Bill Witherspoon is a life-long visual artist, serial entrepreneur, and lover of sky. In his six decades, living on and off in the High Steppe desert in southeastern Oregon, he has painted watercolor skies, practiced ancient art as spiritual discipline, and weathered that pristine geological expanse.

As an artist, over the last four decades, Bill has mounted 40 one-man exhibitions of paintings, prints, and sculptures (1968 – 2020), in addition to desert public art projects. He is also the founder and Creative Director of The Sky Factory, a fine arts, digital technology, and cognitive science studio that designs and manufactures the world’s only research-verified virtual skylights—Luminous SkyCeilings and Luminous Virtual Windows.

His first book, Enter Space—Stories from the High Desert, lays witness to a life surrounded by that rare, unsummoned vastness; one that those of us steeped in the ceaseless churn of urban life can now imagine living through the faithful record of the artist’s experience.

Book: Enter Space: Stories from the High Desert

Sri Yantra: The Oregon Desert Mystery FULL MOVIE

Transcript and Summary of this interview

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group

Interview recorded September 3, 2023.

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.

YouTube Video Chapters:
 
00:00:00 – Introduction and Background of Bill Witherspoon
00:04:49 – A Life of Adventure and Silence
00:09:25 – Being Swept Away by the Waterfall
00:12:52 – A Life-Threatening Water Rescue
00:16:34 – The Near-Drowning Experience That Changed My Life
00:21:02 – The Transcendent Experience of Meditation
00:24:35 – Climbing the Radio Tower and Facing Danger at Sea
00:29:01 – Seeing More Deeply
00:32:33 – Healing the Eye of the Heart
00:36:42 – The Burning Shell
00:40:15 – Learning and Growth through Perseverance
00:43:50 – The Sri Yantra: An Instance of a Law of Nature
00:48:10 – The Bindu
00:52:38 – The New Kind of Seeing
00:57:00 – The Essence of Memory and Love
01:01:06 – A Slideshow of Photographic Events in the Wilderness
01:05:39 – Living in Harmony with Rattlesnakes
01:08:46 – Witnessing Violence and the Impact
01:12:55 – Encounters with Rattlesnakes
01:16:22 – The Strange Book and its Contents
01:20:36 – The Presence of Divine Intelligence
01:24:30 – Accessing Deeper Levels of Consciousness through Meditation
01:32:35 – The Horrors of Being on Death Row
01:35:35 – The Influence of Human Presence
01:40:37 – “Goodbye,” when we went looking for wild horses
01:44:58 – Reflections on an Interesting Life
01:49:33 – Going Deeper in Consciousness
01:53:02 – Building a Beautiful Corporation
01:56:56 – The Skill of Self-Reflection
02:00:18 – Gratitude and Farewell

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Chelan Harkin has been channeling ecstatic poetry for years and has now published two books in the past seven months, Susceptible to Light and Let Us Dance!: The Stumble and Whirl With The Beloved. Her publishing journey has been mystical and transformational and filled with “prayer experiments” gone right. Chelan has regularly been compared to the great mystic poets, Rumi, Hafiz, and Rilke. She lives in a geographically spectacular region of Washington State, The Columbia Gorge, with her husband and two small children. In her poetry and in her life, Chelan continually invites the fumbling, suffering parts of our nature and our divinity to meet for tea in the heart, to have a great laugh, and share a big hug.

• Website: chelanharkin.com
• Facebook page

Some of the main points discussed in this conversation:

• Chelan’s background and introduction to poetry by Hafiz. Her shift from effortful poetry to spontaneous “downloads”.
• Chelan reads some of her favorite poems throughout the interview.
• Chelan’s subjective experience when a poem starts to “come through” – a full-body tingle and a sense of urgency; a mingling of her spirit with something larger.
• What the world might be like if everyone unlocked their full potential.
• Chelan’s transformative experience with hypnosis as a process for the development of consciousness.
• There is no joy in smallness. Chelan reads the poem ‘I AM TOO MUCH!’
• The growth potential of marriage and parenthood.
• Opening the heart and connecting with the divinity within us.
• Sensitivity to ‘truth’ and addressing that which is not aligned with it.
• Being able to have pain move through us without hurting us.
• Chelan’s collaboration with Daniel Ladinsky.
• Chelan’s upbringing in the Baháʼí faith. All people and religions are fundamentally united in a common source.
• Chelan’s mystical experience and creative inspiration in a cell in Israel in which the founder of the Baháʼí faith was imprisoned.
• Developing a harmonious relationship between knowledge and experience.
• Chelan’s current and future projects.

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.

Transcript of this interview.

Interview recorded July 3, 2021

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.

YouTube Video Chapters:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction to Buddha at the Gas Pump
• 00:04:59 – Connecting with Hafez: Inspiring Poetry and Publishing Success
• 00:09:55 – The Spontaneous Poem
• 00:14:14 – The Feeling of a Coming Poem
• 00:17:55 – Unleashing Our Inner Genius
• 00:21:48 – The Birth of Creativity
• 00:26:12 – Healing through Hypnotherapy
• 00:30:33 – Reframing and Reclaiming “I’m Too Much”
• 00:35:15 – Inspiration from Night Walks
• 00:39:32 – The Humility of Relationships
• 00:43:15 – The Worst Thing We Ever Did
• 00:47:36 – Opening Up to Vulnerability
• 00:52:09 – The Strength in Sensitivity
• 00:56:56 – The Essence of Infinity and Connection
• 01:01:11 – A Serendipitous Connection with Daniel
• 01:05:35 – Summoning Poetry with Hafez
• 01:09:32 – Chelan’s Spiritual Upbringing
• 01:13:31 – A Sacred Experience in Bahala’s Prison Cell
• 01:17:04 – Chelan’s Aneurysm Journey
• 01:20:33 – The Impact of Diet and Social Media on Channeling Abilities
• 01:24:39 – The Thirst for Intellectual Knowledge
• 01:28:52 – The Potency of Embodied Spirituality
• 01:33:28 – The Power of Prayer
• 01:37:34 – Finding Joy in Work
• 01:41:18 – The God Who Made the Octopus
• 01:45:28 – The Cosmic Wallop and Cosmic Timing
• 01:49:19 – Discovering the Poet Within
• 01:52:33 – The Power of Language
• 01:56:21 – Living an Authentic Truth
• 01:59:41 – Openness to Opportunities
• 02:03:11 – Farewell and Good Wishes

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