build resilience, and to go beyond merely the healing of illness. Ellen Meredith, Ph.D., is a medical intuitive, energy healer, teacher, and writer. She’s been in practice since 1984 and is an Eden Energy Medicine Advanced Practitioner who served on Donna Eden’s faculty and offers online courses through the Shift Network and other forums. She is the author of Listening in: Dialogues with the Wiser Self (Horse Mountain Press 1994), The Language Your Body Speaks: Self-Healing with Energy Medicine (Donna Eden) (New World Library 2020) and Your Body Will Show You the Way: Energy Medicine for Personal and Global Change (New World Library 2022) Interview Date: 10/28/2022 Tags: Ellen Meredith, speak energy, disembodied councils, yang thinking, binary thinking, yin thinking, empowered yin, inner knowing, streams of energy, nothingness, chakras, sniffer dogs, Donna Eden, water, Personal Transformation, Health & Healing

This deep dialogue enlivens the works and words of Jesus to higher levels of inspiration and understanding so needed in these threshold times. Klotz helps us to see the moving nature and luminosity of the teachings of Jesus that are present within us, within our very breath, every day through the Aramaic translations. Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D. is a teacher, scholar, author, and musician, specializing in the native traditions and the translation and interpretation of the ancient Semitic languages of the Middle East—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. His scholarship connects religious studies and psychology. He’s past chair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion and is active in various international conferences dedicated to peace and spirituality. For more than 40 years he has followed the Sufi path and was a student of the Sufi Murshid Moineddin Jablonski (d.2001) and serves on the advisory board of the International Association of Sufism. His books include Prayers of the Cosmos (HarperOne 2009), The Hidden Gospel (Quest Books 2001), Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life and Death (Hampton Roads 2022) Interview Date: 10/14/2022. Tags: Neil Douglas-Klotz, Bible, New Testament, Jesus, Yeshua, Semitic languages, ancient Hebrew, Samual L. Lewis, Sufi Sam, Sufism, Dances of Universal Peace, Rabbi Zalman Schachter, Beatitudes, somatics, Miracles of Jesus, Religion, History, Spirituality