Hello my friends, and welcome to this edition of the New World Kirtan Podcast. I haven’t posted in a while as I needed to take a break for various reasons, but everything is well here. The weather has been mostly spectacular, and we’ve had so many visitors — son David, son Jesse & his fiancee, my brother Michael, and up next is a trip to Cape Cod to visit Bill’s family. How incredible it has been to give people hugs after this long, long drought. I’m loving being back in the garden, able to work without pain. New hips were one gift of the pandemic, a killer recipe for gluten-free wholegrain sourdough bread was another. But seeing people dying all over the world from this virus helped me realize once again that life is short. Anything can happen at any time. And it has me questioning how I want to spend my time in the hopefully many years I have left. Those of you who know me know I’m not exactly built like Tinkerbelle, my weight has been a lifelong obsession. So another gift of the pandemic for me was realizing I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a fat person — I have a chance for a reset with the new hips, and I’ve decided to go for it. I’ve lost 30 lbs and feel like a new person. In many ways I am.
Now I’m going to brag on some developments in my VoiceOver career — I’ve been nominated for an award in documentary narration! It’s for ‘The History of Las Vegas: the Early Years’. We’ve completed three of a five-part series, the first three parts are up on YouTube. I’m pretty pleased to tell you that Part 1 has had over 4 million views, here’s the link.
Our Friday Satsang is on hiatus until the end of September, but there are a lot of sets backed up that I’ll be releasing as podcasts over the next several weeks. We just subscribed to Apple Music — what a rich trove of kirtan awaits me there, and hopefully some fresh tracks for the new season of our Kirtan Satsang.
So probably like most of you, I’ve been going through some things. The state of the world has me feeling sad & discouraged, maybe you too? And I’ve noticed something. Since being on hiatus from the Friday Satsang, the protective layer that usually surrounds me is diminishing. Things are getting to me, and I’m guessing it’s because that center of calmness isn’t being reinforced on a regular basis by singing a kirtan set every week. So I’ve renewed my commitment to regularly put these sets out for your practice, and for mine. This week I’m pleased to present another set by Sky, ‘Revealing Our True Self’.
Stay safe out there, dear hearts & until next time. Namaste.
This week’s set:
Om Hari Om/Sharanam Ganesha(Refuge) – Sean Johnson & the Wild Lotus Band
Shivoham (Live) – GuruGanesha Singh, Manish Vyas, Ram Dass, Snatam Kaur
Om Asatoma – Deva Premal
Har Mukanday – Mirabai Ceiba
Adi Shakti – Matthew Schoenng, Nirinjan Kaur, Ram Dass
Surya Namaskar Mantras: Agni Mix (feat Nina Rao) – Daniel Johnson, Nina Rao, Suzin Green
Om Purman – Jaya Lakshmi
Om Guru (Trust Within) – Edo and Jo
Har Ji – Mirabai Ceiba
Diamonds in the sun – Girish