Wisdom Talks Podcast Marc Ketchel

Our guest today is highly respected Kundalini expert and researcher Lawrence Edwards. His life long passion to know that Truth of the inner life brings a deeply steeped background in science to a profound inner mystical experience. He chronicles the awakening, unfoldment, and integration of the underlying power of the Universe, the Kundalini Shakti, in his most recent book, Awakening Kundalini – The Path to Radical Freedom. A book I highly recommend for those serious about understanding Kundalini and the subtle process of Kundalini Sadhana. He has narrated an audio presentation of the same name with guided practices and lectures that summarize a lifetime of study and experience. 
He is the founder and director of Anam Cara, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to teaching meditative practices from a variety of traditions. Dr. Edwards has taught at universities, hospitals, corporations, professional meetings, prisons, hospice programs, and yoga and meditation centers in the US, Canada, and India. He has been on the faculty of New York Medical College since 1998.
Dr. Edwards is a board-certified neurotherapist, and a licensed psychotherapist. For the last 45 years, he has developed unique insights that bridge scientific and mystical domains through direct knowledge. This growing direct awareness informs and enlightens every aspect of his life. The understanding and insights that have been revealed to him in this ever-deepening process of Self Realization are what he shares with us in this remarkable conversation.  
For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:
https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 
https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.
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Our guest today is Lee Lyon, world-renowned meditation teacher and author/translator of the recently released, The 112 Meditations from the Book of Divine Wisdom, the meditations from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, with commentary and guided meditations. 
Lee has traveled the world, from the 1980s to today, teaching 1000’s the art of simple meditation and introspection, showing the way to access the deep internal experience which is the goal of all spiritual practice. Lee’s gift is to make the complex and esoteric simple and available to the uninitiated through his marvelous storytelling. He makes the deepest and most profound mystical teachings available to everyone, particularly Westerners, without any knowledge of Sanskrit or Eastern thought. 
Lee’s brilliant translation and rendering of one of the most ancient and esoteric Tantras, Vijnanabhairava, entitled ‘The 112 Meditations from The Book of Divine Wisdom’, makes this rare tantric gem available to Westerners for the first time in an unencumbered and easy to read format. His thought-provoking and insightful commentary and guided meditations make studying this once abstruse Shaivite scripture a pleasure.  
In our highly illustrative conversation, punctuated with Lee’s gifted storytelling ability, he demonstrates his ‘slow it down and feel your way into it’ approach to teaching. He shares his early Canadian roots and the life-changing profundity he experienced in the great Canadian frontier while still in his teens, as well as his spontaneous awakening, and with complete candor and transparency the process of integrating his inner and outer experiences, finally culminating in a decade of work on The Book of Divine Wisdom. 
We hope you enjoy this conversation. 
For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:
https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 
https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Our guest today is Leo Dale and we’re your hosts Marc Ketchel and Larry Holmes. 
Leo is an audio/video producer and a lifelong musician. Having traveled extensively particularly to India, he is just as comfortable on location anywhere in the world as in his studio in Melbourne Australia. 
Our conversation today covers a lot of ground, beginning from his early upbringing in a large Irish Catholic family of musicians where he’s #7 of 8. He shares his dramatic Kundalini experiences and insights including many while visiting the Indian ashrams of Baba Muktananda and his successor, Swami Nityananda at Shanti Mandir in Magod, Gujarat. 
His story is one of the effective integration of the dynamic Kundalini energy into a very productive and active worldly and family life. We think you will find it informative and uplifting. 
For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:
https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 
https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Our guest today is with Swami Dayananda or as she’s known today, Ani Pema, a Tibetan Buddhist nun. And we’re your hosts Marc Ketchel and Larry Holmes.
Swamiji currently resides in Chiang Mai, Thailand, but has spent decades living and traveling in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Thailand. She is a direct disciple of Swami Muktananda, the Shaktipat (or Direct Transmission) Master, and spent the last 12 years of his life with him as he traveled the world initiating thousands into the Way of the Siddhas or Perfect Masters. 
After Muktananda’s passing she eventually found resonance with Tibetan Buddhism and was initiated into a monastic order as a nun in 2001 in Bhutan. 
Our conversation covers the full spectrum of her spiritual work in many yogic disciplines and spiritual traditions as well as the convergence of Transpersonal Psychology as taught by Jungian professors prominent at the time. 
In our conversation, we discuss her investigations and study of the effects of multigenerational trauma in spiritual practice and awakening. We explore the understanding of Shaktipat and subsequent Kundalini unfoldment. She shares with us what she feels is the most important understanding gleaned from the 50 years of her practice, what she calls embodied humanity. 
We discuss her discoveries through deep spiritual work in two of the greatest direct transmission lineages in modern spirituality.  Her wisdom and insights are rare and completely applicable to our current times. 
We hope you enjoy this conversation. 
For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:
https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 
https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

We’re your hosts, Marc Ketchel and Larry Holmes, and today we’d like to share our reflections, insights, and thoughts about what’s next and how to make the most of the current situation. This is a short conversation but one we hope will give you some perspective and add value to your life. What we discuss is how a simple shift in viewpoint can help each of us, in our own way, get the most of the current circumstances and make the process of going forward more fulfilling and rewarding. 
Show Notes
Jane Goodall “COVID19 has shown us that we are all connected…Many people feel helpless right now, but they must stay hopeful that they can influence one another through compassion and understanding.” 
Jane Goodall and Her Chimps – 60 minutes
Episode #20 Joe Smith – The Transformative Power of Breath
Resources, Tips, and Solutions
Power of Gratitude - Gratitude uplifts (you and others), inspires others to act compassionately 
Dalai Lama on Compassion – Time magazine article 
Transformative Power of Selfless Service
In the process of spiritual awakening, the act of selfless service is one of the most mysteriously transformational acts we can do in this life. 
Identify at least one frontline worker; healthcare worker, grocery store workers (often the lowest paid in your community). Find out what you can do to make their life easier or more enjoyable or in some way relieve the unimaginable stress and anxiety they live with day and night. 
It might be contributing to meals for healthcare workers program or to their family in your community or nationally, make face masks for them (they don’t have the time to make them and they are not being supplied adequately in most cases). Reach out to one that you know and ask them what you can do to help them and tell them how much you appreciate what they are doing. 
Importance of Food Banks and the Impact of Hunger
Here’s a startling fact from David Beasley, Executive Director of UN World Food Program, 260 million people are on the brink of starvation right now globally, 300k per day will die today.
Focus globally is you have the resources or locally with these resources: 
Feeding America Food Bank Network – 200 Food Banks across the USA.
Bread of the Mighty Food Bank - In our local food bank, $1 feeds 10 meals, which is a huge value for the $1. Not to mention the goodwill and karmic merit that accrues. 
Importance of Social Distancing and Wearing Face Masks
Social distancing is the most effective way to ensure your health and that of others. Wearing a mask is the second most effective way. Use a homemade mask to cover your n95 mask (if you are lucky enough to have one) to extend its life and save those resources. If you have any doubt about this as a win-win strategy to protect yourself and others, read this very short article: https://mashable.com/article/coronavirus-study-80-percent-of-americans-wear-masks/?utm_campaign=FEED+BLAST-Mashable+Top+Stories+Daily-20200509

Mary Reilly Nichols holds a BA in anthropology from Harvard University. is the Director of Nalanda Institute’s Yoga, Mind & Spirit and has been teaching yoga from a devotional/experiential perspective for over 30 years. She specializes in direct transmission experiential Yoga with an emphasis on the development of wisdom and direct experience through the lens of the non-duality traditions of  Advaita Vedanta, and the Tantric methods of the Trika school of Kashmir Shaivism and Kundalini Yoga. 
Her meeting in the mid-1970”s with the Siddha Master, Baba Muktananda, a Shaktipat Guru, changed the trajectory of her life. She spent 5 years under Muktananda’s direct tutelage living in his residential ashrams both in India and here in the US. 
She currently teaches in a diverse range of settings from academia, to yoga studios and Institutes, to stress management in psychiatric clinical settings and is involved in ongoing research on the mind/body benefits of yoga and meditation.
Her story is unusual in many ways, but importantly she began her remarkable and often dramatic journey as a very normal young college freshman when the latent Kundalini energy awoke, quite spontaneously while she was studying in her dorm room. She had no interest in spirituality and describes her normalcy in her writings about her awakening on her website, http://www.meditationmary.com/home/
 “I first met Shiva one evening in my dorm room during my freshman year at college. It was a few weeks into the first fall semester at Harvard.  I had scored a single room as a freshman by claiming on my roommate questionnaire that I was impossible to live with, had erratic sleep habits, and smoked minimally 2 packs a day, which was all true.”
“There were a handful of people I knew in those days who meditated but the whole thing held no appeal for me, I thought it looked pointlessly unproductive and boring.”
The intensity of her study and depth of her experience is very insightful and instructive, particularly for those who will never meet a true Shaktipat Guru in the physical form. She is adamant about the fact that you can still have a very rich and satisfying relationship with the Supreme Guru who resides in your heart as the essence of your breath. In our conversation, she elaborates on the details of how she engages this divine relationship. 

This is a conversation not to be missed. In fact, you may find yourself listening to it several times. Grab a drink of your favorite beverage and enjoy the conversation. Please leave your comments on this post on the websites below. We respond to every comment personally. 
To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:
https://www.meditatenow.net- Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 
https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.