Transformative Practice
Connie Zweig (Part 2) – Meeting and Healing the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: An Essential Practice for Awakening, Growth, and Healing
Ep. 80 (Part 2 of 2) | Connie Zweig, award-winning author, depth psychologist, master shadow guide, and longtime contemplative practitioner asks some good questions—and answers them too, with unusual clarity and deep insight born of long experience and a cutting-edge mind. Why is it that we meet darkness on the spiritual path? What do we banish into the shadow? How do we reclaim what we project onto charismatic leaders? Learning to recognize and resolve the shadow is a powerful practice, and one that is all too often overlooked in a time when psychology is focused on objective approaches, neglecting the fact and force of the unconscious. Cultivating shadow awareness, we can begin to look beyond projections and stereotypes, recognize the risks of black and white thinking, and learn how to reclaim what Carl Jung called the “unlived life.” Connie discusses the psychodynamics between spiritual student and spiritual teacher, and other situations where people have disproportionate power over others, shining a bright light of illumination on the nuances and complexities of these relationships.
This is an intimate look into the challenges of the spiritual path, where we need both psychological practice and spiritual practice to advance our awakening, and a very relevant, timely conversation with shadow currently erupting in our culture in epidemic proportions. Connie’s dedication to helping people find their way through the dark nights we inevitably experience on our spiritual journey comes through strong and clear. Her authenticity, caring, and wisdom is palpable, inspiring us as to how the lights really go on when we start to see the dynamics of our inner world and relationships with more nuance, deeper insight, and shadow awareness. Recorded April 5, 2023.
Read MoreConnie Zweig (Part 1) – Meeting and Healing the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: An Essential Practice for Awakening, Growth, and Healing
Ep. 79 (Part 1 of 2) | Connie Zweig, award-winning author, depth psychologist, master shadow guide, and longtime contemplative practitioner asks some good questions—and answers them too, with unusual clarity and deep insight born of long experience and a cutting-edge mind. Why is it that we meet darkness on the spiritual path? What do we banish into the shadow? How do we reclaim what we project onto charismatic leaders? Learning to recognize and resolve the shadow is a powerful practice, and one that is all too often overlooked in a time when psychology is focused on objective approaches, neglecting the fact and force of the unconscious. Cultivating shadow awareness, we can begin to look beyond projections and stereotypes, recognize the risks of black and white thinking, and learn how to reclaim what Carl Jung called the “unlived life.” Connie discusses the psychodynamics between spiritual student and spiritual teacher, and other situations where people have disproportionate power over others, shining a bright light of illumination on the nuances and complexities of these relationships.
This is an intimate look into the challenges of the spiritual path, where we need both psychological practice and spiritual practice to advance our awakening, and a very relevant, timely conversation with shadow currently erupting in our culture in epidemic proportions. Connie’s dedication to helping people find their way through the dark nights we inevitably experience on our spiritual journey comes through strong and clear. Her authenticity, caring, and wisdom is palpable, inspiring us as to how the lights really go on when we start to see the dynamics of our inner world and relationships with more nuance, deeper insight, and shadow awareness. Recorded April 5, 2023.
Read MoreLeslie Hershberger (Part 2) – The Enneagram as Spiritual Tool: A Map for Deeper Self-Understanding & More Effective Contemplative Practice
Ep. 76 (Part 2 of 2) | Enneagram expert, teacher, master facilitator, and transformational coach Leslie Hershberger leads us into the world of the Enneagram, not typology point by point—here Leslie paints a broader, deeper picture of the Enneagram and its uses as a psycho-spiritual tool than is commonly understood. Leslie explains how the Enneagram provides the psychological foundation for each individual to navigate their inner world more skillfully. A wealth of knowledge comes with recognizing the center you orient from—head, heart, or body—and your type’s tendencies, freeing up energy within us to move out of negative patterns into virtuous ones. With the insights the Enneagram provides, we can develop practices tailored to our specific personality structure that help with everyday challenges and vicissitudes, with being more present in our relationships, and with opening to spiritual presence.
Listening to Leslie, one feels the energy of rising awareness as her anecdotes about various different Enneagram types’ ways of relating to themselves, others, and the world ring decisively true, matching our own experience. Leslie’s passion for guiding people who are ready to make “the inward turn” in using the Enneagram as a map is clearly palpable. And though she is a longtime contemplative, Leslie is all about boots-on-the-ground action: meeting people where they are at, providing support and guidance, and reflecting back to all whom she encounters a truly awe-inspiring, Enneagram-informed, and integral understanding. Recorded January 9, 2023.
Please enjoy a 20-minute guided meditation, led by Leslie, at the end of part 2 of this podcast. Leslie originally led this meditation for Roger, John, and the Deep Transformation team right before the podcast was recorded, so they could experience her Enneagram-informed techniques that help us ground, center, and connect with our inner being, somatically and emotionally.
Read MoreLeslie Hershberger (Part 1) – The Enneagram as Spiritual Tool: A Map for Deeper Self-Understanding & More Effective Contemplative Practice
Ep. 75 (Part 1 of 2) | Enneagram expert, teacher, master facilitator, and transformational coach Leslie Hershberger leads us into the world of the Enneagram, not typology point by point—here Leslie paints a broader, deeper picture of the Enneagram and its uses as a psycho-spiritual tool than is commonly understood. Leslie explains how the Enneagram provides the psychological foundation for each individual to navigate their inner world more skillfully. A wealth of knowledge comes with recognizing the center you orient from—head, heart, or body—and your type’s tendencies, freeing up energy within us to move out of negative patterns into virtuous ones. With the insights the Enneagram provides, we can develop practices tailored to our specific personality structure that help with everyday challenges and vicissitudes, with being more present in our relationships, and with opening to spiritual presence.
Listening to Leslie, one feels the energy of rising awareness as her anecdotes about various different Enneagram types’ ways of relating to themselves, others, and the world ring decisively true, matching our own experience. Leslie’s passion for guiding people who are ready to make “the inward turn” in using the Enneagram as a map is clearly palpable. And though she is a longtime contemplative, Leslie is all about boots-on-the-ground action: meeting people where they are at, providing support and guidance, and reflecting back to all whom she encounters a truly awe-inspiring, Enneagram-informed, and integral understanding. Recorded January 9, 2023.
Please enjoy a 20-minute guided meditation, led by Leslie, at the end of part 2 of this podcast. Leslie originally led this meditation for Roger, John, and the Deep Transformation team right before the podcast was recorded, so they could experience her Enneagram-informed techniques that help us ground, center, and connect with our inner being, somatically and emotionally.
Read MoreDaniel Schmachtenberger (Part 2) – Developing a Deeper Understanding of Life: Opening to the Complexity, Wholeness, and Beauty of Reality
Ep. 74 (Part 2 of 2) | Daniel Schmachtenberger, one of the most brilliant and integrative thinkers of our time, expresses here his deep love and appreciation for reality itself. Daniel’s inquiries have led him to perceive the intrinsic beauty of the wholeness of reality and to the realization that everything is interesting—just like when you love someone, everything about them becomes fascinating. Along with this deep appreciation comes the desire to serve and protect, and Daniel is focused on investigating the drivers of the metacrisis and how best to meet the difficult challenges it presents, a subject interwoven in this conversation with Daniel’s findings and ideas about reality, human psychology, education, and the future of the planet.
Daniel is a wonderful testament to the far reaching effects of the right kind of education. He relates how he was homeschooled by parents who set him on the path towards goodness, meaning, and beauty right from the start, and who were dedicated to facilitating his interest wherever it led, to include systems theory and how to create a better world. This is a beautiful, rich conversation filled with gems of knowledge and insight—about our human family (actually, the lack of one), the horrible deficit of fathering in modern culture, how we can orient to the sacred and the meaningful, the fact that we actually didn’t evolve to deal with the crises we face now but to negotiate successfully as members of a tribe of around 150 people, and much more. Recorded January 10, 2023.
Read MoreDaniel Schmachtenberger (Part 1) – Developing a Deeper Understanding of Life: Opening to the Complexity, Wholeness, and Beauty of Reality
Ep. 73 (Part 1 of 2) | Daniel Schmachtenberger, one of the most brilliant and integrative thinkers of our time, expresses here his deep love and appreciation for reality itself. Daniel’s inquiries have led him to perceive the intrinsic beauty of the wholeness of reality and to the realization that everything is interesting—just like when you love someone, everything about them becomes fascinating. Along with this deep appreciation comes the desire to serve and protect, and Daniel is focused on investigating the drivers of the metacrisis and how best to meet the difficult challenges it presents, a subject interwoven in this conversation with Daniel’s findings and ideas about reality, human psychology, education, and the future of the planet.
Daniel is a wonderful testament to the far reaching effects of the right kind of education. He was homeschooled by parents who set him on the path towards goodness, meaning, and beauty right from the start, and who were dedicated to facilitating his interest wherever it led, to include systems theory and how to create a better world. This is a beautiful, rich conversation filled with gems of knowledge and insight—about our human family (actually, the lack of one), the horrible deficit of fathering in modern culture, how we can orient to the sacred and the meaningful, the fact that we actually didn’t evolve to deal with the crises we face now but to negotiate successfully as members of a tribe of around 150 people, and much more. Recorded January 10, 2023.
Read MoreNicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens (Part 3) – Grappling with the Metacrisis: Understanding and Responding Effectively to the Great Challenges of Our Time
Ep. 72 (Part 3 of 3) | Nicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens are big picture philosophers with extraordinary big hearts as well as big minds, dedicated to understanding how consciousness, culture, and nature relate to each other, and to forging a path for the Earth and civilization to flourish rather than fall apart. In this dialogue, the world of metatheories comes alive with urgent, purposeful meaning, because as Sean and Nick point out, integrative metatheories like Ken Wilber’s integral theory and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism are the only tools that provide a useful framework for us to talk about and confront the vast web of interrelated and wicked problems we face on every level at this time. Now, we are only just beginning to understand the nature of the metacrisis—how the external crises are driven by interior crises of sensemaking and meaning making—but how do we bring everyone to the table to find solutions? How do we get the wisdom of these approaches to bear upon the crises we face?
It turns out that heart connection—love, caring, and being willing to listen and to change—is a crucial, key ingredient for us to move forward in a positive way. Nick and Sean express both heartbreak and wild enthusiasm—heartbreak that our entire planetary community is so threatened and we have only a small window of time (till 2030) to transform our consciousness and culture into taking a cooperative and reverent approach to life, and enthusiasm to be alive at this pivotal time where everything hangs in the balance. Recorded December 7, 2022.
Read MoreNicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens (Part 2) – Grappling with the Metacrisis: Understanding and Responding Effectively to the Great Challenges of Our Time
Ep. 71 (Part 2 of 3) | Nicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens are big picture philosophers with extraordinary big hearts as well as big minds, dedicated to understanding how consciousness, culture, and nature relate to each other, and to forging a path for the Earth and civilization to flourish rather than fall apart. In this dialogue, the world of metatheories comes alive with urgent, purposeful meaning, because as Sean and Nick point out, integrative metatheories like Ken Wilber’s integral theory and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism are the only tools that provide a useful framework for us to talk about and confront the vast web of interrelated and wicked problems we face on every level at this time. Now, we are only just beginning to understand the nature of the metacrisis—how the external crises are driven by interior crises of sensemaking and meaning making—but how do we bring everyone to the table to find solutions? How do we get the wisdom of these approaches to bear upon the crises we face?
It turns out that heart connection—love, caring, and being willing to listen and to change—is a crucial, key ingredient for us to move forward in a positive way. Nick and Sean express both heartbreak and wild enthusiasm—heartbreak that our entire planetary community is so threatened and we have only a small window of time (till 2030) to transform our consciousness and culture into taking a cooperative and reverent approach to life, and enthusiasm to be alive at this pivotal time where everything hangs in the balance. Recorded December 7, 2022.
Read MoreNicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens (Part 1) – Grappling with the Metacrisis: Understanding and Responding Effectively to the Great Challenges of Our Time
Ep. 70 (Part 1 of 3) | Nicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens are big picture philosophers with extraordinary big hearts as well as big minds, dedicated to understanding how consciousness, culture, and nature relate to each other, and to forging a path for the Earth and civilization to flourish rather than fall apart. In this dialogue, the world of metatheories comes alive with urgent, purposeful meaning, because as Sean and Nick point out, integrative metatheories like Ken Wilber’s integral theory and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism are the only tools that provide a useful framework for us to talk about and confront the vast web of interrelated and wicked problems we face on every level at this time. Now, we are only just beginning to understand the nature of the metacrisis—how the external crises are driven by interior crises of sensemaking and meaning making—but how do we bring everyone to the table to find solutions? How do we get the wisdom of these approaches to bear upon the crises we face?
It turns out that heart connection—love, caring, and being willing to listen and to change—is a crucial, key ingredient for us to move forward in a positive way. Nick and Sean express both heartbreak and wild enthusiasm—heartbreak that our entire planetary community is so threatened and we have only a small window of time (till 2030) to transform our consciousness and culture into taking a cooperative and reverent approach to life, and enthusiasm to be alive at this pivotal time where everything hangs in the balance. Recorded December 7, 2022.
Read MoreDr. Michael Clarke – Reawakening the Heart of Religion: Returning Living Spirit to the Center of Religious Tradition
Ep. 65 | Rev. Dr. Michael Clarke, principal of the Anglican seminary Codrington College in Barbados, beautifully articulates how embodied spirituality can change us and the importance of personal encounters with living Spirit to further us along our evolutionary path. He enlightens us as to the shortcomings of the Church and religion as it is largely practiced in the West in a way many of us may not have heard before, pointing out that the Church fails to take into account that the magnitude of our understanding of divine experience is ever expanding, in parallel with Ken Wilber’s Integral teaching on the ever expanding nature of consciousness, and mentioning that Jesus’ experience as divine man was not intended to be the end all religious experience for all time. As Michael says, “We need to understand the Oneness—we’ve done religion from the duality perspective, from a separatist perspective…missing the whole point!”
Michael is passionate about creating opportunities for people to have personal encounters with living Spirit since having his own earth-shattering experience with the divine. He tells us that when spirituality comes into play, it offers a step upward, a higher place to stand to view the world that allows for Oneness, and describes the separation inherent in our world of duality today as a “wonderful avenue towards unification, appreciation, and understanding.” So, “How do you lift up this thing called spirituality and cause it to be a central part of religious response? Can the Church grow with what needs to happen?” Michael imbues this conversation with a bright, shining light of deep spiritual understanding and invites us all to be open to the “call to be more.” Recorded September 6, 2021.
Read MoreLynn Fuentes (Part 2) – The Unwanted Challenge of Chronic Illness: Existential Questions and Spiritual Perspectives for Patients, Caregivers, Family & Friends
Ep. 64 (Part 2 of 2) | Lynn Fuentes, Ph.D., author of The Koan of Chronic Illness and teacher of a series of courses on managing chronic illness, shines a bright light of understanding on chronic illness with all of its far-reaching ramifications in this very moving and important conversation. Lynn not only illuminates what chronic illness involves physically, emotionally, and relationally, but delves also into the existential questions it engenders: How should we live? How can we love each other? How can we embrace our suffering and allow it to be our path to greater connection with spirit? Lynn speaks from personal experience, having spent many years caring for a family member with a debilitating illness, and explains how she used the Integral Map in her own struggle to help make sense of the huge, all-consuming project that inevitably follows a diagnosis. Now she teaches others what she has learned about coping with the overwhelming logistics, healing the trauma, and also about transforming illness into a spiritual practice.
This conversation really pertains to all of us, whether we are very ill or not, as aging towards death is something we all face. Can we learn to prepare ourselves? Can we reflect deeply on what is truly meaningful and important about life itself and live accordingly? Can we open to the wholeness of life, the pain and the bliss, the suffering that our cultural narrative would just as soon ignore? Chronic illness is a heartrending subject, but Lynn’s warm, wise, skillful, Integral approach allows us to see it in an expanded way, more profound, more transformative, than we may have seen it before. Recorded December 15, 2022.
Read MoreLynn Fuentes (Part 1) – The Unwanted Challenge of Chronic Illness: Existential Questions and Spiritual Perspectives for Patients, Caregivers, Family & Friends
Ep. 63 (Part 1 of 2) | Lynn Fuentes, Ph.D., author of The Koan of Chronic Illness and teacher of a series of courses on managing chronic illness, shines a bright light of understanding on chronic illness with all of its far-reaching ramifications in this very moving and important conversation. Lynn not only illuminates what chronic illness involves physically, emotionally, and relationally, but delves also into the existential questions it engenders: How should we live? How can we love each other? How can we embrace our suffering and allow it to be our path to greater connection with spirit? Lynn speaks from personal experience, having spent many years caring for a family member with a debilitating illness, and explains how she used the Integral Map in her own struggle to help make sense of the huge, all-consuming project that inevitably follows a diagnosis. Now she teaches others what she has learned about coping with the overwhelming logistics, healing the trauma, and also about transforming illness into a spiritual practice.
This conversation really pertains to all of us, whether we are very ill or not, as aging towards death is something we all face. Can we learn to prepare ourselves? Can we reflect deeply on what is truly meaningful and important about life itself and live accordingly? Can we open to the wholeness of life, the pain and the bliss, the suffering that our cultural narrative would just as soon ignore? Chronic illness is a heartrending subject, but Lynn’s warm, wise, skillful, Integral approach allows us to see it in an expanded way, more profound, more transformative, than we may have seen it before. Recorded December 15, 2022.
Read MoreMichael Murphy (Part 3) – The Human Potential Movement Then & Now: 60 Years at the Leading Edge of Transformative Practice, Research & Action
Ep. 60 (Part 3 of 3) | Michael Murphy, author, co-founder of the world-famous Esalen Institute, and pioneer of the Human Potential Movement starting in the 60s, relates a wealth of intimate experience, knowledge, and wisdom covering his decades of living at the leading edge of transformative practice and the realization of human potential. Mike talks about Esalen’s latest research, our current crisis of belief, and the anchoring question that has guided Esalen (and Mike) all along: how best to serve? Mike has watched the developmental process of transformative practices themselves, such as somatics and psychedelics, now circling around after a period of purgation, and talks about current efforts to add research on the mystical and the ecstatic to meditation and mindfulness research in order to better understand what’s going on.
This podcast is a wonderful mix of tales from the past—including Mike and his wife Dulce’s achievements and adventures with Soviet-American citizen diplomacy towards the end of the Cold War—the present, and what’s coming up at the Esalen research center now, e.g., asking what is happening on “the other side,” and discovering the truth about subtle body phenomena. On a personal note, Mike shares about practicing agnosticism, his respect and admiration for the quality of wonder, and about the magic of reading subtle cues and being increasingly in tune with “the algorithms of his heart.” Friendly, relaxed, and humorous, Mike is one of the world’s leading lights on self-transformation. Recorded on February 16, 2022.
Read MoreMichael Murphy (Part 2) – The Human Potential Movement Then & Now: 60 Years at the Leading Edge of Transformative Practice, Research & Action
Ep. 59 (Part 2 of 3) | Michael Murphy, author, co-founder of the world-famous Esalen Institute, and pioneer of the Human Potential Movement starting in the 60s, relates a wealth of intimate experience, knowledge, and wisdom covering his decades of living at the leading edge of transformative practice and the realization of human potential. Mike talks about Esalen’s latest research, our current crisis of belief, and the anchoring question that has guided Esalen (and Mike) all along: how best to serve? Mike has watched the developmental process of transformative practices themselves, such as somatics and psychedelics, now circling around after a period of purgation, and talks about current efforts to add research on the mystical and the ecstatic to meditation and mindfulness research in order to better understand what’s going on.
This podcast is a wonderful mix of tales from the past—including Mike and his wife Dulce’s achievements and adventures with Soviet-American citizen diplomacy towards the end of the Cold War—the present, and what’s coming up at the Esalen research center now, e.g., asking what is happening on “the other side,” and discovering the truth about subtle body phenomena. On a personal note, Mike shares about practicing agnosticism, his respect and admiration for the quality of wonder, and about the magic of reading subtle cues and being increasingly in tune with “the algorithms of his heart.” Friendly, relaxed, and humorous, Mike is one of the world’s leading lights on self-transformation. Recorded on February 16, 2022.
Read MoreMichael Murphy (Part 1) – The Human Potential Movement Then & Now: 60 Years at the Leading Edge of Transformative Practice, Research & Action
Ep. 58 (Part 1 of 3) | Michael Murphy, author, co-founder of the world-famous Esalen Institute, and pioneer of the Human Potential Movement starting in the 60s, talks about Esalen’s latest adventures in research, our current crisis of belief, and the anchoring question that has guided Esalen (and Mike) all along: how best to serve? Mike relates a wealth of intimate experience, knowledge, and wisdom covering his decades of living at the leading edge of transformative practice and the realization of human potential. He describes the developmental process of transformative practices such as somatics and psychedelics, now circling around after a period of purgation, and the need to include the mystical and ecstatic in meditation and mindfulness research in order to better understand what’s going on.
On a personal note, Mike shares about practicing agnosticism, his respect and admiration for the quality of wonder, and about the magic of reading subtle cues and being increasingly in tune with “the algorithms of his heart.” Friendly, relaxed, and humorous, Mike is one of the world’s leading lights on self-transformation. Recorded on February 16, 2022.
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