Buddha at the Gas Pump

Award-winning translator, author, poet, teacher, and workshop leader, Carmen Acevedo Butcher, PhD, is core faculty and Dean at the Center for Action and Contemplation, founded by Father Richard Rohr. Her translation for Shambhala Publications of the fourteenth-century contemplative classic The Cloud of Unknowing received a 46th Georgia Author of the Year Award. Martin Laird calls her translation of Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence “the new standard,” and it was named by Spirituality & Practice to its Best Books List. At the University of Georgia Carmen earned an MA and a PhD in Medieval Studies, and as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of London, she worked with monastic manuscripts in London and Oxbridge libraries and translated homilies by the tenth-century Benedictine abbot, Ælfric of Eynsham, published as God of Mercy: Ælfric’s Sermons and Theology (Mercer University Press). Carmen has been interviewed on the BBC World Service The Compass, NPR Morning Edition, Center for Action and Contemplation’s Everything Belongs, Turning to the Mystics, and Learning How To See, and many other podcasts. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, in the College Writing Programs, and she is often found in the marsh chanting Psalm 46:10 in Old English.

Barbara Whitfield was a researcher at the University of Connecticut Medical School with psychiatry professor Bruce Greyson. Together they researched the after-effects of people who have had a Near-Death Experience. She taught at Rutger's University's Institute for Alcohol and Drug Studies School for 12 years, served on the board and executive board of The International Association for Near-Death Studies and was president of the Kundalini Research Network. She's been a guest expert on Larry King Live (twice), The Today Show, Man Alive, Donahue, Unsolved Mysteries, PM Magazine, Good Morning America, Oprah, Joan Rivers, Sonya Freeman, CNN Medical News, and Alabama Public Television, Imus, and All Things Considered. She also writes self-help books and provides workshops and speaking engagements on topics of recovery, near-death experiences and natural spirituality.
Charles L Whitfield MD was a physician, psychotherapist, and internationally recognized expert on mental illness, behavioral problems, and recovery. He was an associate professor of medicine at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine for 4 years and then taught medicine and addiction medicine as associate professor of medicine, psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine for eight years. He has been on the faculty of the Rutgers University Summer Institute of Alcohol and Drug Studies since 1978, and in the private practice of medicine and psychotherapy since 1976. He has been voted by his peers as one of the Best Doctors in America every year since 1994.
Barbara and Charles had a private practice in Atlanta, Georgia helping adults who have been repeatedly traumatized, who are having problems in living, who want to come off of psych drugs and/or opiates, and who may have had a spiritually transformative experience.
Books:
Dragon Energy: Myth and Reality (New)
Spiritual Awakenings: Insights of the Near-Death Experience and Other Doorways to Our Soul
The Natural Soul: Unity with the Spiritual Energy that Connects Us: What it Looks like and how It Feels
AFGEs: A Guide to Self-Awareness and Change
The Power of Humility: Choosing Peace over Conflict in Relationships

Website: barbara-whitfield.com

Empaths, Empathic Overwhelm, Source Intuition, and the Sacred Work of Healing
Dave Markowitz explores empaths, empathic overwhelm, and the sacred work of healing ourselves and our world. He shares how trauma, sensitivity, intuition, and our connection with Source can shape the way we experience ourselves and other people.

A Source intuitive, bestselling author, healing facilitator, and longtime student of human transformation, Dave draws on decades of experience working with highly sensitive people. He describes his own discovery that he was an empath, how he learned to distinguish his own feelings from what he was absorbing from others, and why he believes many of us are naturally empathic.

The conversation explores the deeper roots of empathic overwhelm, including four original wounds and the movement from an early experience of oneness into separation and individuation. Dave explains why simply protecting or shielding ourselves from other people’s energy may address symptoms without addressing the deeper source of the problem.

Rick and Dave also discuss trauma, fear, anger and grief; relationships and community; forgiveness; meditation and nonduality; connecting with Source; intuitive guidance; and the importance of allowing difficult experiences to become part of our growth rather than trying to escape them.

Dave offers a practical perspective on becoming more resilient without becoming closed off—and on how our own healing can ripple outward, affecting the people and communities around us.

Spiritual Liberation, Memory Reconsolidation, and the End of the Separate Self
Monica Khosla explores spiritual awakening, nonduality, and liberation through the surprising lens of neuroscience and memory reconsolidation. A somatic psychotherapist, she describes a sudden shift during a yoga class in 2009 in which the sense of being a separate self simply fell away.
Monica is the author of The First and Last Belief: A Theory of Liberation in the Age of Neuroscience. In this conversation with Rick Archer, she considers whether the apparent end of separation may be understood as the release of a fundamental embodied assumption—an update in the brain’s model of reality rather than the attainment of a special spiritual status.

They discuss her early spiritual experiences, her long search through psychology, yoga, meditation, acupuncture, astrology, and nondual teachings, and the quiet, unremarkable character of the shift she calls liberation. Monica distinguishes enduring liberation from transitory spiritual states, challenges common assumptions about enlightenment, and emphasizes that liberation does not make someone perfect, omniscient, or free of ordinary human habits and difficulties.

The conversation also explores memory reconsolidation, trauma therapy, predictive processing, consciousness, the nature of perception, the relationship between ancient contemplative traditions and modern neuroscience, free will and responsibility, personal identity, and how spiritual understanding may—or may not—translate into ordinary life.

Book: The First and Last Belief: A theory of Liberation in the age of neuroscience

Website: nondualitynow.com

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group

Hello everyone, who knew and loved Bart,

This is Renata Gregori, his wife. My beloved husband left this earth plane on July 27, 2026, due to pneumonia and infection - complications from conditions he was dealing with since the end of last year.

He was the best man I’ve ever known. He was my teacher, my confidant, my best friend, the love of my life and my touchstone for all that is good and righteous. I could always count on him to put things in perspective for me and check me, when I was off base.

We had a celebration of life at our house in Mexico yesterday and it was so beautiful. Music, laughter, tears and beautiful people. Bart has been laid out at our house for two days. As per his wishes, he will be cremated today.

Please continue to contemplate his teachings, read his books and watch his videos. I send my Love to all who knew and loved him and all whose lives he touched.

Bart Marshall described his spiritual path as “self-guided eclectic.” It began with a death experience in Vietnam in 1968 and ended in 2004 on an airplane at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic as he returned from a workshop with Douglas Harding. In those intervening years he “turned over every rock” in his quest for a final answer, but counts three teachers as the most influential: Richard Rose, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Douglas Harding.

He founded Self Inquiry Group (SIG) in Raleigh, North Carolina and for many years held weekly meetings before stepping back in 2013. Sometimes called “the reluctant guru” by those who know him, Bart nevertheless traveled widely to speak when asked, and teaches retreats and intensives with Deborah Westmoreland (Conscious TV interview) events that proved to be highly transformative for participants.

Bart was the author of The Perennial Way: New English Versions of Yoga Sutras, Dhammapada, Heart Sutra, Ashtavakra Gita, Faith Mind Sutra, and Tao Te Ching, and Christ Sutras (Fall 2014), which contains the complete sayings of Jesus from all sources arranged as topical sermons.

Interview recorded 11/8/2014