Negotiating Reality Podcast

We need a level of consciousness we don't yet have to solve problems our current consciousness created. So where do we start? We’ll be exploring that today in this episode. Key Books from Said Dawlabani MEMEnomics (2013) Second Sapiens: The Rise of the Planetary Mind and the Future of Humanity . Key References from Said: Valuematch.net . Said’s MEMEnomics website . Ken Wilber’s A Theory of Everyth...

NOTE: I mistakenly attributed a quote to Thomas Merton that was actually from Bruno Barnhart! Here’s a reference to the actual quote! https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2416&sso_checked=1 Introduction Welcome to Negotiating Reality, where we explore how our civic, spiritual, and natural processes tethering us to reality are breaking down, and what we might do about it. I’m Eric Hekler. To...

Episode Summary In today’s episode I interviewed John Kesler. John brings together decades of contemplative wisdom and leadership experience across multiple sectors in this deeply personal conversation. From his early discovery as a young atheist in Hamburg, Germany—where he found a foundational “physical resonance” through silence and stillness—to his journey through Columbia Law School grappling...

Introduction Welcome back to Negotiating Reality, where we explore how we understand our world and reckon with the possibility that many of our deeply held truths just might be delusions. I'm your host, Eric Hekler. Throughout Season 1, we've been building a framework for understanding the fundamental nature of reality—what philosophers call metaphysics. We've discovered that "Life Breathes" toget...

Introduction Hello, and welcome back to the Negotiating Reality Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Hekler. We've been on a three-part journey exploring the fundamental assumptions we make about the nature of reality—what philosophers call metaphysics. Today, we reach one that may initially feel disorienting, but as you grow into it, I hope you'll find it truly liberating and inspiring for navigating our...

Episode Summary Reckoning & Reimagining Urban Planning In this rich conversation, Drs. Mai Nguyen and Keith Pezzoli join me to explore how urban planning shapes our communities - and how communities can shape back. The Historical Reckoning Mai opens with a stark truth: American cities were designed from their inception to discriminate and segregate. The first zoning ordinances around 1908 in LA, f...

Summary In this mind-bending conversation, geoscientist Dr. Marcia Bjornerud (author of Timefulness and Turning to Stone ) and I explore the radical implications of thinking in geological time—and why our culture's "adolescent pugilistic relationship with nature" is literally threatening our survival. We dive deep into the ramifications of taking an overly "Newtonian" worldview to science, examine...

Introduction Welcome to the Negotiating Reality podcast, where we explore how we understand our world and reckon with the possibility that many of our deeply held truths just might be delusions. I'm your host, Eric Hekler. This is part two of a three-part series on metaphysics—examining the fundamental nature and underlying assumptions we make about reality. In our first episode in this series, "L...

I'm excited to welcome Reverend Dr. Christopher Carter—someone who's been both teacher and guide for me in learning how to breathe into spiritual formation.  I met Christopher in late 2019 at a Racial Resilience Workshop he co-led with Seth Schoen. What struck me immediately was how they held something almost impossible in our polarized times: seeing racism's deep complexities and harms while neve...

Part 1 of a 3 Part Series about Metaphysics: Explorations into the fundamental structure and nature of reality "Life Breathes." If history has a rhythm, what happens when we zoom way out—past generations, past centuries—into geologic and cosmic time? What if history isn’t just human memory—but planetary breath? The pulsing, expanding, and contracting of life itself—across billions of years? Why do...

If you haven’t yet listened to the Life Breathes episode, I invite you to do so when the time feels right. This meditation is offered as a companion to that story—something you can return to whenever you feel the need to breathe with life. This is an invitation to explore breathing not just as a personal rhythm, but as participation in a larger symphony—the breath of all life . Like all invitation...

What happens when spiritual wisdom, poetic insight, and systems thinking walk into a podcast studio? This first negotiation episode features a rich, unscripted conversation me, Eric Hekler, and my long-time mentor and friend Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz—a retired USC Professor/Psychologist, accomplished poet, behavioral scientist, rabbinical school dropout, and fellow traveler through the breakdowns and...

An Introduction [intro music, first variation of Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition] Hello, and welcome to  Negotiating Reality ! I’m your host, Eric Hekler.  If you’ve ever had that nagging sense that something in our culture is, well,  off  — but struggle to articulate exactly what it is, I hear you!  What is going on right now?! If you are feeling that way, you’re in the right place! And...