Redefining sainthood as a deep care for ourselves and others, Lama Rod Owens and Raghu discuss reclaiming our sacredness and our identity.

Check out Lama Rod’s book, The New Saints, to learn more about becoming a spiritual warrior.

Within this episode, Raghu and Lama Rod discuss:

• Healing through music and other mystical experiences
• Lama Rod Owens’ college experience and getting into activism
• Re-framing our relationship to religion
• The freedom to be our most authentic selves
• Owning our own identity and sacredness
• Community and collective as the hero we all need
• The apocalypse as an unveiling of the truth
• Creating a culture of care and prioritizing well-being
• Disrupting habitual reactivity and transforming our responsiveness
• Loneliness on the spiritual path

About Lama Rod Owens:

Lama Rod Owens is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. An international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. Author of Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, his teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care. Highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself. A leading voice in a new generation of Buddhist teachers with over 11 years of experience, Lama Rod is highly respected among his peers and the communities that he serves. From these intersections, he creates a platform that’s very natural, engaging, and inclusive. Check out Lama Rod’s most recent publication, The New Saints and his podcast on the Be Here Now Network, The Spirit Underground.

For current offerings and programs, click here.

“I think that the most important spiritual practice is care, compassion love; I think that’s the common expression across many paths. A saint is defined by the depth of their care for others.” – Lama Rod Owens

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Noah and Raghu Markus catch up with Joseph Goldstein to talk about poetry, imposter syndrome, trust, and more.

Grab a copy of Joseph’s poems and reflections HERE

In this episode, Raghu, Joseph, and Noah connect through these topics:

• How Joseph revitalized his poetic spirit while traveling in Spain
• Revision as the most important process of writing
• Struggling with imposter syndrome
• How poetry overlaps the meditative space
• Silence as an integral precursor to creativity
• The beauty within very ordinary experiences
• How aversion traps us just as much as desire
• Compassion as the activity of emptiness
• Loneliness and the myth of intimacy
• Building trust and self-confidence
• Artistic versus scientific ways of understanding
• Anger as a messenger and using wise discernment

Be sure to check out this talk on quantum mechanics, as suggested by Joseph in today’s episode.

About Joseph Goldstein:

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and loving-kindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he is one of the organization’s guiding teachers. In 1989, together with several other teachers and students of insight meditation, he helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

“A lot of creativity comes out of the silence because then it’s more intuitive rather than thinking through something. It’s that overlap that I really love. I can be in a quiet space and a very ordinary perception of something takes on more meaning because I’m not just rushing through it, I’m actually there in it.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Trauma-focused psychotherapist Ralph De La Rosa links with Raghu to explain how radical self-compassion can outshine our deepest wounds.

Eager to learn more? Grab your own copy of Ralph’s new book, Outshining Trauma.

In this episode, Raghu and Ralph have a conversation about:

• Ralph’s casual brush with death and the divine play of the universe
• Healing our afflictions and uncovering our awakened state
• How we all tend to dissociate and distract ourselves
• Inspiration from Buddhism in Ralph’s own life and his therapy practice
• Befriending all of the different parts of our psyche
• Connecting the heart of compassion to the difficulties we experience
• Utilizing the tools of Internal Family Systems
• Working with the breath and other meditation techniques
• Getting intimate with our afflictions
• The concept of taking refuge
• Considering what a healthy love/relationship looks like
• How to respond to self-judgment and drop our armor

About Ralph De La Rosa

Ralph De La Rosa (he/they) is a teacher of human spirituality, an internationally published author and a trauma-focused psychotherapist. Ralph works in private practice and is a seasoned meditation teacher known for his radically open and humorous teaching style. He is personally mentored by Richard Schwartz, founder and developer of Internal Family Systems. Check out Ralph’s new book, published in November 2024, focusing on trauma and radical self-compassion, Outshining Trauma. You can keep up with Ralph on his website.

“Our hearts can really break open for our own struggle. That, for me, is the nature of what I would call radical self-compassion, when you start to behold your own struggle and are willing to get intimate with your afflictions rather than run from them.” – Ralph De La Rosa

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Aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta joins Raghu to discuss our shared evolution of consciousness and navigating a post-truth world.

This week on Mindrolling, Tyson and Raghu have a conversation about:

• Living in a post-truth world where objective facts lose to emotional/personal appeal
• How coronavirus nudged us closer to fascism
• Cultural feedback routes and how America affects Australia
• Working with Indigenous medicine to connect to the spirit
• Navigating the grieving process
• Revolutions of consciousness through the eras
• Our universal connection and sharing of space with each other
• Disinformation and the build-up to our recent election
• Right story versus wrong story and how the truth gets blurred
• All of our relations, human and non-human

About Tyson Yunkaporta:

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.

Preorder Tyson’s book, Right Story, Wrong Story: How to Have Fearless Conversations in Hell

“People are really suffering, and this feels true. This story reflects our feelings of terror and the need to preserve our cultures and communities and resources exclusively.” – Tyson Yunkaporta

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Sharing stories from her world travels, yoga teacher Susan Maruffo explores healing and self-discovery through yoga, Tantra, and meditation.

This time on Mindrolling, Susan and Raghu journey through:

• Unhappiness within Western cultural conditioning
• How getting out of the United States transformed Susan’s life
• Being alone while doing yoga versus in a group setting
• How suffocating our ‘roles’ in life can be
• Recognizing our universal connection via a trip to India
• Coming back into the body through yoga practice
• Susan’s experience at a Tantric school in Thailand
• Neo-Tantra versus classical Tantra
• Healing through yoga and sexual exploration
• Dying to the old versions of ourselves
• How the heart reveals itself during meditation
• The ways we run away from intimacy

About Susan Marrufo:

Susan left the United States and a job in advertising in 2008 to travel internationally and experience life beyond the confines of her cultural conditioning. She received her first 500-hr yoga certification in Thailand in 2009, where she began her studies of the classical yogic scriptures and delved deeply into esoteric tantric philosophy. After 2 years of teaching month-long tantric-based courses on the banks of the Ganges in India and the Pacific coastal towns of Mexico, Susan returned to the US to begin a residential internship with the Kripalu School of Yoga, where she taught in and project-managed several Kripalu yoga teacher trainings as well as received her 2nd 500-hr teacher training certification from the Kripalu School of Yoga. Susan facilitates group courses in the inquiry of yoga and meditation and dives increasingly deeper into her yogic studies. She is the founder of Samarasa Center.

“It was the first time that I started practicing yoga alone. Not in groups of classes with other people. That was transformational for me. That was the game changer, just being alone, having time, not feeling stressed, not feeling the pressure to be anybody. To be a wife, to be a boss, to be a daughter.” – Susan Marrufo

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Justin Boreta, the first musician to collaborate with Ram Dass, talks with Raghu about Ram Dass’ legacy and the power of music.

Check out the track Awareness, an ambient track by Justin mixed with a guided meditation from Ram Dass.

This week on Mindrolling, Justin and Raghu chat about:

• Ram Dass’ legacy transported through music
• The chants that Ram Dass brought home from India
• Kali Yuga, the age of destruction
• Chants for Ganesh and music as the delivery method for mantra
• Ram Dass’ humor and charm
• How music is a tool for being in the present moment
• Using the breath to enter into a space of loving-kindness
• The intersection of community, teachings, and music
• Trusting the music and letting go

Raghu suggests checking out the poetry of Kabir brought to life through music.

About Justin Boreta:

Justin Boreta is a member of The Glitch Mob, a beat-driven electronic group that has been touring for more than a decade performing around the world at festivals including: Coachella, Burning Man, Lollapolooza, Reading & Leeds and Bonnaroo. Boreta has collaborated with the spiritual teacher Ram Dass and Alan Watts on guided meditations and was recently nominated for a 2021 Grammy for Best New Age Album. Boreta is also a member of the Soul Land music series at Love Serve Remember.

“There was this sense of unencumbered big-eyed view of love. I felt so accepted and seen and relaxed right away. It was psychedelic. It was one of the most psychedelic experiences I’d had…the first thing I thought was if he [Ram Dass] makes me feel like that, I want other people around me to feel like that too.” – Justin Boreta

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Surfing dimensions of consciousness, dream yoga expert Andrew Holecek joins Raghu to discuss the benefits of lucidity in liminal spaces.

This time on Mindrolling, Andrew and Raghu discuss:

• Andrew’s early interest in the occult and the role of psychedelics
• Lucid dreaming and having insight before understanding
• Tibetan Buddhism and dream yoga
• Andrew’s experience with mantra and transcendental meditation
• Liminal dreaming and working with the space between sleep and waking
• Flexibility and surfing dimensions of consciousness
• Witnessing our mind transition from wakefulness to sleep
• Seeing how thoughts create reality
• How dream yoga transcends lucid dreaming
• Working with the tectonic states of our being

Grab a copy of Andrew’s recently released book, I’m Mindful, Now What?

About Andrew Holecek:

Andrew Holecek is an author and spiritual teacher who offers talks, online courses, and workshops in the United States and abroad. As a long-time student of Buddhism, he frequently presents this tradition from a contemporary perspective – blending the ancient wisdom of the East with modern knowledge from the West. Drawing on years of intensive study and practice, he teaches on the opportunities that exist in obstacles, helping people with hardship and pain, death and dying, and problems in meditation. Known as an expert on lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep and dream, he is an experienced guide for students drawn to these powerful nocturnal practices. Check out Andrew’s website to learn more.

“Therefore, you can literally work with really short, micro, lucid dream lenses. Where you can bring lucidity/mindfulness into the transition and see how it is that thoughts create reality at the level of the dreamscape. This is a form of dream-incubation, you can actually watch a thought transform into a dream.” – Andrew Holecek

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Raghu interviews Leonard Pickard about his early involvement in psychedelics, zen practice, his 20-year incarceration, and building resilience via mindfulness.

Leonard will be joining Raghu, Zach Leary, Trevor Hall and others at a Ram Dass Legacy Event in Denver on December 12th, 2024. For more info, click HERE.

This week on Mindrolling, Leonard and Raghu chat about:

• Transformative experiences as not dependent on substances
• Delving into the great leaders of the sixties and honoring Ram Dass
• The psychedelic revolution that is currently taking place
• Our total dependence on one another
• The way that music transformed throughout the 1960’s
• Leonard’s time at the San Francisco Zen Center studying Buddhism, meditation, and yoga
• Carrying our practice out into the world
• How Buddhism prepared Leonard for years of incarceration
• The beauty of spiritual practice and growing ones heart

Check out Leonard’s book, The Rose of Paracelsus, which he wrote while incarcerated, to explore more about psychedelics, spirituality, science, and human evolution.

About Leonard Pickard:

Once known as the Acid King, Leonard Pickard is a former research associate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, Harvard fellow in drug policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Deputy Director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program at UCLA. His 1996 prediction of the fentanyl epidemic was published by RAND in The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids. Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest LSD manufacturing case in history. On July 27, 2020, Pickard was granted compassionate release from federal prison 20 years into his sentence.

“Transformative experience, if it is to be valid, cannot be drug dependent. It would be a terrible offense to think that such beautiful insights were dependent upon a mere substance.” – Leonard Pickard

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