The Soul-Directed Life

This is a very sacred show—the concluding show of six years of The Soul-Directed Life. Change is afoot. For me. For you. For our world. Who better to help us embrace change and create a world that works for all of us, then the 12 Archangels who speak through the beloved guide Belinda Womack. This is a conversation to treasure.

In his newest book, More Together Than Alone, beloved spiritual teacher Mark Nepo makes a compelling testament to the power of community throughout time, and why it is essential, now more than ever. Join us to learn how to create community, build connection, and discover hope by coming together in our turbulent times.

In The Way of Grace, world-renowned spiritual teacher Miranda Macpherson steps into the whirlwind of our chaotic, stress-filled times to help us find a new and radiant way of being that extends love, clarity, and peace not just in our own lives, but out into our troubled world. How? By relaxing our egos. Listen and learn how.

When Bridgitte Jackson-Buckley asked me to write the foreword for her new book, The Gift of Crisis, I knew I would say yes the moment I heard the title. I'm the poster child for the gifts of crisis. I am who I am because crisis came calling. As I say in the foreword: It's not a crisis; it's a crossroads. And Bridgitte is the goddess of that crossroads.

Sandra Ingerman is a beloved guest on The Soul-Directed Life. She has been teaching shamanism for 30 years. In The Book of Ceremony, she takes us deep into the heart of shamanism to create sacred rituals that open the beauty, wisdom, and potential in your life. These are not rituals you follow—these are ceremonies you create.

How has the goddess appeared from the Ice Age to today, from Africa to Australia, from Sedna to Madame Pele, from Kali to Aphrodite? In The Heart of the Goddess, Hallie Iglehart Austen brings us a worldwide selection of the art, values, and wisdom of goddess culture. Creation, transformation, power, and celebration—these are her themes. This is her food.

Meghan Don is an initiate in the Sophian Lineage, the founder of the Gnostic Grace Circle, and author of The New Divine Feminine, tapping a long-buried knowing that the divine feminine is the soul of the world. Does the living presence of the divine feminine change your prayers? I know she's changing mine.

When Neil Douglas-Klotz was on the show, he played clips of the Beatitudes in Aramaic that Timothy Frantzich and Sofia Sings converted into sacred chant. When I asked Sophia who could write sacred music for me, the answer was instantaneous and clear. I sent Timothy “Do You Feel That Breeze” and well, you get to hear what happened. Join Timothy, Carin Vagle, and Dean McGraw for "The Beatitudes," "Black Elk's Vision," and the first time my love songs are sung!

Christine Valters Paintner is a beloved guest on The Soul-Directed Life. Christine is a Benedictine Oblate, artist, best-selling author, poet, and online abbess for Abbey of the Arts. In The Soul's Slow Ripening, she brings us 12 Celtic practices to help us walk the ancient and sacred Celtic path today.

In 2006, Aaravindha Himadra felt an unshakable calling to visit the Himalayan Valley of the Immortal Master, a highly reclusive lineage of spiritual mysticism. Join us for his remarkable account of a transformational journey into the power of supreme love.

With 50 years of practice, Gary Gach brings us the heart of Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching: pause for intention, breathe for introspection, and smile for insight. Mindfulness is the fastest-growing self-help trend since yoga. With popularity unfortunately comes trivialization and misunderstanding. Join us for a simple but deep mindfulness practice.

Activist and theologian Matthew Fox, along with intergenerational partners Skylar Wilson and Jennifer Listug, invite us to join the Order of the Sacred Earth. To whom do you belong? Have you asked yourself that question? At first you might think it points to a person or divinity. But look down. You are not just loved by our earth; you are her.

Listen as Jenifer Zetlan, author of The Incredible Power of Inspiration, explores the great mystery of inspiration. What is inspiration? Is there a process for accessing it? How about a formula? What is the most important question to ask yourself on the inspiration road?

Philip Clayton and Andrew Davis gathered the spiritual memoirs of Richard Rohr, Deepak Chopra, Cynthia Bourgeault, Rupert Sheldrake, and many more inviting us into intimate personal experiences of God as immanent, alive, and present in everyone and everything!

When Netanel Miles-Yepez was with us on May 31, he brought us Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the wisdom of the Hasidic stories in their beautiful book A Heart Afire. Netanel returns with his delicious translation of The Song of Songs, taking us deep into the heart of this mysterious Bible book. Is it a prayer? A love poem? A metaphor for divine communion? Something else?

Amos Smith is a United Church of Christ pastor, an exciting denomination in which the voice of the Divine is still speaking. His first book, Healing the Divide, is part of Richard Rohr's Living School curriculum. In Be Still and Listen, Rev. Smith shares a Christian mystical experience of prayer.

When Pouria Montazeri was with us in April, sharing Rumi's wisdom on prayer in his original Persian, listeners begged for more. Pouria returns to share Rumi's profound teachings on the ultimate mystical teaching: Die before you die.

Lama Tsultrim Allione was the first American ordained a Tibetan Buddhist nun. She returned her vows to become a mother. She is the founder and resident lama at Tara Mandala and author of Wisdom Rising: A Journey Into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine. Join us to meet the once secret and forbidden Dakini.

All traditions have mystical teachings, but the most mystical teachings are from the bees. Jacqueline Freeman, author of Song of Increase, has been listening to bees for years. The bees taught her that honey is food made in prayer. Join Jacqueline for deep insights on prayer, wisdom you can hear nowhere else.

Alana Fairchild is a voice of love incarnate. Alana creates divinely guided oracle decks like no others. The apex of her oracle genius is Crystal Mandala Oracle Deck. Join Janet Conner to hear the story behind that deck and receive an online reading!

John Welshons—Ramananda—is a profound spiritual teacher and protégé of Ram Dass. Ramananda believes that the path to happiness is the path of Love. Every page of his book One Soul, One Love, One Heart is a stepping-stone on the path to true happiness. Can you love everyone and tell the truth? Join Janet Conner for a fascinating conversation with Ramananda. Join the show 816-251-3555.

Can you alter time? Shape it? Bend it? Join Janet Conner as she talks with Patrick Paul Garlinger, author of Bending Time, as he shares groundbreaking ideas about how you can work with time.

Did you know the people in your current life in past lives? Are your interests and talents recurring themes throughout multiple lifetimes? Who have you been and who are you becoming? Tune in as Michael Goddart, author of In Search of Lost Lives, shares startling details about past lives.

What is mindfulness? Why is there such a great need right now for a Mindfulness Meditation Certification with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach? Can mindfulness help solve the world's problems? Big questions. Big answers with Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True.

Netanel Miles-Yepez has a deep interspiritual heart. He is Hasidic and Sufi, founder of the Inayati-Maimuni Order in the Sufi lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and a professor of religious studies at Naropa University. He studied intimately with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and together they wrote A Heart Afire, bringing us the stories and teachings of the early Hasidic masters. When Netanel is in the room, Rabbi Zalman is there also.

When I first stumbled upon this awareness of the Unified Field of Prayer, I turned to the angels for guidance. And what guidance they had! The view of prayer from the angelic realms is so beautiful, the heart can barely hold it. Belinda Womack, the voice of the 12 archangels, brings us their divine guidance and love on the mystery of prayer.

Have you noticed that the divine feminine is in her ascendancy? She is being heard in and through all traditions, even those that have long ignored her. Isabella Price has delved deep into her history and brings us a thrilling invitation to awaken the wisdom of the divine feminine in your life.

The first time I opened The Radiance Sutras, I held it to my heart and said, “Teach me about freedom,” and opened to a sutra on freedom! I knew that a book of living mystical poetry had landed in my hands. I can't wait to share the ecstatic beauty of this ancient love poetry with you.

Brett Bevell is a depth Reiki master. He is an in-demand teacher at Omega Institute, Esalen, and Thailand. He's written many best-sellers on Reiki including The Reiki Magic Guide to Self-Attunement and Reiki for Spiritual Healing. His new book, Psychic Reiki, isn't about Reiki—it is Reiki—and we get to experience it on The Soul-Directed Life!

Celeste Yacoboni asked dozens of leading figures one question: “How do you pray?” The result? A thrilling and often startling compendium of deeply personal prayer practices. Who better to help us unravel our question of the year: “Is there a unified field of prayer?”

Joyce Rupp is a beloved Christian writer and retreat leader, with numerous best-sellers including The Star in My Heart, Open the Door, and (my fave!) Prayers to Sophia. Today, Joyce brings us Boundless Compassion, a transformative process to develop and deepen compassion. Come, let your heart be opened.

Pouria Montazeri grew up with Rumi. He wrote, directed, and filmed the award-winning Shams and Rumi: The Fragrance of Axis Mundi. Join us for a deep and often surprising dive into Rumi's teachings on prayer in the original Persian.

Thomas Merton was Jim Finley's novice master for six years. After Jim left the monastery, he wrote Merton's Palace of Nowhere to give us on the outside a taste of the peace he found on the inside. On the 40th anniversary of this perennial best-seller, Jim joins us to share Merton's guidance on prayer. 

Theme: Is there a Universal Ground of Prayer?  David Nicol, Ph.D., is the founder of the Gaiafield Project and Institute for Subtle Activism. He is also cofounder of Be the Peace, a global meditation event that occurs annually on International Day of Peace, September 21. He teaches on subtle activism at the California Institute of Integral Studies, for the Shift Network, and for the Institute for Subtle Activism.       

Theme: Is there a Universal Ground of Prayer? Arna Lāhela Johnson grew up on the shores of Hakipu'u on the windward side of O'ahu. Early on, her kuleana (purpose, role, responsibility) was revealed to her as a caretaker/keeper of ancient knowledge, a Kahu. Lāhela joins us to share the deep healing wisdom of the ancient Hawaiian prayer of forgiveness, Ho'oponopono, and discuss an expanded experience of the prayer in alignment with the call for harmony in 2018.

You know and love Rabbi Rami Shapiro's books, including The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness, and his radical translations of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. He cuts to the quick in just a few sentences in his Spirituality and Heath columns. He's been called a “holy rascal,” so of course his latest book is titled Holy Rascals. Listen in as Rabbi Rami joins Janet Connor for some fascinating conversation on what it means to be a "holy rascal" and if you might be in the same catagory. 

Theme: Is there a Universal Ground of Prayer? Mark Nepo is a poet, philosopher, writer, teacher (and, many would say, spiritual rock star). He's written dozens of books, including the New York Times No. 1 best seller The Book of Awakening. In Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark shares excerpts from his own journals, revealing his beating heart—and ours.   

Theme: Is there a Universal Ground of Prayer? The universe is alive. Everything is conscious. Everything is in communication—even, or especially, numbers. Because they were here first, right? Everything is constructed of numeric vibrations. So the date of your birth, the numerology in your name, your address, the recurring time on the clock … it's all sacred communication. Alana Fairchild, a living oracle and embodiment of the divine feminine, joins us from her home in Australia to bring the messages of the numbers alive. 

Theme: Is there a Universal Ground of Prayer? Michael Lennox as a brilliant astrologer. When you read his daily Astro-Alerts, you begin to enter Michael's awareness that the planets, moons, and stars are living beings in conversation with one another and with us. The universe is alive! And when you choose to enter into that conversation, everything changes. 

Theme: Is there a Universal Ground of Prayer? Tara Cousineau, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with expertise in mother-daughter relationships. After her own daughter was assaulted in school, Tara had an epiphany: Only kindness can cure our culture rampant with cruelty. Tara joins us to share the in-depth research on the efficacy of compassion in her first book, The Kindness Cure, a book highly recommended by Rick Hanson, Sharon Salzberg, and many more.  

The key to living a soul-directed life is the ability to listen to the wisdom of your innate, divinely-guided intuition—the voice of your soul. But, oh! Those internal negative voices! They can be so loud and distracting. In her newest book, The Intuitive Dance, medical intuitive and holistic energy practitioner Atherton Drenth guides us to build, protect, and clear our sacred energy. 

Penney Peirce is a world-renowned expert on intuition and perception. Her famous trilogy: The Intuitive Way, Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration, and Leap of Perception: The Transforming Power of Your Attention, transformed countless lives. What's next? Transparency. Peirce guides us masterfully into how to become transparent and, in the process, transform our opaque world.  

In an hour-long special, PBS labels Ervin Laszlo "A Modern-Day Genius." Laszlo is a systems theorist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and author of 90 books including Science and the Akashic Field. Professor Laszlo joins us from his home in Italy to discuss The Intelligence of the Cosmos which answers the ultimate question, “Why are we here?”

October Theme: How do we live The 9 Containers of Love? Girish is an eclectic musician with roots in jazz, world, and sacred music, and the author of a thrilling new book, Music and Mantras. After living for five years in a Hindu monastery, Girish began to share the beauty of mantras. Today he is a world-renowned Kirtan musician. If you want to know what happens in your body, mind, and soul when you chant your prayers, this conversation is for you. 

October Theme: How do we live The 9 Containers of Love? Estelle Frankel is a scholar and teacher of Jewish mysticism, a practicing psychotherapist, and the author of an important book, The Wisdom of Not Knowing. Instead of being afraid of the unknown, Estelle calls us to embrace uncertainty, even relish that space of darkness. 

October Theme: How do we live The 9 Containers of Love? Paul K. Chappell is an international peace educator, West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran, and author of the Road to Peace book series. After seeing violence up close in his childhood home and on the battlefield, Paul has dedicated his life to a new understanding of war and peace, rage and trauma, to show us a path to peace.  

October Theme: How do we live The 9 Containers of Love? Banafsheh Sayyad and Andrew Harvey fell in love over Rumi's ecstatic poetry. She is Iranian-born master dance artist who fuses Sufi mysticism with the Divine Feminine in dance. He is a living mystic and voice of Sacred Activism. Together they explore the question, “How can we live life as a sacred dance?” (Note: there will be Rumi poetry in Persian!)

Ninth Container of Love: The Divine Feminine   You are not only a genius, you are a feminine genius, a divine feminine genius. An intuitive, sensual, creative, confident, intelligent genius. The juicy, radiant LiYana Silver, author of Feminine Genius, is with us to help us tune in to our feminine genius so our overutilized, linear, competitive masculine genius can take a rest.

Ninth Container of Love: The Divine Feminine The Divine Feminine can be soft and loving or fierce and powerful. Across traditions, she appears as a black goddess—think Hindu Kali or Catholic Black Madonna. Devotional polytheist and Priestess of the Morrigan, Stephanie Woodfield, brings us her love of Irish mythology and deep relationship with the Celtic Dark Goddess so we can turn to her for strength and courage. 

Ninth Container of Love: The Divine Feminine   The Divine Feminine is all: the feminine, masculine, inside, outside, all in all. She is Twameva, the ancient Sanskrit hymn to the Mother. Divine life coach and deep student of the teachings of Yogananda, Usha Sharma, has been chanting Twameva her entire life. Come, listen, as Usha teaches us this sacred prayer beginning with a new understanding of the sounds of AUM.  

Ninth Container of Love: The Divine Feminine   Joyce Rupp is a member of the Servants of Mary, a spiritual midwife, and a world-renowned author of numerous best-sellers including two about her relationship with Sophia, the radiant Divine Feminine in the Wisdom Books of the Bible: The Star in My Heart and Prayers to Sophia. Who better to kick off our month in the arms of the Divine Feminine!