The Emerald

By: Joshua Schrei
  • Summary

  • The Emerald explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. Brought to life through the wise, wild, and humorous vision of Joshua Michael Schrei — a teacher and lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — the podcast draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. At the heart of the podcast is the premise that the imaginative, poetic, animate heart of human experience — elucidated by so many cultures over so many thousands of years — is missing in modern discourse and is urgently needed at a time when humanity is facing unprecedented problems. The Emerald advocates for an imaginative vision of human life and human discourse as it questions deep underlying assumptions about societal progress.
    © 2024 The Emerald
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Episodes
  • This Episode is FIRE
    Nov 3 2024

    In the deepest, oldest caverns of human memory, a fire burns... and that fire has been with human beings since the very beginning. Scientists now say that the human relationship with fire goes back over 1.5 million years. And so — fire has played a profound role in shaping human bodies and human consciousness in ways we're often unaware of. For fire... changed everything. It took us out of the immediacy of the animal experience and gave us a focal point, a place to gather and tell stories, to ideate, and to dream. And because fire created for us a perpetual hearth in the midst of shifting seasons, fire also gives us the ability to pause and plan ahead. Forethought, in many traditions, is a gift of fire, as is ritual. Our ancestors recognized the universe itself as lit by a great cosmic fire and recognized that same fire present within themselves. So ritual practice — often centered around fire — reflects and enacts the transformative friction of the cosmos. And practitioners heat themselves through repetitive dance, drumming, rattling, singing in order to participate in a primal alchemy, a transformative process that is not possible without the heat of fire. The spiritual promise of fire is in the transformation it brings, in how it burns away dross and reduces old patterns to ashes and regenerates us anew. Yet fire has another side too. The very thing that warms and nourishes us, that cooks our food and provides the spark for our ideas can also... burn us. In dozens upon dozens of cultures, fire is brought to human beings by a trickster, and the gift of fire has consequences too. For, poorly tended, fire can burn out of control. Today, in a world inflamed, a world of conflict driven by obsessive hungers and enacted through incendiary discourse and weapons of fire, we can see clearly that there is a fire imbalance on planet earth. What is called for in such times? Perhaps a return to the old gods and goddesses of the hearth, and a lot of time spent learning what it means to properly tend the fire. Featuring incandescent music by Travis Puntarelli and Victor Sakshin, listen to this episode on a good sound system and perhaps while staring into the hottest part of a roaring fire.

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    1 hr and 51 mins
  • (Why Mindfulness Isn't Enough)
    Oct 1 2024

    In recent years, the practice of 'mindfulness' has become ubiquitous. Mindfulness has outgrown its traditional Buddhist roots and now permeates modern wellness and optimization culture, finding its way into corporate boardrooms, therapist's toolkits, and an ever-increasing number of calmness apps. Yet modern iterations of mindfulness practice often live removed from their original context. The forest ecology from which mindfulness grew was animate and alive, and what we call mindfulness practices formed only a part of a rich tapestry that included rituals of ancestor worship, enacted connection to ecology, spirit mediumship, healing, and esoteric somatic practices. Modern adoptions of mindfulness tend to view the solitary meditative aspects of practice to be the 'essential' part, whereas the ritual and animist elements are seen as expendable. The reasons for this are deeply tied in with colonial history, and with the western legacy of body-mind divide. For it turns out that the animate, ritual context is profoundly important for shaping and architecting relational minds, and post-modern minds — free of context, already fractured from relational connectivity, left to simply 'sit with what is' or left to focus on individual optimization at the expense of relationality — may not benefit or be able to assimilate the power of such practices. Extracted from context, freed from ethics and the heart connection to other beings, mindfulness can exacerbate isolated individualism. In an age of fracture, is being mindful of an already fractured mind enough? Or is a more robust vision necessary? As science increasingly comes to recognize the importance of the context that traditional cultures have understood for thousands of years, we come to understand that minds need a contextual body. Mind needs fire and water, breath and movement, it needs story and song... it needs to establish a living relationship with those that came before and those yet to come, to offer in devotion and to repeatedly enact its place in the larger cosmos. Such realizations return us to the sacredness of... form. We find that all of the supposedly 'non-essential', ritual, form-based aspects of tradition actually architect a mind that has true fullness to it, and perhaps we can't find true fullness of mind without ritually placing the mind in living context.

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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • Guardians and Protectors!
    Sep 2 2024

    Practices of guardianship — invoking guardian deities, enlisting spirit help, clearing spaces of questionable energies, and establishing boundaries around ritual, communal, and personal space — are common to animate traditions across the world. In many traditions, guardianship is absolutely central as we navigate a world of forces, not all of which are traditionally seen as beneficial. So traditional practitioners — even as they commune with the natural world — also draw clear boundaries, send wayward spirits fleeing, and even do battle with malefic energies. Such practices challenge modern western minds and are often dismissed as 'superstitious' or as the least important part of any traditional practice. They rub up against modern visions of a cosmos or a natural world that is 'all good', as they suggest the existence of things like malefic forces that are incompatible with a modern rationalist vision. So modern spiritualities forgo traditional understandings of guardianship and promote a vision of 'openness' within a universe that is 'all good.' Yet many traditions focus a lot of attention on closing, sealing, and directly establishing boundary. Even in non-dual traditions that see a cosmos ultimately beyond yes and no and good and evil, practitioners spend years establishing boundary, cultivating discernment, and invoking guardian entities. With the rise of modern freeform spiritual experimentation, people are invoking and inviting spiritual forces and navigating heightened states of consciousness often without any attention to guardianship. In such a time, when mental states are fragile and traditional safeguards are no longer in place, it can be important to understand what guarded space looks like personally and ritually. Guardianship practice needn't be complicated. It starts very simply, with offering and gratitude, and with how we navigate our own thoughts and feelings. Featuring conversations with Tantric scholars Dr. Ben Joffe, Dr. Hareesh Wallis, and Dr. Sthaneshwar Timalsina, author and Ayurvedic Doctor Robert Svoboda, sculptor Rose B. Simpson and activist Nadia Irshaid Gilbert, this episode dives deep into how traditional systems have viewed guardianship practice and its necessity in an age of spiritual free-for-all and excessive exposure to internet imagery. Listen on a good sound system at a time when you can devote your full attention.

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    2 hrs and 32 mins

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Soul-Anima-Heart... Spirit-Espirtu-Breath

I love this podcast. The Soul of the World; One in the Many Ensouled Beings.

This is fantastic listening that tells if my 36 years living with tge Maya in their forest. The world of tge Traditional, Ancestral Maya is alive, enrolled, filled and touched by Heart of the Sky, Heart of the Earth
Uk'uux in Maya languages signifies the feeling Heart soul of our intuitive nature our instinctual intelligentsia. How I do love this podcast as a Translator of Popol Wuj stories...bringing them to life in Englishvto Decolonialize previous translation by Christians looking for the 10 Lost Tribes, the Mormons looking and finding a priori the Exhile and Exodux of Nephites and war withbthe Lamanites. Popol Wuj mentioned hear is the most vital story of rebirth and re-initiation into the ensouled world of Maya as Mesoamerican People. We are beings with the flesh of animals, flesh of clay, flesh of wood, flesh of reeds, flesh of Maize...this is tge sacred story of the Maya Being to continue becoming like Divinity as Nawal Winaw or Magical Transforming Ancestral Beings...We tge Replacements or K'exel of the Ancestral Formers and Shapers, Molders and Modelers of Eternal Creation and Destruction and Re-Creation. We, tge Descendants of the Ancestors Body and Soul, Mind ans Spirit...who else can we be...Thus our need to awaken our consciouness to the soul in all animate beings: our hoe. our axe, our, pots our Comal upon which to toast tortilla. The tools alive, the animals in need of compassion, the trees and vines the fathers and mothers of women and men...this is rich insight....I hope we will get to talk about Popol Wujnof K'iche Maya...the stones Divinity or K'ab'awil who teach the maize people how to pray, to name the names. To speak. To create connection, to communicate. to remember tge story. So what do you say we work and playcat bringingbthis storynof the Maya back to life by telling it here on the Emerald known aa YAMANIK, lije Jade or Kuwal or holy sprout the Maya loved and lived through and by the metaphor of tge eternal green seed to be sown to sprout...not tge kapitalist golden key to open the lock to hold on to the precious treasure...not that but...the Emerald Green seed of Emmerald Green Jade to be sown, planted in our heart. our soul as the eternal words of the Ancient Word of tge ancient ways of Maize that wishbylto be planted to sprout, to be tended by hillman being in order to provide sustenance to maize beings, formed and shaped from white and yellow maize. silver and gold Korn...tge Corn Griws, tge people magically prosper. One seed creates 1600 replacements...to Heads of maize to one Maya seed of Maize comes to fruition as 4 counts of 400....All this comes from the Sacred Stones or K"uhul Abaj, Saq Abaj, Loq'olaj Abaj. Look to tge MAYA Exibition at tge MET...The Lives of Divinity and the Divine Life of the K'ab'awil, the Divinties...tge God's...This Podcast just opens our minds wide to let in consciousness, in oymur struggle to bring firth Soul and Spirit through awakenings consciousness...The Emerald is the Best, aviators for Archetypal Psychology, Native American People, Arts and so many more who live in the embrace of the Great Mother on the Face of tge Earth under the enveloping nurturing Sun, Clouds, Rain, Lightening and Thunderbolt of the Great Father in tge Heart of the Sky...Yes. Yes to Soul, Yes to el Anima. gracias a la Animus....Yes, yes, yes...

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What a gift

The Emerald is amazing! I loved this episode. It is so rich and filled with beautiful gems.

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