Saturday, May 28, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #224 - 28MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • A pre-recorded conversation with Brother John Martin Sahajananda, a member and present superior of Shantivanam ashram community in Tamil Nadu, India. This ashram was founded by two French priests Jules Monchanin and Henri Le Saux in 1950. Fr. Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk and well-known author, took the leadership of the ashram in 1968. Brother Martin has been very much inspired by the vision of Shantivanam. He was one of the close disciples of Bede Griffiths. His passion is inter-religious dialogue, particularly Hindu-Christian dialogue. He is invited to Europe every year to lead seminars and retreats on the vision of Christianity for our times and on inter-religious harmony. He has written several books, including: You Are the Light – Rediscovering the Eastern Jesus; Truth Has No Boundaries; Fully Human Fully Divine; New Annunciation - A Universal Call to be Virgin Mothers of God; The Ganges and the Jordan Meet: Reincarnation and Resurrection.
More information about Brother John Martin Sahajananda's work can be found at:

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #223 - 21MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • Our guests in the studio today are Kelsang Chogyop and Kelsang Labsum, both of the Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center in Penngrove CA. Kelsang Chogyop is a modern Buddhist nun and 13 year practitioner in the New Kadampa Mahayana Buddhist tradition. She is the resident teacher at the Penngrove Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center. Kelsang Labsum is the Administrative Director of the Penngrove center and has been studying under the guidance of Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso since 2007. He has been ordained since 2012. He demonstrates how a modern Kadampa monk integrates Buddhist wisdom into one's daily life. The main emphasis of New Kadampa Buddhism is to maintain the purity of Buddha's teachings and to make these teachings very practical, accessible, and relevant in the modern world. The New Kadampa Tradition was founded by Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso in 1991. Geshe Kelsang has written 22 books and in each of them he strives to make Buddha's very profound teachings practical and tangible so that anyone, Buddhist to not, can benefit from them, whether by simply learning how to meditate or by studying very closely in a teacher-guided study program.
More information about Kelsang Chogyop and Labsum's work can be found at:

Saturday, May 14, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #222 - 14MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick speak in the studio with one another on spiritual news and other topics relevant to the show that have been on our minds in recent weeks. Some of the books and topics discussed include:
    • An obituary for Zenkei Blanche Hartman Roshi
    • Whether spiritual growth requires a teacher or if no teacher is necessary
    • The topic of “spiritual children” and what that term might mean
Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for October 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the electronics and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2016.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Saturday, May 7, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #221 - 07MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week Mystical Positivist co-host, Rob Schmidt, is joined in the studio by Albert Flynn DeSilver, author of the forthcoming book called Writing as a Path to Awakening, as well as the autobiographical Beamish Boy. Albert Flynn DeSilver is an author, poet, artist, teacher, speaker, and publisher, born 1968 in Norwalk, Connecticut. In addition to the book titles already mentioned, he is the author of several books of poetry including Letters to Early Street, and Walking Tooth & Cloud. His writing has appeared in more than one hundred literary journals worldwide. He taught for many years as a California Poet in the Schools, and at numerous venues nationwide; from Creedmore Psychiatric Institution, in New York, and San Quentin State Prison, in California, to the British Institute in Paris—from an Alzheimer’s Clinic in Marin County, to The University of California—Davis. He has also taught for many years in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. In 2008 he was named the very first Poet Laureate of Marin County, California. He is currently the Director of Visiting Angels, a Senior Homecare agency franchise in Santa Rosa, California.
More information about Albert Flynn DeSilver's work can be found at: