Brian McLaren - Author, activist, artist, agitator, futurist, culture critic, and all around cool guy talks with Mike about the power of good questions and how they can guide the path that our life takes, and about the power of story to evoke empathy and imagination!

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Dr Liza J. Rankow argues these apocalyptic, alchemical times make it all the more essential to find and follow the soul purpose of your path, to find the healing that is yours to live and to give, so that your life becomes Soul Medicine for a Fractured World (the title of her brilliant book that explores Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness). An advocate for sustainable, effective, mystical activism, Dr Liza shares how her wounds have led her to work wisely, and shares wisdom for each of us in connecting our healing with healing the world. This one is good medicine for the moment!

Learn more at https://www.lizarankow.org/soulmedicine

Good friend Rev. Dr. Cassidy Hall, author of Queering Contemplation, chats with Mike about finding our authentic healing path and practice, getting out of the boxes that others try to put us in, and how to glean our own wisdom with our teachers even when we disagree with them or they let us down. 

“If we are not protected by a cloak of good stories, we are constantly at the mercy of stories that do not wish us well.” Mike chats with his hero, master story teller, mythologist, and wilderness rites of passage guide, Dr Martin Shaw about how we “get grown” in a culture lacking rituals of initiation, how limit and absence can be our best teachers, why praise making matters, and above all how solid sacred stories and myths make life, meaningful, in a culture over inundated with competing stories.

Mystic, monastic, teacher, and trauma survivor transformed, Tessa Bielecki shares with us insights about the mystical path, and how she survived being let down by a spiritual leader’s sexual scandals. If you’ve been hurt by a pastor, priest, politician, person in power, a parent, or a partner, this episode has some medicine for you.

Scholarly and spiritual sage Andrew Harvey shares what he learned in his own dark night experience, why he thinks we are all in one together right now, and offers wisdom for shining a light in the darkest of times. Founder of The Institute for Sacred Activism, Andrew is an teacher and translator of some of the world’s most sacred texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, inspiring us to put our healing in the service of healing the world.

Psychologist, scholar, and old friend Alexander John Shaia chats with Mike about a symbolic road map for healing and growth hidden inside the four gospels of the Christian New Testament, and gives us a completely different way to think about Christian symbols and the seasons of our lives.

Learn more at https://www.quadratos.org

Carmen Acevedo Butcher and Mike geek out about words, wizards, how our wounds led to wisdom, and especially why it’s essential to LET OUR WEIRD LEAD THE WAY!! A fellow dyslexic doctor, Carmen is a teacher, a translator of ancient texts, a trauma survivor transformed, and Dean of Faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation as well as Faculty at UC Berkeley.

Mike sits down with the philosopher Samuel Loncar to discuss falling in love with wisdom, even if that leads us to wrestle wisdom out of our biggest fears, suffering and losses as our wounds lead to our wonderings. We cover everything from why ancient philosophy might be better understood as science and magic—and Socrates and Jesus might have been magicians—to why Wizards are so popular right now, and why the greatest secret to being fully alive might just learning to die before you die.

Samuel Loncar PhD practices the ancient art of philosophy, linked to the origins of science, Western spirituality and contemplative practice, that promotes the perpetual evolution of human potential. He is the Editor of the Marginalia Review of Books, the Director of the Institute for the Meanings of Science, and the founder of the Becoming Human Project. His Becoming Human Podcast is one of Mikes all time favs. 

Our wounds caused us to whither… We hide parts of ourselves out of the light, we project our best qualities on heroes that we idealize, but this makes it possible for parents, partners, pastors, or politicians to take advantage of us and keep us small. Jungian psychologist Connie Zweig, and I discussed the shadow. To shine a light on it we go to places you’re not supposed to go—we talk religion, politics, suicide, spirituality, and how to get back the parts of ourselves that we’ve lost.