The Spiritual Context Podcast

A life devoted to finding peace regardless of circumstance, external or internal: sitting in a cancer center, her heart fills with gratitude; at the bedsides of the dying, her heart swells with love; even in a season of failing health, arriving at a training by wheelchair, she found wholeness and oneness; and in the depths of meditation, she settles into an infinite love beyond time and space. Ger...

A mystical experience at nineteen changed David Cassian Cole's life forever — setting him on a journey through Celtic spirituality, Christian mysticism, Eastern Orthodox hesychasm, twenty years inside a dispersed new monastic order, and now the teaching of Fr. Bede Griffiths and a recontextualization of Christianity through the Upanishads. David's is a life devoted to truth, wherever it le...

Dr. David R. Hawkins | Christ | Mystical Experience | Forgiveness | Love | Death | Devotion | Meditation | Silence | Prayer | Visions To mark the 25th episode of The Spiritual Context Podcast, I'm releasing a very special interview—one of the very first conversations I recorded when this podcast was still just an idea. My guest today is Sherry Ritley, a dear friend and someone who has deeply i...

Is there within us a Presence that knows what we need before we do? How do we hear its guidance, and how do we trust it when it asks us to abandon what we thought we wanted? At eight years old, Patricia McBee felt an overwhelming Divine Presence, and she has followed its leadings since. A Quaker mystic and elder, she has spent a lifetime learning to recognize its guidance in all its forms. The ful...

Kirya Yoga | Kirtan | Samadhi | Meditation | Enlightenment | Kundalini | Yogananda | Autobiography of a Yogi | Siddhartha by Herman Hesse | Bhakti Neti Neti | Chakras From dancing to Beatles records as a child and playing in progressive rock bands in his youth, to a distinguished academic career teaching music history and theory, John Covach achieved immense success in the material world. But his...

A 15-year-old anti-war activist arrived at the Vedanta Society in Southern California to distribute protest flyers. Upon hearing that inner peace is the prerequisite for world peace, she realized that peace requires working in a domain far deeper than politics. She was snagged by the Divine. But it wasn't until ten years later, compelled by a close encounter with death, that she finally committed...

How many of your beliefs have you really questioned? What if it is these same unquestioned beliefs that cause suffering? And what if questioning is all that's required for stressful thoughts to let go of you? Grace Bell has used The Work of Byron Katie to question the thoughts underlying her eating disorder, divorce, grief, and cancer diagnosis, and found that without the filter of these thoug...

Waking up is not a departure from ordinary life but a deeper arrival into it. Rev. Busshō Lahn, a Zen priest and spiritual director, has spent decades practicing this arrival, responding to the infinite welcoming of reality. What he finds there, and what this conversation circles, is that turning toward suffering rather than away from it may be the most honest thing we can offer — to ourselves in...

From Japanese American internment camps to a successful career in dentistry. From vision quests in the wilderness to a second calling as a Shin Buddhist (Jodo Shinshu) minister. From grief and loss to a heart filled with gratitude — Rev. Kenji Akahoshi's remarkable life has taught him that joy emerges when life is received rather than grasped. Kenji Sensei's teaching is simple but radical:...

What does it mean to truly care for another, even as they are dying? How do we move from head knowledge down into the heart, where love resides? What does it mean to lead from a place of stillness? Sister Mary Lou Mitchell has spent her life at the intersection of stillness and action. From her background in nursing and academia, to her time accompanying the elderly and those nearing death as a sp...

She sings about dishes being holy, shovels being prayer, and the astounding beauty of human beings in the humdrum of daily life. This week's guest, singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer says that when we pay attention, we can find the divine — what she calls the Great Luminous — in everything. Songwriting has been one such practice of attention for her, alongside decades of Quaker silence....

Anxiety isn't an enemy to be vanquished, but a friend to be met with care and clarity. Stephanie Wagner knows this from the inside. In this episode, the Director of Learning and Development at HUMIN and meditation teacher at Tergar Institute — founded by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche — traces her path from chronic anxiety and the dead ends of compulsive shopping and emotional eating, to a life of genuin...

What would you do if someone held a knife to you and threatened to kill you? Els Thissen did not react with fear. In fact, she ended up having dinner with this person at his home--she calls it a miracle.  You may think her naive, but she isn't unaware of what we humans are capable of.  She has served as a police officer, facilitatied support groups in prisons, led workshops in war-torn regions, an...

Giovina Caroscio is a spiritual director at Mercy Spirituality Center, Rochester, New York, and has been steeped in Ignatian Spirituality for decades. In this conversation, she invites us to notice how God is unfailingly present in our joys, struggles, and in the ordinary moments of everyday life. She shares how we can discover our true identity as the child of an infinitely loving God, and what i...

Addiction | Recovery | Sobriety | Surrender | Self-Realization | Nisargadatta Maharaj | Dr. David R. Hawkins | Devotion | Devotional Nonduality The emptiness within. Ryan McGinty sought to fill it with academic and athletic achievement. When that failed, alcohol and drugs seemed, for a time, to offer relief. But soon he found himself in the throes of addiction, unable to manage his life. And yet,...

Sprituality | Health and Healing | Consciousness | Quantum Physics | Integrative Medicine | Holistic Healing | Placebo | Science and Spirituality | Awe | Inner Silence What are health and healing within a spiritual context rather than a materialist paradigm? How can scientific investigation and inner spiritual exploration inform each other? How can we encounter each moment of our lives, not as a p...

Saints | St. Patrick | St. Therese of Lisieux | Padre Pio | Surrender | Love | Contemplative Prayer | Everyday Holiness | Catholic Spirituality | Christ How do the saints pray? How do they face suffering? What can we learn about God by entering into their lives? And what might it mean for us to become saints? In this episode, Lisa Lickona shares what she has discovered after years of studying and...

Buddhism | Awakening | Suffering | Tibetan Buddhism | Spiritual Teacher | Inner Serenity | Compassion | Reincarnation An ancient aspiration to teach those who have no teacher. An eternal vow to work tirelessly for the liberation of all beings. A series of mysterious dreams and unlikely events. Born in Singapore to a Chinese family, Felix Lee was later recognized as a high Gelug Lharampa reincarnat...

From fear to compassion. From unworthiness to self-acceptance. From searching for answers to living in the question. This arc of Shinsen Troy Couillard's spiritual life is still unfolding to greater depths. After years of seeking in the Jesus Movement, existentialism, Christian mysticism, and both Rinzai and Soto Zen, Shinsen found a home in the silence of zazen. But even that home he holds loosel...

This episode of The Spiritual Context Podcast features BenBigelow, a singer-songwriter, author of Loving Without Conditions: The Path of Christ , and a mentor to many on the spiritual path. Ben shares his journey from darkness and despair toincreasing beauty, joy, and peace through the lived practices of forgiveness and surrender. Deeply devoted to Christ, his spirituality transcends sectarian bou...

What is truly here, right now? What is revealed by listening without agenda, judgment, and urge to fix or change? What remains when self and other, inner and outer, past and future fall away? In this episode, Sandra Gonzalez reflects on decades of practicing direct observation of reality, moment by moment. Years of intense solitary retreats led her to the realization that the belief of separation...

Hitting bottom, a near-death encounter, surrender, traumaand healing, longing and belonging, “dying before you die,” poetry, and music—from a Sufi perspective. Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” In this episode of The Spiritual Context podcast, Sufi teacher Ihsan Chris Covey shares his experience of finding God in the depths of despair, and of learning to let go while...

What remains when you question everything? Stillness, says Stew Glick. In this episode of The Spiritual Context Podcast, Stew shares a practice that began with radical questioning—questioning religion, tradition, ritual, belief, hierarchy, labels, and even the sense of being a separate self. Pared down to the essential, his approach is what he calls "wondering": an open, curious awareness that doe...

Yoga, Bhagavad Gita, and the patient work of Self-Realization. In this conversation, Swami Asokananda, shares how we can continue to grow spiritually while resting in that which is already whole, complete, and perfect. He shares his experiences and insights on: 1) Skillfully working with negative thoughts, while simultaneously loosening identification with thinkingness itself 2) The Art of meeting...

Monastic wisdom on embracing limitations, discerning ourpath in life, letting go of judgments to grow in love, and healing the worldthrough silence. Fr. Isaac Slater has chosen a life of radical constraint,and within it, discovered radical freedom. Our truest desires, he says, may actually guide us Home, but only if we learn to discern true desire from its impostors. For Fr. Slater, contemplation...