The Walled Garden

About Jack Stafford: Jack Stafford is a British singer-songwriter and super troubadour. He is most well-known for his thought-provoking lyrics. He is on a mission to bring spirituality to the centre stage and mysticism back into the mainstream. Jack grew up in the UK but quickly moved to Amsterdam, where he lived and worked as a copywriter, musician and fashion designer. However, this led to burnout, so Jack sold all his possessions and set off on a bicycle tour as a nomadic troubadour. He travelled through 45 countries, playing over 700 house concerts in return for a place to sleep. He recorded many of his crazy adventures in his songs, and through those—plus countless self-help books and podcasts, as well as yoga, his Ayurveda songs, and Vipassana meditation—he grew and grew to become a unique modern-day troubadour. The culmination of his life skills is the unique Podsongs podcast, where—together with other musical artists from around the world—he interviews special people in selfless service to others, and writes a song to bring greater awareness to their work. Jack lives in seclusion in the South of Italy. He is a qualified Ayurvedic Practitioner, student of metaphysics and Italian representative of The Aetherius Society - he also hosts another podcast called the Mysticast. Listen to Podsongs: https://podsongs.com/about To register for upcoming Walled Garden events, go to thewalledgarden.com/events Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About Our Guest: Joshua is a retired veteran, avid reader, and lifelong learner. He hosts In Search of Wisdom to engage in meaningful conversations on how to live in a complex world. He enjoys exploring the integration of timeless principles and practices with everyday life. Joshua is an ICF-trained Leadership Coach with a passion for collaborative partnerships. Joshua is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in strategic leadership and holds a Master of Science in management. He has executive certificates in the Psychology of Leadership, Organizational Consulting and Change Leadership, Brain-Based Coaching, and Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being. You can find out more about Joshua's work at www.perennialleader.com. To register for this week's Walled Garden Meetups, go to thewalledgarden.com/events and register via the links available.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Simon, Sharon and Kai discuss Emerson's passage on rediscovering our own connection with the divine in our age. Link to music from the beginning of the meetup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3jSct9cO_s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Simon sets the scene for our upcoming Walled Garden meetup on Emerson’s call for us to experience the enlightenment that our ancestors felt. The passage read comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays on nature.  The poem read was from Simon’s own storehouse.  You can read the rest of the poems in that collection and listen to the album, Pairidaēza Suite, here: https://thewalledgarden.com/post/pair...  You can register for the meetup mentioned via this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJck...  Fern Tree Gulley painting by Thomas Clark: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/col... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About our guests: Meghan Sullivan is the Wilsey Family College Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, director of the God and the Good Life Program, and director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. She has published works in many leading philosophy journals. Her first book, Time Biases, was published by Oxford University Press. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation. Sullivan has degrees from the University of Virginia, Oxford University, and Rutgers University, where she earned a PhD in philosophy. She studied at Balliol College, Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar. Paul Blaschko is an assistant teaching professor in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He heads up curriculum design and digital pedagogy for the God and the Good Life Program, and has recently been working to develop similar curricula at universities across the nation as part of an initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Blaschko completed an MA in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, a PhD at the University of Notre Dame in 2018, and held the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship prior to being appointed to his current position. About The Good Life Method: For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages. You can purchase The Good Life Method anywhere where great books are sold.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About our guest: Paul O’Brien is an entrepreneurial strategist, philosopher, and raconteur who invented divination software and created the world’s largest astrology and divination eCommerce business, Tarot.com. He is a sought-after advisor, interview subject, and speaker, as well as author of The Visionary I Ching: A Book of Changes for the 21st Century, Intuitive Intelligence, and the Visionary I Ching app for smartphones (available on Indie Goes). His latest release is the Visionary I Chingcard deck (available by Beyond Words Publishing, free sample reading at:  http://visionaryichingcards.com/ ). Executive director of the Divination Foundation, for 30 years Paul has hosted Pathways radio in Portland, Oregon, an interview program focused on personal and cultural transformation (podcasts at Divination.com and iTunes). Paul's Website: https://www.tarot.com/bios/paul-obrien Soul Searching with Seneca: https://anchor.fm/simon-drew To sign up for this week's Soul Searching with Seneca Meetup, go to thewalledgarden.com/events/ The Walled Garden: thewalledgarden.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About our guest: Erich Hatala Matthes is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Director of the Frost Center for the Environment at Wellesley College. His teaching and research focus on the ethics, politics, and aesthetics of art, cultural heritage, and the environment. He majored in English and Philosophy at Yale and earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. His work has appeared in Ethics, Philosophical Studies, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Public Affairs Quarterly, Social Theory and Practice, Ergo, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Analysis, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Philosophy Compass, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and various edited collections. He has also written for popular outlets such as Aeon and Apollo Magazine. Buy Drawing the Line: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/drawing-the-line-9780197537572?cc=us&lang=en& Twitter: @ehatmat Website:https://sites.google.com/wellesley.edu/ehatmat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Simon is joined by Western Australia based facilitator Ashley McCole to talk about how to deal with polarisation during the holiday period. Merry Christmas everyone!   To join The Walled Garden, go to thewalledgarden.com.  Use the promo code PRACTICALSTOIC to get a discount on the Caretaker membership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Simon Drew speaks with friend and co-seeker Joe Tucker about  Stoic philosophy, sacred texts, and the modern search for wisdom.    To join The Walled Garden, go to thewalledgarden.com and use the promo code PRACTICALSTOIC to get over 20% off a caretaker membership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Simon reads a letter regarding Seneca's wisdom, seeking the goods of the soul, perfecting our aims, and seeking the most important knowledge.  To join this week's meetup (launch of The Poet & The Sage), register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUlduCupj8tHN3cj1HuTcbYgS6wo6rqomPC  To join The Walled Garden, go to thewalledgarden.com and use the promo code PRACTICALSTOIC to get a discount on the Caretaker membership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices