Be Here Now Network Guest Podcast

Duncan Trussell joins Raghu Markus and Kelly Rego for a heartfelt conversation on Ram Dass’s enduring legacy and the auspicious experiences that brought the Be Here Now Network team together.
Help us celebrate 10 years of Be Here Now Network and support the next chapter of Ram Dass Here and Now. Gifts are matched dollar for dollar through June 30. Learn more and give here: BHNN 10th Birthday Fundraiser
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In this episode, Duncan, Raghu, & Kelly discuss:
Duncan’s introduction to Ram Dass: swimming, playing, and seeing the light again
How Ram Dass helped Duncan process the loss of his mother
Spreading Ram Dass’s love and legacy through the Be Here Now Network
How the universe guides us right to where we need to be
Moving through a dark night of the soul
The lasting love we have for those we have lost
The profound generosity of giving our full attention to another
About Duncan Trussell:
Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, and actor. His popular podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, has been downloaded over 25 million times and is known for its blend of humor, fringe ideas, eclectic guests, and great interviews. The DTFH is the foundation for Duncan’s Netflix animated series, The Midnight Gospel, which he co-created with Pendleton Ward in 2020. To learn more about Duncan’s work, visit his website at duncantrussell.com.
“An ex-Ivy League acid-head runs into a guru in India, and now we’re at the point where that convergence of minds is being technologically amplified around the planet. We live in an algorithmically controlled world. My algorithm, oh my god, the horror that I have seen. The more of Ram Dass’s lectures, the more Kornfield, more of the people in this community that you signal boost out onto the world, I don’t think there’s any way to quantify the benefit of that, what that’s doing for the world.” –Duncan Trussell
About Kelly Rego:
Kelly Rego is an Integrated Marketing & Media Specialist. An Emerson College alumni, Kelly has over 15 years experience of facilitating projects into reality. She has worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer with women’s groups and dairy cooperatives in Costa Rica, a media strategist and buyer in New York City, and has produced a full-length documentary.
Kelly is the Marketing Director for Ram Dass’s Love Serve Remember Foundation, as well as the project manager of Be Here Now Network, a podcast network dedicated to spirituality, mindfulness, and personal growth.
“Ram Dass had this ability to listen on such a deep, deep level, that is how he was able to reflect such interesting things. He was so much in his heart space that whatever you were expressing with your words, he was able to go down deeper to where your heart was coming from. It’s rare to feel so listened to these days; people can be so distracted. He was so one-pointed with that attention. That was part of the magic of being next to Ram Dass.” –Kelly Rego
About Raghu Markus:
Raghu Markus spent 18 months in India with Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass. He has been involved in music and transformational media since the early 1970s, when he was program director of CKGM-FM in Montreal.
In 1974, he collaborated with Ram Dass on the box set Love Serve Remember. In 1990, he launched Triloka Records, which established itself as a critical leader in the development of world music. For 17 years, Triloka was home to such artists as Krishna Das, Hugh Masekela, Walela, Jai Uttal and transformational media projects that featured Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, and Les Nubians.
Raghu lives in Ojai, California, and is the Executive Director of the Love Serve Remember Foundation. In 2016, he co-founded the Be Here Now Network, where he hosts the Ram Dass Here & Now podcast, as well as his own Mindrolling podcast. He is the producer of Becoming Nobody, a Ram Dass documentary feature film that was released in 2019.
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Followed by spoken-word poetry from Dreaming Bear, Ram Dass and Uma Reed explore how the union of Bhakti and Vedanta leads to unchanging bliss and eternal awareness.
Recorded in 2008 at Studio Maui, this mini-series features Ram Dass and guests from his satsang. Check out the first two episodes of this mini-series on episodes 245 and 255 of the Be Here Now Network's Guest Podcast.
Help us celebrate 10 years of Be Here Now Network and support the next chapter of Ram Dass Here and Now. Gifts are matched dollar for dollar through June 30. Learn more and give here: BHNN 10th Birthday Fundraiser
Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.
In this episode, Uma Reed and Ram Dass share insights on:
Weaving together the paths of Bhakti and Vedanta
Connecting to our blissful nature and a joy that is unchanging
Ram Dass’s mushroom trip at Tim Leary’s house: seeing the roles vs. the soul
Stripping everything away until you are pure awareness and love
Spoken word with Dreaming Bear
Loving all of each other the way we love our beloved
Giving yourself permission to become wild and undomesticated
About Uma Reed:
Uma was first exposed to Hindu devotional chanting in the early 1970s, while studying meditation and spiritual practices with Ram Dass and various other teachers. Kirtan was a practice that touched her deeply, and as a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, she often participated in kirtan gatherings with fellow devotees, as well as in other ashrams and spiritual communities. For years she held kirtan in her home, and for the past dozen years or so, she has led kirtan formally in yoga studios, spiritual centers, and retreat settings. She has taught workshops and led kirtan on numerous retreats and in satsang with Ram Dass and other spiritual teachers in the U.S. and abroad.
About Dreaming Bear:
Dreaming Bear is a master word-smith delivering his fervent message with extraordinary verbal dexterity and relevance. He's a nomadic bard, a hip mystic and modern-language Sufic style philosopher-poet. If you'd like to experience a living combination of Spaulding Gray, Rumi, Jack Kerouac, Robin Williams, Shel Silverstein, Michael Talbot and Thich Nhat Hanh, you owe it to yourself to see Dreaming Bear. The foundation for Dreaming Bear’s work as a transformational epic orator and poetic storyteller is deeply attuned to the natural world. His work as a university teacher/researcher was further defined by years spent living 'off the grid'. While in a deep communion with what the Hawaiians call the a'ina, or life force of the land, he began to take his artistry to a new level and developed many of the works that have proven to be inspiring to so many. Find out more about Nature’s Poet Laureate by reading a book of his poetry.
“You will always exist. Isn’t that reassuring? You always exist.” –Ram Dass
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With humor and wisdom, Duncan Trussell shares how the ego can turn spirituality into another achievement, and why freedom comes from realizing there's nothing to prove.
Help us celebrate 10 years of Be Here Now Network and support the next chapter of Ram Dass Here and Now. Gifts are matched dollar for dollar through June 30. Learn more and give here: BHNN 10th Birthday Fundraiser
Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.
This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Duncan chats about:
Lessons on spiritual materialism from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Staying connected to everyday life while being spiritual
Transcendental common sense vs. getting puffed up in the ego
Staying connected to everyday life while being spiritual
The trouble with actively ignoring parts of ourselves
Reconciling higher consciousness with everyday affairs
Surrendering to all of it and becoming ‘normal’ again
Hyperfixating on suffering rather than the end of suffering
About Duncan Trussell:
Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, and actor. His popular podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, has been downloaded over 25 million times and is known for its blend of humor, fringe ideas, eclectic guests, and great interviews. The DTFH is the foundation for Duncan’s Netflix animated series, The Midnight Gospel, which he co-created with Pendleton Ward in 2020. To learn more about Duncan’s work, visit his website at duncantrussell.com.
“It’s a very frustrating thing to our ego to imagine that you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to learn Sanskrit, know about your chakras, have those scars on your arm from frog venom, do 90 ayahuasca retreats, go to the Ram Dass retreats, listen to Alan Watts lectures. You don’t have to do anything because you’re already there.” –Duncan Trussell
About The Host, Jackie Dobrinska:
Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves.
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Exploring the factors of enlightenment, Vipassana teacher Trudy Goodman offers listeners ‘the good news’ of Buddhist Practice.
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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Trudy Goodman explores:
The balancing factor, energizing factors, and calming factors of enlightenment
Manifesting metta through mindfulness
Investigation into the truth of the dharma
Offering compassion to the pain we feel
The beauty and profound stillness of a unified heart-mind
Being both the subject and object of experience
Having faith in the strengthening of our mindfulness skills
This episode was originally published on Dharmaseed
About Trudy Goodman:
Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com
“We can be both the subject and object of experience. We can drop the whole thing and be neither. We have this capacity when we are willing to focus our attention, and, to focus our attention somewhere besides here, we discover a whole world of empathy, love, and intimate connection.” –Trudy Goodman

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While offering a guided meditation, Gil Fronsdal traces the movement between knowing, feeling, and relaxing in our practice.
Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.
This week on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal dives into:
The 3 levels of mindfulness practice (knowing, sensing, relaxing)
Considering what it feels like to be thinking
Knowing the changing phenomena of the moment
Allowing yourself to be both alert and relaxed
Feeling the activation of our thinking minds
Calming the brain and body
"You’re just kind of flowing along with the changing phenomena of the moment. And the changing phenomena of the moment might just be the changing sensations of breathing. You’re just knowing them in a very, very simple way, maybe even a non-cognitive way. You’re not necessarily thinking about them, having words, but you’re really letting it register, this is the changing sensation of breathing." –Gil Fronsdal
This episode was originally published on Dharmaseed
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