Saturday, August 27, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #233 - 27AUG16

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:
More information about Jill Nephew's work can be found at:

Saturday, August 20, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #232 - 20AUG16

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 conversation with Siddhartha V. Shah. Siddhartha Shah received his BA in art history from The Johns Hopkins University (2000) and his MA in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (2003) with an emphasis on Hindu philosophy from a Jungian perspective. He has been an art dealer for 15 years, specializing exclusively in Hindu and Buddhist art of the Kathmandu Valley since 2005, and has written for numerous publications including Art Asia Pacific Magazine, Marg, Namarupa, and Orientations. Siddhartha is currently a Ph.D student at Columbia University. His academic interests include theories and uses of Indian ornament in Britain and British India, Tantric cults of the Divine Feminine, and late 19th century French and British painting. Siddhartha is also a yoga instructor and serves on the Editorial Board of Illumine, a Chicago-based publication focused on yoga, wellness and psycho-spiritual development. He is a recipient of the Steven Kossak Graduate Fellowship in South Asian/Indian Art (2014 & 2016), the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Doctoral Summer Fellowship (2015), a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship (2015), and an Honorary Mention for the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by Graduate Students (2016). This conversation was pre-recorded at Tayu Meditation Center in Sebastopol, CA.
More information about Siddhartha Shah's work can be found at:

Saturday, August 13, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #231 - 13AUG16

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 conversation by telephone with author, entertainer, and two-time former guest on the show, Rick Lewis, in which Rick turns the tables and interviews hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick about aspects of their Tayu spiritual practice, including the admonition Follow Your Dread

    Rick Lewis is an author, speaker and entertainer who has taken the title “professional misbehaver” to describe what he sees as his role in the world - reminding others that we are born to break our own rules and the unconscious limits of our culture. Rick is a father of 3, the husband of 1, and an over-fastidious control-freak who meditates regularly so he can appear to be a normal person when not on stage. Rick travels extensively presenting to corporate and non-profit organizations on the subject of professional and personal growth. He is the founder of Break a Rule Presentations and Trainings, www.FreedomHabits.com, and is always working on finishing his next book.
More information about Rick Lewis' work and interests can be found at:
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Saturday, August 6, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #230 - 06AUG16

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 discuss the topic of Hope as inspired from a variety of sources including the Gurdjieff Work, the Prayer of St. Francis, and the writing of Andrew Harvey. Originally we were scheduled to be in conversation with Andrew Harvey himself today, but he had to reschedule until September 3rd due to a family situation in India.

    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: