Ep. 197 (Part 1 of 3) | Polarity management pioneer and author Barry Johnson and adult development expert Beena Sharma are masterful teachers on the subject of polarities and what polarity thinking can bring to the world, benefitting our well-being at every level. Together they explain what polarities are, why they matter, how to apply and leverage them, and the essence of polarity wisdom: pursuing the upsides of opposite poles. Barry is careful to explain that although either/or thinking is the root of our troubles, both/and thinking by itself isn’t the answer either. Integrating either/or with both/and thinking and recognizing the interdependence of all things is the road to transformation and, Beena adds, the engine of human development, of human maturity.

Barry explains the profound spiritual understanding foundational to polarity wisdom and Beena details how polarities shift according to our developmental stage. Each of the polarities discussed—justice/mercy, claiming power/sharing power, being/doing, to name a few—illuminates its sphere, whether it relates to democracy, social justice, or spiritual practice. Barry and Beena are passionate about the promise of polarity thinking and their excitement is contagious in this fast-paced, delightfully lucid dialogue, jam-packed with information that is practical, inspiring, and potentially life changing. Recorded May 22, 2025.

“Either/or thinking without both/and thinking is the root cause of poverty, racism, sexism, and war.”

• Introducing polarity management pioneer & author Barry Johnson and adult development expert Beena Sharma (00:48)
• How did Barry discover polarities? (02:15)
• The essential dimension of polarities—interdependent pairs—and the universal interdependence of all of life (03:08)
• The capacity to integrate and recognize interdependence is the driving force of adult human development (03:47)
• The difference between polarity management and polarity wisdom (05:37)
• A key polarity in leadership and democracy: claiming power & sharing power (07:20)
• Experiential exercise: the infinity loop (08:11)
• What is true for all polarities: each pole brings something special that is essential to the relationship (11:15)
• The integrating wisdom that includes and transcends both polarities encompasses all dualities, reflecting traditional East Indian wisdom (12:12)
• As a leader, how can we be both clear & flexible, self-assured & humble, and as an organization, centralized & decentralized? (13:51)
• The oscillation between activity and rest (14:55)
• Leveraging polarities: maximizing upsides and minimizing downsides (16:22)
• Either/or thinking is essential, but it needs to be supplemented with both/and thinking (16:34)
• Privileging one pole as better, you enter into dysfunction (19:33)
• Interpersonal relationships: we see the positive value of our preferred pole but the downside of the other’s opposite preferred pole (20:56)
• The essence of polarity wisdom: embracing the wisdom of the opposite pole (21:41)
• Polarity thinking is an antidote to rigidity; it heals polarization (22:25)
• Either/or thinking without both/and thinking is the root cause of evil (23:09)
• Pursuing justice to the neglect of mercy (its interdependent pole) (26:47)
• Does both/and thinking require a certain level of...

Ep. 196 (Part 2 of 2) | n the twelfth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali guides us into the profound experience of pure being, which lies at the core of all mystical teachings. There are two nondual ways of experiencing the fullness of being, he explains. We can recognize we are infinite and boundless—as if we were the sky, but still experiencing this through our being—or, we can experience the oneness of being from the perspective of all manifestation: the mountain, the rocks, the molecules and atoms... “Wherever you go, physically or mentally, is pure being.” Hameed calls the first recognition “unity,” and the latter “oneness.”

Hameed clarifies the paradox of nothingness: “being and nothing are two ways of knowing the same thing; you can feel it as a fullness or you can feel it as an emptiness.” And he explains that being being and knowing being are the same thing, when knowing is understood in its deeper sense as gnosis. “Awakening is knowing our being or our awareness for what it is,” he says. Why is Hameed so uniquely articulate in talking about the experience of pure being? John asks him. This talk is an amazing teaching—visual and sensory, scientific and mathematical, deeply mystical and spiritual—Hameed comes at the subject of pure being from all angles. Recorded June 26, 2025.

“Practice is clearing the way, but whether awakening emerges or not is not up to you.”

• Why Hameed is so uniquely articulate talking about these experiences, and why some teachers don’t talk about these things (00:27)
• The nothingness side of pure presence (04:28)
• The spaciousness here appears different; it is non-Euclidean (07:44)
• Being and nothing are two ways of knowing the same thing; you can feel it as a fullness or you can feel it as an emptiness (09:22)
• What other traditions teach about emptiness (11:34)
• Awareness is pure beingness too (13:53)
• Awareness is an ontological reality; it is an “is-ness” we can recognize and it includes knowing (18:14)
• Being being is the same thing as knowing being; this is gnosis: knowing by being (20:23)
• Awakening is knowing our being or our awareness for what it is (23:44)
• Knowing and mind are fundamental, not just intellectual (25:52)
• Awakened awareness: realizing that awareness is the nature of everything (27:10)
• Awakening cannot be earned; it is a recognition, but there are obstacles in the way (29:37)
• We’ll get into knowing and reification next time (32:45)
• This teaching affirms you are a real being, and you are an expression of the being of God (33:55)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond Approach
• A. H. Almaas,

Ep. 195 (Part 1 of 2) | In the twelfth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali guides us into the profound experience of pure being, which lies at the core of all mystical teachings. There are two nondual ways of experiencing the fullness of being, he explains. We can recognize we are infinite and boundless—as if we were the sky, but still experiencing this through our being—or, we can experience the oneness of being from the perspective of all manifestation: the mountain, the rocks, the molecules and atoms… “Wherever you go, physically or mentally, is pure being.” Hameed calls the first recognition “unity,” and the latter “oneness.”

Hameed clarifies the paradox of nothingness: “being and nothing are two ways of knowing the same thing; you can feel it as a fullness or you can feel it as an emptiness.” And he explains that being being and knowing being are the same thing, when knowing is understood in its deeper sense as gnosis. “Awakening is knowing our being or our awareness for what it is,” he says. Why is Hameed so uniquely articulate in talking about the experience of pure being? John asks him. This talk is an amazing teaching—visual and sensory, scientific and mathematical, deeply mystical and spiritual—Hameed comes at the subject of pure being from all angles. Recorded June 26, 2025.

“One way of experiencing pure being is from within itself; then there is experiencing it from the perspective of all manifestation. This is when we understand form is formlessness and formlessness is form.”

• Introducing the 12th dialogue of the
• A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series focused on Hameed’s nondual teachings, and experiencing the fullness of being (00:33)
• The difference between the localized experience of presence and the infinite, boundless experience of presence (01:50)
• Divine love, pure presence is the precursor of all other qualities (03:15)
• More fundamental than divine love is the simplicity of pure presence, pure being (06:09)
• Our alienation from completeness causes a sense of lack in us all (11:19)
• There are 2 major ways of experiencing the fullness of being, both nondual (15:27)
• The second way is experiencing it from the perspective of all manifestation; this is when we understand form is formlessness and formlessness is form (22:14)
• Nonduality is implicit in both experiences—subject and object are the same thing (26:09)
• If you look a little deeper, you find that formlessness is behind everything (28:17)
• All manifestations of true nature are an antidote to suffering (28:43)
• Ordinary mind perceives everything as separate, singular (31:04)
• Science deals with behavior only; quantum physics comes closest to acknowledging there is something besides the physical (32:59)
• Can mathematics take us to a realization of pure being? (36:58)
• It would be possible for scientists to study this if they practiced inquiry into the observer, into the experience (39:50)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School

Ep. 194 (Part 2 of 2) | Frank Ostaseski, Zen hospice pioneer, founder of the Metta Institute, and author of The Five Invitations, speaks with us about the profound wisdom and potential for transformation that is unleashed in the process of dying. “Suppose we imagine death as an unprecedented opportunity for transformation, he says, adding, “so why wait until we are dying?” In attending over a thousand people in hospice, Frank has often seen them experience a real sense of discovery in the dying process; there is a time of acceptance, a time of letting go, and then a deeper state of surrendering to something larger. The walls that prop up the self start tumbling down, Frank explains, and a larger connection emerges that is always there.

Frank would like to see the process of dying brought out of the closet—shared about, learned from, and not reduced to a medical event. It’s important to meet death with don’t-know mind and trust the dying process to teach each of us what we need to know, he explains. And some of what we can do right now to open ourselves to the wisdom of death is pay attention to how we end things, and to how we love. This far reaching discussion delves gently into the divine mystery of death and dying, touching on radical acceptance, transcending self, don’t-know mind, everyday compassion and boundless compassion, grief as an expression of love, and creating rituals to mark this passage and all passages. We are left feeling unexpectedly comforted and liberated at the same time. Recorded December 5, 2024.

“Grief is a way we continue to love someone… a natural response to the experience of love.”

• What qualities do people need to be with the dying? (00:27)
• Boundless compassion needs everyday compassion (02:09)
• Don’t wait to tell people that you love them (03:55)
• Grief is a way we continue to love someone, a natural response to the experience of love (06:06)
• There are subtler experiences after surrender: tracking consciousness as the brain stops (06:38)
• Gratefulness and a deep sense of belonging to something larger (09:52)
• Cultivating don’t know mind; meeting dying with don’t know mind (12:47)
• Terminal lucidity (17:49)
• Practices we can do now: how do we meet endings? (19:54)
• Impermanence is not later; it’s in this very moment (22:35)
• Cultural changes Frank would like to see (26:15)
• Proximate karma (30:00)
• Better drugs than sedation: psychedelics could help us meet the profundity of the experience (30:37)
• Bathing the body after death: a wonderful tradition that can fundamentally shift our relation with death (33:45)

• Frank Ostaseski’s website: https://frankostaseski.com/
• Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
• Metta Institute, founded by Frank Ostaseski, to provide innovative programs and trainings that foster mindful & compassionate end-of-life care
• Frank Ostaseski, founding director of the San Francisco Zen Hospice...

Ep. 193 (Part 1 of 2) | Frank Ostaseski, Zen hospice pioneer, founder of the Metta Institute, and author of The Five Invitations, speaks with us about the profound wisdom and potential for transformation that is unleashed in the process of dying. “Suppose we imagine death as an unprecedented opportunity for transformation, he says, adding, “so why wait until we are dying?” In attending over a thousand people in hospice, Frank has often seen them experience a real sense of discovery in the dying process; there is a time of acceptance, a time of letting go, and then a deeper state of surrendering to something larger. The walls that prop up the self start tumbling down, Frank explains, and a larger connection emerges that is always there.

Frank would like to see the process of dying brought out of the closet—shared about, learned from, and not reduced to a medical event. It’s important to meet death with don’t-know mind and trust the dying process to teach each of us what we need to know, he explains. And some of what we can do right now to open ourselves to the wisdom of death is pay attention to how we end things, and to how we love. This far reaching discussion delves gently into the divine mystery of death and dying, touching on radical acceptance, transcending self, don’t-know mind, everyday compassion and boundless compassion, grief as an expression of love, and creating rituals to mark this passage and all passages. We are left feeling unexpectedly comforted and liberated at the same time. Recorded December 5, 2024.

“Dying is not predominantly a medical event, and we ought to stop treating it as if it were.”

• Introducing Frank Ostaseski, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project & author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully (00:35)
• What drew Frank into working with the dying? (01:51)
• John’s brush with death and how it affects him now (03:05)
• Does a contemplative practice help in a near-death experience? (08:10)
• Dying brings about certain conditions that help us transcend our small self (11:39)
• Facing death is an unprecedented opportunity for transformation—why wait until we are dying? (12:38)
• Acceptance is only the beginning, letting go has an important role, but there is a deeper dimension: surrender (14:23)
• Who are we after we are stripped of our identities? (20:43)
• Another way of understanding surrender: a deep relaxation rather than a giving up (22:19)
• We need to not project our standard of what dying should look like on people who are dying (30:30)
• Roger’s comments about how touched he was by Frank’s book, The Five Invitations (36:39)
• How painfully inadequate medical training is for helping the dying (38:28)
• How vulnerable doctors became during Covid, when they had to take on the role of family members (40:20)
• Time-of-death rituals are growing in medical centers around the world (42:17)
• Playing Brahms’ Lullaby throughout the hospital to mark a birth (46:18)

• Frank Ostaseski’s website: https://frankostaseski.com/
• Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death...

Ep. 192 (Part 2 of 2) | Professor Mark Fischler, constitutional law expert and co-host of the Integral Justice Warrior podcast, helps us make sense of what’s happening to our democracy, providing context—historical, legal, ethical—for the plethora of disturbing and destructive acts occurring on a daily basis in our political arena. The rule of law is under direct attack at this time, he explains, and an assault on democracy is essentially an assault on our most fundamental values—the principles this country was founded on: inclusivity, equality, and dignity for all.

Mark clarifies President Trump’s political actions in the context of developmental stages, unpacks Project 2025, and discusses the assault on higher education and critical thinking and what it portends. The trajectory of where we are headed, Mark points out, is regressing into values we have already transcended. We need our democratic foundation to move to deeper, post-democratic levels that are reflective of greater levels of interconnection and inclusivity—not the opposite, he says. What will it take to change the regressive trajectory? Courage! And involvement. Thank you, Mark, for bringing a rare depth and much-needed clarity to the subject of the evolving democratic crisis occurring in our nation today and its implications for our future. Recorded June 12, 2025.

“The assault on democracy we are experiencing is also an assault on a spiritual understanding of the deeper nature of our existence.”

• The assault on higher education and critical thinking, continued (01:07)
• The idea of inherent capabilities of race is a slippery slope (02:33)
• Authoritarianism, the “authoritarian slide,” and the current administration (11:16)
• Do you cave if your livelihood is threatened or do you stand up for the values of your country? (14:12)
• The assault on democracy is an assault on our foundational spiritual values (19:26)
• The leftist postmodern approach to transgender issues & immigration created fodder for the movement towards authoritarianism (23:12)
• The importance of creating an educated citizenry (28:03)
• MLK’s four basic steps for nonviolent action (32:09)
• Take direct action only after you’ve entered into a purified state such as Jesus had on the cross (34:05)
• Prevent violence in protests, disable provocateurs (36:16)

• The Integral Justice Warrior series, co-hosted by Mark Fischler and Corey deVos (Integral Life website)
• Greg Thomas, CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project on the Deep Transformation podcast, From Race to Culture to Cosmos: Using the Dance of Our Differences to Wise Up, Harmonize, and Actualize
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” (YouTube...

Ep. 191 (Part 1 of 2) | Professor Mark Fischler, constitutional law expert and co-host of the Integral Justice Warrior podcast, helps us make sense of what’s happening to our democracy, providing context—historical, legal, ethical—for the plethora of disturbing and destructive acts occurring on a daily basis in our political arena. The rule of law is under direct attack at this time, he explains, and an assault on democracy is essentially an assault on our most fundamental values—the principles this country was founded on: inclusivity, equality, and dignity for all.

Mark clarifies President Trump’s political actions in the context of developmental stages, unpacks Project 2025, and discusses the assault on higher education and critical thinking and what it portends. The trajectory of where we are headed, Mark points out, is regressing into values we have already transcended. We need our democratic foundation to move to deeper, post-democratic levels that are reflective of greater levels of interconnection and inclusivity—not the opposite, he says. What will it take to change the regressive trajectory? Courage! And involvement. Thank you, Mark, for bringing a rare depth and much-needed clarity to the subject of the evolving democratic crisis occurring in our nation today and its implications for our future. Recorded June 12, 2025.

“The rule of law is a hard-earned process… and it’s under direct attack at this time in our country.”

• Introducing constitutional law expert, professor of Ethics, Constitutional Law, and Criminal Procedure, and co-host of the Integral Justice Warrior podcast, Mark Fischler (00:39)
• Trump, tribalism, and the zero-sum game: there are winners & losers; the losers deserve to lose (01:31)
• The rule of law is under direct attack in the U.S. at this time (11:34)
• Dehumanization and Trump’s pre-conventional ethic of retribution (14:41)
• Our nation is built on ethics of higher purpose; our founding fathers specifically banned gifts to the President in the Constitution (17:30)
• Where is Congress in all of this? (21:13)
• Treason and bribery are the two legal grounds for impeachment (21:55)
• What is Project 2025, and the over-rulings of judicial rulings by the executive (25:33)
• The Heritage Foundation, responsible for developing the central ideas of Project 2025 (29:41)
• Project 2025’s pre-conventional position on abortion and family (32:49)
• Why does democracy matter? (36:22)
• What we are experiencing is a direct attack on the principles of inclusivity (37:53)
• How does slashing Medicare and Medicaid square with Christian values? (40:21)
• The trajectory of where we are headed: regressing into values we have already transcended (43:14)
• The left has made it easy for the far right (43:48)
• The assault on higher education and critical thinking (44:17)

• The Integral Justice Warrior series, co-hosted by Mark Fischler and Corey deVos (Integral Life website)
• J. Michael Luttig,

Ep. 190 (Part 2 of 2) | The eleventh Wisdom Series dialogue with A. H. Almaas brings us to the second turning of his teaching, into the boundless dimension of divine love. Hameed explores this nondual dimension in detail: its qualities, what it’s like to experience firsthand, and what the effects of such an experience are likely to be. This boundless dimension of loving consciousness is the first of the five boundless dimensions, though love continues to develop throughout them all. Hameed gives a beautiful account of his initial experience with this dimension, when divine love and light permeated all of reality. “Why don’t more people experience this if love is always there? asks co-host John Dupuy, and Hameed explains that it’s always there in potential form though not always manifest; the experience is there for when we are ripe for it.

Having awakened to this dimension, one can’t help but want everyone to feel this way, Hameed says, and this is the main reason spiritual teachers teach. Hameed describes the obstacles that prevent us from experiencing the reality of divine love, how it challenges our perceived separateness, and tells us that after experiencing this unity, returning to separateness is not a choice. It turns out that experiencing boundless love is not a panacea for enlightenment, but creates an upwelling of obstacles and a state where our boundedness feels even more restrictive than before. Hameed also relates how hatred and greed can exist in this reality of pure goodness, and tells us that it is here, in the ocean of love and light, that they are transformed. A wonderfully numinous, illuminating conversation. Recorded May 1, 2025.

“The love is what makes us human—you can’t be really human without heart.”

• Two ways of functioning: from the perspective of the soul, or from the perspective of the ocean of love (00:35)
• A third way of functioning is when the ocean manifests the functioning itself (03:58)
• The ocean of love dissolves all fears (06:06)
• Love takes forms; this dimension is an example of the formless taking form (07:06)
• The sense of pure “goodness” in this dimension is unmistakable—you can’t help but want everyone to feel this (10:34)
• Hatred is not a quality of being; it’s a distortion of a quality of being (14:37)
• Hameed’s experience of the beast, an inherent part of the ego (17:40)
• Experiencing Jabba the Hut, who represents greed; greed gets healed in this dimension (21:23)
• Your curiosity—wanting to know and being willing to experience—is the only way to transform greed or hatred; you can’t push them away (29:02)
• Five steps towards true nature (31:41)
• The heart (love) keeps developing through all the dimensions (34:20)
• You can’t be really human without heart (35:32)
• How do we continue to develop and manifest this connection with love? (36:20)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of