Episode 10: "Holy Smoke!" Holy Fire with Thomas Yeomans

Show Notes

Thomas Yeomans, Ph.D. is the founder and director of the Concord Institute. His background includes education at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of California and professional work in the fields of literature, education, and psychology. Tom has been involved with psychosynthesis and spiritual psychology for over forty years. He studied with Roberto Assagioli, M.D. in the early 1970's, and has trained professionals in psychosynthesis and spiritual psychology since then, both in individual and group work, throughout North America and in Europe and Russia.

Tom has published writing on psychosynthesis and spiritual psychology as well as three volumes of poetry and a childrens' book. He is founder/director of The Concord Institute and co-founder of the International School in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is also a painter and musician. Tom maintains a private practice in psycho-spiritual consulting and mentoring in Shelburne Falls, MA. His latest book is Holy Fire: The Process of Soul Awakening.

Tom Discusses

-  What is contemplative?
-  What is psychosynthesis (PS) as a framework for human development? Freud, Jung and Assagioli – the full spectrum of human consciousness and experience
-  House as metaphor of human consciousness and Assagioli’s addition of a “terrace”
-  The inherent, natural evolutionary tendency of human development toward integration, synthesis and spiritual maturity
-  Abraham Maslow and self-actualization
-  Tom searching in his 20s, PhD program and discovery of Assagioli’s “egg diagram” as personal epiphany
-  The centrality of the present moment as a touchstone in PS underlying aliveness and vitality
-  Doctrine and dogma – “you can’t dogmatize the present moment”
-  Tom’s latest book, Holy Fire: The Process of Soul Awakening - the purpose of using  “holy” and “soul” as terms
-  The book is primarily written for “serious seekers” not necessarily for professionals
- In PS the emergence of needs arising from existential reality is key and techniques and methods are selected appropriate to serving those needs specific to each individual
-  The story of Craig the dumpmeister
-  Four types of awakening and their "wildness"
-  Importance of cultivating an appreciation of the unknown
-  Pythagoras, his lyre and awakening to the cosmos
-  Paradox of opening to the Big Picture and self as unique
-  No split between macro and micro as with Aristotle – the non-dual
-  The lived experience of poetry and painting as spiritual practices
-  Tom closes by reading his poem “Now”

References Mentioned

The Concord Institute

Holy Fire: The Process of Soul Awakening

Assagioli's "egg diagram" of the human psyche

Trappist Monk William Meninger Dies

Fr. William Meninger, a Roman Catholic priest and Trappist monk died at the age of 88 on Sunday 14 February 2021 at St. Joseph's Abby in Spencer, MA. He played a major role in assisting with the revival of the Christian contemplative tradition through his teaching, speaking and writing. In particular, he did so in collaboration with two other Trappist monks, Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington, deceased earlier. 

This threesome rediscovered a contemplative practice based on the 14th century text, "The Cloud of Unknowing" and tailored it for modern times. They eventually named it centering prayer, a type of non-conceptual, non-discursive, non-thinking based meditation practice. The practice has became widely adopted throughout the world. 

Fr. William's passing is a significant closure and perhaps celebration of a chapter in the revival of contemplative spirituality and practice in the Christian world - as all three monks have now passed-on yet left behind a host of treasures. May all three rest in peace.

Episode 8: Abundant Living Here-Now with Joan Tollifson


Show Notes - to leave comments/questions click on title above.
Joan Tollifson writes and talks about being awake to the aliveness and inconceivability of Here-Now—being just this moment, exactly as it is. Rather than relying on outside authorities, traditional ideas, acquired knowledge or beliefs, this is about direct, immediate seeing and being. Joan has spent time with many teachers, exploring Buddhism, Advaita and radical nonduality, but she does not identify with or represent any particular tradition. She is the author of Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life (1996), Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is (2003), Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogs about Nonduality (2010), Nothing to Grasp(2012), and Death: The End of Self-Improvement (2019). (Adapted from Joan’s website.)
Joan Discusses
-  When is it contemplative
-  Is there spirituality and does it develop
- The pathless path leading to the gateless gate
-  Maps and conceptual constructions – help, hinderance or both 
-  Religious doctrine, dogma and beliefs vs. teachings
-  How science and religion approach beliefs and direct experience
-  The value of not knowing and groundlessness
-  Suffering vs. pain and stories and identification with thinking as sources of suffering
-  There’s no there there: self as fiction arising from thoughts and the paradox
-  Here-Now defined and impermanence and presence as aspects
-  Thinking as “mental chewing gum”
-  "Dissolution" of my inner/outer boundary
-  Freedom – what’s thought and thinking got to do with it
-  What’s problematic – having thoughts or believing in them
-  Non-Duality, unicity, making something an other (dualism)
-  Taoism, Yin/Yang and being at peace with everything - more paradox
-  Aging: natural loss and more wisdom, love, joy, peace, and beauty found in simple being
 


"It" Runs in the Family

This morning I had a delightful time interviewing David Parks, a Zen teacher. David and I both grew up in Kentucky where he has returned to live on a small farm after spending many years in California. His father, John Parks a psychiatrist and now deceased introduced me as a college student to meditation 50 years ago. 

While I knew of David as his son we never really had a chance to connect meaningfully until recently as we prepared to record an episode of All Things Contemplative. He spoke of growing up seeing his parents meditating on a regular basis and he would flip through books laying around the house by Akhilananda, their meditation teacher, Manley Palmer Hall and others. I said likewise with the books my mother left discreetly around by Gurdjeiff, Ouspensky and Yogananda hoping I’d show interest in them. It was she who introduced me to David’s father. 

This is all to say that it is as if I was only aware of threads and in a flash the whole cloth, invisibly woven together appeared as some type of interconnecting "it", sensed though incapable of precise definition. The episode with David will air in about two weeks.