New Dimensions

For over a decade, Edwin Rutsch has hitchhiked, bicycled, traveled and worked his way around our precious planet. He interacted with a wide variety of cultures and peoples from all walks of life and learned to see and feel a common humanity shared by people around the world. During his explorations he came to see the importance of empathy in human connections.He is a computer expert, a filmmaker, and the founding director of The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. This center serves as one of the leading organizations of the global empathy movement and focuses on bridging social and political divides by designing a free online empathy training course and holding face to face and virtual empathy cafés.

Tags: Edwin Rutsch, Helen Riess, empathy, Carl Rogers, eye contact, active listening, empathic listening, curiosity, Empathy Cafes, Empathy Tent, Empathy Circles, empathy boot camp, peace, nonviolence, conflict, collaboration, Barbara Fredrickson, positive emotions, Social Change/Politics, Personal Transformation, Relationship/Partnership/Sexuality, Self Help

Microdosing involves taking small amounts of psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms to enhance physical health and cognitive function. Here, we discuss protocols, legality, safety, and other collective knowledge. James Fadiman, Ph.D. is a former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and professor of psychology. Jordan Gruber was awarded a Juris Doctor degree, and has forged and sculpted authoritative volumes in forensic law. He is the author of The Bounce: The Complete SuperBound® Guidebook to 21st-Century Rebound Exercise (co-author Joy Daniels) (SuperBound 2020), James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber are the co-authors of Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are (Park Street Press 2020) and Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance (St. Martin’s Essentials 2025)

Interview Date: 2/21/2025   Tags: James Fadiman, Jordan Gruber, microdosing, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, autism, depression, long-COVID, Paul Stamets, Health & Healing, Personal Transformation, Psychology

After having a life-altering dream of a dragonfly, Williams contemplates the re-enchantment of our world to rediscover wonder, mystery, and meaning in our relationship with nature and the environment. He invites us to consider new perspectives on nature, consciousness, and the practice of re-enchantment in our modern world. Brooke Williams is a naturalist and environmental writer who covers subjects such as evolution, consciousness, and his own ventures exploring both the inner and outer wilderness. He advocates for the preservation of wilderness. His writings also take us with him on his many treks into the deserts of Utah, where he lives with his wife and partner, the writer and New Dimensions guest Terry Tempest Williams. He is the author of several books including: Half-Lives: Reconciling Work and Wildness (Johnson Books 1999) and · Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the Practice of Re-Enchantment (Uphill Books 2025)

Interview Date: 1/17/2025   Tags: Brooke Williams, Kathryn “Mimi” Blackett, dragonfly, enchantment, Galapagos, Desert Fathers, climate change, imaginal world, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Personal Transformation, Psychology

We have the ability to live longer but ultimately death is a reality and advanced medicine is not well set up to prepare us for a peaceful death. Here is specific advice, with resources for the patient and caregivers, about dying with dignity. Butler advises us to not wait for a health crisis to consider our wishes about dying and to have conversations with friends and loved ones in advance.She is the author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door (Scribner 2014) and The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life (Scribner 2019)

Tags: Katy Butler, dementia, conveyor belt medicine, Western medicine, pacemaker, resilience, advance directive, medical directive, active living, active dying, Dementia Directive, pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy, palliative chemotherapy, hospice, lotsahelpinghands.org, sharethecare.org, DNR, do not resuscitate, dying in the ER, death certificates, Death & Dying, Health & Healing, spirituality

Williamson stresses the importance of love over fear and explores the concept of Jesus as an internal teacher and the transformative power of forgiveness. She uses the analogy of cancer cells and quantum physics to illustrate the interconnectedness of all things and advises maintaining respect and openness in political discourse to foster moral persuasion and unity. Marianne Williamson is the author of many books. Throughout her career she has worked on such issues as poverty, anti-hunger, and racial reconciliation. She is a leader of a spiritually progressive circle, and six of her published books have been New York Times bestsellers, including A Return to Love. She has participated in two Presidential campaigns and is the founder of Project Angel Food, a Meals-on-Wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area. In 2004 she co-founded The Peace Alliance and supported the creation of a U.S. Department of Peace. 

Interview Date: 12/20/2024      Tags: Marianne Williamson, A Course in Miracles, ACIM, forgiveness, Jesus, true spiritual north, quantum physics, mental prison, atonement, Holy Spirit, natural intelligence, miracles, Martin Luther King Jr., Personal Transformation, Social Change/Politics, Religion, Spirituality

Brown shares his experiences of exploring the most unlikely zones of urban industrial wastelands where wild nature is eking out its existence outside the human realm. He encourages us to explore these exciting urban edgelands which are teaming with life. Christopher Brown is an accomplished lawyer who has worked on two Supreme Court confirmation hearings. He has also been general counsel for several technology companies. His varied experiences span from restoring prairies to reporting from Central American war zones. He’s author of three award-nominated science fiction novels and The Natural History of Empty.  His current nonfiction book explores the natural world in urban settings: Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places (Timber Press 2024).

Interview Date: 12/2/2024.     Tags: Christopher Brown, biodiversity, abandoned lots, industrial sites, urban creeks, brownfields, Neolithic, agriculture, Kiva, pit house, colony of Harvester ants, Edgeland home Austin, wastelands, Tesla plant in Austin, biodiversity, climate change, Animals, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Social Change/Politics

Oftentimes the death of someone we love shifts reality as we’ve known it and brings forth an opening just wide enough for us to begin seeking a deeper truth, a multi-dimensional one, and this inquiry can take us closer to a more expansive understanding of our own timeless consciousness. It is said that the next frontier is that of the exploration of consciousness and that the material world may reflect only small portions of the universe. Christina Rasmussen has a way of putting us in direct contact with that multi-dimensional universe, one in which we can meet with those who have died through what she calls Temple Journeys. She has taught thousands to have an experience these journeys and says these are not guided meditations or visualizations, “[The Temple Journeys] are a framework that allows the invisible world to be seen so we can trust enough to allow our brain to let go of this reality and for consciousness to grab us and show the expansive nature of our existence.” You’ll find this deep dialogue both exciting and enlightening. Christina Rasmussen is author of Second Firsts: Live, Laugh, and Love Again (Hay House 2013) and Where Did You Go? A Life-Changing Journey to Connect with Those We’ve Lost. (HarperOne 2018). r: 3666

Tags: Christina Rasmussen, Temple Journeys, Neuroscience, Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, Robert Lanza, Beyond Biocentrism, three-dimensional reality, multi-dimensional universes, the material dimension, entanglement, brain science, spooky action at a distance, hologram, synchronicity, Dean Radin, The observer effect, waves and particles, double slit experiment, imagination, Death & Dying, Science, Parapsychology/Paranormal, Personal Transformation

Orsborn shares the concept of embracing old age as a transformative process. She emphasizes the importance of accepting reality, embracing mortality, and recognizing one's belovedness. She also touches on the evolutionary purpose of old age and the role of spiritual practices in navigating life's challenges, including illness and loss. Carol Orsborn, Ph.D. received her Masters of Theological Studies and Doctorate in History and Critical Theory of Religion from Vanderbilt University, with post-graduate work in Spiritual Counseling at the New Seminary in Manhattan. She specialized in adult development and ritual studies. She has served on the faculties of Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, and Georgetown Universities. She is the author of Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection (self-published 2019), The Making of an Old Soul: Aging as the Fulfillment of Life's Promise (White River Press 2021)and Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life (Park Street Press 2024).

Interview Date: 1/10/2025    Tags: Carol Orsborn, Joan Chittister, fear, denial, God, grace, Tolstoy, Death of Ivan Illich, Ram Dass, hope, expectation, curiosity, Personal Transformation, Spirituality, Aging

It’s possible to rewire our neural networks and build resilience so that positive emotions become a default reaction. Graham explains how habits such as mindfulness, self-compassion, and body awareness can help us learn to naturally respond with grace and skill when we are under pressure. She offers practicable suggestions to consciously develop our natural resilience. Linda Graham, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist and meditation teacher in full-time practice in the San Francisco Bay area. She integrates her passion for neuroscience, mindfulness, and relational psychology through trainings, workshops, and conferences. She publishes a monthly e-newsletter entitled Healing and Awakening Into Aliveness and Wholeness, and weekly e-quotes on resources for recovering resilience, archived on her website. She’s the author of Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain For Maximum Resilience And Well-Being (New World Library 2013)

Interview Date: 3/20/2015    Tags: Linda Graham, resilience, prefrontal cortex, positive emotions, mindfulness, self-compassion, negativity bias, body memory, implicit memory, posturing, default network, equilibrium, left brain, right brain, neuroscience, brain science, Personal Transformation, Science, Health & Healing, Self Help

If we are to grasp Willis Barnstone’s greatest contribution to culture over the course of his 87 years, we can focus on his role first and foremost as a poet – a lover of words, both his own and those of others, and on what he believes are sacred words from our earliest written records down to present day mystics and poets. Willis Barnstone is a poet, translator, biblical scholar, memoirist, anthologist, teacher, and painter. He is a former O’Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of numerous literary awards, including the Emily Dickinson, Lannon, and W. H. Auden awards. In 2015 he was recipient of the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award. He is translator of the Greek Lyric Poets, a literary historical version of the New Testament, and poets as diverse as Sappho, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Antonio Machado, Wang Wei, and St. John of the Cross.

Barnstone’s life’s work includes over 75 books including With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires (University of Illinois Press 1999), The Poems of Jesus Christ (W.W. Norton & Company 2012), The Poetics of Ecstasy: Varieties of Ekstasis from Sappho to Borges (Holmes & Meier Pub 1983), The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice (Yale University Press 1995), Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets (Pantheon 1988), The Other Bible (HarperOne 2005), The Apocalypse (editor, translator) (New Directions 2000), The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala 2009), The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas (W.W. Norton and Company 2009) and A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (editor with Aiki Barnstone) (Schocken1992)

Interview Date: 3/9/2015   Tags: Willis Barnstone, poetry, prose, metaphor, literature, Antonio Machado, Robert Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, Eve of the Bible, Jack Kerouac, St. John of the Cross, Jesus, translation, art of conversation, Jorge Luis Borges, Arts & Creativity