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Touchstones: Religious Experience
Time: Tuesdays @ 11 am
Program Host: Paul Nagy
Contact: pnagy@wordtrade.com
Website: http://www.wordtrade.com/essays/touchstones/touchstonesA.htm
Bio: Paul has been an active member of The Theosophical Society in America since 1973, a Unitarian Universalist since 1983, and a member of the North Carolina Society of Ethical Culture since 2000. He is a graduate from The Pacific School of Religion (Master of Divinity), an interdenominational seminary affiliated with The Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, California. He has had a ministry in spiritual direction, and is a member of Spiritual Director’s International. He has led countless seminars and some retreats on esoteric religions and on the daily practice of prayer.
In addition, Paul has a degree in cultural anthropology from San Francisco State University and has conducted extensive research among non-christian, meditation groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He visited Turkey and Konya in 1980, during a study fellowship from the Chishom Institute (Beshara Foundation) and followed the traditional pilgrimage order of visiting the maqams of Sadrerinn Qunavi, Shams-i-Tabriz and Jelaluddin Rumi. Recently he completed a course where the participants were encouraged to experience transformative spiritual discourse (sobhet) by sharing their feeling about selections from Rumi's poetry.
As Managing Editor of Wordtrade.com, (a review of academic books in the sciences and humanities), Paul supervises the business end of the review, while writing now and again reviews for the newsletter. He considers himself a mystic without theistic religion. His style of mysticism is humanistic and theosophical as a philosophical and reasonable approach to the ultimate ineffable realities of life. He has a strong kinship with the Sufism of ibn al-’Arabi, the worldview of the Hindu Yogavashista, and active beauty and simplicity of Trika mysticism. Over the years, Paul has been part of a number of initiatory groups and has spent some time as a yogin, a wiccan, a Subudan, as well as a practitioner of Buddhism. He is also an accomplished tarotist, specializing in its occult lore and esoteric dimensions as well as clairvoyant readings.
Today his own spiritual practice tends toward the tantric, especially mahamudra meditation. Considering much of the Tibetan presentation of this style a little too sectarian, he characterizes this spiritual practice as centering prayer, an ecumenical form of contemplative prayer. Recently he has renewed his interest in Kashmir Shaivism or Trika as reflective of the most versatile aspects of the contemplative tradition. The spontaneous attentiveness in simple awareness as divine presence now is the active basis of his spirituality.
Paul’s academic groups include: the The Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, the International Society of Neoplatonic Studies, the American Academy of Religion, and the The Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.
Description: “Touchstones: Religious Experience” is a show that reflects the variety of religious possibilities available to people. As the host of Touchstones, Paul will explore personal religious and/or spiritual experience with a wide variety of local and visiting religious practitioners. His own extensive background of study and interaction with the broad range of religious experience will have as much visibility as traditional mainline churches, synagogues and mosques.
The focus is on personal experience with religion and spirituality rather than doctrine as such. Eventually the shows will attempt to be more topical and exploratory than introductory.
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