Ep 1: BK Loren on Nature, Grounded Spirituality, and the Power of the Unnameable
Release Date: 02/25/2021
The Relaunch
Enlightened-ish Podcast
In this episode, host Brad Wetzler re-introduces listeners to Enlightened-ish Podcast after two years away to write and publish his memoir, Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing. The book, published by Hachette Book Group is now available on Amazon.com and from your local independent bookstore. He discusses why he named the podcast Enlightened-ish and his philosophy that our spiritual life ought to be rooted in a spirit of imperfection. Stay connected—on the path, in the work, and in the soul. 🌐 Website & offerings: 📬 Substack | Seeking: Letters to the...
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Episode 7: Living Our Authentic, True Self
Enlightened-ish Podcast
Brad Wetzler revisits Siddhartha, the classic spiritual novel by Hermann Hesse, and he discusses the concepts of "true self" and "authenticity." He asks, how do we locate our true self? How do we live from our true self? What is the cost of living in our true self? Are you courageous enough to become who you really are? Are you ready to walk away from the unspoken agreements holding you back?
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Episode 6: Yoga, Lovingkindness Meditation, and Finding Faith in Ourselves
Enlightened-ish Podcast
Brad Wetzler shares the life lessons he learned on a pilgrimage to India's Mount Arunachala. He discusses his definition of "spiritual" and "faith," and he reveals how a humiliation led him to see his path more clearly and helped him heal depression and cope with childhood trauma.
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Episode 5: Roadtripping, the Heart, and Embodied Enlightenment
Enlightened-ish Podcast
Brad tells the story of a recent road trip across New Mexico and Colorado--and into the core of his own heart. What is the heart? What does it mean to drop into the heart? Is all this heart talk even real except to poets and romantics? Brad answers these questions, and he comes to a surprising conclusion about what enlightenment actually is. Hint: Cows do it.
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Episode 4: Adventures In Faith
Enlightened-ish Podcast
In this episode, I tell the story of my pilgrimage to Arunachala, the great Shiva mountain in southern India. While circling the conical peak chanting Om Namah Shivaya, I encounter the ego-destroying Shiva. I come closer to what I've been seeking for decades. I get a glimpse of my true self, maybe my soul. I learn that I have far more faith than I imagined. Faith is a verb. To have faith is to trust in one's own experience.
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Episode 3: Spiritual Ambition (Is a Good Thing)
Enlightened-ish Podcast
In this episode, I discuss the ways in which having spiritual ambition has helped me to transform, and how great spiritual teachers have emphasized this, too. I tell a story about my pilgrimage to Israel and Palestine launched me into a decade-long period of inner exploration. How can you set your spiritual goals? Listen to Episode 3 for inspiration to help you with your spiritual evolution.
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Episode 2: Being a Good Human
Enlightened-ish Podcast
This week I talk about how I shifted away from seeking "enlightenment" and total emotional healing by leaning into my humanness. I discuss more self-forgiving, less painful ways to practice. I talk about the pitfalls of self-absorption and victim-ness, and I offer one way that we can transcend these bad habits. Last, I talk about what it means to live a life with heart.
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Episode 1: Introducing the Enlightened-ish Podcast
Enlightened-ish Podcast
Welcome to Enlightened-ish with Brad Wetzler. In this first episode, Brad discusses the who, what, where, when, and why of his new podcast. We humans have big brains that serve us in many ways. But our thinking brains also cause trouble for us. Meanwhile, we humans have big hearts, the feeling part of us that unites us and allows for cooperation and even love. Brad proposes that, in the Enlightened-ish Podcast, he will seek to build a bridge between the thinking brain and the heart.
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Ep 4: Dr. Tamra Sattler on the Enneagram, Spiritual Bypassing, and the Quest for True Self
Enlightened-ish Podcast
oin host Brad Wetzler for a discussion with Dr. Tamra Sattler on the difference between spirituality and psychology, the enneagram, spiritual bypassing, and the quest for True Self.
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Ep 3: Ross Wehner on Education, Purpose, and the Future of Wisdom
Enlightened-ish Podcast
Educator and entrepreneur Ross Wehner and host Brad Wetzler discuss education, purpose, and the future of wisdom. Wehner, the founder of World Leadership School and TeachUNITED, nonprofits dedicated to helping people discover their purpose explains that purpose happens when a person's thinking, feeling, and doing are in alignment. Anybody interested in how transformation happens and how humans can build a healthier, more sustainable future won't want to miss this episode.
info_outlineJoin me as I talk with BK Loren about the power of nature and the things that can't (and shouldn't) be named.
Brad Wetzler is the author of the new memoir INTO THE SOUL OF THE WORLD: MY JOURNEY TO HEALING (Hachette Go). You can buy the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Into-Soul-World-Journey-Healing/dp/0306829304/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1683471841&sr=8-1
This powerful memoir shares an adventure journalist’s story of a decade-long, round-the-world quest to overcome his drug addiction and to understand and heal from past traumas. Suffering from PTSD and severe depression from past trauma, battling an addiction to overprescribed psychiatric medication, and at the rock bottom of his career, journalist Brad Wetzler had nowhere to go. So he set out on a journey to wander and hopefully find himself—and the world—again. Into the Soul of the World is Wetzler’s thrilling, impactful, and heartrending memoir of healing—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. An adventure journalist at heart, Wetzler mixes travelogue with empowering insights about his inner journey to better care for his own mental health. Journey with him as he travels across Israel and the West Bank, before moving on to India, a candle-lit cave on a mountaintop in the Himalayan foothills, and a life-changing encounter with a 100-year-old yogi. Wetzler's writing is full of the poignant, amusing, and occasionally heart‑breaking situations that unfold when we finally decide to confront depression (or any mental health struggle) and declare ourselves ready to heal: How do we heal our past and thrive again? What does it mean to live a good life? How can we transform our suffering and serve others? His answer: live to tell the story and find the humility and courage to be the best human you can be.
BK Loren is the award winning author of the novel THEFT, and the essay collection, ANIMAL, MINERAL, RADICAL. Her short fiction and essays have garnered many national awards and have been published in The Best Spiritual Writing Anthologies (2004 and 2012), Parabola, Yoga International, Orion Magazine, and many others. She is from a working class family and has usually worked in jobs that allow space to write as she works. She’s been a ranch hand, a cook for a gourmet catering service in NYC, a cook, also, in a cafe run by a reverend healer who cured people’s ailments with a pendulum and herbs. She was also an aide on a locked psych ward, a tenured college teacher, and a furniture builder. She was extremely grateful for the chance to go to college (not a given)–and she attended the University of Colorado (Classics/Philosophy), the University of New Mexico (Lit), and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, (Fiction). She feels that her varied experiences in other fields inform her writing as much as her schooling has. The publishing editor of her first book told her I wrote like she was raised by wolves. She tries to live up to that daily. TWITTER FACEBOOK RADIO KRUU, WRITERS’ VOICE KBOO, a podcast from Orion Magazine and something completely different than Theft or Animal, Mineral, Radical. Theft has been optioned for film, and BK will be writing the screenplay.
Brad Wetzler is an author, journalist, podcaster, and yoga teacher/meditation teacher. Read about his work and offerings at www.bradwetzler.com.
Stay connected—on the path, in the work, and in the soul.
🌐 Website & offerings: https://bradwetzler.com
📬 Substack | Seeking: Letters to the Restless: https://bradwetzler.substack.com
📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/bradwetzler
📘 Facebook: https://facebook.com/bradwetzlerwriter
🎓 Memoir Workshop – One Powerful Session:
https://bradwetzler.com/one-powerful-session-one-inspired-follow-up-a-lifetime-of-writing-tools
🌀 Writing the Soul – A Guided Journey:
https://bradwetzler.com/writing-the-soul
🎙️ Audiobook — Into the Soul of the World: https://adbl.co/3NAtvCc
📚 Hardcover book: https://amzn.to/3JYPsp7
www.bradwetzler.com
Music credit: "sun of the most high" by ketsa