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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

Daniel Simpson

Timeless wisdom for modern dilemmas, combining yoga philosophy, practical insight and critical thinking. Hosted by Daniel Simpson. 

ancientfutures.substack.com

Ancient Futures

What distinguishes self-centredness from care for oneself? To what extent is emotional healing a spiritual practice? How might an inner sense of safety and connection fuel better relationships and more sustainable ways of living?

Justin Michelson is a meditation teacher, author and wilderness guide. His recent book The Dharma of Healing is billed by its publisher as: “A handbook for spiritual freedom in an age of global crisis”. Its focus is on changing responses to difficult feelings, which otherwise block the development of wisdom and compassion.

Our conversation explores Justin’s fusion of Buddhist perspectives with modern psychology. We discuss what it means to heal personal wounds, as well as how that relates to taking better care of each other and the world. We also reflect on a tension between accepting what is and facilitating change.

Justin’s book provides a practical guide to the transformative power of self-compassion. It’s accompanied by guided meditations, available here.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

Self-Compassion – Justin Michelson

What inspired the idea of being “spiritual but not religious”? Modern quests for experiential insight have diverse roots. Influences range from the work of Aldous Huxley – The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception – to the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and their references to “God as we understood Him”.

Don Lattin is the author of Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk, which highlights the impact of Gerald Heard, who got Huxley interested in Eastern wisdom, and turned on many others to LSD – including Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA.

This book is the prequel to an earlier bestseller, The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. That grew out of Don’s career as a reporter, covering religion for the San Francisco Chronicle while becoming an addict and alcoholic.

We discuss how his own story overlaps with those he writes about, from religious doubts to experiencing oneness on LSD. In the process, we explore whether altered states lead to mystical insights or resolve mental health issues – topics addressed by Don’s recent books, God on Psychedelics and Changing Our Minds.

These days, Don shares reflections on cults and other new religious movements via his Substack, Messiahs I Have Known, which I highly recommend.

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👀 For a yogic perspective on life, join my year-long course The Path of Knowledge

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

Spiritual Catalysts – Don Lattin

How might humans relate to other beings if we saw ourselves as animals? What if beastliness had positive qualities, instead of being seen as a defect to exorcise? Which natural tendencies might we embody if we paid more attention to ancestral insights?

Elizabeth Sulis Kim is the author of the recently published Book of Beasts, which is subtitled “Reclaiming Animal Wisdom”. She is also the founding editor of Cunning Folk, an independent magazine about magic, folklore, mythology and the occult.

Our conversation explores how these interests overlap, with a particular focus on the power of telling stories to present new possibilities – or as Cunning Folk puts it: “to innovate, we have to imagine”. In the process, we consider how to foster better treatment of animals and live more harmoniously with our surroundings.

Elizabeth’s second book, The Art of Folklore: A Visual Miscellany of Myths, Lore and Legend will be published next year. She’s also working on a novel that examines how the stories we tell shape our future.

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🧙 For an immersion in traditional yogic wisdom, join us on The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!
 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

Animal Magic – Elizabeth Sulis Kim

Practically speaking, what does it mean to wake up? It’s literally the opposite of falling asleep, so it involves being aware. But since the Buddha’s name means he awakened, the bar seems quite high.

This conversation with my friend Matthew Green reflects on what we’ve learned from decades of practice – not least that it’s ultimately not about us. So we talk about ways of processing unhelpful conditioning, avoiding being triggered and the value of what Matthew calls “relational mysticism” – i.e. doing this communally.

Matthew is global investigations editor for the climate website DeSmog. Having trained as a collective trauma integration facilitator with Thomas Hübl, he co-hosts the What Is Collective Healing? podcast, writes Resonant World, and is co-founder of the Resonant Man international men’s group. He offers Tarot readings here.

The book I quote from at one point is Awareness by Anthony de Mello. Matthew also mentions his wife Genevieve, a clinical psychologist and parenting coach.

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🤿 To explore yogic wisdom in depth, join me online for The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!
 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

What is Awakening? – Matthew Green

How much has yoga changed over the past 2,000 years? 🤔

In one sense, very little – assuming yoga means a state beyond mental activity, as ancient texts teach. However, nowadays, it mostly refers to something else – the regular practice of sequences of postures that developed more recently.

My new book, The Evolution of Modern Yoga, is an engaging guide to the shifts in priorities that shaped new methods and objectives over the centuries, making yoga more appealing to contemporary practitioners. Drawing on the latest research, it examines key trends, influential teachers and issues of authenticity, among other topics. The overall aim is to explore how innovation relates to tradition.

This episode includes a brief sample, along with some reflections on broader ideas. The book is part of a series from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. It will be published in October and it’s available for pre-order now via the following links: bookshop.org, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk

See the publisher’s website for other online options, along with endorsements. And send me an email if you have any questions about placing orders or anything else.

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🤿 To explore these ideas in more depth, join me online for The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!
 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

Evolution in Action – Daniel Simpson

What if everything we think is a dream? Would nothing be real? Or might it reveal how to live in infinity, untroubled by suffering? 🤯

Tamara Cohen wrote her PhD about the Yogavāsiṣṭha – a text whose original name was the Mokṣopāya, or “means to liberation”. Structured as a dialogue between the sage Vasiṣṭha and the young prince Rāma, it explains how to set oneself free from conceptual delusions.

As we discuss, the text suggests its method is the ultimate summary of all possible philosophies. In the process, it incorporates yoga alongside Buddhism, Śaiva Tantra and – in the Yogavāsiṣṭha – non-dual Vedānta. It also brings ideas to life by telling stories, presenting worlds within worlds that stretch beyond imagination.

You can find out more about Tamara’s work here. She taught a course on the text at the start of this year and she’s writing a book about its teachings on yoga. For now, she recommends this translation by Swami Venkatesananda (which can be found online). The Sanskrit of the Mokṣopāya is here – it’s also available in German.

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🔭 For a comprehensive overview of yogic traditions, join The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!
 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

Liberating Insights – Tamara Cohen

What might we learn about mental resilience from ancient Greek mythology? 💭

Sam Akbar is a clinical psychologist and Oxford-trained classicist. Her new book is The Odyssey Mindset, which explores timeless guidance from Homer’s epic on finding purpose and strength in the face of life’s challenges.

Sam’s speciality is trauma. She’s worked with refugees who’ve fled torture, war and sexual violence, and she draws on that experience to address a general audience with practical suggestions for overcoming difficulties.

Together, we consider how Odysseus’s long journey home can be read as a metaphor for seeking security. We also discuss how it helps to have mentors, perhaps including therapists, and to identify core values with which one aligns.

Along the way, we talk about this trailer for Christopher Nolan’s new Odyssey movie, as well as the translation by Emily Wilson that Sam recommends.

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💡 To explore yogic wisdom and critical thinking, join me on The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!
 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancientfutures.substack.com/subscribe

The Odyssey Mindset – Sam Akbar

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ancientfutures.substack.com

﻿What if yoga meant technology, jihad or sex with multiple partners? 😳

That’s just a sample of the thought-provoking papers presented in Paris at the Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana conference last week. This podcast shares a few reflections on what was discussed, plus my own presentation on misleading books that manipulate readers to generate sales (slides available here).

Expanding on a range of conversations across other panels, I also outline some possible responses to broader concerns about misinformation. In the process, I consider ways to bridge gaps between scholars, yoga teachers and practitioners, journalists, activists and the general public.

Recordings of some keynote presentations will be uploaded here via the YouTube channel of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies. I also referenced a talk about fascist yogis by Emily Ward, which is available here. Meanwhile, my critical reviews of Shyam Ranganathan’s and Stewart Home’s books are here and here.

The next YDYS conference will be held in Finland in 2028. To stay informed about plans, join the mailing list here at yogaresearch.org, where you can also find resources from scholars. And for more thoughts from me, see this earlier episode.

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💡 For a mix of scholarly and practical insights, join me on The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!

Building Bridges – Daniel Simpson

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ancientfutures.substack.com

How might we be inspired by a worldwide community of Yiddish-speaking Jews, whose cultural identity was broadly internationalist?

David Mazower is the author of Yiddish: A Global Culture, which accompanies an exhibit he curated at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Our conversation explores the heritage and influence of Yiddish – the everyday language of East European Jews, which became a diaspora lingua franca and the medium for bold creativity, from avant-garde art and subversive writing to radical politics that shaped socialist and anarchist movements.

David’s great-grandfather, Sholem Asch, was a pioneering Yiddishist writer and another of his ancestors – his father’s father Max – was a revolutionary in tsarist Russia, becoming involved with a socialist party called the Bund, whose deeply humanistic perspective has since been marginalised.

As David observes, the impact of the Bund is now the focus of a book by Molly Crabapple (titled Here Where We Live is Our Country). And an outing of London Bundists from the early 1900s features on the cover of David’s book.

Before joining the Yiddish Book Center as its research bibliographer and editorial director, David was a senior journalist with BBC World News and deputy curator of the Jewish Museum London. He writes for a range of publications on topics from Yiddish theatre and popular culture to British Jewish history.

Selected highlights from the exhibit that accompanies his book are available here. There’s also a digital guide via the Bloomberg Connects app (see here for details).

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🔭 For a comprehensive guide to yogic wisdom, join me on The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!

Yiddishland – David Mazower

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ancientfutures.substack.com

What defines the right thing to do, and how helpful is yoga in doing it? 🤔

Yogic traditions present different frameworks for ethical conduct, with varying degrees of engagement in worldly affairs. If their aim is to promote liberation, can they also support human rights? Might ideas about the highest good, or a self in all beings, provide orientation? If so, which philosophy seems the best fit?

Brett Parris explored these themes – among many others – for a doctorate from Oxford. A book based on his thesis, which was titled Yogic Metaethics: Comparing Patañjali’s Yoga, Nondual Śaivism, and Vedānta, is now in the works, and he recently presented his findings here.

Together, we discuss how key teachings relate to modern challenges. At one point, I quote this line by the sceptical scholar Agehananda Bharati (from his book The Light at the Center): “You don’t learn ethical behavior through yoga and meditation any more than you learn loving your neighbors by playing poker or cello.”

🎙️ Thanks to Gerard Harris for help with the audio. Gerard also wrote the podcast music – more of his productions are uploaded here.

🧘‍♂️ To explore yogic teachings in depth, join me online for The Path of Knowledge

🙏 Your support makes this podcast sustainable – please consider subscribing or make a donation... It's greatly appreciated!

Self-Compassion – Justin Michelson

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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