Deep Transformation

Ep. 125 (Part 1 of 3) | Purpose guide, activist, nonduality student/teacher, and meditation teacher Jonathan Gustin is passionate about bringing the subject of the metacrisis into spiritual practice, essentially updating spiritual traditions that originated on deeply local levels to reflect the world of interrelated global crises we live in today. Jonathan proposes we delve into the relationship between nondual awakening and the metacrisis, using the metacrisis as our spiritual koan, and fostering within our contemplative practice a sense of responsibility for life that manifests in activism. Jonathan’s focus is also on guiding individuals to explore the notion of soul-level purpose—not only to discover our true purpose but embody a purpose that is consistent with love without boundaries. 

This is a warm, lively, far reaching, and enlightening discussion, tying many intriguing subjects to the overarching theme of nonduality, metacrisis, and soul-level purpose: Native American vision questing, karma yoga, skillful communication, the developmental stages of purpose, the consequences of the delusion of separateness, the difference between humancentric nonduality and ecocentric nonduality, and much more. It is deeply inspirational to approach the metacrisis (which Jonathan provides a wonderful definition of) as an investigation into our relationship with life and reality. Recorded April 4, 2024.

“When we wake up, we wake up to a love and a responsibility for all things.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• Introducing meditation teacher, activist, nondual student/teacher, and founder of the Purpose Guides Institute & the Green Sangha organization, Jonathan Gustin (00:51)
• What inspired Jonathan to adopt climate change as a spiritual practice: Jonathan’s vision of whole person midwifery (02:20)
• A passion for bringing spiritual practice and activism together (04:20)
• How can the metacrisis inform nonduality? How can nonduality inform the metacrisis? (05:27)
• Why does a nondual experience not effect more change in people? (07:43)
• Nonduality defined: “not two;” the difference between separate and individual, and the underlying unity of reality (09:42)
• The responsibility aspect: expanding our circle of care, the realization that we are responsible to life brings us to our purpose (12:50) 
• Marrying liberation (moksha) and service (dharma) into one: liberation/service (15:03)
• Purpose discovery falls between self-actualization and self-transcendence (17:04)
• Native American nondual wisdom and Jonathan’s daily practice (19:45)
• “What is this?” Seung Sahn and Kalu Rinpoche (23:16)
• For the first time in history we can access all the world’s wisdom: YouTube is the new Alexandria (24:12)
• Privilege, the top 1%, and the option of service (26:11)
• Handling the overwhelm of the world’s suffering (29:10)
• Awakening soul-level purpose and mythopoetic identity (31:09)
• Understanding and implementing whole person midwifery: Who are you at a soul level? Who are your people? What are you good at? (34:27)
• “Find the place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” – Frederick Buechner (37:51)

• Jonathan Gustin, founder of the Purpose Guides Institute and Green Sangha, a spiritually oriented activist organization
• The Advaita Vedanta tradition (Hindu nondual tradition)
• John Prendergast, co-author of Jonathan’s upcoming paper on the metacrisis and nonduality
• CA Institute of Integral Studies
• Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Ramana Maharshi, Who Am I? The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi 
• Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth*, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future*
• A.H. Almaas, creator of The Diamond Approach, Nonduality and Beyond (Deep Transformation podcast)
• Wallace Black Elk, Native American shamanic teacher, Black Elk: The Sacred Ways of a Lakota*
• What is This? Zen master Seung Sahn, Kalu Rinpoche, and an orange (The Zennist)
• John Vervaeke, award-winning lecturer on subjects like Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
• Jonathan Rowson, director of Perspectiva, Making Friends with Conflict, Metamodernity, Construct Awareness, and Other Ways of Facing the Current Metacrisis (Deep Transformation podcast)
• Daniel Schmachtenberger, founding member of The Consilience Project, Developing a Deeper Understanding of Life: Opening to the Complexity, Wholeness, and Beauty of Reality (Deep Transformation podcast YouTube video)
• Terry Patten, founder of A New Republic of the Heart, Facing Death: A Call to “Get Real,” the Importance of Being Kind, and Waking Up to the Miracle of Existence (Terry’s Message to Us 3 Weeks Before His Own Passing) (Deep Transformation podcast)
• Climate Change as Spiritual Practice with Joanna Macy, David Schenk, Larry Churchill (Purpose Guides YouTube video hosted by Jonathan Gustin)
• Climate Change as Spiritual Teacher with Adyashanti & Jonathan Gustin (YouTube video)
• Frederick Buechner, “Find the place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet”
• Joseph Campbell’s Follow Your Bliss (YouTube video)

Join Roger Walsh at Integral Conference of North America (ICON)’s FUTURE HUMAN conference, May 16-19th, 2024 in Denver!

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Jonathan Gustin, MA, MFT, is the founder of Purpose Guides Institute. He helps people to find and embody their life’s purpose, and offers training for those who want to become Purpose Guides themselves. He is also a meditation teacher, facilitating meditation gatherings remotely as well as in-person in his hometown of Victoria, BC, Canada.  

Jonathan has been a psychotherapist and spiritual mentor for over 25 years. He is a retired adjunct professor at JFK University and co-author of Purpose Rising with Ken Wilber, Erwin Laszlo, and Bill Plotkin. He has had the pleasure of co-teaching programs with such luminaries as Human Potential pioneer George Leonard, eco-activist Joanna Macy, eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin, and Non-Duality pioneer Adyashanti. Jonathan looks forward to igniting a global conversation on Non-Duality & The Metacrisis (with a forthcoming paper in Summer 2024). Jonathan’s Institute welcomes a new cohort each September for Purpose Discovery and Purpose Guide Training. You can join him here:

HERE Zoom Meditation

HERE Intro to Purpose Discovery

HERE Non-duality & the MetaCrisis – A group exploration

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 124 | In this engaging, informative, and thought provoking conversation, artificial intelligence expert Dr. Nikki Mirghafori gives us a clear picture of where AI technology stands at this point and enlightens us as to its gifts, its potential, and its dangers. Nikki, who is also an internationally acclaimed Buddhist meditation teacher, is passionate about helping to bring equanimity to the whole issue of AI and emphasizes that the fear mongering going on around it is doing all of us a real disservice. She opens our eyes to the enormous potential of AI as applied to global issues such as cleaning up the environment, ending hunger, providing clean water, improving methods of food production—even acting as a wise mentor in supporting people to be their best selves. Nikki tells us that ethical use of AI depends on both designers and users, and that we are not powerless in the way things unfold. 

How can AI systems be benevolent and supportive and bring out the best in us? Will we be able to maintain our values and ethics as our use of AI continues to expand? If our perception of AI was sort of murky or limited before, this conversation effectively brings us to a much more informed understanding. Nikki explains everything from where we have been exposed to AI without knowing it, the important distinction between weak/narrow AI and strong/general AI (AGI), personal choice engineering, our natural tendency to anthropomorphize AI, and the difference between benevolent AI and compassionate AI. Nikki is a superb teacher and a pleasure to listen to; this conversation is invaluable in its timeliness and its ability to bring us all up to speed on AI. Recorded January 29, 2024.

“There’s so much good that can come from this technology… the list is endless how much AI technology can be helpful.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• Introducing AI research scientist and inventor & gifted meditation teacher and practitioner, Dr. Nikki Mirghafori (01:13)
• What exactly is AI? (03:07)
• The important distinction between weak or narrow AI and strong or general AI (AGI) (05:11)
• AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) which is self-aware and conscious is still only theoretical: fear mongering around AGI is really a disservice to us (06:46)
• Where have people been exposed to AI without even knowing it? (10:28) 
• The gifts that AI technology can bring are endless (13:33)
• The most exciting AI applications for Nikki: finding creative ways to clean up the environment, stop hunger, provide clean water, produce our food, and be a mentor in supporting people to be their best selves (15:07)
• Pattern recognition: taking input patterns and producing output patterns is the heart/brain of AI (17:35)
• How can AI help us to become wiser and more compassionate? The ethics of AI depend on both designer and user (20:14)
• Creating AI in our image and how our developmental level fits in—it’s in the data that the AI system is fed (28:16)
• Personal choice engineering (32:11) 
• Kids have become ruder interacting with chatbots like Siri & Alexa: how can we keep our humanity alive and be true to our ethics as we interact with AI? (34:40)
• Resisting temptation and avoiding sliding down the slippery ethical slope (36:50)
• What is the mystery of being human? We don’t even know what consciousness is (40:43)
• The New York Times journalist who was told to leave his wife by a chatbot (45:11)
• Our natural tendency to project on and anthropomorphize artificial intelligence—many people will be fooled (46:53)
• Does AI have the potential for exponential growth? AI’s self-improving capacity does not exist now—and may never exist—but parameters, computational power, and storage capacity have become far greater & neural net training has become faster (48:42)
• Bringing equanimity to the issue of AI (52:42)
• Why Nikki likes the term “benevolent AI” versus “compassionate AI” (54:23)

• Nikki Mirghafori website: https://www.nikkimirghafori.com
• Nikki Mirgafori teaching schedule: https://www.nikkimirghafori.com/so/0dOquYoj7?languageTag=en
• Fei-Fei Li, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
• Carlos Casteñeda, “Death is the only wise advisor that we have.” (Journey to Ixtlan*)
• The Hidden Brain podcast explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex, changing world
• Robert Knight and the Knight Cognitive Neuroscience Research Lab at UC Berkeley
• The 2013 movie Her (YouTube Trailer)
• Creepy Microsoft Bing Chatbot Urges Tech Columnist To Leave His Wife (Huffington Post)

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Dr. Nikki Mirghafori is an Artificial Intelligence scientist and an internationally recognized Buddhist teacher. She serves as a Stewarding Teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where she is also on the Board of Directors, and a Dharma Teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA.  She teaches with clarity, warmth, and humor on topics ranging from mindful leadership to cultivating kindness, with a rare expertise on mindfulness of death. Dr. Mirghafori is widely published in AI, has led international research collaborations as a Berkeley academic, and advised technology startups. She is of Persian heritage, an advocate for wisdom and compassion in daily life, as well as ethical AI in our zeitgeist. More info at https://www.nikkimirghafori.com.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 123 (Part 3 of 3) | Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, brilliant spiritual teacher, and prolific author, whose books have been foundational to many people’s understanding of Buddhism, mindfulness, and insight meditation, shares rich nuggets of wisdom stemming from a lifetime of ever-deepening practice. The focus of this conversation remains very much in the present, as Joseph describes how the leading edge of his practice never stops moving forward and how his understanding of the most basic ideas becomes ever more refined and liberating. In sharing his insights, he sheds light on and smooths the path for the rest of us: about the mysterious arising of compassion, made easier the more open we are and the less self-referential, about reframing our experience in a way that frees us, about spontaneous responsiveness, and about awakening being a gradual process—until it’s sudden.

Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment is “lightening up” for the way it conveys a sense of making progress along a journey. And with his humor, humility, and easy, lighthearted manner, Joseph exemplifies and transmits a lighter way of being in the world. He makes it ever so clear that spiritual practice and meditation, examining and investigating our experience moment to moment, naturally leads us to compassionate responsiveness and out of the shackles of what binds us to a self that is ultimately just a construct. Recorded November 2, 2023.

“Nirvana is like the peace that comes when the refrigerator stops humming.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• An ever-deepening understanding of refuge: for Joseph, refuge feels like being held (00:56)
• In mindfulness, unwholesome states of mind no longer act as distorting filters—they are wholly accepted (04:12)
• The effects of recognizing aversion and resistance to your experience (07:03)
• Liberation is impossible as long as there is attachment to the pleasant, aversion to the unpleasant (08:02)
• Nirvana is like the peace that comes when the refrigerator stops humming; it also describes the mind free of defilements (10:09)
• What is unique about the experience of nirvana? What gives it the transformative power to uproot defilements? (15:17)
• Does the path ever end? Who knows! (19:29)
• It’s the quality of your interest that is key to staying on the spiritual path: “If you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it” (22:55)
• Joseph: “The fact that liberation is inevitable gives me a lot of joy.” (25:18)
• Reflections on how Buddhist teachings apply to the crises of today: the balance of equanimity and compassion make effective response possible (27:39)

• Dogen, founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan in the 13th century
• A.H. Almaas, founder of The Diamond Approach, see also Deep Transformation episode #43, Nonduality and Beyond: The Exhilarating Adventure of Discovering the Nature of Reality (or watch on YouTube)
• Joseph’s article on Nirvana: Reflections on Nibbana
• Anagarika Munindra, Bengali Buddhist master & Vipassana meditation teacher
• Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill*
• Angeles Arrien, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary*
• Joseph Goldstein, co-founder Insight Meditation Society 
• Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight*
• Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation*
• Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening*
• Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism*
• Joseph’s article on Nirvana: Reflections on Nibbana

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Joseph Goldstein is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist studies, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Insight Meditation and The Experience of Insight. He has also co-authored books with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet, and he leads Insight Meditation retreats around the world.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 122 (Part 2 of 3) | Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, brilliant spiritual teacher, and prolific author, whose books have been foundational to many people’s understanding of Buddhism, mindfulness, and insight meditation, shares rich nuggets of wisdom stemming from a lifetime of ever-deepening practice. The focus of this conversation remains very much in the present, as Joseph describes how the leading edge of his practice never stops moving forward and how his understanding of the most basic ideas becomes ever more refined and liberating. In sharing his insights, he sheds light on and smooths the path for the rest of us: about the mysterious arising of compassion, made easier the more open we are and the less self-referential, about reframing our experience in a way that frees us, about spontaneous responsiveness, and about awakening being a gradual process—until it’s sudden.

Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment is “lightening up” for the way it conveys a sense of making progress along a journey. And with his humor, humility, and easy, lighthearted manner, Joseph exemplifies and transmits a lighter way of being in the world. He makes it ever so clear that spiritual practice and meditation, examining and investigating our experience moment to moment, naturally leads us to compassionate responsiveness and out of the shackles of what binds us to a self that is ultimately just a construct. Recorded November 2, 2023.

“The forward edge has more to do with the attitude of exploration rather than any particular thing.“

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• The mysterious arising of compassion and what does this say about the nature of reality? (00:52)
• Compassion is the manifestation of emptiness; responsiveness is the activity of emptiness (03:00)
• Understanding bodhicitta (05:47)
• The near enemy of compassion is sorrow, because in sorrow is aversion (09:57)
• Moving out of sorrow to compassionate response transfigures sorrow into an uplifting energy: moving from self to non-self (13:52) 
• How unwholesome mind patterns keep us bound, and uprooting the first 3 fetters/defilements in the 1st stage of enlightenment (17:36)
• Desire and aversion are uprooted at the third stage of enlightenment but conceit, or some manifestation of “I am-ing,” remains (19:47)
• The experience of the zero center: when we know unmistakably that self is a construct—still there are still deeply conditioned habits of mind, one of which is the habit pattern “I am” (21:38)
• The power of recognizing the particular defilement that triggers our suffering (23:50)
• Don’t conflate clear perception, recognition, with mindfulness—recognizing fear is different from accepting fear (29:59)

• Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche & Lama Surya Das, Natural Great Perfection*
• Ram Dass & Paul Gorman, How Can I Help*
• Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Vajrayana master, scholar, poet, teacher, “When we realize the selfless nature of phenomena, the energy to bring about the good of others dawns uncontrived and effortless.”
• Alan Watts, Trust Human Nature (YouTube video)
• Lama Surya Das, Dzogchen teacher, see also Deep Transformation podcast episode #83, The Essence of Awakening
• Kevin Schanilec, The 10 Fetters, SimplyTheSeen.com
• Bhikkhu Analayo, Buddhist monk, scholar, meditation teacher
• Joseph Goldstein, co-founder Insight Meditation Society 
• Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight*
• Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation*
• Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening*
• Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism*
• Joseph’s article on Nirvana: Reflections on Nibbana

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Joseph Goldstein is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist studies, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Insight Meditation and The Experience of Insight. He has also co-authored books with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet, and he leads Insight Meditation retreats around the world.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 121 (Part 1 of 3) | Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, brilliant spiritual teacher, and prolific author, whose books have been foundational to many people’s understanding of Buddhism, mindfulness, and insight meditation, shares rich nuggets of wisdom stemming from a lifetime of ever-deepening practice. The focus of this conversation remains very much in the present, as Joseph describes how the leading edge of his practice never stops moving forward and how his understanding of the most basic ideas becomes ever more refined and liberating. In sharing his insights, he sheds light on and smooths the path for the rest of us: about the mysterious arising of compassion, made easier the more open we are and the less self-referential, about reframing our experience in a way that frees us, about spontaneous responsiveness, and about awakening being a gradual process—until it’s sudden.

Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment is “lightening up” for the way it conveys a sense of making progress along a journey. And with his humor, humility, and easy, lighthearted manner, Joseph exemplifies and transmits a lighter way of being in the world. He makes it ever so clear that spiritual practice and meditation, examining and investigating our experience moment to moment, naturally leads us to compassionate responsiveness and out of the shackles of what binds us to a self that is ultimately just a construct. Recorded November 2, 2023.

“The fact that liberation is inevitable gives me a lot of joy.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• Introducing Joseph Goldstein, renowned Buddhist meditation teacher, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, and author of many spiritual books (01:05)
• What’s on the edge for Joseph now? The edge is always about clinging, and as what you cling to changes, the edge changes (03:45)
• Over time, the understanding of mindfulness becomes more and more refined (04:51)
• Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment: lightening up (08:53)
• Don’t waste your suffering! Relate to it with interest (10:58)
• The ultimate reframe: “I” becomes “no-I” (13:44)
• How walking meditation can open us to a vivid experience of selflessness (15:06)
• Our lives are lived in relationship to our overlay on experience, going to the direct experience is itself healing and transformative (18:56)
• The conceptual level lends some sense of permanence but on the level of direct experience, everything changes, nothing is permanent (20:07)
• Clinging to things that are impermanent gives you rope burn (21:44)
• Awakening is always gradual…until it’s sudden: the diminishment of defilements and the uprooting of defilements (22:55)
• Sudden awakening, gradual cultivation, and the necessity to integrate an awakening experience (26:57)
• There are 4 stages of enlightenment because we are not able to open to the magnitude of suffering all at once; we have gone beyond belief in self, but there is still desire, aversion, conceit (31:53)
• Practice is a continual deepening (34:35)

• Joseph Goldstein, co-founder Insight Meditation Society 
• Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight*
• Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation*
• Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening*
• Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism*
• Joseph’s article on Nirvana: Reflections on Nibbana
• Sayādaw U Pandita, one of the foremost insight meditation teachers from Burma
• Anagarika Munindra, Bengali Buddhist master & Vipassana meditation teacher
• Shunryū Suzuki Roshi, Zen monk who popularized Zen Buddhism in the West, “Everything changes.” Author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind* and many more
• Korean Zen Master Chinul, Tracing Back the Radiance*, “Sudden awakening, gradual cultivation”

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Joseph Goldstein is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist studies, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Insight Meditation and The Experience of Insight. He has also co-authored books with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet, and he leads Insight Meditation retreats around the world.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 120 (Part 2 of 2) | Many time award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield has spent her life steeped in poetry and spiritual practice. Here, we feel almost as if we’ve been invited into her kitchen to talk about life, love, and especially about poems and how they offer us various answers to the abiding questions: who are we, what are we, what is our relationship to each other, what must we be grateful toward? Jane describes poems as vessels of discovery and poetry as taking your understanding and putting it into a form that is holdable, retrievable, transmissible. Poems can also be keys to unlock our despair, she explains, creating a crack in the darkness, a re-entrance to the possibility of wholeness. Jane’s sublime poetry is many-layered; the same poem might be about human love or peace between nations, about the end of love or the fact that love never dies. Jane shares that her lifetime of questioning (her most recent book of new and selected poetry is titled The Asking) has boiled down to one question: How can I serve?

An awareness of our interconnectedness with all beings, all of life, permeates her work, and Jane is driven to provoke action on contemporary, pressing issues of biosphere, peace, and justice, and help us navigate the tightrope between hope and despair. The conversation also turns to early feminism and the poetry of women mystics that Jane put together in a beautiful anthology called Women in Praise of the Sacred, covering 43 centuries of spiritual poetry by women. When asked about her longtime Zen practice, Jane said, “I needed to become more of a human being, understand a different way of living inside this life I had been given” to become a good poet. She tells us that both poetry and Zen are paths of discovery, exploration, and awareness, and both paths insist that we attend to this world fully. This is a warm, personal, deeply illuminating, and thought provoking conversation, and Jane reads several of her poems, revealing their depth and beauty. Recorded November 30, 2023.

“I don’t want a model of spirituality that excludes other forms of connection. Inclusion is the only path that makes sense.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• How can we become a magnet for creative imagination? (00:49) 
• Artist retreats are the monastery of creativity (03:51)
• How Jane was drawn towards poetry, haiku, and Buddhist understanding early on (07:56)
• In 3-year retreat at Tassajara, writing wasn’t permitted, and how poetry returned after the monastic years (12:40)
• Both poetry and Zen are paths that insist you attend to this world fully (14:12)
• Women poets throughout history and the story of Enheduanna, earliest known poet (18:07)
• Protofeminist movement in the Middle Ages: the Beguines (25:08)
• Reading of Mechthild of Magdeburg’s poem, and how we carry a molecule of divine remembrance with us (26:56)
• Spiritual poems of male and female mystics, are they different? (30:12)
• Poems of the sacred rather than poems of suffering: dark nights of the soul come after moments of awakening as much as before (33:19)
• Spiritual poems often use the language of eros, and how inclusion of all forms of connection is the only path that makes sense (35:01) 
• Women have found their voice…yet women have always written poetry (37:09)
• Reading of “The Poet,” a 1996 poem about poems that have never been published (39:01)
• “I Imagine Myself in Time” reading (44:12)

• Allen Ginsberg, American poet, Buddhist, activist
• Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
• Alan Watts popularized Buddhist, Taoist & Hindu philosophy for a Western audience
• Jane Hirshfield, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women*
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own*
• Emily Dickinson, Katherine Anne Porter, Jane Austen
• Ancient Akkadian poet Enheduanna, The Hymn to Inanna
• Cole Porter’s song Begin the Beguine
• Protofeminism and the Beguines
• Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, all manner of things will be well.”
• Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beguine, Christian medieval mystic 
• Mirabai, Hindu mystic and poet
• Kabir, Indian mystic, poet & saint
• Eliza Griswold, poet and journalist of conflict zones
• Nobel prize winners, Louise Glück & Toni Morrison
• Jane Hirshfield, The Asking: New and Selected Poems* (September 2023)
• Jane Hirshfield, Ledger: Poems* (2021)
• Jane Hirshfield, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women*
• About Jane Hirshfield, Poetry.org website

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Jane Hirshfield, writing “some of the most important poetry in the world today” (The New York Times Magazine), is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere. Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and finalist selection for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The author of two now-classic collections of essays on poetry’s infrastructure and craft, and editor and co-translator of four books presenting world poets from the deep past, Hirshfield’s work, translated into seventeen languages, appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and ten editions of The Best American Poems. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she was elected in 2019 into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her most recently published collection of poetry is The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023).

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 119 (Part 1 of 2) | Many time award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield has spent her life steeped in poetry and spiritual practice. Here, we feel almost as if we’ve been invited into her kitchen to talk about life, love, and especially about poems and how they offer us various answers to the abiding questions: who are we, what are we, what is our relationship to each other, what must we be grateful toward? Jane describes poems as vessels of discovery and poetry as taking your understanding and putting it into a form that is holdable, retrievable, transmissible. Poems can also be keys to unlock our despair, she explains, creating a crack in the darkness, a re-entrance to the possibility of wholeness. Jane’s sublime poetry is many-layered; the same poem might be about human love or peace between nations, about the end of love or the fact that love never dies. Jane shares that her lifetime of questioning (her most recent book of new and selected poetry is titled The Asking) has boiled down to one question: How can I serve?

An awareness of our interconnectedness with all beings, all of life, permeates her work, and Jane is driven to provoke action on contemporary, pressing issues of biosphere, peace, and justice, and help us navigate the tightrope between hope and despair. The conversation also turns to early feminism and the poetry of women mystics that Jane put together in a beautiful anthology called Women in Praise of the Sacred, covering 43 centuries of spiritual poetry by women. When asked about her longtime Zen practice, Jane said, “I needed to become more of a human being, understand a different way of living inside this life I had been given” to become a good poet. She tells us that both poetry and Zen are paths of discovery, exploration, and awareness, and both paths insist that we attend to this world fully. This is a warm, personal, deeply illuminating, and thought provoking conversation, and Jane reads several of her poems, revealing their depth and beauty. Recorded November 30, 2023.

“Nonduality is inherent in an existence experienced as a verb and not as a noun.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• Introducing award-winning poet and long-time Zen practitioner Jane Hirshfield (00:59)
• Jane’s recent collection of poems, The Asking, tracks the story of her evolution as a poet (02:33)
• How the title The Asking came about: a poem is an exploration of a question that can’t be answered (04:50)
• What is poetry? Poems are vessels of discovery that are retrievable; they provide you with a record of having worked through the questions (08:54)
• Sacred questions, Zen practice, and how Jane’s questions eventually became one: “How can I serve?” (11:55)
• Remembering we are all interconnected—this is not a solitary venture (16:16)
• Jane’s reading of “Today, When I Could Do Nothing,” written the first day of the COVID stay-at-home mandate (18:52) 
• Entering the zone of poetry you become more open: when you ask a question, you start hearing answers everywhere (24:41)
• How does the invisible become visible? Poetry finds a way (26:11)
• If we could understand existence as verbs rather than nouns, it would change everything (27:19)
• Opening to poetry, synchronicities show up everywhere, things leap into a poem to help (29:08)
• Science, the advent of the microbiome, and the realization that a large part of us isn’t human (30:54)
• Jane’s series of poems investigating “what is the self?” and a reading of “My Proteins” (32:18)
• Poems related to the Earth’s crisis began with Jane’s own perplexity and grief (36:27)
• Reading of an “all-purpose crisis poem”: “Let Them Not Say” (40:00)
• Jane’s task as a poet became to make it not so that future generations would say we didn’t do enough in regard to the biosphere, justice, and peace (42:11)
• What state of consciousness do you need to be in to write a poem, also to read it and receive it? (43:08)
• Deep depression and the crack a poem opened, a re-entrance into the possibility of wholeness (44:23)
• Reading of “For What Binds Us,” a poem about love and about peace between nations (46:49) 
• Poetry made Jane a promise that the scar of a wound is a strength not a weakness (50:14)
• Keeping the connection to unconscious wisdom alive when poetry is unavailable (52:10)
• How poetry (and art) can save us in impossible circumstances and despair (53:26)
• The curative of despair is any sense of agency (56:41)

• Jane Hirshfield, The Asking: New and Selected Poems* (September 2023)
• Jane Hirshfield, Ledger: Poems* (2021)
• Jane Hirshfield, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women*
• About Jane Hirshfield, Poetry.org website
• Robert Frost, beloved American poet, “… a momentary stay against confusion” comes from The Figure a Poem Makes
• San Francisco Zen Center, founded by Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind*
• Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist and author, Events and the Nature of Time (YouTube video)
• The myth of Psyche (see under Psyche’s trials: sorting grain)
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring*
• Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish poet, “Face to Face”
• Nâzım Hikmet, Turkish poet
• The butterfly effect

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Jane Hirshfield, writing “some of the most important poetry in the world today” (The New York Times Magazine), is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere. Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and finalist selection for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The author of two now-classic collections of essays on poetry’s infrastructure and craft, and editor and co-translator of four books presenting world poets from the deep past, Hirshfield’s work, translated into seventeen languages, appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and ten editions of The Best American Poems. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she was elected in 2019 into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her most recently published collection of poetry is The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023).

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 118 | Psychologist and non-violent communications trainer Kateryna Yasko and her husband, Vytautas Bučiūnas, Integral Master Coach and leadership development expert, relate what it’s like to live in war-torn Ukraine, two years since the Russian invasion began. They share why they chose to return to Kyiv from the safe haven of Lithuania, and describe a “special form of happiness” that occurs when the fragility and beauty of life is brought to the fore, as Russian missiles and drones continue to target civilians and cultural landmarks. It is an existential battle being fought for Ukraine, and Kateryna & Vytas are deeply aware of the importance of keeping the soul of Ukraine alive, the cultural code, the foundation of any democratic nation’s identity. Among other things, Kateryna works with theater groups to stage productions that help make meaning of what Ukrainians are going through, help with processing PTSD, and keep cultural expression alive.

This poignant conversation reveals what extraordinary courage human beings are capable of when put to the test: to protect loved ones, country, and the values of truth, justice, freedom, and democracy. Kateryna and Vytas emphasize that love is not enough to protect our innate rights and that pacifism is not an option in this case. They provide us with a glimpse into personal family life in modern wartime, a psychological portrait of where Ukrainians are at, a request for help, and a wake up call for all to understand that democracy around the world is not a given and that there are times, like this, when we need to stand up and fight for it. Recorded January 23, 2024.

“We cannot leave this war to our children.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• Introducing Ukrainian psychologist Kateryna Yasko and integral leadership development expert Vytautas Bučiūnas, who have returned to live in Kyiv despite the ongoing war with Russia (01:13)
• What is it like living in a country at war? The bombing of civilian buildings all over Ukraine happens according to schedule: Mondays, Tuesdays & holidays (03:21)
• The interior personal dimensions: stress, fear, anger, but also a very meaningful time, a special form of happiness with life so fragile (06:18)
• Why Kateryna & Vytas have chosen to return to Kyiv, rather than staying in Lithuania where it’s safe (08:51) 
• Pacifism in this case is not an option: Putin is explicit about his intention to destroy Ukraine as a nation (10:08)
• Kateryna’s work with military recruiters (as a psychologist), every one of whose motivation is “We cannot leave this war to our children.” (14:33)
• Maintaining the cultural code, the soul of Ukraine: Kateryna works with producers & directors to support theater groups whose venues have been targeted in Russia’s attempts to destroy Ukraine culturally (16:09)
• How theater helps people make sense of their trauma, and the staging of Pinocchio to address how to remain humane under circumstances that evoke so much fear, anger & stress (20:08)
• A philosopher, PhD, and theologian friend has now become a sniper, and how Kateryna, a professional non-violent communications trainer and psychologist, realizes she too may need to become a sniper if Ukraine doesn’t receive enough support to protect itself (22:53) 
• If Ukraine were to lose, Ukrainian men would become cannon fodder for the Russians, fighting against Western allies (26:04)
• Invitation to join an Emerge gathering in Ukraine, September 2024, to deliberately envision the global planetary future we want to create (28:57)
• Ukraine is now the frontier, the best place to feel into the fragility of life and contemplate futurism (32:42)
• So many tipping points around the world are building up this year and the challenge of making sense of it: peace and democracy are not a given (35:11)
• A call for support from the United States: peace & democracy are fragile all over the world—don’t take them for granted (36:01)
• Will Ukraine get the package of funding under consideration in the US? Please do the compassionate action: write your senators and representatives to pass this funding (38:08)

• Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man*
• Martin Luther King Jr., “…love without power is sentimental and anemic”
• Hryhorii Skovoroda, one of Ukraine’s greatest philosophers, also a beloved poet, teacher, and composer. The beautiful 18th century mansion that housed the National Literary and Memorial Museum of Hryhorii Skovoroda was singled out and destroyed by the Russians because of its psychological and spiritual value to the Ukrainian people
• Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio
• Emerge Ukraine Pilgrimage, September 2024

See also previous Deep Transformation podcasts with Kateryna and Vytas:

• Ukrainian Integral Perspectives on the Ongoing Invasion of Ukraine with Kateryna Yasko & Vytautas Bučiūnas
• The Moral Imperative to Help Ukraine: Integral Perspectives on the War, Its Global Implications, and the Role of Warrior Consciousness
• Ukraine, One Year Later: Finding Meaning, Purpose, and Ways to Contribute Amidst the Hell of War

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Kateryna Yasko (Ukraine) is an organizational psychologist, a trainer for the development of emotional intelligence, trust, cooperation, effective communication, and peaceful conflict resolution, and co-founder of the consulting company U-Integral. Her academic background is in the area of international relations and law (MSc), business (MBA), and psychology (MSc). She bases her programs on the principles of Ken Wilber’s Integral approach and Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, and is certified in Spiral Dynamics Integral and in Susanne Cook-Greuter’s Maturity Assessment Profile. Kateryna is also head of the public association “International Institute for Integral Development” and a founder of the educational initiative EMPATIA.PRO, specializing in bringing holistic approaches into educational leadership and learning cultures. 

Vytautas Bučiūnas (Lithuania–Ukraine) is a co-founder and managing partner of U-Integral, an integral leadership development company. Vytautas also has vast experience as a top manager in the banking sector including working as the Head of Resident Office, Senior Banker, Associate Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Russia, Ukraine). Vytautas’ professional profile includes building organizational units from scratch, carrying out large-scale transformations, and managing crises. Vytautas is a certified Integral Master Coach™ (Integral Coaching Canada), an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC)™, and the only business consultant in Ukraine certified in Leadership Maturity Framework – Maturity Assessment for Professionals (LMF-MAP) and Global Leadership Profile (GLP). Vytautas explores the development of human consciousness and complex social systems from a holistic perspective. He considers the growth of a critical mass of mature leaders with systemic thinking and transformational capabilities to be the key to society’s healthy development.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 117 (Part 3 of 3) | Brad Reynolds, author of Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber and Where’s Wilber At? Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium, gives us a beautiful distillation of Ken Wilber’s work, starting from the beginning and spanning decades. Not only does Brad elegantly relate the major themes of Ken’s work, he also makes clear the value of Ken’s contributions—the way this knowledge can be understood and applied to literally expand our notion of reality and evolve our consciousness. Brad deftly leads us through the subjects that Ken has developed: the spectrum of consciousness, the integration of science and religion, transcending and including what has come before, the importance of the transpersonal, and much more. We learn why Ken’s teachings are timeless and also so relevant and important today.

Brad’s scholarship, his own spiritual practice and insight, his engaging, easygoing style, and the close working relationship he had with Ken for many years make this podcast a goldmine for learning the essence of Ken’s theories, for deepening our appreciation of the magnitude of Ken’s understanding, and above all, the topics covered here point the way for us to evolve as human beings. We come to understand that integral is much more than a theory: it’s a practice, a call to grow and transcend, to become more inclusive, more responsive—to live our true potential. Brad eloquently brings it home just how much we need integral thinkers and leaders right now, with regressive developmental trends on the rise. Especially pertinent in our polarized society, integral shows us how to take all that is valuable within ostensibly conflicting worldviews and integrate it for the benefit of all. Recorded January 3, 2024.

“Integral thinking is really about encouraging people to be their best selves.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• Ken’s Phase 5: Ending the solitary period and establishing the Integral Institute to apply the AQAL model in the world (00:49)
• Ken’s health issues multiplied in 2006 (05:19)
• Brad’s favorite book of Ken’s: Integral Psychology (06:37)
• Ken’s critique of postmodernism in his novel Boomeritis (09:05)
• Ken’s new book would often address the flaws in his last book (13:28)
• What Ken’s The Marriage of Sense and Soul intended to do: how to integrate value-free science with value-laden religion? (14:40)
• And how do we mitigate the clash of civilizations, the war of worldviews? (19:01)
• How psychology uses the scientific method to develop our interiors and help heal our fractured culture (20:52)
• Ken’s theory is based upon the reality of his transpersonal awareness (22:04)
• The need for integral leaders to permeate our institutions and establish global reconciliation—otherwise there will be a regression (23:39)
• History is calling on us as a collective to address the pathologies we haven’t addressed or we will lose our democracy and regress down the spectrum of consciousness (25:16)
• Integral is really about encouraging people to be their best selves, to be inclusive; it’s a way of securing the rights of liberty and justice (27:32)
• Ken’s most recent publications, The Religion of Tomorrow, A Post-Truth World, and Revolutionary Social Transformation (29:33)
• Every generation has the responsibility to allow for higher development of human consciousness (35:01)
• The importance of BEING integral, not just thinking integral (36:02)
• Roger’s thank you to Brad for synthesizing Ken’s work and the value of integral so beautifully (36:47)

• Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard & Marco Morelli, Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening* 
• Jamie Wheal: see Deep Transformation episode #3, Ramping Up Human Evolution in Time to Avert Disaster
• Integral Life website, run by Corey deVos, see also Deep Transformation episode #67, Illuminating the Integral Vision: A Metatheory for Understanding Our Self, Life, and the World
• Jeff Salzman, The Daily Evolver podcast, see also Deep Transformation episode #1, Polarization, Being Woke, the Universal Agenda, Mindfulness Going Bad, and the Integral Vision
• Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology*
• Ken Wilber, Boomeritis* (a novel)
• Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion*
• Steve McIntosh, Developmental Politics: How America Can Grow Into a Better Version of Itself,* see also Deep Transformation episode #20, Consciousness Evolves, Politics Can Too
• Ken Wilber, The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions*
• Brad Reynolds’ website: https://integralartandstudies.com
• Brad Reynolds, Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber*
• Brad Reynolds, Where’s Wilber At?: Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium*
• Brad Reynolds, God’s Great Tradition of Global Wisdom: Guru Yoga-Satsang in the Integral Age*

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Brad Reynolds did graduate work at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) before leaving to study under Ken Wilber for nearly a decade (1995-2004), and published two books reviewing Wilber’s work: Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber (Tarcher, 2004) and Where’s Wilber At?: Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium (Paragon House, 2006). He recently published a book reviewing the world’s wisdom traditions called God’s Great Tradition of Global Wisdom: Guru Yoga-Satsang in the Integral Age (Bright Alliance, 2021). Brad is also a graphic artist, laying out books and designing a wide variety of graphics for publication as well as continuing his work in Integral Philosophy and the study of world religions.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Ep. 116 (Part 2 of 3) | Brad Reynolds, author of Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber and Where’s Wilber At? Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium, gives us a beautiful distillation of Ken Wilber’s work, starting from the beginning and spanning decades. Not only does Brad elegantly relate the major themes of Ken’s work, he also makes clear the value of Ken’s contributions—the way this knowledge can be understood and applied to literally expand our notion of reality and evolve our consciousness. Brad deftly leads us through the subjects that Ken has developed: the spectrum of consciousness, the integration of science and religion, transcending and including what has come before, the importance of the transpersonal, and much more. We learn why Ken’s teachings are timeless and also so relevant and important today.

Brad’s scholarship, his own spiritual practice and insight, his engaging, easygoing style, and the close working relationship he had with Ken for many years make this podcast a goldmine for learning the essence of Ken’s theories, for deepening our appreciation of the magnitude of Ken’s understanding, and above all, the topics covered here point the way for us to evolve as human beings. We come to understand that integral is much more than a theory: it’s a practice, a call to grow and transcend, to become more inclusive, more responsive—to live our true potential. Brad eloquently brings it home just how much we need integral thinkers and leaders right now, with regressive developmental trends on the rise. Especially pertinent in our polarized society, integral shows us how to take all that is valuable within ostensibly conflicting worldviews and integrate it for the benefit of all. Recorded January 3, 2024.

“Reality encompasses all perspectives.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

• How Phase 3 evolved: the importance of practice & the AQAL map (all quadrants, all stages, all lines, all states, all types) (00:49)
• No boundary awareness: the limits of the mind and how the heart becomes the driving force (04:19)
• Hierarchies and the great chain of being—the great nest of spirit—from matter to nature to body, mind, soul & spirit (08:33)
• Rescuing the interior from scientific materialism and the development of the four quadrants: interior elements of reality are just as authentic as exteriors (10:31) 
• The importance of a stable ego and the current emphasis on growing up and showing up to avoid spiritual bypassing (13:16)
• Finding our way in spiritual traditions, cults, and with gurus, and Ken’s map to distinguish spiritual teachers’ legitimacy, authenticity, and authority (17:16)
• The timeless nature of Ken’s teachings and how they point to the evolution of humanity (26:48)
• In a cult (and some religious traditions) we are looking for the leader to play our parent, submerging our autonomy (31:15)
• We are largely at an adolescent stage of development; the difference between adolescent and mature stages of development (33:03)
• Crucial distinctions between problematic spiritual groups and beneficial spiritual groups (35:49)
• Roger’s summary of Ken’s 4 phases, with phase 5 still to come (37:35)

• Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology*
• Ken Wilber, No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth*
• Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything*
• Dick Anthony, Bruce Ecker & Ken Wilber, Spiritual Choices: The Problems of Recognizing Authentic Paths to Inner Transformation*
• Brad Reynolds’ website: https://integralartandstudies.com
• Brad Reynolds, Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber*
• Brad Reynolds, Where’s Wilber At?: Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium*
• Brad Reynolds, God’s Great Tradition of Global Wisdom: Guru Yoga-Satsang in the Integral Age*

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Brad Reynolds did graduate work at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) before leaving to study under Ken Wilber for nearly a decade (1995-2004), and published two books reviewing Wilber’s work: Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber (Tarcher, 2004) and Where’s Wilber At?: Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium (Paragon House, 2006). He recently published a book reviewing the world’s wisdom traditions called God’s Great Tradition of Global Wisdom: Guru Yoga-Satsang in the Integral Age (Bright Alliance, 2021). Brad is also a graphic artist, laying out books and designing a wide variety of graphics for publication as well as continuing his work in Integral Philosophy and the study of world religions.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell