Immersing listeners in hope and optimism, author Anne Lamott helps listeners cultivate resilience through stories of honesty and service.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Anne Lamott holds a talk on:

• Service to others and selflessness as a clear path to hope
• Listening to the one-man band of our inner selves 
• The Three A’s in the 12-step program: Awareness, Acceptance, Action
• Allowing ourselves to feel the pain all around us, in the world, in our families, etc.
• Remembering that there is a solution to everything and that it is always spiritual 
• Reframing death as a step to new life and regeneration 
• Generosity as a natural human tendency that can be tapped into 
• Talking to ourselves as if we are our most cherished friend 
• Paying attention to the beauty in life and within ourselves

Check out the book recommended by Anne, A Distant Mirror. 

"Service is always a path to hope. When we can get out of ourselves and be there for others, it's what heaven will be like—what heaven on earth is like." – Anne Lamott

About Anne Lamott: 

Anne Lamott is the New York Times best-selling author of many books, including collections of essays, novels, and long-form non-fiction, including the classic writing manual Bird by Bird and child-rearing memoir Operating Instructions. In addition to being a novelist and nonfiction writer, Lamott is also a progressive political activist, public speaker, and writing teacher. Keep up with Anne on Instagram.

This episode is also brought to you by Dharma Moon.

Join Senior Buddhist Teacher David Nichtern for a provocative and playful online discussion exploring the profound practices of mindfulness and the journey of becoming a meditation teacher.

Learn more and sign up for a free online talk about becoming a meditation teacher with David at dharmamoon.com/deepening.

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Opening our hearts in practice, Trudy Goodman takes us through her Jellyroll meditation to encourage the expansion of metta from the self to others.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Trudy Goodman illuminates:

• The heart’s natural capacity to love and heal—reclaiming our birthright to compassion
• Beginning metta (lovingkindness) practice with those we deeply love and who love us in return
• Feeling into the warmth, care, and well-wishes from those we visualize in our meditation
• Softening the mental walls that block us from receiving love and emotional support
• Powerful metta phrases to offer ourselves and others
• Embracing radical self-love—accepting ourselves just as we are
• Expanding lovingkindness to those we feel neutral about, widening our circle of care
• Extending compassion and goodwill even toward those we struggle with
• Using the power of imagination to radiate boundless love to all beings everywhere

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed.

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com

“It's also a great practice to offer some loving kindness to the difficult parts of yourself. The parts you wish you could just have an 'ectomy' and get rid of them. A shame-ectomy or a blame-ectomy, whatever parts of yourself you find difficult to love, just hold them in some tenderness and care." – Trudy Goodman

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Gil Fronsdal reflects on Anicca, the Buddhist teaching often translated as impermanence, and offers a more precise lens for Western minds to understand its meaning.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Gil offers wisdom on:

• How to create inner conditions that support the natural arising of wisdom
• Understanding inconstancy as a flow of coming and going, not a fixed state of change
• A powerful fable: The Emperor of China’s quest for a painting that embodies peace and wisdom
• Calming the agitated, restless mind through meditation and mindful awareness
• Discovering true peace and safety within ourselves, rather than chasing it in the external world
• The value of noticing the flow of change and where our minds are caught
• Knowing that it is not just the world that constantly changes, but also our perception of the world
• Floating in the river of change rather than trying to swim against it
• Seeing Anicca through the lens of insight meditation 

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed.org

"The mind is like a waterfall, furious and violent. There's not much peace in it. In that state, there's not much wisdom, not much clarity. This is one of the functions of meditation: to help us quiet the mind, settle it, and show the mind that there is an alternative to being restless and agitated. Teach the mind that the safety that it's looking for is found within.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Synthesizing the divine love found in Sufism with the primal emptiness found in Zen practice, Llewellyn reveals how each path has impacted his spiritual life. 

This episode is a companion to BHNN Guest Podcast Episode 213, Angels & Devas with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check it out!

In this week’s episode, Llewellyn goes over:

• Understanding the essence of Ch’an (Zen) as a harmonious fusion of Taoism and Buddhism
• Interweaving the mystical threads of Sufism and Zen practice
• How both divine love and pure awareness dissolve the thinking mind
• Awakening to the inner light and Buddha nature within every being
• Becoming veiled by the play of illusions that we call life
• Llewellyn’s return to love after a childhood without it
• The mystery of divine love as a selfless force that seeks nothing in return
• Wisdom from Llewellyn’s Indian guru: “There is nothing but nothingness.”
• The vast, primal emptiness found at love’s distant shore
• Integrating pure consciousness into everyday life—not just on the meditation cushion
• Moving on from the drama of awakening into the calm silence of emptiness

About Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee:

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D. is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is the author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Check out his new podcast Working With Oneness.

"Love gradually became part of my life. Like an invisible scent, a perfume from a hidden garden, it began to permeate me, and in one of the greatest mysteries that can happen to a human being, my heart woke up—that spiritual organ of divine perception that is the direct connection with the source of love, what the Sufis call the beloved." – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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Deepak Chopra explores the inner universe and explains how turning inward connects us to God, higher consciousness, and the boundless intelligence of the cosmos.

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In this deeply intellectual episode, Deepak Chopra holds a lecture on:

• Three levels of existence: physical, quantum, non-local domain
• Defining God as the immeasurable potential of all that was, all that is, all that will be
• How we are intrinsically connected to the cosmos and universal intelligence
• Accessing the wisdom of the universe by turning inward
• Experiencing the divine through our own awareness, identity, and perception
• Ways we negotiate with the world and looking at the fight-flight response 
• The four control dramas rooted in childhood behavioral conditioning
• Our innate ability to be in touch with our inner observer—our soul 
• Understanding that consciousness can evolve 
• Freeing ourself from the past, from the known, and not being victimized by our memories
• Invoking Hindu deities like Ganesh for what they symbolize, their knowledge, their energy
• Numerous levels of God, the creative response, visionary response, sacred response, and beyond

“As is the atom, so is the universe. As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm. As is the human body, so is the cosmic body. As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind. If something is inside here, it’s everywhere. If it's not here, it's nowhere. You, by going inside, can have access to all the knowledge in the whole universe.” – Deepak Chopra

This episode was originally recorded in 2007

About Deepak Chopra:

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, FRCP, is a Consciousness Explorer and a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Dr. Chopra is co-founder of DeepakChopra.ai, his AI twin and well-being advisor. He also co-founded Cyberhuman.ai, a transformative suite of personalized health and well-being solutions. Dr. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is the author of over 95 books, translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers.For the last thirty years, Dr. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution. His mission is to create a more balanced, peaceful, joyful and healthier world. Through his teachings, he guides individuals to embrace their inherent strength, wisdom, and potential for personal and societal transformation. In his latest book, Digital Dharma, Dr. Chopra navigates the balance between technology and expanded awareness, explaining that while AI cannot duplicate human intelligence, it can vastly enhance personal and spiritual growth. Learn more about this book and others HERE. 

“The old paradigm said that human beings are self-contained; we are all independent. But, the new one says that human beings are focal points in one unified field. Unified means everything. Space, time, energy, information, and matter are all part of the field and we are inseparably connected with the pattern of intelligence and the whole cosmos. We are all a web of relationships.”  – Deepak Chopra

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Vipassana teacher Trudy Goodman shares how we can alleviate suffering by holding both universal and personal truths in our awareness.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Trudy Goodman provides wisdom on:

• The interwovenness of the sacred spiritual world and the conventional world 
• The liberation found in not clinging to the personal or the universal
• How the ‘Big Mind’ of awareness can make our ‘small self’ vanish
• Using the fine details of daily life as doorways into vast awareness
• Reclaiming the sacred in the mundane: renewing presence in everyday moments
• Seeing ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves 
• Accepting reality and finding the goodness in all situations 
• Heart-opening stories of resilience and optimism amidst personal tragedy
• Lessons from Qigong: discovering depth and mindfulness in every movement
• Having room for personal heartbreak, but also knowing that everything is alright

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com

This episode was originally published on Dharmaseed

“The personal, the particular expression of life in the form of you, of me, of every single sentient being, is a dharma door opening into the vastness.” – Trudy Goodman

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Mirabai Starr joins Amy Buetens, Jackie Dobrinska, and the LSRF virtual Satsang to explore how we can deepen our sacred connection with our ancestors and embrace the divine mystery of mortality.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This week, Jackie, Mirabai, and Amy explore:

• Taking a moment to share in gratitude after a brief breath meditation
• Expanding the heart in the wake of grief, death, and profound loss 
• Being with the reality of a broken heart while remembering that death is a part of life
• Día de los Muertos and the Latin cultural approach to honoring death
• Honoring the intimate connection we have with our loved ones who have died
• Sensing the connection we have to our ancestors and bringing the qualities/quirks of our deceased loved ones into our lives
• Creating home altars and ancestral shrines as a form of ongoing reverence
• Dedicating projects, practices, and creative pursuits to our ancestors

Each month, women are invited to a monthly virtual Satsang that uses a shared leadership model, featuring rotating facilitators, cooperative programming, active participation, and inclusive decision-making. This Women’s Satsang has been formed to help build allyship and agency among people who identify as women, whether cis, trans, or non-binary women, by providing a space to come together to foster greater connection, involvement, and representation around the teachings of Ram Dass and Neem Karoli Baba. Click HERE to join.

About Mirabai Starr:

Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialogue. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Check out her many books and learn more at MirabaiStarr.com.

About Amy Buetens:

Amy Buetens is an artist, illustrator and art educator. She is a certified integrative thanatologist and death educator. Her work includes performing final rites of passage, and she serves as a leader in her Jewish burial society. She has been a dedicated student of Ram Dass for over 20 years, and is a co-leader for the Love Serve Remember Foundation’s International Women’s Satsang and leads her local Ram Dass Fellowship. Check out her co-created book, You are the Universe, HERE

About The Host, Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves.

“By really forging these intimate bonds with our ancestors, we are also making friends with our own death and becoming more at ease with that vast, beautiful, invitational mystery to merge back into the beloved. The Sufi's call our death our wedding night with the beloved.” – Mirabai Starr

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In this expansive overview of spirit beings and how they operate in our world, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explains his personal encounters with Angels, Devas, and more.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This week on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Llewellyn illuminates:

• Awakening to our divine nature through spiritual practice and accessing higher dimensions of consciousness
• The sacred worldview of our ancestors vs. the spiritual emptiness of modern culture
• Lessons from Lakota Medicine Man, Black Elk, on restoring awareness of the sacred nature of all things
• How Angels and Devas have effected Llewellyn’s life and brought him messages about humanity
• The disconnection from unseen realms and its impact on human consciousness
• Llewellyn’s detailed description of different types of Angels
• Jinns, spirits made of fire in the islamic tradition which have free will to do good or evil
• Devas, aka, the spiritual intelligence within nature
• How reconnecting with nature’s spirit can help heal ecological destruction
• Encounters with elemental tricksters and darker beings from other dimensions
• How violence and darkness obscure the radiant light of our true consciousness
• The sustaining power of light and love on both the soul and cellular levels of being

About Llewellyn:

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D. is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is the author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Check out his new podcast Working With Oneness.

“I live surrounded by these other worlds, not fully understanding why our culture had to cut off all the inner worlds from our consciousness, why we have to live in such a bleak environment in which even our dreams are censored. And what does it mean to this present liminal time when we no longer have angels to guide us, nature spirits to help bring us back into balance with the natural world and its patterns of biodiversity? ” – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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Are we trying to find inner peace the wrong way? Gil Fronsdal discusses cultivating an all-inclusive awareness that embraces each experience and sensation without resistance or judgment.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Gil Fronsdal provides insights on:

• Figuring out what our life’s pursuit is, and, if we are chasing the wrong things
• The Buddha as a doctor of freedom, the inner life, the illness of suffering
• How child-like wellbeing and openness lead the Buddha to the path of freedom and the end of suffering 
• Integrating adult stability with childlike openness, curiosity, and joy
• Cultivating openness and inner strength when facing temptation, emotional pain, or adversity
• Using mindfulness to expand awareness and include all aspects of our experience
• Practicing nonjudgmental and non-discriminating awareness—welcoming all emotions, thoughts, and sensations equally
• Shifting focus from what we’re mindful of to how we are being mindful 
• The problem with hyperfixating on the self and identity 

This recording from Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“What I feel is most sacred in Buddhism is not something outside of you. Not a shrine, not a statue, not a text. But rather, what's most sacred is an awareness, your awareness, when it has nothing outside. There's nothing outside, nothing which is unacceptable for it, nothing which is shut out from it. Everything is allowed to be there in your awareness. When awareness is all-inclusive, with no outside, I think that's sacred.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Contemplating the nexus of suffering and compassion, Thanissara, Raghu, and Jackie offer suggestions for showing up with love for all that arises. 

This is the opening workshop from the Centered in the Storm Virtual Immersion with Ram Dass & Friends. This course features topics like: uncovering our shared connection, transforming relationships, personal healing & global impact, and more!

Check out Ram Dass’ Inner Academy, where you can get the full Centered in the Storm Virtual Immersion along with dozens of other full-length, interactive, virtual courses and retreats. The Inner Academy offers lessons from Ram Dass, Krishna Das, Anne Lamott, Dr. Robert Svoboda, Sharon Salzberg, Roshi Joan Halifax, Dr. Robert Thurman, Nina Rao, Father Greg Boyle, David Nichtern, Thanissara and many more.

Today’s podcast is also brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode,Thanissara, Raghu Markus and Jackie Dobrinska discuss:

• Cultivating inner peace and resilience in the face of life’s most difficult moments
• The vital role of trust in awakening intuition and authentic self-awareness
• Coming together in unity rather than being polarized as we navigate life’s storms
• The nexus and relationship between suffering and compassion
• How toxic individualism fosters inequality and disrupts collective well-being
• The deeper the suffering, the more potential there can be for quantum shifts of consciousness
• How fear-based thinking can fuel violence and disconnection in an untrained mind
• Finding a way back to the deathless, back to the heart, back to being
• Embodying courage and unwavering faith in the radiant wisdom of the heart

About Thanissara:

Thanissara is a teacher, poet, climate activist, and co-founder of the Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat. She spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun and holds an MA in Core Process Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice. Thanissara was a founding member of Chithurst and Amaravati Buddhist Monasteries in England. She helped initiate/support a number of HIV/Aids response projects in deep rural South Africa. In addition, she has facilitated meditation retreats internationally for 30 years. She teaches across the U.S., in South Africa, and the UK. She is the author of several books, including her most recent, Time To Stand Up, A Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth.

About Raghu Markus:

Raghu Markus spent two years in India with Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass. He has been involved in music and transformational media since the early 1970s. Currently, he is the Executive Director of the Love Serve Remember Foundation and hosts the Mindrolling Podcast on the Be Here Now Network. Along with Duncan Trussell, Raghu also recently co-created The Movie of Me to the Movie of We.

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves.

"This focus of suffering into compassion or the nexus and relationship of suffering and compassion, the entwined way that both of these two sides of the same coin, is really just a very succinct way of summarizing the whole path of awakening." – Thanissara

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