BetterListen!

Excerpt from "Global Mind Change" with Edgar Mitchell

Dr. Edgar Mitchell  -- the sixth person to walk on the moon – talks to us about what what it means to be a human and our place in the universe in his series of lectures, “Global Mind Change.”  Following is an excerpt from that series.

I like to suggest that there is a challenge here. Throughout most of human history we have strongly believed ourselves to be very physical beings -- rooted in our physicality, experiencing what we would like to think would be a wonderful life.  But quite often, experiencing a lot of trauma and pain and all of those things that go with being human, that is the opposite of having ups and ups and ups. And the question is why? We are rooted in our physicality and yearning for a spiritual experience and trying to ask ourselves: Why me? What’s this all about? And we particularly ask that question “Why me?” when things turn sour. 

I suggest to you that the way we need to look at it is that we are not really physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  We are in reality eternal creative beings creating a physical experience, and it takes quite a shift in mindset to get yourself around that one.  But tonight we’re going to give it a try.  For those of you who haven’t heard me before, why is this important?  What is it about now, that I would bring this up?  What is it about the contemporary period that we live in that perhaps makes this a vital alternative viewpoint to think about and to look at? I will tell you that in the last year I have seldom spoken with a person who did not think that something very strange was going on, who did not think that the world was in a rather major crisis and it seemed to be deepening.  I will suggest to you that in the last six months it has become almost overwhelming.  I can’t talk to anyone who doesn’t feel that way.  They seek me out and my telephone is ringing off the hook.  Things are happening in ways they haven’t happened before. 

Next, BetterListen! will offer and excerpt from Edgar Mitchell's recording "Science and the Inner Experience".

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

Click Here to Order

Excerpt from "Your Universe and You" with Edgar Mitchell

We are pleased to continue to bring you even more from Edgar Mitchell with this excerpt from "Your Universe and You".  

There is a fundamental original design for all of this.  A priori knowledge that the universe was constructed in thought a priori and laid out in all its glory, and we are just following a plan.  That isn’t the evidence either.  The evidence is that we’re in an evolving, creating, self-organizing, learning universe.  And the consciousness that is us is a part of the consciousness that is creating it all along.  And that, instead of being passive participants in this play, we are the major actors and have been all along.  We just forgot who and what we are.  So the ancient question can be rephrased only slightly, to give us a better picture of what it is that we are dealing with.  Virtually all of our systems of the past have talked about our physicality; we’ve expressed ourselves as physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  And if we turn that around and say that the alternative is that we are eternal conscious beings creating a physical experience, I think we have it closer to being right.  The problem is that it is very difficult for us to experience that.  

 

How many have heard Deepak Chopra, Dr. Deepak Chopra?  Quite a few of you. Good. Some haven’t.  Dr. Chopra is an Indian by birth. Not an American Indian -- the real type.  Trained in the west. Family of physicians.  On the staff at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Hospital and at this point dedicated to bringing some of the ancient wisdom of the ayurvedic medical techniques into western medicine.  And he speaks of these subjects, virtually the same as I do, but from the point of view of medical scientist and practitioner.  And he gives a wonderful little analogy that I like so much from his native county and it’s called precognitive commitment.  It is the notion that you take a young elephant and tie them with a small green vine in their youth, and then as they grow up -- I mean you always tether them with a small green vine -- but when they grow up they may be able to break a chain tied around their leg but they can’t break a small green vine. Because they are precognitively committed to that which confines them.  If you take insects and put them in a closed jar, and keep them alive in there for awhile and then take the lid off, very, very few will escape.  They are precognitively committed to their environment.

 

We have become precognitively committed to the idea that we are physical first and spiritual second when it is really the other way around.

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

Click Here to Order

Excerpt from "Only the Light of the Moon..." with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

We are delighted to be able to offer an excerpt from this rare recording with the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach from a talk titled "Only the Light of the Moon Can Create a New World."

When God created the world, the sun and the moon had the same light, according to our tradition.  Then the moon came before God and says to God, “It just isn’t fair -- two kings have the same power.”  So God says to the moon, “OK. Make yourself smaller.”  So in the way of the world, the Sun people, they say God is punishing the moon for the chutzpah, for the audacity; God created you this way so stick to it, forget it.  But the real people know the moon is right, you know there cannot be two cooks in the kitchen. No matter how much there is always the same light is the world?  I want you to open your hearts.  You know what the moon was saying to God: “Is this all you can give the world, the light of the sun, where you see only the outside? Isn’t there a deeper light available -- something so much deeper?” All God says is, “You are the one who will do it.”  

What is the first sign of the real inside person?  You know outside people -- they are always the same. Either they love you or they hate you. When they love you they are always like, “Hi. Are you God?”  So stupid, so meaningless.  The moon people change all the time.   One day I love you, one day I can’t stand you.  One day I am full, one day I am not shining at all.  You see, the more real it is, the more I have to say it every second.  I want you to know I had a great Rabbi, my teacher, he says to me, “If you ever want to be anything in the world, then it has to be clear to you. Whatever you knew yesterday is meaningless today.”  You know friends, I am sure it’s clear to you, God is not a yenta --  you know what a yenta is, someone who says the same thing a hundred times and the way the yenta is saying it could be a he or a she, the way they say it like it’s the first time they are saying it. God cannot stand the same thing twice. 

The sun is always the same, the moon.  You know every day, every day a different light is coming down from heaven. Every day God needs different things from us.  You know one of the great Rabbis passed away.  And his children came to the holy visionary (I am just throwing names at you), and he says to them, “What was the most important thing for your father?” so they said, “For our father, the most important thing is what you do right now.”  You know most people have those general ideas -- they know what to do forever -- but when it comes to the moment they have no idea what to do with it.  

I know every week is Shabbos; I know every year is Rosh Hashanah; I know every year is Yom Kippur, good; but what are you doing right now? And usually they always do the wrong thing because they are not in tune with the moment, special privilege.  You know something? You can be the greatest scholar in the world and not know. You know sometimes a person asks you a question and what they need right now you will never know.  You know it’s so deep to know.  What are you supposed to do right this minute?

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Bio and Links

Click Here to Listen

Like This - More Poems of Rumi - Coleman Barks

Through his rendering of Rumi’s poems and stories, Coleman Barks has established himself as perhaps the leading voice for Rumi’s work today. His warm and sensitive reading combines with the world-renowned musicianship of Hamza El Din (oud and tar) and Steve Coughlin (ney an hansuri) to create an enthralling listening experience. 

Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), is now recognized in the West as one of the greatest poets of all time . His works are charged with an unequalled blend of literary genius and spiritual wisdom 

No matter how often we listen to Rumi, each time is always the first time.

This program includes twenty two of Rumi’s most beautiful poems. Coleman Barks bio and links

Running Time: 73 minutes Like This - Preview	Buy From BetterListen!
	also available on iTunes

2009 Nautilus Silver Winner Pure Water - Poetry of Rumi with Coleman Barks and Eugene Friesen

BetterListen is proud to be the recipient of a 2009 Nautilus Silver Award for our recording of Pure Water - Poetry of Rumi with Coleman Barks and Eugene Friesen. 

Following are transcribed selections of Rumi poetry included on our audio program our Pure Water.

Inside water, a water wheel turns.

The star circulates with the moon. 

We live in the night ocean wondering, 

What are these lights?  

*********************************

 

This moment, this love comes to rest in me, 

many beings in one being.

In one wheat grain a thousand sheath stacks. 

Inside the needles eye a turning night of stars.

*********************************

 

I am so small I can barely be seen.  

How can this great love be inside me?  

Look at your eyes, they are small, 

but they see enormous things.

*********************************

 

Keep walking though there is no place to get to.  

Don’t try to see through the distance, that’s not for human beings.  

Move within but don’t move the way fear makes you move.  Move within.  

*********************************

 

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, 

there is a field. I’ll meet you there. 

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.  

Coleman Barks Bio and Links

The Educated Heart with Robert Bly

During this talk, Robert Bly gives a delicate and lively view of the fantastic flowering of feeling in the 12th century Provence. The feeling thought, developed of Arabic, Gnostic, and Albigensian sources, blossoms as love poetry famous at that time.

Bly distinguishes in this talk between the literal mode, the psychological mode and the mythological mode, and he locates the “Amor” or ecstatic love in the latter. That mythological mode of feeling led to Sufism among the Arabs.

When we hear the Provencal poetry he recites toward the end we recognize the terrible loss we suffered when these traditions were uprooted and destroyed.

Robert Bly Bio and links

Running Time: 58 minutes Click here for Educated Heart Preview	Buy From BetterListen! MP3 download info
	also available on iTunes

The Human Shadow by Robert Bly - 20th Anniversary Edition

20th Anniversary Edition
(Digitally Remastered)

WITH POETRY, MUSIC AND STORIES, Robert Bly takes us on a thought provoking and entertaining journey. Recorded live at the Open Center in New York City, and edited by William Booth, this audio program captures an extraordinary event for you to listen to again and again.

"Your parents make it clear there are certain parts of us they don't like, 'you're too noisy' ... One image is to say we take that part and put it into a bag. Our independence and feeling goes into the bag, the bag is getting heavy and two miles long."

“You could say we spend our life until we're twenty deciding what to put into the bag and we spend the rest of our life trying to get it out again." Robert Bly Bio and Link

Running Time: 2hours 40minutes Click here for Human Shadow Preview 1 Click here for Human Shadow Preview 2 Click here for Human Shadow Preview 3	Buy From BetterListen! MP3 download info