Dangerous Wisdom

Video version here: https://youtu.be/FtDBx1IBkoA A spiritual pioneer, Phyllis Curott is an attorney, writer and one of America’s first public Witches. Her international best-selling memoir Book of Shadows, 5 other books and groundbreaking Witches’ Wisdom Tarot have been published in 14 languages, making her the most widely published Wiccan author in the world. An outspoken advocate in the courts and media, she handled or consulted on groundbreaking cases securing the legal rights of Witches, including cases of child custody, religious assembly, organization, expression, and free speech. Phyllis was named one of The Ten Gutsiest Women of the Year by Jane Magazine and inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Clergy and Scholars. She received the 2018 Service to Humanity Award from the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary and the 2020 Person of the Year Award from Kindred Spirit. Phyllis is a Trustee of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, serving as Vice Chair of the 2015 Parliament, and Program Chair for the historic 2021 Parliament blessed by Pope Francis, and the 2023 Parliament with its theme of religious responsibility to resist the growing scourge of fascism. New York Magazine has called her teaching on Witchcraft the culture’s “next big idea” and Time Magazine has published her as one of America’s leading thinkers. Her You-Tube series on Wicca has almost 3 million views. Phyllis is teaching online and working on her next book on the embodied spiritual wisdom of Mother Earth, Nature’s “secret magic” and why the world needs its Witches. Website: https://www.phylliscurott.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phylliscurott Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phylliscurott/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PhyllisCurottWitchcrafting

The secret of entering the Way of the Wolf, the Way of the Wild, the Way of the Soul; a celebration of the Gospel of Mountains and Wolves; and a path to creating a vitalizing civilization, based on a nonduality of Nature and Culture.

What is the truth that human credulity covers over, and what is the truth that the wild honesty of wolves seeks to reveal?

We consider wolves as a spiritual keystone species. We have considered the horse as a spiritual keystone species, and we can learn a lot from both Wolf and Horse as archetypal currents in the soul. Wolf is part of the mandala of the Dangerous Wisdom curriculum. In light of recent events in Wyoming and more broadly, this contemplation on the spirit of Wolf seems important and overdue. Includes reflections on the books, The Philosopher and the Wolf (by Mark Rowlands), Beyond Words (by Carl Safnia), and the books on the Yellowstone wolves by Rick McIntyre, which start with The Rise of Wolf 8. https://dangerouswisdom.org/

Our best science and philosophy suggest very clearly that we don't know what thinking IS. If large ecologies are mind, what is thinking? If mountains think better than most human beings, how can we learn to think like a mountain?

One of Sophia's owls of wisdom made friends with a delightful and insightful human, the author and ecologist Carl Safina. If you enjoyed My Octopus Teacher, you will love hearing about Carl Safina's fabulous feathered friend, Alfie. Carl's book, Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, is a wonderful work of philosophy and ecology, and I think you'll enjoy this dialogue as much as I did. It was a great pleasure to speak with him. Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. His writing has won a MacArthur “genius” prize; Pew, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundation Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. He grew up raising pigeons, training hawks and owls, and spending as many days and nights in the woods and on the water as he could. Safina is now the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean, which can be viewed free at PBS.org. His writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, Audubon, Yale e360, and National Geographic, and on the Web at Huffington Post, CNN.com, Medium, and elsewhere. Safina is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent books are, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, and Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends. Find out more at https://www.carlsafina.org/ For photos of Alfie: https://www.instagram.com/meetalfietheowl/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551548969047

Dr. Tawni Tidwell is an exceptional—and exceptionally interesting—person. She is the first person from the dominant culture to go through the whole Tibetan medical curriculum and earn a Tibetan medical degree. She also has a Ph.D. in bio-cultural anthropology. And her impressive experience and insight go beyond even this already remarkable education. We discuss her education and some aspects of Tibetan medicine. This is one of my favorite dialogues with one of my most favorite guests, and I look forward to having Tawni-la back to inquire further into the nature of health, healing, and liberation.

What is it to think like a mountain? How is it that many of our decisions go wrong, sometimes producing negative side-effects? You might remember hearing about a hole in the ozone layer that appeared last century. No one intended to create that hole. But we did it. We didn’t intend to put mercury in our brains and lead in our bones. A recent study tested 62 samples of human placenta and found microplastics in every single one of them. How do things go wrong on personal and planetary scales? And how can we do better?

Lars Chittka is the author of the book The Mind of a Bee and Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary College of the University of London. He is also the founder of the Research Centre for Psychology at Queen Mary. He is known for his work on the evolution of sensory systems and cognition using insect-flower interactions as a model system. Chittka has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of animal cognition and its impact on evolutionary fitness studying bumblebees and honeybees. I often say that human beings have lost the sense of the mindedness all around us—that we exist fully embedded in mind. In this episode we cultivate an appreciation of the remarkable mind of a bee.

The Mind of Nature and the Nature of Mind Part 2 in an Introduction to Ecological Thinking—A Wisdom-Based Approach What is the nature of mind? What is the mind of Nature? We inquire into some radical and revolutionary aspects of mind and ecological thinking.

What is ecological thinking? Why does it matter? A contemplation for everyone—a series of contemplations for everyone. It’s an incredibly important series, because the idea of ecological thinking as we will approach it relates to the basic question of why we have so many problems in our world, and how we can resolve them, and it relates to the nature of mind and the mind of Nature, and how we realize our highest potentials. In other words, it’s about what we are.

The biggest bite of knowledge fruit humanity has taken in the past millennium or two has to do with complex systems—the very stuff of life. Neil Theise has written an excellent, accessible introduction to complex systems, and we discuss the basic elements. Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr. Theise’s studies in complexity theory have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields such as integrative medicine, consciousness studies, and science-religion dialogue. He is a senior student of Zen Buddhism at the Village Zendo in NYC. His most recent book is, Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being.

Bob Thurman, known in the academic circles as Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, is a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings and the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A charismatic speaker and author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, Bob was named by The New York Times the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, and was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 2020, for his help in recovering India’s ancient Buddhist heritage. Time Magazine chose him as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.” Bob served as the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University for 30 years, until 2020. A very popular professor, students always felt his classes were “life-changing”. Bob is the founder and active president of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan culture, and of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific Tibetan treatises. His own search for enlightenment began while he was a university student at Harvard. After an accident in which he lost the use of an eye, Bob left school on a spiritual quest throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He found his way to India, where he first saw His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1962. After learning Tibetan and studying Buddhism, Bob became a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the first Westerner to be ordained by the Dalai Lama. Some years later, however, he offered up his robes when he realized he could be more effective in the American equivalent of a monastery: the university, returning to Harvard to finish his PhD. As part of his long-term commitment to the Tibetan cause, at the request of H.H. the Dalai Lama, Bob co-founded Tibet House US in 1987 with Tenzin Tethong, Richard Gere, and Philip Glass, a nonprofit organization based in New York City and dedicated to the preservation and renaissance of Tibetan culture. Inspired by his longtime good friend the Dalai Lama, Bob takes us along with him into an expanded vision of the world through the prism of Tibetan Buddhism. He shares with us the sense of refuge in the Dharma, which unfailingly helps us clear away the shrouds of fear and confusion, sustains us with the cheerfulness of an enriched present, and opens a door to a path of realistic hope for a peaceful, kind, and wise future. Learn more: https://bobthurman.com/ https://menla.org/ https://thus.org/ https://wisdomexperience.org/treasury-buddhist-sciences/

How can we practice with Earth? How can we think with Earth? Can we allow our thinking and our practice of life to become undomesticated, wild, and indigenous again? In this dialogue, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, philosopher in the academy and Zen priest, joins us to discuss Dogen, Gary Snyder, and the possibilities for a practice of the wild that can heal self and world in mutuality.

If Nature is super, if superness belongs to the very character of the Cosmos, then our attempts to exclude the super and the "impossible" may contribute in fundamental ways to the mess we find ourselves in (politically, economically, spiritually, and of course ecologically). We may claim that we want to exclude the impossible because we insist on excluding "superstition" and "woo," but in fact we may discover that we have thereby excluded the superness that belongs to the nature of Nature, and thus created and perpetuated confusion about what we are and what reality is. Jeffrey J. Kripal, a delightful and insightful scholar of religion, joins us to discuss these matters, especially in relation to his new book, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities. This is a fun yet sober discussion of exciting yet sobering ideas, data, and experience, shifting our perspective from "the supernatural" to the Superness of Nature , the Super Natural. You can learn more about Jeff here: https://jeffreyjkripal.com/

On the Winter Solstice of 2023, U.S. President Biden will sign a law that could move our entire planet a step closer to global transformation--or not. It's up to us. But the law will require the disclosure of UFO/UAP and alien encounter information held as some of the deepest secrets of the U.S. government. What does this mean for us? It may surprise you to learn that even the Vatican has formally acknowledged the existence of advanced life outside our solar system, and the need to come together to discuss the implications for us in terms of our religious, spiritual, philosophical, and political ideas and practices. How might we have to change in order to integrate the reality of extraterrestrial life? And what happens when we find out those beings seem more advanced not only technologically, but also in some sense more advanced in terms of consciousness itself? Daniel Sheehan joins us to discuss these questions and to go over the legislation. He's an insider. Danny is a Harvard-trained lawyer who has argued high-profile cases such as the Greensboro Massacre, the Silkwood case, the Three-Mile Island case, and even appeared before the Supreme Court in the famous Pentagon Papers case. As part of his work at the Romero Institute, he works with the New Paradigm Institute, to help empower all of us for a post-contact reality. https://newparadigmproject.org/ https://www.danielpsheehan.com/

Where do we find Sophia's wild garden of awakening and love? We're it. And we can see that garden in every direction, if we look with awakening eyes, eyes of love, eyes of wisdom, eyes of beauty. And we need to cultivate that garden, with "Acts of Restorative Kindness". We find references to Sophia as a presence in the Earth, a presence in soil and soul. She calls to us to attend to Her, and to all Her sacred beings. In this episode, we enjoy a deep dialogue with Mary Reynolds, emissary of Sophia, and botanical bodhisattva of magic and grace—one of my favorite guests! She helps us reflect on the living loving world as our path of wisdom and wonder, and invites us to become the Ark of Being through Acts of Restorative Kindness. Mary Reynolds is a reformed international landscape designer who launched her career by achieving a gold medal for garden design at the Chelsea flower show in London in 2002, the story of which was made into a 2016 movie called “Dare to be Wild”. Bestselling author of The Garden Awakening, and We are the ARK, she is an occasional television presenter and the founder of the global movement “We are the ARK”. She’s not the worst cook and she likes to campaign against evil corporate/political efforts to cull us all off with pesticides, herbicides, GMO’s, greenwashing, and fossil fuel craziness. Her aim in life is to restore the Earth's native plant and creature communities (her clothing of choice), and remind people that our role here on this beautiful home of ours is one of guardian, not gardener. Find out more: www.marymary.ie www.wearetheark.org

Our need for wholeness has revealed itself clearly in many ways, and one of them relates to trauma. And, that puts us in dangerous wisdom territory, because talking about trauma can provoke anxiety and confusion. How can we relate most skillfully to the experiences we consider traumatic, and to our lives and our world as we metabolize those experiences?

We live in a fragmented culture. That means our attempts at holism, including any supposed holism of body and mind, could involve significant fragmentation and ignorance. We need holism and vision in order to make sure our practices of embodiment heal self and world at the same time.

Instead of becoming more “embodied,” we, in some crucial sense, need to become more . . . ecologied, encosmosed, and liberated into the mysteries of interwovenness, liberated into sacredness and wonder. If “embodied” signifies getting “into” our “body,” it misses our true need in a variety of ways. For a free pdf of practices to help facilitate ecosensual awareness and a more ecological embodiment, visit the Dangerous Wisdom website: https://dangerouswisdom.org/practices-of-a-sacred-place