Deep Sit Podcast
I have a wonderful guest on today and I'm very excited to share this conversation with you. In thinking about the message of today's conversation I was reminded of a comment I recently heard make when he was . They were talking about Tim's recent silent meditation retreat and the benefits of them, and seeking out master teacher to help with your practice. I'll admit, taking a few days for silent retreat, even a few weeks, months maybe, sounds pretty good to me. But I do see my desire for that experience as an example of looking for answers or...
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Today on the show we are going to hit mindfulness head on and talk about how we might be getting tripped up by the practice, and how, according to my guest, we might be doing it wrong. Now don't interpret that as a judgement or criticism, but more like permission to take some of the pressure off. I know that over the years of practicing sitting meditation, I've had times where I get a little caught up in the practice, looking for it to do something for me, or I'm watching my meditation streak of days in a row. Then there are these great apps and tools and podcasts to equip us...
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Congratulations, you made it to part 5, the final segment of my epic interview with Atz Kilcher. And while each episode stands on its own, it makes sense to start from the beginning to hear it in sequence to get a full understanding of his journey and the range of wisdom you can glean from his life experience. This episode is a great wrapper for everything we've talked about. I called it "Getting on With It" because for one, that's how Atz ends this segment, but also because for every hardship, every bend in the road, every moment of despair,...
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Today is Part 4 of my interview with Atz Kilcher, and after 3 hours of digging deep into the conflict and trauma that Atz has work so hard to overcome in his life, we finally find his Mother, Ruth. I found it interesting that it took us this long to talk about her, but even more interesting when Atz told me he originally intended to write his new memoir, Son of a Midnight Land, about her. But maybe just as it took us 3 hours to finally talk about her, he needs more time to dig into the complexity mystery of his Mom. Surprisingly,...
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We've made it to the half way point in my interview with Atz Kilcher, and after two and a half hours you might expect we'd be getting close to wrapping up, possibly running out of things to talk about. Not the case here, everything up until this point was really just a warm up. As we enter hour three of our conversation we address PTSD, a debilitating mental and emotional disorder that has gone by many names in history, but is perhaps just now getting the attention it deserves in society. This is a topic very near and dear to Atz as he has dealt with...
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Today I continue my interview with Atz Kilcher. This is Part 2 and is where Atz really started to help me personally. I don't know if I mentioned this in the intro to Part 1, but my experience sitting with Atz for a day was life changing, and I don’t say that lightly. I don't do this podcast to report the news, or simply deliver someone else's message. My main objective when I sit down with someone is to learn and find the guiding wisdom that I can integrate into my own life. It sounds quite selfish when I put it that...
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Part 1 - Hard Work: Today I'm kicking off my interview series with . I felt like I sat down with someone, who at the age of 70, with perhaps nothing left to prove, is on the brink of discovering the true or perhaps ultimate meaning and purpose of his life. Atz is the son of Alaskan homesteaders, gaining unexpected fame late in life on reality TV on the series , and of course he is father to , one of the greatest singer-songwriters of our time. But amazingly, Atz might just now be hitting his stride in a way that is probably unimaginable...
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Arrive Where You Started - Part 2 Today I have someone very special on the show, one of the most respected and well-known teachers of mindfulness and meditation. His name is , and his recent book, , immediately caught my attention because I've never thought of enlightenment in scientific terms before, and of course what really turned me on to meditation was how neuroscience has captured what happens in the brain. Given that the word enlightenment is even hard for some people to say without feeling they've gone full on new-aged hippy, talking about it more...
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Arrive Where You Started - Part 1 Today I have someone very special on the show, one of the most respected and well-known teachers of mindfulness and meditation. His name is , and his recent book, , immediately caught my attention because I've never thought of enlightenment in scientific terms before, and of course what really turned me on to meditation was how neuroscience has captured what happens in the brain. Given that the word enlightenment is even hard for some people to say without feeling they've gone full on new-aged hippy, talking about it more...
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From the moment we sat down for this conversation, my guest today gave me a sense of genuine inspiration to be a better person, to be a more authentic person, living with gratitude, acceptance, and grace. Her name is , and many of you know her as the founder of , which she ran for 15 years. But now she has embarked on some new ventures including a wonderful podcast calledwith her co-host , she has developed a concept calledwhich forms the basis for an upcoming book. We will get into all of that in this conversation, and her perspective on how to approach...
info_outlineToday I continue my interview with Atz Kilcher. This is Part 2 and is where Atz really started to help me personally. I don't know if I mentioned this in the intro to Part 1, but my experience sitting with Atz for a day was life changing, and I don’t say that lightly.
I don't do this podcast to report the news, or simply deliver someone else's message. My main objective when I sit down with someone is to learn and find the guiding wisdom that I can integrate into my own life. It sounds quite selfish when I put it that way, but when I present this podcast, you are hearing it from a beginner's mind, someone who is genuinely curious and wants to learn.
This next hour is when I really started to understand how Atz can help people. The beauty of his delivery is that is isn't masked or diffused by what you might called new agey, hippy-dippy words, or even done in a dry academic manner. This is straight talk, and it's on the ground floor of everyday life that we all experience. Within the first 20 minutes of meeting each other, Atz had me figured out, and that comes up in this segment where we talk about generosity and rejection.
Why is it hard for us to give, or even more interesting, why is it hard for us to receive. What does that say about us? These are not mutually exclusive, and our ability to give and receive without conditions is perhaps a reflection of our own self-worth, our own sense of value, and our willingness to do for others what we would like them to do for us.
So rather than try to distill this any further, I'll let Atz take it from here. Of course he does it skillfully with song and a story of man named Dell. You will enjoy this segment. It's where the lights went on for me and I hopped on the Atz train.
Thanks for listening,
PF