From psychedelic medicine to the art of deep listening, East Forest explores how creativity can inspire meaningful change.

Today's episode dives into Music for Mushrooms is a narrative feature film on the transformative potential of art and introspection in a world aching for healing and connection. It features interviews with artists, academics, and cultural experts in psychedelics, science, music, and beyond, with voices like Ram Dass, Hanifo Nayo Washington, Jon Hopkins, and more.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, East and Jackie explore:

• The collaborative process of filmmaking
• Creating something that inspires people
• Music as the language of emotion
• Healing from the inside out
• How psychedelic medicine can stimulate us to change our actions in everyday life?
• Training ourselves to listen deeply
• Profound spiritual experiences through nature, plant medicine, and sound
• How music becomes a doorway to the non-dual, opened by our attention to the experience
• Playing with mantra-like experiences through looping in music
• Navigating information sickness and burnout
• Following bliss through the things you’re curious about

“The first of your senses that comes online in the womb is hearing. The first thing you sense is your mother’s heartbeat resonating continuously. That’s why the drum or four-on-the-floor dance music rhythm in general can entrain our brain because it goes way back to our sense memory of safety, the original womb, of source.” –East Forest

About East Forest:

East Forest is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and ceremony guide. Since 2008, East Forest’s “lush” (Rolling Stone) and “blissful” (NPR) music has blended ambient, neoclassical, electronic, and avant-pop to explore sound as a tool for inner journeys and consciousness expansion. Known as the first musician to collaborate with Ram Dass, he's now working on the feature-length film Music for Mushrooms, a narrative documentary showcasing the transformative power of psychedelics, music, and community.

About The Host, Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director who brings two decades of mystical studies and 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves.

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Exploring the path to samadhi, Gil Fronsdal reflects on how we can stop being at war with ourselves and develop a more unified awareness.

In this episode, Gil Fronsdal offers a talk on:

• The process of becoming whole
• Holding compassion for the self and others
• Feeling at ease and not being in conflict with the self
• Unification as a function of samadhi
• Composing ourselves on what is happening in the moment
• Learning to be alert while relaxing
• The problem with too much thinking
• How defining ourselves physically limits the quality of awareness
• Including it all, the difficult and the wonderful

“I believe that the earlier stages before samadhi are stages that are to help us become whole and not to be divided with ourselves or fragmented. Part of the process of entering samadhi is becoming whole, at least samadhi is healthier the more whole we become, when we are not at war with ourselves.” –Gil Fronsdal

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“When the mind is stable and equanimous, you have a much better situation to be able to see clearly without the filter of your conditioning, the filter of your likes and dislikes, the filter of your emotional reaction to what is going on.” –Gil Fronsdal

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Through the Buddhist precepts, Trudy Goodman leads us to Pabhassara Citta, the innate radiance and clarity of our own minds.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Trudy Goodman talks about:

• Sila and the courage to follow what we love
• Wholeness and having an undivided heart
• Pabhassara Citta: the radiant mind and heart
• How thoughts and ideas can be a thief
• Telling the truth, no matter what
• The liberating jewel of being honest with yourself
• Relating to all experiences with steadiness of heart

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed.

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com

“It’s the truth that frees each one of us. So when you’re sitting there, retched and overwhelmed, anxious, in whatever tormenting state may be present when you’re just certain that there won’t be any end to the pain, then, just to see that ‘oh, I can be aware of this, I can tell myself the truth of how this is, it doesn’t matter that this is my experience’. It doesn’t matter whether we’re retched or soaring with insight and spiritual strength. What really matters is the relationship that we have with each experience.” –Trudy Goodman

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