Dangerous Wisdom

Kate Rudd joins us to talk about a short and highly accessible chapter from the classic book seeking to integrate economics and wisdom: Small Is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Small Is Beautiful, Dangerous Wisdom will host a series of dialogues with faculty and alumni of Schumacher College.Schumacher's book is exceptionally relevant today, as we have continued the pattern of insanity he sought to question, and his insights and suggestions still offer us the possibility to arrive at better ways of knowing and being, better ways of organizing our culture, and better ways of relating with each other and the larger world. Kate joins us to discuss the chapter on scale, and to discuss her own work in regenerative economics.Kate is a multilingual research consultant, facilitator and writer working at the intersection of inner development, social innovation and transformational change. She supports organisations contributing to social and ecological regeneration to catalyse transformative change through insight, strategy and communication.She holds and MA in Regenerative Economics with Distinction from Schumacher College and first-class undergraduate degrees in Applied Languages, Economics, and Law from universities in France, Spain and the UK.At present Kate is:· Collaborating with the UNDP’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance as a Local Food Systems Leadership Consultant. · Conducting her own academic research at the intersection of food systems transformation and the inner dimensions of transformative change.· Engaged in business incubation projects and content creation projects for several grassroots orgs promoting regenerative agriculture in Africa and Latin America. Here's a link to Kate's research: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DIVaeZu8BjPVBbDK4lveTq0YTlKO5-Au/view

Mona Sobhani joins us to discuss her book, Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe. Mona is a cognitive neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, VOX, and other media outlets. She lives in Los Angeles.

The nature and scale of ecological degradation can provoke empathy distress that devolves into depression, despair, anxiety, antipathy, avoidance, and outright denial. But ecological awareness and ecological education can help us to see how much power we have when we become attuned to spiritual and ecological realities. We can actually help to heal the world—each and every one of us, wherever we live.Imagine a national park bigger than Yosemite, bigger than Yellowstone, bigger than the Grand Canyon. Imagine a national park bigger than all three of those combined. Now imagine a national park bigger than those three combined with the addition of the Adirondacks, the Grand Tetons, the Great Smoky Mountains, Denali, Olympic, and Sequoia—bigger than all of those put together!Imagine all the wild beings doing the work they do to further the conditions of life, all the work they do to make your life and my life possible. Imagine those beings thriving, and imagine humans thriving more in the process.Finally, imagine that this park can become a reality—and that reality depends on you. It doesn’t depend on you in some burdensome, terrible way. You don’t have to give yourself a spiritual or physical hernia. Rather, it depends on things you can do at your own scale, something enjoyable and rewarding. And something done in the key of wonder, something that can open up the ecology of your own mind.This describes Doug Tallamy’s project, detailed in his book, Nature’s Best Hope. This is a good news kind of book, and it can dispel our feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, replacing them with beauty, wonder, wildness, and mutual empowerment.Doug is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 112 research publications and has taught insect related courses for over four decades. His principle research goal involves arriving at a better understanding of the many ways insects interact with plants, and how these interactions create diversity in animal communities.Doug’s books include Bringing Nature Home, The Living Landscape (co-authored with Rick Darke), The Nature of Oaks (winner of the American Horticultural Society’s 2022 book award), and Nature’s Best Hope (a New York Times Best Seller). In 2021 he cofounded Homegrown National Park with Michelle Alfandari (HomegrownNationalPark.org). https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org/

Derrick Jensen's new book is called, Marijuana: A Love Story. It details his wild romance with this oft misunderstood plant teacher and medicine, and how the dream the Marijuana once offered people (a version of "the American Dream") became ruined by the corporatized capitalistic system. From the book description: "In state after state, the wealth-building capacity of this extraordinary plant is now concentrating into the control of the already rich. From seed to smoke, legalization is eroding the lives and livelihoods of the people it was supposed to help: the patients, growers, trimmers, "mules," and activists who created the colorful and committed culture that is now under threat.We can end the war on weed without turning it into a war on small family growers-but it will depend on how much pressure we are willing to apply to force law makers to serve local communities rather than corporate interests. Marijuana: A Love Story is a report from the front, a reminder of how and why we fell in love with this plant, a cautionary tale of corporate power, and a call to once more "Free the Sacred Herb."'Derrick Jensen is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Bright Green Lies, A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He is also a teacher, activist, and small farmer, and was named the poet-philosopher of the ecological movement by Democracy Now! In 2008, he was chosen as one of Utne Reader's 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World and won the Eric Hoffer Award. He is a cofounder of the organization Deep Green Resistance. Jensen has written for the New York Times Magazine, Audubon Magazine, and The Sun, and was a columnist at Orion Magazine. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University and a BS degree in mineral engineering physics from the Colorado School of Mines, and has taught creative writing at Eastern Washington University and Pelican Bay State Prison. He lives in Northern California on a property frequented by bears.

A magnificent swindle attempts to keep us from realizing true peace and happiness. How can we overcome it? We must begin by seeing through it, with the help of Lewis Mumford, Walter Kaufmann, C.G. Jung, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. We consider addiction, domestication, distraction, and the material bribe we all must keep ratifying in order for the pattern of insanity to perpetuate itself. We can stop ratifying it here and now.

Picking up our contemplation on the feedback loop of Mind and Nature, we enter into insights and suggestions from Nietzsche and the poet-philosopher-farmer Wendell Berry. These thinkers help us to face some troubling questions:What are we not likely, or not able, to become conscious of, simply by living in the dominant culture?What does the culture make likely as our experience?What does it make likely as our world?The general answer to the latter question seems to be something degraded, limited, limiting.The philosophy of the dominant culture encourages the practice and realization of the very things that cut us off from our fuller potentials, and philosophers in the university do little to teach students how to transform. The cultivation of states of anger, greed, aggression, and deceit go altogether with conquest, and this leads to the total breakdown of more empowered and empowering forms of awareness.We in the dominant culture live in a context that encourages the invisibility of these other forms of awareness, discourages their cultivation, and then encourages and even insists upon their dissolution if they were to somehow arise. How can we transform all of this, for the benefit of the whole community of life?

We arise embedded in mind, with mind in every direction. Human beings in the dominant culture seem to miss the mindedness all around them.The “modern” human walks around with “ideas” “in” their head. This localization of mind remains untenable on scientific grounds, and does not fit with most of the spiritual/philosophical traditions we have inherited. Nature is already Minded. Because of this, we need to mind Nature—that is, attend to Nature, and also allow Nature’s mindedness to spontaneously presence itself in/through/as us and our World.We likewise need to allow Nature to mind us. That will mean liberating ourselves into the nonduality of Nature and Culture—liberating ourselves into larger ecologies of mind. We can’t really let Nature care for us, guide us, teach us, and even liberate us if we maintain a false duality between Nature and culture.Engage with your philosophical self by checking out part two on The Others and the Interwovenness of Earth and Soul. These two contemplations belong to a larger mandala revealing pathways to better ways of knowing and being, living and loving.

It's something the self-help-industrial complex covers over, turning our sincere search for healing and success into the self-help catastrophe. What does our soul really want? How can we get on a path of sanity and sacredness, a path of true healing and happiness? Wisdom can help us find our way---but first we have to see things as they are, which means seeing our deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret.

In honor of Interdependence Day, celebrating the total interwovenness of all things, we speak with Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, a philosopher specializing in the anomalous.Sharon Hewitt Rawlette is a philosopher and interdisciplinary researcher specializing in anomalous phenomena and their implications for our understanding of consciousness. She earned her PhD from New York University in 2008, studying under Thomas Nagel, and taught at Brandeis University before leaving academia for an independent writing career.She currently serves on the advisory board of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies and is a supporting researcher for the International Centre for Reincarnation Research. Her books include The Source and Significance of Coincidences, Beyond Death, and The Feeling of Value.Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, PhDsharonrawlette.com Author of:Psychology Today blog Mysteries of ConsciousnessBICS award-winning essay Beyond Death: The Best Evidence for the Survival of Human ConsciousnessThe Source and Significance of Coincidences: A Hard Look at the Astonishing EvidenceThe Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal ConsciousnessThe Supreme Victory of the Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Synchronicity

If you struggle with getting enough sleep, you aren't alone. Keep in mind: six hours or less per night on an ongoing basis seems about as bad as getting zero for two days straight.As much as 41% of adults in the U.S. report short sleep, and as much as 84% of high school students report short sleep. Worse yet, 50-70 million U.S. citizens (perhaps more) qualify for a formal diagnosis of sleep disorder, ranging from insomnia to sleep apnea.All of this should create a sense of urgent compassion for ourselves, each other, and the world. That has to do in part with the many mental and physical ailments connected with sleep disruption. Not getting enough quality sleep AND dream seems to go together with a concerning list of illnesses, including cognitive decline.Moreover, a lack of quality sleep and dream can limit our skill and our potential in life, leaving us less capable to take skillful, creative, wise, compassionate, and beautiful action in our lives, on behalf of our own wellbeing and also on behalf of the whole community of life. Sleep and dream go fully together with our life and our world, and the problems we see in our own life and world thus go together with the crisis of sleep and dream we now face.The present dialogue goes together with the dialogue with psychologist and dream tender Dr. Leslie Ellis, released as Episode 44. If you missed that one, I encourage you to check it out.In the present episode, Dr. Rubin Naiman joins us to contemplate the dangerous wisdom of sleep and dreams, reflecting on some of the things we need to begin to open to and keep in mind if we want to allow the power of sleep and dreams help us to heal self and world at the same time. But the episode begins with some reflections on Hermes from your friendly neighborhood soul doctor. Hermes is, after all, a guide of souls, a lord of dreams, and a magician with the capacity to carry lead us into the realm of sleep and dream. Then we move into a delightful dialogue that I think you will enjoy. You can find Rubin's bio and contact info below. Rubin Naiman, PhD, FAASM, is a psychologist, author, Fellow in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine where he has taught seminars on sleep and dreams to physicians for twenty-five years. Rubin pioneered the development of integrative approaches to sleep and dreams, integrating scientific with depth psychological, transpersonal, and spiritual perspectives. He has taught and consulted about sleep and dream matters in a dozen countries around the globe.Over the years, his work has included training doctoral psychology students, dreamwork with hospice patients and survivors, and establishing and directing sleep and dream health programs for Canyon Ranch and Miraval Resorts. Rubin has also served as a creativity consultant for the entertainment industry, which included travel with a world-renowned rock band for two years.Rubin is the author of numerous consumer and professional works on sleep and dreams including Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming and Awakening, Hush: A Book of Bedtime Contemplations, Healthy Sleep, an audio program co-authored with Andrew Weil.More recently, he published a seminal paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences entitled, Dreamless: The Silent Epidemic of REM Sleep Loss as well as Oxford University Press Medical text chapters entitled, Dream Medicine and The Future of Sleep Medicine.In his spare time, Rubin is an avid hiker and amateur photographer. He has about seven grand kids and believes that children and dogs offer the greatest hope for the betterment of our planet.Rubin Naiman, PhD, FAASMDirector, NewMoon Sleep, LLCClinical Assistant Professor of Medicine  Andrew Weil Center for Integrative...

We begin with a story, and thread all the way through the meaning of enlightenment, and the need to receive initiation into the mysteries of life, follow a path of joy, cultivate reverence for wisdom and wildness, and truly realize the inconceivable interwovenness of all things.

Love is a trainable skill, and luck is an inevitable ingredient in our lives. Our current science challenges the notion of the sovereign individual, the importance of love, and the need for a paradigm shift. The Harvard Study of Adult Development goes together with other data to invite us to question the nature and the role of love, luck, and the true wealth of nations. The Harvard Study also supports the need for a new kind of science.

In this episode we rewrite the headlines: Massive Harvard Study Reveals the True Wealth of Nations. What is the true wealth of nations? Isn’t it gross domestic product?And if nations are comprised of people, what is our true wealth?We’re thinking through the true wealth of nations in relation to our last contemplation. At that time, we considered the famous Grant Study, more formally known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development. If you haven’t heard about the study, it’s worth listening to that other contemplation of it first.The present contemplation considers the paradigm shift we would need in order to make sense of the Harvard study—a revolution in our science and society, all in relation to the Gospel of Love that our science and our wisdom traditions now agree on.

It’s an impressive study, the longest scientific study of adult development, conducted across decades (it started in 1938). Referred to as the Grant Study or the Harvard Study of Adult Development, this famous research program has gotten several rounds of press.But the press coverage seems to miss something incredibly vital and far-reaching in this study. Even the books have failed to make it clear. In a way, we could suggest the lead researchers of the study missed this finding—didn’t notice it, didn’t fully grok it, or didn’t understand how crucial it is.This unstated finding is the most important finding about happiness and a meaningful and fulfilling life that we have.

A contemplation of healing, wholeness, the challenges of suffering, and the paradoxes of success. We consider some of the essential questions: In what sense is life a self-healing truth? What is the nature of health and healing? What is the nature of sickness—our cultural sickness and our own mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical sickness? What is the role of nondoing in our healing and in our life?

In our culture, we have placed a set of habitual notions about time on top of the soul’s instincts and intuitions about rhythm and temporality. The physicist David Bohm said that, “. . . every thought assumes time. Whether we discuss thought or anything else, we always take time for granted. And we take for granted the notion that everything exists in time. We don’t take for granted that time is an abstraction and a representation, but we take for granted that time is of the essence—reality—and that everything is existing in time, including thought.” What if we have some very unskillful notions about time? What if the evolution of our culture depends on shifting our relationship with time?

Leslie Ellis, Ph.D.,RCCAuthor, A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapyhttps://drleslieellis.comA delicious discussion of the importance of dreams and some of the basics of how to approach them. Dr. Ellis wrote a book called, A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy that provides a highly accessible, yet insightful education on the nature of dreams and how to work with them. By offering a unified model, Dr. Ellis makes it possible for all of us (clinicians and non-clinicians) to begin to understand the importance of dreams, and to begin to work with them so as to receive the profound gifts they can bring to our own life and the life of the world we share.Dr. Leslie Ellis is a leading expert in the use of experiential and somatic approaches in psychotherapy, in particular for working with dreams and nightmares. She is the author of A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy, has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and worked as a therapist in private practice in Vancouver, BC for more than 25 years.She is a certifying coordinator and former president of The International Focusing Institute, and incorporates this gentle yet profound method of internal inquiry into her method of engaging with dreams. Leslie now offers dream study programs online, certifying clinicians in her unique method of embodied experiential dreamwork. She also teaches with the Jung Platform and the Polyvagal Institute.Find out more: https://drleslieellis.com

A little singing and swearing, to help us arrive at our awesome presence.Humus, humility, homo sapiens, and Om share a common root, and considering their interwovenness can help us to touch our basic dignity. In this contemplation, the first to have both swearing and singing, we look at some elements of the dominant culture’s way of living that indicate how Nature has gotten pushed into the shadow. We consider the architectural manifestos of Hundertwasser, the memories of Jung, and the teachings of world philosophers who seek to help us find our awesome presence, even in the most mundane or seemingly profane activities of life.

Jung made at least two incredible discoveries. He wrote about one of them, and we discussed it in our first episode in this series. The other discovery appears nowhere in his writings, but it may have been his greatest by far.In this contemplation of the shadow we ask some questions, take a kind of inventory, that can help us detect the presence of the shadow so that we could begin to bring light to its contents. But first we consider some of what we need to have in place in order to work skillfully with our unconscious, including a sense of the soul or psyche that transcends even Jung's vision.As part of our contemplation, we consider an artefact related to Jung that many people haven’t heard about, but which we should take time to consider. This is an episode you don’t want to miss, as it brings us to the place where philosophy, psychology, and spirituality (including ecology and a sense of the Cosmic and the mysterious) come together.

Part 2 in a short series. The dominant culture tends to trivialize many of the spiritual teachings and practices that present a threat to it, or a threat to the egos within it. We get McMindfulness because a genuine practice of meditation, as part of a holistic and skillful philosophy of life, results in citizens who want nothing to do with many of the core practices of the dominant culture.Shadow work runs the risk of the same kind of trivialization, such that we'll end up nibbling on McShadow nuggets and thinking we've confronted the vastness of the psyche. Meanwhile, the pattern of insanity will continue to unfold.In this contemplation we try to consider a few things about the shadow and the psyche that help us to understand its importance, and to get some sense of the consequences of any kind of avoidance on our part of the sometimes unpleasant or even frightening work of freeing ourselves from deception—both self-deception and the deceptions of the dominant culture.