Western Baul Podcast Series

Grounded practice gives us direct experience of the pervasiveness of the mechanical, identified mind. Before we have direct experience of something, linguistic representations are ineffective at transmitting what it is. There is a distinction between results and practice. A teaching can be the result of practice, such as loving our neighbor, but we may consider it as a practice that we are unable...

Our private life involves a flow between ourselves and others, and we may choose to share details of it with those we trust will receive it with empathy, responsiveness and understanding. Our secret life, on the other hand, is known only to ourselves. It would be hard to share with others except in a rather touching and intimate way. It's deeply personal and mysterious, unique to our individual be...

The mythic image of Sisyphus, of a muscular man pushing a rock up a hill for eternity, represents something that needs to be known in us. We can consider it in various ways. For some, it’s about punishment by the gods for immoral behavior. For others, it’s a metaphor for an unfulfilling, demanding life. Or it can be a jumping off point from which to ask the larger questions of life. We can be take...

The reason we have questions is that we don’t see the bigger picture. As children, we don’t recognize the trauma we experience, but as we get older the sense that something is not right in life may lead us to the spiritual path. What happened to us informs how we respond to life in the present, but we live out of the programming of the past. As long as we’re reacting from childish programming that...

The aim of all religions is to point out the path that leads to freedom, peace, and joy, which can only be realized through the surrender of ego. The principle of ego or separation permeates our lives. To realize oneness with God or the universe is to be conscious of the divine presence everywhere. Intellectual understanding is different than actual spiritual experience. Ego avoids surrender at al...

Our willingness to feel the pain of the world is inextricably entwined with our capacity to love. What is the value of keeping our hearts open in hell, when life is most painful and difficult? We all have a deep desire to have our hearts awakened to love. Love can transform us in a powerful way when we are in hell. There is a lot of sorrow in life, but we can choose joy and beauty in the cracks be...

As long as we have a body, ordinary life will present things that ego considers problems. Waking to ordinary life implies that we’re not awake. When we are stagnant and fearful, interested in a safe comfort zone, we do not notice the beauty of ordinary life. But we can broaden our view. Waking to ordinary life is about cultivating a vulnerability to beauty. This occurs when we have the necessity t...

Mantra is likely older than language, sounds that were received by the rishis, poet mystics of the Vedas. It can be silent and internal, a form of thought that reveals more as one goes deeper into it. One meaning of mantra is “crossing over the mind.” How can a sacred sound take us beyond the incessant machinery of mind? Japa is defined as speaking mantra, a simple practice of devotional repetitio...

We can’t separate our nervous system from the nervous systems of others we are in relationship to since we affect one another. In a practical sense, we are not separate. Nervous systems do not develop in isolation. If we are not regulated and have children, there is an immediate effect on them. Co-regulation is the regulation of emotions and behaviors in relationships or groups. We don’t have the...

The book, The Only Grace Is Loving God, written in twilight language or ecstatic speech by Lee Lozowick in 1982, was inspired by Answer to Job, CG Jung’s discussion of the human struggle with an image we have of God and the suffering we experience. The Divine image has to include the feminine aspect of existence in order for Christ consciousness, a God of love and mercy, to be born in us. Consciou...

French audio version, original talk released July 14, 2022. Rumi termine l’un de ses poèmes en disant : « Il y a mille façons de s'agenouiller et d'embrasser le sol ». Quand on regarde le monde tel qu'il est aujourd’hui, il est normal d’avoir peur, d’être anxieux, de ressentir du chagrin. Notre monde est à la fois bourré de toxines et débordant de nectar. Il y a trois façons de traiter ces toxines...

There is a rightness to how we feel because of how we act when we provide what is wanted and needed in any given moment. This may be considered as the trademark of a revolutionist. Fresh insights and revelations come from use of a different language. Jan Cox was a teacher, in the mystical and philosophical sense, whose language was unique. Maxims from his “Revolutionist Code of Conduct” are discus...

There are two sides to the metaphor of a razor’s edge. On one side is duality and on the other side is non-duality. When we’re born, we’re in a state of relaxed well-being and can see clearly for a period of time. Then we discover that we can fall off the razor’s edge. This occurs when our attention is taken from us through identification, attachment, comparison, and our stories. Prior to losing o...

This talk emphasizes what we can use from Dune for our own personal evolution or transformation. Science fiction explores archetypes and mythic structures and can help us consider what it means to be human. Twilight language, which permeates Dune, is the way that mystics and shamans speak, which requires a different state of consciousness to understand. Frank Herbert creates a world that leaves ou...

Zazen is a practice that involves the body in ways such as working with the breath. Joshu Sasaki Roshi came up with the phrase, “Buddha is the center of gravity.” Rooting ourselves to the earth through the hara, the abdominal area, is an aspect of Chan or Chinese Buddhism that came to be known as Zen in Japan. We unconsciously absorb negativity that denigrates the body in our culture. There is a s...

Identification is the great law that governs all human life. We are enslaved and quickly swept away by it as it captures and consumes our attention, which is what we are in essence. Yet, we are blind to it and believe we are free. All human problems are caused by identification. Imagination and identification are identical twins that work together. We are powerless to hold attention for long befor...

Rick Lewis talks about the mystery of the Guru through telling stories of his experience with his Guru, Lee Lozowick. He discusses circumstances that brought him to his first Guru, Bhagwan Rajneesh (Osho), to meet Lee after Osho’s death, and to search to escape from the anxiety of human separation through spiritual attainment. Altered states that feel incredibly profound can be used to maintain a...

It's interesting to consider that there are larger forces at play in creation than we know. Angels are part of the Abrahamic cultures (Moslem, Christian, Hebrew). There are similar entities—dakinis, demigods, spirits—in Buddhist, Hindu, and Native traditions. Einstein’s great question was, “Is this a friendly universe or not?” We can look at the qualities of angels in history, art, and theology an...

The aphorisms of G. I. Gurdjieff are an accessible concentration of many of his ideas and basic teaching. Nine of the 38 aphorisms are considered in this presentation on the life of Gurdjieff, who appeared in Moscow in 1912 after a 20 year search for knowledge. His quest produced a system that became known as The Work. Gurdjieff used the tumult of life that presented itself to teach, including wor...

An ethical will is about what we wish to pass on to future generations. Native American tribes think seven generations ahead in terms of what to leave behind. An ethical will has been part of the Jewish tradition. Ethics is about acting according to conscience, while morality is more about following widely shared norms, sometimes unthinkingly. When we consider who our ancestors were, we learn abou...

The Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945 in a jar buried in the ground in a small Egyptian town, Nag Hammadi, in a region where monks had meditated in solitude. Its origin dates back to the first few centuries and possibly to the time of Christ. In the accepted Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus is presented as an utterly unique being or as the only begotten son of God. Thomas means twi...

Love is a stable state of being that can be seen as the culmination of the path. What is required of us for this state to come about? Love is about more than one relationship. We can consider love in coupled relationship, with others that we associate with, and in relationship to life. What is usually meant when we say we love someone is that we want to be loved by them. We can have expectations o...

We are living in wild times, in a shifting world in which we don’t know what’s going to happen. How can we find and live with reality in a world that is so predominantly unreal? Our karmas have to ripen all the way for us to become more fluid, open up, and let go. An essential tenet of tantra is non-rejection, taking whatever is arising as our path. Pratyahara, a teaching in the Yoga Sutras, is ab...

Enlightenment may or may not be a goal for people, but why would we get on the path unless we wanted something? With age, there seems to be less talk about pursuing enlightenment, which takes attention and energy to sustain. Is it natural for the pursuit to continue with less intensity? Or have we been distracted by all the problems of life so that the focus of attention that some of us had in our...

The metaphorical aspect of darkness can refer to the dark night of the soul, to a deep descent within ourselves, our individual or collective shadow, a time of transition, grief, or depression—whenever we’re suffering. We have a bias towards light. The sacred nutrients of wisdom, creation, and transformation dwell in darkness. Darkness has a fertile, receptive, feminine quality because something w...