The Emerald

Latest Episodes:

The Return to Focused Presence: Rediscovering the Greatest Conspiracy of All Sep 15, 2020

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Conspiracy theories abound these days. The Yoga and wellness communities have come under fire for being particularly prone to indulging these theories. Yet the teachings of Yoga ask us ultimately to look deeply at the difference between focused presence and spiraling mental agitation. This is how, in indulging conspiratorial world views, the yoga world is overlooking a profound treasure that lives at its very core. For right at the heart of yogic teaching is perhaps the greatest conspiracy of all — a conspiracy that resurfaces throughout the ages in traditions everywhere. The ability of the the individual to find freedom from panicked reactive thought and find peace and presence here and now. Through this inner work comes the agency that the conspiracy theorists so deeply crave — the agency to find center, and act from a place of focus to navigate chaotic seas effectively.

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The Honey that Hums and Blazes: Somatic Nectars of the Trance State Sep 01, 2020

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Honey was revered across the ancient world — found in Egyptian tombs and Chinese apothecaries and referred to glowingly in ancient Sumerian medical texts. The myths and stories that come to us from the ancient world are soaked in honey. Honey is certainly a remarkable substance. But is that enough to explain the presence of liquid nectar in myth upon myth upon myth? There are strange commonalities in the myths and stories about nectar and honey. The association of honey and immortality. The descriptions of cascades or rivers of honey or nectar. Honey described as luminous dew. Associations of honey with rapture and prophecy. Associations of honey with sound and with particularly effulgent qualities of light. When we delve into the myths and stories, we find that the prevalence of liquid nectar in myth can only lead to the conclusion that the honey being spoken of is experiential — it is a nectar of felt experience. Specifically, the nectar of heightened awareness, of trance. Today on the podcast, we steep in the honeys of consciousness, and find a common vision of luminous, sonorous liquid that pervades mystic discourse around the world.

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A Brief History of Want: Longing and Its Place in Cosmos and Consciousness Aug 18, 2020

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Human beings have a complicated relationship with want. For some traditions, desire, want, or longing sits right at the heart of creation itself, providing the spark that sets the universe in motion, and is inherent to what it means to be human. Yet unchecked want has also resulted in untold suffering for people and planet. Renunciate traditions have put forth practices and philosophies designed to get rid of the want altogether. But is getting rid of want even possible? Is longing inextricably part of the fabric of reality, and to deny it is to deny existence itself? In times like these when we face unprecedented global crises, perhaps we need to harness this primal want in service of life and nature rather than deny it. In this episode we follow the fascinating history of one Sanskrit word — Kāma, desire, longing — in order to shed light on humanity's intricate relationship with want, ultimately finding ourselves at the feet of the Goddess of Longing herself, whose temple and traditions speak to a universe that is built upon a deep substrate of longing, and who encourages us to harness longing rather than deny it.

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In These Mythic Times: Monsoon, Apocalypse, and What We Are Truly Longing For Aug 04, 2020

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These are mythic times. And what are we called to do in mythic times? What is the deep mythic transformation we are seeking? Often the mythic journey requires something very simple of us. Often, it asks us to cultivate the simple acts of paying attention and remembering. Remembering, in a chaotic age, who we are and what we want, what we truly long for. This episode of The Emerald draws upon the bhakti — or devotional — traditions of India and their profound relationship with longing to explore the idea that what we are longing for is to enact the cycle of longing itself. That we are wired as humans to enact cycles of longing, crisis, and release, and if we don't find ways to internally enact this cycle through ritualized longing, we enact it through the urgencies and crises of the external world. Steeped in fairy tales and the devotional songs of longing and monsoons, this episode seeks to rekindle a loving relationship with the world, a relationship from which ultimately profound change will come.

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Holy River of Flows: Words and Discourse in a Declarative Age Jul 21, 2020

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Wonder of wonders, words have started arriving for my 13-month old son! Their arrival is a deep reminder that words are more than detached concepts — they are somatic, they invoke, they carry with them the power and potential of transformational magic. Speech, or voice, in the Vedic vision is the goddess herself, and poetic discourse is a river whose ultimate promise is to allow us to 'step in tune with being', or to 'find the angel' that lives between us and another. Yet these days we are inundated with millions upon millions of words, words that live removed from the somatic and communal context words once bore. And perhaps the further the word gets separated from its rapturous, somatic core — isolated and treated as a symbolic end unto itself rather than part of a continuum — then the more public discourse, and even social movements themselves, become self-referential abstractions that are solely based on the shifting around of written words. Today on the podcast, we take a journey from the primordial deities of the word through Jay-Z and Rudolfo Anaya to understand the true transformative potential of words.

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Sand Talk with Tyson Yunkaporta Jun 30, 2020

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Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland Australia. He's the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Sand Talk looks deeply at the basic pattern of nature and how that pattern reflects through all of creation, informing not only how natural systems operate, but reflecting into systems of law, harmonious conduct, and relational communication. Join Tyson and me as we take a journey through the pattern — stopping along the way to talk about ancestral mind, native corn, Game of Thrones, and the best way to approach rocks. Talking about the basic pattern of nature is a rich topic, one which ultimately begs the question, that Old Man Juma in the book keeps getting at, if all this is pattern, then is even the current destructive paradigm part of some greater pattern too?

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Space Hex: The Curse of Restlessness in Worldviews of Perpetual Escape Jun 23, 2020

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"We don’t go to other planets because our planet is dying. Our planet dies, specifically because we perpetually want to go somewhere else." Today on the podcast, welook at humanity’s increasing obsession with transcending planet earth, in the context of the mythologies of human restlessness. How human beings, whether through certain religious visions of transcendence, or through the increasing transhuman and supernatural focus of modern science, are ultimately looking to be anywhere but right here, with ourselves, in nature. This misplaced spiritual drive, in which we perpetually seek wholeness out there, when wholeness ultimately lives right here, has been the subject of some of our most central stories about ourselves. Many in fact, have seen it as… a primordial curse.

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Rapturous Focus and Extraordinary Powers: Breathing Life into the Third Book of the Yoga Sutras May 19, 2020

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The third book of the Patañjali yoga sutras, the Vibhūti Pāda, is often skipped over in modern yoga teacher trainings. Why? Its descriptions of supernatural powers — of yogis who can shrink to the size of an atom, fly, and read minds — can cause cognitive dissonance or discomfort in the modern mind. Yet right in the heart of this discussion of the extraordinary powers is an animate, rapturous vision that is concurrent with the experience of human ritual culture dating back in an unbroken line to the Paleolithic. This is, in fact, the animist chapter of the yoga sutras, which is precisely why it's ignored. Today on the podcast, we look at the rapturous vision of the Vibhūti Pāda, which arrived at a time when the old ways of trance and animal powers were butting up against new doctrines of transcendence. With source references as diverse as Italian scholar Roberto Calasso and the Wu-Tang Clan, we can safely say this is like no other commentary on the yoga sutras that you've ever heard. And if it ruffles a few scholarly feathers, so be it. Enjoy.

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Broadcasting Live From the Time of Poets and Bards May 05, 2020

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The poet/bard/singer holds a special place of reverence in many cultures and traditions. Far from being seen as 'escapism,' sung music, incanted verse, and told story was essential technology for transporting people to a place of greater presence, awareness, focus, and timeless vision that ultimately could assist in navigating life well. This is why story, poetry, and song are more vital now than ever. On this live storytelling episode of The Emerald, we conjure up the old bards and singers, from the formidable Indian singer Tansen — who called fires and storms with his voice — to the Celtic Taliesin, to Orpheus, the animate force of poetry and song itself. In this vision, poetic, sung verse is sometimes a fountain, sometimes a stream, sometimes a cauldron full of bubbling liquid... and the force of praise is the force of nature itself, which exists in a state of perpetual awe at its own creative power.

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Broadcasting Live From the Center of the Universe Apr 21, 2020

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In this live storytelling episode, we look at mythological visions of the world axis or central column across a range of cultures. Starting with the simple upright alignment of the human spine, and journeying to the central mountain of the Indian mythologies and the world tree of the Norse and Siberian cultures, we explore stories and ritual practices that illuminate 'center' and our relationship to it.

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