The Pastor & Priestess

Our series on integral philosophy and adult development continues with Beena Sharma who combines the worlds of adult development and polarity wisdom. Beena shares moments of mystical insight and conceptual breakthrough that married ego development with polarity wisdom. For us, such an intersection inevitably involves the sacred task of bringing into union elements of ourselves and the whole world.

Our series on Integral Spirituality continues with Cindy Wigglesworth, corporate veteran, consultant, and bestselling author of SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence. She proposes that there are skills to be developed that can make us more like those great exemplars of Spirit, living with wisdom and compassion.    

How does one move from simple adulthood to maturity? As a former Harvard lecturer and now Senior Monk and Integral Zen Dharma Holder, Rob McNamara brings the academic and the subtle spiritual to the question. Moving from basic stages of development to the farther reaches of growth, McNamara suggests there is much to be discovered after adulthood, even in a paradoxical stage known as ensoulment.

To kick off our series on integral spirituality and adult development is guest Santiago Jimenez, a Zen monk who teaches in the lineage of Zen Master Genpo Roshi, and Shinzen Young. Santiago is also an accomplished musician, industrial engineer, integral facilitator, and serves as the current director of the Integral Center Colombia, one of the pioneer integral institutions in Latin America. 

A Christian psychedelic society? Yes, there is one! After his own experience in a psilocybin study of religious leaders, The Rev. Hunt Priest founded Ligare, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the church about psychedelics and their potential benefits. Hunt shares his psychedelic and faith journeys with us as well as what lies ahead.

Joe Tafur is not your everyday physician. Both a trained physician and a trained Ayahuascero, Dr. Joe Tafur researches mind-body healing, leads a new kind of spiritual community, and directs a nonprofit. In this episode, he shares his understanding of healing and spirituality and of the role of psychedelics in supporting healing. Spoiler Alert: Love is what heals.

Dr. Randy Scharlach is a radiation oncologist, trained at Yale and UCLA medical schools. Randy holds a unique position as both a medical doctor and a spiritual guide offering support for those seeking healing from psychedelic medicines. Having personally recovered from a deep depression thanks to plant medicine, he is giving back to the plants by serving as Director of Consciousness Studies for the for-profit company, Field Trip Health. In this conversation, we explore Randy's personal and professional journey and what it tells us about plant medicine and spiritual life.

This episode begins a series on Psychedelics and Spirituality. In this episode, Pastor JT and Priestess Allison share their own stories of sacramental prayer and explain how and why plant medicines can be a powerful spiritual practice, when held wisely. If you're interested in the psychedelic renaissance, start here!

Anahita Joon has known both the darkest oppression and fullest expression of the feminine.  She was born in Iran during the revolution and grew up during the Iran Iraq war, where women were highly oppressed. As a young girl, she only wanted to dress up and dance, and longed for more self-expression, but that was forbidden in Iran at the time.  At age 14, Anahita moved to America to find freedom. As an immigrant, she tried desperately to fit in – she dyed her black hair blond and straightened her curls. She rejected her natural Goddess-given beauty in hopes that the world would finally accept her. Divorced by 22, she faced an addiction to food and illegal substances. She experienced severe depression and contemplated suicide. She spent years taking antidepressants before eventually becoming medication-free. Her divorce catapulted her into a ‘dark night of the soul' that would lead her to a spiritual awakening. She had a mystical initiatory experience with the Divine Feminine that led her to find her liberation on stage as an exotic dancer. Now a credentialed spiritual counselor and coach, and a wife and mother, she is dedicated to unleashing the power of the feminine for women. In this episode, Anahita shares her spiritual journey and how she is learning to bring love and boundaries, separateness and togetherness into Sacred Union. She shares how liberation comes from owning it all, in a radical recognition of “I Am That.”

Kimberly is the Founder of Wildfire Global, a boutique firm for high-impact, conscious leaders and entrepreneurs. She envisions a world where a diverse slate of empowered, intuitive leaders are guiding the top corporations, businesses and political offices.  Kimberly has mentored, advised, coached and sponsored hundreds of leaders over the years. Her clients are courageous leaders with a proven track record of success and who also have a deep longing to experience unfettered power, so they can experience more love, money, power, pleasure and respect in their lives with ease and grace. After more than 20 years at a Fortune 7 firm where she led teams as large as 10,000 employees and managed portfolios valued at more than $14B, Kimberly traded in her golden handcuffs to put her hand at leading her own successful company.  She's been a senior executive, married, divorced and married again. She's been highly sought after and she's been fired. Today, Kimberly is devoted to bringing all of her experiences to the table in service to her clients in their quest to lead, live and love as their most authentic and divinely-empowered selves.

Grandmother La'ne Sa'an Moonwalker hails from a lineage of healers from her Yaqui grandmother. Holding a vision to train teachers, healers, oracles and ministers under the umbrella of environmental guardianship she sought and found her main teacher Grandmother Tu Moonwalker, the holder of an unbroken medicine lineage. Together, they founded The Philosophy of Universal Beingness Within the Whole. Grandmother La'ne is a Reverend Canon through The Brigade of Light and is on the World Council of Spiritual Elders through the Aniwa Community. She has been an oracle, healer, spiritual teacher and environmental guardian for fifty years.

17 million trees planted. That's what Clare Dubois, founder and CEO of TreeSisters, has helped to happen after she ran into a tree, literally.  Her tree planting accomplishment is inspiring all by itself. Yet, the power of Clare's message – and the potency of the Tree Sisters movement – is really focused on a paradigm shift, a culture change, and, ultimately, a movement of the heart.  We discuss the sacred union of Consciousness & Love as the critical missing piece in global efforts to protect our Mother Earth. In order to make it through this ecological crisis, we must reclaim a sacred, open-hearted connection to the earth… So that we can drop the identity of consumers and become restorers of earth, giving back as much as we take from Her.  Clare shares her amazing personal story and how it has fueled her fiery call to all humans… to step into our power as earth guardians. It's a deeply moving transmission, all the way to the very end.

Spiritual Leader, Teacher and Earth Wisdom Keeper of the Maya, Tat Erick Gonzalez shares his passion for unification of all lineages for healing of humanity and earth. In this episode, we focus on the urgent spiritual imperative to serve the unification of all peoples of the earth, to The Sixth Sun era has begun where ‘the people made of honey' will come into a new way of collaboration, within and without. The rituals and medicine prayers help us to become those people made of honey. Over a forty-year period, this elder traveled with, trained under, and was initiated by spiritual Elders from México, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala and throughout North America. Tat Erick has participated in Indigenous Councils throughout the Americas, gathering tribal Elders as part of a sacred call to action, promoting increased cooperation and unity between diverse traditions.

Rev. Dr. Rima Bonario talks about different aspects of the archetype of Sovereignty expressed in the feminine to realize embodied power. Connecting 7 areas of Sovereignty to the seven chakras, she discusses the dynamics of running energy in a balanced way, uniting masculine and feminine within and in relationships.

Brian Emerson, Ph.D. is Principal and founder of Andiron, a firm committed to helping leaders navigate organizational complexity. He has an impressive history of partnering with organizations around the world to achieve sustained results in leadership development, aligning organizational culture and strategy, and harnessing the power of polarities—holding two seemingly-opposites at once, e.g., Structure: Flexibility, Decentralize: Centralize, etc. Clients attribute Brian's success to his “uncanny insight and ability to balance human dynamics with business needs,” the way he “simultaneously challenges and inspires,” and “getting results while having fun.” His research led to the development of two related theories. Suffering Paradox theory explains what happens when groups have no objective way to deal with paradoxical situations, and the theory of Navigating Paradox outlines the dynamics of groups using polarity maps to effectively leverage paradoxical complexities. In addition to consulting and coaching, Brian teaches about paradox in leadership and organizations at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Maryland, and as co-director of Georgetown University's Certificate in Polarities and Paradox. He is the co-author of two books, A Manager's Guide to Coaching, and Navigating Polarities: Using Both/And Thinking to Lead Transformation, the first book in the Navigating Polarities series, which he co-edits. Brian holds an M.A. in Organizational Communication, an M.A. in Human Development, and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems. He is a Master in Polarity Thinking and has a certificate in Organizational Development from Georgetown University. He lives outside Washington, D.C. where he and his partner are restoring a historic farm and trying their best to keep bees.

On the matter of social justice and spirituality, Lettie Sullivan is a force and a voice of experience. After George Floyd's murder, she offered space for community lament and to seek the strength to be resilient. Her offer went viral, expanding her circle of connection one hundredfold.  As a Priestess of the Sacred Arts and the Creatrix of the Goddess Ministry, Lettie's mission is to anchor energetic activism centered in Love, Divine Feminine wisdom, metaphysical principles and cosmic time cycles. As Lettie says, now the real work begins to create a renaissance in cultural intelligence and new cultural forms. Join the Pastor and Priestess as they engage Lettie in a conversation about sacred activism that is energized to move from the invisible to the visible.  And be guided in an activation prayer from Lettie at the end of the episode.

As the visionary author of the eco-feminist novel, GAIA CODEX, Sarah Drew catalyzes powerful blueprints for the future deeply rooted in the gnosis of the past. Sarah has been a featured speaker at the graduate level and at organizations such as Google, ABC Deepak Homebase, The Assemblage and Bioneers. She is currently a popular teacher and mentor for women worldwide on topics such as Feminine Wisdom and Evolutionary Culture. Sarah, studied Religious Studies at UC Berkeley and was a start-up founder, CEO and early innovator in virtual reality and subsequently working as a creative director on media projects that have explored the edges of digital technology and visionary narrative. She has  travelled  from the jungles of the Amazon to the high peaks of Bhutan where she has had the honor of studying and living with key lineage teachers.  Her work expresses a deep curiosity and a polymathic approach to exploring multiple disciplines with a focus on humanity's evolution, the cultivation of compassion and our multi-generational nurturance of Mother Earth.  As a storyteller, she is inspired by regenerative narratives that give us both a deeper understanding of our past and powerful blueprints for the future. Sarah lives with her husband in Manhattan and on a lushly forested farm in the Hudson Valley. What can we do on a daily basis to benefit others, to benefit all Life?

Lila Sophia Tresemer and David Tresemer, Ph.D., are founders of The StarHouse. They work together, grow together and love living LIFE together, and have grounded collaborative visions for sustainable community. Together for the past 25 years, they have taught and facilitated at The StarHouse and in other places around the world, and are dedicated to bringing more intelligent, ceremonial awakening into the world. Their devotion is to Sacred Union, within ourselves, with one another, and with the web of life. They are dedicated to both online and onsite course work, meditations and community-building. Their passion for working together is to engage with the deep weaving between StarWisdom and Sophia.

After living for 5 years in Harlem in the late 60s, Barry Johnson became passionate about changing organizations, communities, and nations so that protest was not the only option to improving the consequences of unjust systems. In his quest to learn, he studied Gestalt psychology and, in the midst of guiding a client session in 1975, stumbled on a breakthrough formula for getting unstuck: managing polarities. Barry then spent a great deal of time ruminating, refining, and writing on the concept of polarities, seemingly contradictory values that, rather being the basis for polarization, actually are interdependent. It turns out it's as simple as inhaling and exhaling. They need each other. In his book, And: Making a Difference by Leveraging Polarity, Paradox, or Dilemma, he urges us to stop being only an “OR” thinking culture, and to add “AND” thinking to the culture. In order to be at our best in our personal and communal lives, we will need both “OR” and “AND” thinking applied to the appropriate situation. Applying “OR” thinking to an “AND” situation leads to destructive consequences like racism, sexism, and inequality.

Brooke McNamara is author of Bury the Seed and Feed Your Vow, and is co-director of Eunice Embodiment, which offers cutting-edge performances, embodiment education and creative practice workshops and retreats. She is passionate about teaching poetry meditation and creative practice. She has this to say about Zen: “There's a saying in Zen that exhaustion is a friend of Zen, because we can get so tired that we just have a spontaneous moment of insight – we're not trying so hard. And the same thing with creativity, I think. . . . there's a certain kind of softening of effort that can really help with catching those moments that we want to catch.”

The Divine Feminine is and must be on the rise. The current challenges of environmental distress, racism, sexism, and inequality are all the result of a repression and neglect of the Divine Feminine and the archetypal feminine values and energies. The Pastor & Priestess share about their personal stories of seeking the Divine Feminine and about their first date.  They also outline the historical moment of the Divine Feminine's impending and imperative return.  How did we get here so distant from Sophia? Riane Eisler's cultural and archeological history work The Chalice and the Blade explains the ancient roots of the problem. The Pastor and Priestess also share a taste of Sophia through Scriptural readings and stories of the Divine Feminine. Pastor JT shares about another way for Christianity to renew itself with the inclusion of the Divine Feminine and Original Blessing.

In an exploration of the relationship of religion and spirituality to drugs, Allison and JT speak with Brian Muraresku, author of The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. Do we need a psychedelic renaissance? The ties with plant sacraments and prayer and mystical experiences – the combination of psychedelics and religion - goes way back – and may be what current western civilization is craving. In the words of our guest, “only something of this scale could heal the alienation from nature, and the loss of the experience of being part of the living creation. Would a popular outbreak of mysticism be able to heal our lost connection to Mother Nature and each other?”

Welcome to the introductory episode of Pastor and Priestess. Meet co-hosts Allison Conte and JT Smiedendorf. They'll share a little bit about their backgrounds, and get us started on what they aim to achieve with this podcast, as they seek to combine their seemingly divergent religious experiences into a Sacred Union.