The Healer With a Thousand Faces

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! More info on Brian: https://brianmclaren.net/ Follow me on substack: https://substack.com/@drmikepetrow  Follow me on instagram:  ht...

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...

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 so...

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...

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,...

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, p...

In this episode, Mike chats with Gaudiya Vaishnava monk, scholar, and spiritual teacher Swami Padmanabha about why heroes need to be vulnerable, the questions that drive our journey, what we do when our gurus let us down, and especially about Bhakti Love as a spiritual and healing path! For more info please visit: https://swamipadmanabha.com/  Follow me on substack: https://substack.com/@drmikepet...

Dr Barbara Holmes often reminded me that we do not heal alone, we can ask for help of the more than human, and the more than mortal world: “You have to give permission: the spirits, the ancestors, do not break in. They're not going to force themselves on you. They wait for that invitation. And that invitation comes through specific practices that...you can develop as habit, inculcate into your lif...

"Grief or loss is not a roadblock to the spiritual path, it is a spiritual path." In this episode, Mike talks to his friend and mentor Mirabai Starr—grief counselor, author, wisdom teacher, translator of so many mystics—about her inter spiritual journey, how she’s walked the sacred path of grief and loss, and what it means to take the Healer’s Journey and put our healing in the service of healing...