Michael Cepress is a "triple citizen of the arts," engaged in performing arts, visual arts, and fashion design. He invites us to recognize the limitless potential for good that emerges when artistic expression serves and uplifts the greater good, weaving diverse forms of art into purposeful community action.

Michael Cepress is a multidisciplinary artist celebrated for his dynamic creativity—he is a musician, a storyteller and poet, a craftsman, a designer, and a cultural curator. In addition to his musical talents he has excelled in textile arts and fashion design, with exhibitions of his work showcased internationally. Michael recognizes the boundless potential for good that arises when artistic expression serves and uplifts the greater good, weaving together the varied forms of art into purposeful community action.

Interview Date: 9/11/2025. Tags: Michael Cepress, Native Funk and Flash, Alexandra Jacopetti Hart, Richard Rohr, Swami Kriyananda, quilting, fashion, Art & Creativity

Many explorers are seeking a depth of healing that is more experiential through expanded states of consciousness. Some modalities of this are sweat lodges, vision quests, breath work, and where is it legal, psychedelics in Mexico. Here we explore the experiential therapeutic applications of expanded states of consciousness that lead to healing and transformation. Françoise Bourzat is a consciousness guide and counselor. She has a master’s degree in Somatic Psychology and is a Certified Hakomi Practitioner. After traveling the world, she became an apprentice to an indigenous Mazatec woman leading healing ceremonies with sacred mushrooms in the high mountains of Southern Mexico. Drawing from years of her close apprenticeship with this Mazatec curandera, as well as her training in other indigenous traditions, Françoise has developed a comprehensive approach that bridges Western and indigenous modalities. She trains therapists and facilitators and teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She also lectures internationally. Shes the co-author with Kristina Hunter of Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth. (North Atlantic Books 2019).

Interview Date: 7/6/2019 Tags: Françoise Bourzat, heroin, compassion, mushroom ceremonies, psychedelics, entheogens, hallucinogens, vision quest, sweat lodge, transdance, altered states, Ralph Metzner, MAPS, MDMA, PTSD, Roland Griffith, ibogaine, Julieta Casimiro, personal transformation, Indigenous wisdom, Shamanism, Health & Healing

Becoming an elder can be a time of great creativity and contribution.This deep dialogue explores what it means to be to be proactive in approaching aging and becoming an elder in the 21st century. Percy’s research points out that growing older does not mean we can no longer actualize new and healthier futures. These years may be our most influential ones yet. Percy is the author of Becoming an Elder: Practicing the Wisdom Arts.

Interview Date: 8/3/2019 Tags: Diana Percy, elderhood, eldering, mortality, obituaries, Sir Laurens Van der Post, meaning, Viktor Frankl, friendships, Matthew Fox, Order of the Sacred Earth, Intergenerational vision, volunteering, humor, personal mastery, Personal Transformation

Lama Palden Drolma presents the Tibetan meditation practice, Tonglen, in a way that is accessible to Westerners. It combines breath, awareness, imagination, and an energetic transformation process that opens our hearts to reveal and cultivate kindness, love, compassion and wisdom. This practice can be used in our everyday life in an “on-the-spot” meditation. Lama Palden Drolma is the author of Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy (New World Library 2019)

Interview Date: 7/16/2019 Tags: MP3, Lama Palden Drolma, Tonglen, Niguma, Dilgo Khyentse, Chenrezig, three jewels, Buddha, Sanga, Dharma, sin, Matthew Fox, mantra, Kalu Rinpoche, 16th Karmapa, Meditation, Personal Transformation, Buddhism

Nepo’s creative works, books, poems, workshops are all about creating a sacred place where the experience of honest truth can happen. Even in our deepest moments of suffering, he encourages us to seek out slivers of light seeping through the broad slats of darkness. His genius is to discover metaphors as a way of understanding and making meaning of our lives. Mark Nepo is the author of many audio learning projects and over 20 books including Reduced To Joy (Cleis Press 2013), Seven Thousand Ways To Listen: Staying Close To What Is Sacred (Free Press 2012), The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your heart (Atria Books 2016), The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting (Sounds True 2016) and Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression (Sounds True 2019)

Interview Date: 8/10/2019 Tags: Mark Nepo, metaphors, cancer, grief, Gail Warner, Pine Manor Retreat Center, Doc Palmer, creativity, immersion, whales and dolphins, suffering, telling stories, Rilke, being present, ambition and dreams, making plans, Winston Churchill, assumptions, conclusions, Pandora music app, George Bernard Shaw’s tailor, Personal Transformation, Spirituality, Writing, Art & Creativity, Philosophy

Here we climb the attic steps and kneel before an old trunk, lift the lid and allow ancient tales to rush out and pierce our hearts and souls with their wisdom. Our guide in this quest is Martin Shaw who invites us to look at folktales not as therapy, not as giving advice but as tributaries that lead us to the bigger river of essential truths that nourish our lives.His books include A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace in Wildness, (White Cloud Press 2011), Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language (White Cloud Press 2014), Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia (White Cloud 2016) and The Night Wages: Bidden or Unbidden Initiations Come, (Cista Mystica Press 2019).

Interview Date: 6/4/2019 Tags: MP3, Martin Shaw, Captain Beefheart, Robert Bly, Odyssey, Ulysses, Nostos (returning home), longing, Psyche and Eros, Medusa, Charles Eisenstein, Mythology, Philosophy

Inner peace, as expressed by love, exists as goodness itself and is the strongest alternative to helplessness, resentment, hate, insanity, bitterness, and crazy violence. Here, we focus our attention on the capacity for a generous love that embraces such virtues as kindness, courage, forgiveness, gratitude, dignity for all, and hope.

Stephen G. Post, Ph.D. is among a handful of individuals awarded the distinguished service award by the National Alzheimer's Association. In 2001 he founded The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, which researches and distributes knowledge on kindness, giving and spirituality. Post served as a co-chair of the United Nations Population Fund Conference on Spirituality and Global Transformation. He's a professor in the Department of Preventative Medicine at Stony Brook University and founder and director of the Stony Brook Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics. He's a leader in medicine research and religion and the author of several books.

Interview Date: 8/22/2025 Tags: Stephen Post, Buddhist chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo, John Eccles, original mind, supreme mind, creativity, freedom, intuition, Mircea Eliade, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, loyalty, compassion, kindness, Sean Keener, Jacques Rousseau, empathic, freedom, Dostoevsky, Hinduism, Golden Rule, volunteering, mirth, Personal Transformation, Psychology, Work/Livelihood

This physicist and mystic combine their wisdom and experience to encourage us at this time of “choice point” for humanity. They describe what occurs in our brain when surprises happen and how that provides the opportunity to instantly change a long-standing habit. Hade describes the importance of knowing our core values in order to be resilient.

William Arntz is a physicist and filmmaker and creator of the film, “What the BLEEP Do We Know!?” Deirdre Hade is a modern-day mystic, poet and leading visionary in the ancient arts of the wisdom traditions, and creator of “The Radiance Journey” a path to mystical knowledge that unites the magical with the material. Together, husband and wife team William Arntz and Deidre Hade explore how science merges with mystical prophecy to help us navigate the upheaval and ever-changing surprises in these post-modern times. Arntz and Hade are the co-creators of the book: The (not so) Little Book of Surprises (Waterside Press2016), with the award winning photography of Endre Balogh.

Interview Date: 9/5/2017 Tags: Deirdre Hade, William Arntz, What The Bleep Do We Know, illumination, mysticism, scientism, curiosity, intuition, Sodom and Gomorrah, faith, Age of Surprises, habits, neuroplasticity, resilience, core virtues, core values, despair, fear, awe, soul, angelic presence, archangels, Philosophy, Science, Spirituality, intuition/psychic