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It's MP"Free" Monday! Get the King of Togo Togo and Other Stories with Laura Simms - free!

Between now and Wednesday evening, this incredible recording is free for our "BetterListeners." Feel free to spread the word!

Listen to The King of Togo Togo, The Flower of Life, the joyful tale of The Two Brothers and the wacky stories of the Dancing Man and the Origin of the Black Bean.

Music by Steve Gorn and Bill Usher is brilliant. Unforgettable performances!

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It's Free Download Friday!!! "A Kabbalistic Approach to Fixing the World" by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

In this timeless and timely talk by the late and beloved Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, we are exposed to his deeply spiritual and simple truths, lessons and inspirations. Interspersed in the teachings are wonderful melodies composed by Rabbi Carlebach, who offers this profound yet simple truth: “When you see something wrong with the world you are the one to fix it”. 

We hope you enjoy this wonderful program!

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Excerpt from "The King of Togo Togo and Other Stories"

Laura Simms' recording of "The King of Togo Togo and Other Stories" is a collection of truly delightful stories that the whole family will enjoy.  The following transcribed excerpt of the story about the donkey and goose who were in love will give you a taste of what to expect.

There was once a donkey and a goose and they were in love. They lived on opposite sides of a road separated by two fences and all day they would stare at each other and sigh. They wished that they could speak each other’s language so that they could tell one another how much they loved each other. 

Excerpt from Robert Bly's "What Stories Do We Need"

The following is a transcribed excerpt from "What Stories Do We Need" -- a thought provoking and timeless recording by poet and men's movement pioneer Robert Bly.  "What Stories Do We Need" reminds us that we all carry a personal mythology, but the stories we tell ourselves may not be entirely true... Recorded live at The New York Open Center.

We’re talking about mythology today. And mythology moves towards the soul in the same way that philosophy moves towards the brain. In fact, I think Joe Campbell said the other day, all philosophy is a frozen form of mythology and if you really love a philosopher, then try to recognize the philosopher as being a kind of an ice over the water on which you could walk. And that’s nice, but try to go below and see what the water is doing down there. And in that case, he believes that every philosophical idea has a mythological image underneath it, including all those ones, Heraclitus, and all of that. They come out of centuries of wild mythological imaging.

Excerpt from "Men & Women: Talking Together" with Deborah Tannen and Robert Bly

Note: this award winning  title is Free through this Wednesday evening, Enjoy!

Men's movement pioneer Robert Bly and relationship communication expert Deborah Tannen help us understand how men and women communicate differently and how they can learn to appreciate the other's point of view, as evidenced in this transcribed excerpt from Tannen and Bly's terrific program "Men & Women: Talking Together".  Recorded Live at The New York Open Center.

In a way, a conversation is a ritual. And to come home and tell everything that happened is a ritual, and it’s a ritual that women have engaged in from the time they were very little. So to feel that life is going on as it should, you just want to play out those rituals because it’s not a ritual that men understand. It’s not one that they’ve done. And I want to say right here that all evening we are going to be saying women and men. And nothing that we say will be true of every woman and every man. There are a lot of cultural differences here, too.
 
So I do hear from couples who will say the husband comes home and wants to tell everything and the wife says if it’s not a problem, don’t talk about it. Stop complaining if you don’t want to do something about it. So you hear it from both sides. But because it’s a ritual that most women understand and most men don’t, he looks for the literal reason for the talk and he doesn’t see a reason for that talk. And it’s very frustrating to do something that you don’t understand the reason for. So I’ve had people say, “Well, you know, just say to him I don’t want you to tell me what to do. Just listen to me.” And that makes perfect sense except it will drive a person crazy to sit and listen to something that they don’t understand why they’re listening and what it’s getting at.
 
So sometimes, it’s just as reasonable -- I sometimes use my own husband as an example here. I don’t think he’ll mind. He’s sitting out there. He’s smiling so far.  So I remember I was talking and he said, “Well, I know you just want to talk about it and you don’t want me to give you the solution, but it’s too frustrating for me to sit here and listen when I know the solution. So let me tell you the solution and then you can keep talking about it if you want to keep talking about it.” So that is just as good a compromise, and I’ve heard of couples, too, that compromise in the following way. Not just as you said where they both kind of find different ways of talking but they may have an understanding where she will give him a half hour to not talk and then he will give her a half hour to talk.

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Robert Bly Bio and Links

 

 

Excerpt from "The Glance"

Enjoy this gorgeous passage of Rumi's poetry from "The Glance", as translated and read by Coleman Barks.  Jalalud'din Rumi is one of the world's most revered poets and mystics.

Love is alive, and someone borne alone by it is more alive than lions roaring or men in their fierce courage. Bandits ambush others on the road. They get wealth, but they stay in one place. Lovers keep moving, never the same, not for a second. What makes others grieve, they enjoy. When they look angry, do not believe their faces. It is spring lightning, a joke before the rain. They chew thorns thoughtfully, along with pastured grass. Gazelle and lioness having dinner. Love is invisible, except here, in us. Sometimes I praise love. Sometimes love praises me. Love, a little shell somewhere on the ocean floor, opens its mouth. You and I make we. Those imaginary beings enter that shell as a single sip of seawater.

Coleman Barks Bio and Links

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Excerpt from "World of Relaxation" DVD and MP3 by Jon Kabat-Zinn

“World of Relaxation: A Guided Mindfulness Meditation Practice for Healing in the Hospital and/or at Home” by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn -- -- internationally known for his development of and trainings in mindfulness-based stress reduction and meditation -- has been used in thousands of hospitals to help patients empower themselves to promote healing.  It is now available exclusively on BetterListen! We hope you'll enjoy the following excerpt.

What I suggest we do is begin by just bringing awareness to the fact that in this very moment we’re alive. As you lie back in bed seeing if you can bring your attention to your body for a moment, and just experience the fact that as you lie here you’re breathing, and the breath will move in and out of the body in a continuing cycle. As we proceed, you might like to work with allowing your eyes to gently close. Many people find that it really helps and furthers this process with the eyes closed because it allows you to go to deeper levels of concentration. I will shortly be closing my eyes and we will work together with the eyes closed, and at any time that you feel perhaps disoriented or you’d like to open your eyes just feel free to do that. My face will be here on the screen, and you can just reassure yourself that everything is okay in allowing your eyes to close once again.