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Holy Darkness
When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. – David Whyte
 
Here in the northern hemisphere, as we slide toward the winter solstice, the days are becoming shorter and shorter. We live more and more in the dark.
 
In general, most of us tend to denigrate darkness – especially those of us on a spiritual path! We associate spiritual growth with the light: seeking the light, seeing the light, being enlightened, and so forth. Darkness we consider a place of fear, danger, doubt, despair, and all kinds of negativity – not to mention historical prejudices against people with darker skin. 
 
Lately, I’ve been rethinking this dichotomy between darkness and light. Kabbalist mystic and Zen teacher Jason Shulman, whom I interviewed recently for the Earth & Spirit podcast, helped me see that darkness can be a lovely and necessary place of gestation, intuition, and integration of our full selves – not just the shiny, happy self we may wish to pursue or project. It is the yin that complements the yang. The Kabbalists even speak of the “lamp of darkness,” and upcoming podcast guest and dharma teacher Deborah Eden Tull writes of “luminous darkness” and “endarkenment” as a complement to enlightenment. Perhaps the “light shining in the darkness” in this Christian Advent season is a partner to the dark, not an enemy of it!
 
In these next weeks, I’d like to invite all of us to make a nondual journey into the darkness, in whatever forms it may take in our lives. Let’s travel there with mindfulness and open-hearted curiosity, and see what gifts it may offer us. “There you can be sure,” as poet David Whyte writes so beautifully, “you are not beyond love.”
 
Take care,
Kyle Kramer, CEO
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Jason Shulman on Wholeness, Conflict, and Being Saved by Love

Jason Shulman is a spiritual teacher who straddles the worlds of Jewish Kabbalah mysticism and Zen Buddhism. In this episode, Jason shares his practical, deeply grounded, nondual vision of reality and how it plays out in conflict resolution, the integration of polarities and paradox, and above and beneath all, love.

RESOURCES:

Jason’s school, A Society of Souls: https://www.societyofsouls.com/, https://www.facebook.com/asocietyofsouls/

The Foundation for Nonduality: https://www.nonduality.us.com/, https://www.instagram.com/foundationfornonduality/, https://www.facebook.com/FoundationForNonduality,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ml_7AMW7UL15uD_CI9mQQ

Earth & Spirit Center: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Donate to support this podcast: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

 

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Nina Simons on Nature, Culture, the Sacred, and Feminine Leadership

Nina Simons is an activist, author, social entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Bioneers, a nonprofit organization committed to social and environmental justice work that honors the web of life, now and into the future. In this conversation, Nina reflects on how feminine and indigenous leadership are crucial paths for cultural and ecological regeneration.

RESOURCES:

Earth & Spirit Center: www.earthandspiritcenter.org

Donate to support this podcast: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Nina’s website: https://www.ninasimons.com/

Nina’s new book, Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, 2nd edition: https://www.ninasimons.com/writing

Bioneers website: https://bioneers.org/

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Creation Spirituality
One of the great blessings of hosting the Earth & Spirit NPR Podcast is the chance to have deep conversations with some absolutely amazing leaders in the areas of spiritualty, social justice, and Earth care. I recently had just such a conversation with Matthew Fox (check out the episode here), a wonderfully cantankerous spiritual teacher and prolific author of 39 books.
 
Among the many topics Matthew and I covered, we spent a lot of time talking about Creation Spirituality, which rests on the assumption that divinity (by many names and understandings) permeates the world and can be experienced through spiritual practice. Creation Spirituality has four main paths: the positive path of awe, gratitude, and joy; the negative path of darkness, doubt, suffering, and letting go; the creative path of birthing beauty in its many forms; and the transformative path of justice-making, compassion, and healing our relationships with other people and the planet.
 
I find great resonance with these four paths, which also hew closely to the Earth & Spirit Center’s mission commitments to spiritual practice, social justice, and Earth care. Many days, feelings of wonder and gratitude come quite easily to me. Others I feel disconnected, dry, and full of doubt. Still others I feel most spiritually alive not on my meditation cushion but in the hustle-bustle of efforts to create a better and more beautiful world.
 
Creation Spirituality reminds me that the difficult times don’t have to be obstacles to spiritual practice, but can and should part and parcel of it – and that authentic spirituality absolutely requires active, deep engagement with the messy needs of our beautiful and hurting world. Also, spiritual practice and spiritual experiences vary daily and evolve over time: as the world changes, as our circumstances change, as we change and grow. Set-it-and-forget-it cruise control isn’t really an option for those on a genuine path of spiritual seeking. I hope that the Earth & Spirit Center can support you as you walk the many paths of your spiritual journey.
 
Take care,
Kyle Kramer, CEO
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Matthew Fox on Creation Spirituality and Original Blessing

Matthew Fox is an author, theologian, and activist Episcopal priest whose radical interfaith work attempts to reawaken us to the sacredness of the created world. In this conversation, Matthew reflects on how creation-centered spirituality, and the marriage of the divine feminine and sacred masculine, can help us respond with hope to the troubles of our apocalyptic times.

RESOURCES:

Earth & Spirit Center website: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Donate to support this podcast: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Matthew will be in Louisville, KY at the annual Festival of Faiths, November 9 – 12.  https://festivaloffaiths.org/

Websites related to Matthew’s work:

http://www.matthewfox.org

http://www.thecosmicmass.com

http://www.orderofthesacredearth.org

http://www.dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org

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Stephen Jenkinson on Grief and Belonging in Troubled Times

Stephen Jenkinson is a Harvard-trained author, activist, farmer, sculptor, and canoe-builder who has worked in his native Canada as a palliative care provider for dying people and their families. In this challenging conversation, Stephen reflects on the deep roots of our troubled times and on how rich and full human belonging – in one’s life, one’s culture, one’s place – means letting go of our drive for autonomy to embrace the beauty of our limits.

RESOURCES:

Donate to support this podcast at https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Stephen’s website: https://orphanwisdom.com/

Stephen’s latest book (with Kimberly Ann Johnson), Reckoning: https://orphanwisdom.com/reckoning/

Stephen’s Nights of Grief and Mystery 2022 Tour: https://orphanwisdom.com/nights-of-grief-and-mystery/.

 

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Resonance
Earlier this month, the Earth & Spirit Center took part in the Louisville Resonant City Peace Project, part of the larger Global Peaceful Cities Project. I served on the planning committee for a time and did an interview about the project for the Earth and Spirit Podcast. The project leaders chose a specific focus area in Louisville, gathered enough meditators from across the city (and beyond) to equal a certain minimum percentage of that area’s population, and facilitated 20-minute guided daily meditations for 11 days, with the intention of reducing crime and violence in that area by at least 25%. It is a double-blind research study, so none of the meditators knew what part of Louisville was the focus area. Number-crunching PhD statisticians will now be analyzing Louisville crime data to see if there is a correlative reduction in crime. 
 
This project is based on the conviction – subjected to scientific scrutiny – that meditation can have tangible effects beyond just the individual meditator and her own behaviors. A musical analogy explains it best. I’m a guitarist, and even without my touching the strings, my guitar can vibrate sympathetically in response to tones of my voice or other instruments, when those frequencies match the guitar tuning. Similarly, it may be possible for there to be resonance and amplification of shared, focused prayerful and meditative intentions for the peace and well-being of others – such that there are tangible correlative effects. I don’t pretend to comprehend that, but in a world of interdependent quantum entanglement (I love Einstein’s phrase, “spooky action at a distance”), it certainly doesn’t seem implausible. I certainly like the idea of resonating with others who share common intentions for good.
 
The point, which we’ve emphasized since opening our doors in 2005, is that meditation is never just a private pastime. It can and should have ripple effects – resonance! – far beyond yourself. As always, we’re here to help and support you as you tune up, center down, and join the symphony.  
 
Take care,
Kyle Kramer, CEO
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Resonance: Bethany Gonyea on the Personal and Collective Impact of Mass Meditation Events

Bethany Gonyea is the founder of Numinous, a nonprofit that facilitates interfaith spiritual practices to reduce human suffering. In this conversation, Bethany shares about her work in creating mass meditation events aimed at reducing crime and violence in specific geographic areas (in statistically verifiable ways), as well as bringing benefits to the meditators themselves.

RESOURCES:

Earth & Spirit Center homepage: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Numinous homepage: https://numinousonline.com/

Global Peaceful Cities Project: https://www.peacefulcities.org/

Bethany’s book: Become a Consciousness Athlete: A Step by Step Program to Heighten Consciousness for Daily Happiness

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