In this episode, we have a roundtable discussion of spiritual issues with psychotherapist, Lisa Chatham. In Part I, we talk about the complex legacies of brilliant spiritual teachers, like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who are associated with inappropriate behavior or scandals. In Part II, we explore the spirituality of our most distant past in European and Middle-Eastern cave art and artifacts, and the spiritual futurism and metaphor of Star Wars. In Part III, we discuss the role and importance of technology in our lives and how we can deal with it spiritually.

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Born in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Grandmother Arapata is a healer who holds the indigenous lineages of both the Maori and Samoan ancestral bloodlines.

In this episode we talk about Grandmother Arapata’s upbringing with traditional teachings, the stigmas of colonization, the different challenges of indigenous peoples in the United States and New Zealand, reclaiming lost traditions, trusting chaos and intuition, working with the womb and generational pain (in the seen and unseen worlds), as well as injuries from power and greed. We also discuss appropriation and cultural reclamation among colonizing peoples, treating the whole being, the necessity of play and joy for re-rooting, working with men, 'whiteness' and the white-washing of culture and indigeneity, learning from and giving to our ancestors, the relationship of creativity to healing, and the necessity of pain in healing.

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Nataraja Kallio is a scholar-practitioner of Yoga and Hindu tantra. He is the Chair of the B.A. Yoga Studies program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and the co-designer of Naropa’s M.A. Yoga Studies program.

In this episode, we discuss Kallio’s upbringing in an American Hindu spiritual community, his travels in India and meetings with his guru, the origins of Hindu tantra (utilizing “the fecund material of our existence”), the spectrum of tantric deities, the transformation of intense emotions to crack the shell of identity, the pros and cons of asceticism, desire, the story of Shankaracharya and the exploration of the flesh, the story of Shiva and the forest ascetics, authentic and inauthentic tantra, neo-tantra and the western obsession with sex, cultural appropriation, epicureanism and sacralization, the ‘tantric’ dimension of all religions, and the treasure of spiritual friendship.

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