Seeing Something New in the Old

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Trappist monk whose writings speak to so many people -- progressive Christians and progressive non-Christians alike.  His Center for Action and Contemplation offers daily meditations, brief reflections on a theme like "From the Bottom Up," "Unknowing," and "Transformation."  He explore each theme for a week, and on Saturday he offers summary of the week's reflections.

This past week's theme was, "This Is My Body."  He was exploring the traditional Christian concept of "incarnation" in what for many would be a highly provocative way.  That's one of the things I absolutely love about his writing.  It puts me in mind of phrase I learned during my chaplaincy training (about which I wrote back in May), "Tell me about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God either."  Rohr seems to me to be saying, "Tell me about this teaching you don't believe.  I probably don't understand it that way."

What is the meaning of the word, "Christ."  It's often been said, "'Christ' isn't Jesus' last name."  It's often understood as signifying Jesus' God-hood. Yet what if you don't believe in those teaching?  What if you believe that Jesus was a man, a human person, who was not God but had, instead, 

"[an] identification with God so complete, [a] relationship so intimate, that they seemed to be one and the same.  Jesus saw the world with God's eyes; he loved the world with God's heart; and his acts were ultimately the acts of God.  Those who looked at Jesus saw God's face, and they met God directly through him."  [That's from my first book, Teacher, Guide, Companion: Rediscovering Jesus in a Secular World, p. 38.]

What does this do to the concept of "the risen Christ"?  There is a spiritual way of understanding it that does not require the overthrow of the human experience of life and death.  John Dominic Crosson notes that the word "resurrection" is different from the word "restitution," and that one need not believe in the later to believe in the former.


In the meditation "The Universe is the Body of God," he quotes the theologian Sallie McFague:

"The resurrected Christ is the cosmic Christ, the Christ freed from the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to be present in and to all bodies."

That certainly changes things!

So often we get stuck with a particular understanding of a word, rather than experiencing a reality.  So often we refuse to see anything in a particular teaching because of the way we were taught to think of it.  Yet at least equally as often, to quote Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."  And if you take that new meaning with you back into the rest of the text and the teachings, whole new meanings open up.

Christianity is by no means the only way we humans have tried to make sense of that space between being born and having to die.  Yet for those who have left behind that Christian tradition in which they were raised, or who have never even explored it because of what they've heard it's about, I offer an encouragement to look again, and to look anew.  You might be surprised by what you find.

This is one of the ways a spiritual director/companion can help you with your journey.  They provide a space in which to dance with questions of meaning.


Pax tecum,

RevWik

Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate (pt. 3)

This is the third in a series of posts looking at the challenges people often cite when explaining why they haven't been able to stick with a meditation practice, or who've never started one because they knew they would face these challenges and couldn't imagine a way around them.  On Monday we looked at the issues of "not having enough time" and "physically not being able to sit still that long."  On Wednesday the focus was on the issue of being "too easily distracted."  Today, let's consider the complaint which, it would seem, the younger monk must have just raised with his elder:  "What happens next?"

Is that all that meditation is about?  Sitting on a cushion (or chair) and counting your breaths or saying a mantra over and over again?  Isn't something supposed to happen?  The Buddha, we're told, sat in meditation for seven days under the Bodhi tree, after which he "awakened" and saw through to the depths of reality, the underlying Truth of existence, which he then taught as the Four Noble Truths.  The term "Buddha" means "the awakened one," and there is a story that the Buddha was once walking down a road.  A man he met asked what manner of being the Buddha was -- an angel, a demon, a God, and so on.  The Buddha replied, "I am awake."

This state of "awakeness," of seeing through to the heart of reality, is what most people think of when they think of "enlightenment."  And enlightenment is what most people think is the purpose of meditation.  When asked why they think meditation is important, or something they "should" be doing, folks often say that it will make them more peaceful, more calm, more easy going, more aware, more healthy, etc.  Yet nearly everyone knows that one of the results that's usually claimed for meditation practices is "enlightenment."  Yet whether it's purely for relaxation, or for some kind of spiritual deepening, most people think that meditation is going to do something for them.

Within the Zen tradition(s), at least, doing meditation in order to accomplish or achieve something is to fundamentally misunderstand the practice of meditation.  In fact, one might say that the extent to which you practice in order for something to happen, the less you are truly meditating.  As the senior monk in the cartoon says, "Nothing happens next.  This is it."  The purpose of sitting on your cushion, it's been said, is to sit on your cushion.  Nothing else.

There's a wonderful story told about Ludwig van Beethoven.  It is very likely apocryphal, but the story is that after playing one of his piano sonata's at some fashionable soiree, as he did, a woman said, "That was marvelous, Herr Beethoven ... but what did it mean?"  Beethoven is said to have sat down at the piano again and played the piece through one more time.  When he was finished, he looked at the woman and said, "That, Fraulein, is what it means!"

The Thing In Itself.   The music exists for its own sake; it has no meaning or purpose.  It doesn't exist so that ... anything.  It exists because it exists.  I'm put in mind of what the character of God gives to Moses when they meet at the burning bush and Moses asks God's name:  "I am that I am."  (Interestingly, the Hebrew can also be translated as "I was what I was," "I will be what I will be," or any combination.)  In other words, the name, the underlying reality of God, is "is-ness," is existence.  God is, and that's all that matters.

And that's true of us, also.  At least, if you look at life through the lens of in-this-moment mindfulness.  If this moment is really the only moment that exists, then I am not typing these words in order for you to read them.  I'm typing them because I'm typing them.  I'm typing them to type them; there is no other purpose.  If I were typing them so that you could read them, and something goes wrong with my computer and the file is erased, then I would have wasted this moment.  I don't mind if you do read them, of course.  In fact, I hope you will.  But if I am truly living with the awareness that this moment is the only moment, then I can't write them for any other reason than the writing of them.

Now, note that I said, "if you look at life through the lens of in-this-moment mindfulness."  One of the things the Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, John Daido Loori, used to say was that when you're sitting in the meditation hall you are aware that all things are interconnected, that nothing exists independent of anything else, that, "you and I are one."  However, he would say, when you're crossing traffic you need to remember that you and the car coming at you are different!

So yes, of course, as I'm sitting here writing this post I am doing so, at least in part, in the hopes that you'll read it, and that there'll be something in here that'll be worth your time.  That is, if you will, the way we look at things in "ordinary time."  Yet just as practicing scales is an exercise a musician does to be able to play their instrument more beautifully, or working out at the gym is a kind of peculiar time set aside to prepare one's body to function more healthfully and effectively, so, too, the time spent in your meditation practice is sort of a time set apart from "ordinary time."  It is, if you will, a time during which you train yourself to be mindful so that, in the moment-to-moment realities of our lives we can be more mindful.

As noted last week, meditation is a four-fold practice:  Focus.  Become Distracted.  Recognize that we've become distracted.  Make the decision to return to our original focus.  While in the middle of doing this practice, there is no reason for doing so except for the doing of it.  If you're doing it in order to become more peaceful, then that intention is, itself, a distraction from the focus on, for instance, counting your breaths.  If you're training yourself to focus only on the thing you've chosen for your focus -- your breathing, a mantra, a candle's flame -- than anything else you bring with you into your time of meditation is a distraction.

It is very likely -- extremely likely, in fact -- that if you engage in a meditation practice (or, for that matter, any spiritual practice) you will experience some "results."  Chances are you will feel more peaceful, calm, serene, relaxed, healthy, focused, etc., etc., etc.  You might even gain enlightenment and see through to the "really real."  Yet during the time you've set aside for meditation, you probably shouldn't feel as though anything is happening.  In that moment, there should only be the sitting.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate (pt. 2)

Last week I began to write a bit about meditation.  I noted that there seem to be three kinds of folks when it comes to meditation -- those who've tried to meditate but ran into too many challenges, people who've never tried to start a meditation practice because they thought the would run into too many challenges, and those who have a meditation practice (no matter how spotty) and who are committed to deepening it.

When asked about the challenges people have run into, answers tend to fall into three categories:  not enough time, can't quite our restless minds, and it's hard to keep the practice alive because nothing seems to be happening (i.e., it's boring).  Having looked in the last post at the question of time, I want to address the issue of what Buddhists sometimes call "monkey mind."

Everybody knows that meditation is about sitting still and quieting the mind so that you are not distracted by the usual inner monologue(s), right?  That's the point, isn't it?  A quiet, serene mind?

Well ... I don't really think so.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that those distractions are actually essential for meditation. Rather than a problem, they are at the heart of the practice.

I have studied a number of different meditation techniques over the years.  (I've even practiced some!)  And just like I believe that there are core elements in prayer that transcend any religious tradition's particular dressing, I believe that there are four phases in any meditative practice.

1. Choose a focus
2. Become distracted
3. Recognize that you've become distracted
4. Choose to return to the focus

1.  Choose a focus:  in some traditions you count your breath, one count for each in-breath and each out-breath -- "breathe in, one; breathe out, two; breathe in, three; breathe out, four" -- continuing until you've reached ten, and then start over.  In other traditions, the focus is a word or a phrase, a mantra.  Sometimes you're encouraged to look at a candle flame, or an icon.  Yet despite the apparent differences between traditions, nearly all at least begin by suggesting that you focus your mind on something.  Zen practitioners sometimes refer to this as, "feeding the hungry tiger," because besides being like a money (jumping from thing to thing) our minds are also like tigers which, if they don't get something to eat, become voracious.  Just emptying the mind of all thoughts, then, is a pretty advanced technique.  We novices need something on which to focus the mind, so that we can then let everything else go.  (Another metaphor could be that the focus we use is like the rodeo clown that gets the attention of the bull so that the other people in the ring can get free.)  In choosing a focus, we are choosing to engage with an exercise.

2.  Become distracted:  This is the part of the practice of meditation that causes a lot of people to quit, or not to begin in the first place.  Because we have this notion that meditation is about having a still and quiet mind, the fact that our minds seem to become even more cacophonous when we try to meditate is incredibly frustrating.  Some people believe that they just aren't able to meditate because they just can't get their minds to quiet down.  "Breathe in, one; breathe out, two; breathe in ... what am I going to cook for dinner tonight?  Did I remember to close the door?   Oh why didn't I stand up to my boss this morning?  Oh crap ... Breathe in, one; Breathe ... I'm a lousy meditator.  I can't do this.  What's the point?  Breathe in, one ..."  Some of us get further along in our counting than this, others don't even get this far, but the monkey mind always seems to reassert itself.  This isn't failure, though.  If we didn't get distracted, we'd have nothing to work with.

3.  Recognize that we've become distracted:  This is key.  If in our meditation we didn't have this opportunity to recognize when we've become distracted, there would be no practice.  It'd be like going to the gym without ever picking up a weight or getting on the stair climber.  At a certain point we realize that we've forgotten our decision to focus on one thing as a way of allowing all of our other thoughts to drop off.  We can, of course, berate ourselves when we discover that our mind has wandered, and many of us do.  This is why some of us quit trying to meditate.  On the other hand, we can see this recognition of our distractedness as a good thing.  It is a major step toward that goal of a still and quiet mind.

4.  Decide to return to your focus:  As I said, we could choose to self-flagellate when we recognize that we've strayed "from our meditation," or  we can accept this as part of the practice, each part of which is essential.  If we could choose a focus and then actually stay focused with no other thoughts intruding on our single-pointedness, we wouldn't actually be meditating.  And whether you need to return to your focus one hundred times during your practice or just once (right at the even because you hadn't even noticed that you'd been distracted the entire time!), each phase of this four-phase pattern is necessary.

Whatever the goal of meditation may be, as understood through the lens of any particular tradition's teachings, that practice itself fundamentally consists of these four steps:  choose to focus your mind on one thing so that you're fully and intentionally aware of it; lose track of that one thing in the flurry of the thousand and one things that we're usually swimming in; become aware that we've stopped being fully aware of what we've decided to do during this time; and make the conscious choice to return to our original focus.

One more thought -- there is a meta-dimension to this four-fold schema.  If you, like me, find your practice to be  ... spotty ... take hope.  The fact that you can't seem to maintain a daily meditation practice is analogous to the difficulty of maintaining focus.  Let's say you decide to meditate daily.  And you do, for a while.  But then life encroaches and you soon realize that you haven't meditated for days or weeks.  (Or, as has been true for me more than once, months.)  This is like choosing a focus and then becoming distracted.  So, just as within a particular period of meditation, notice that you've become distracted, and when you recognize that you've not meditated in a while, choose right then to return to your original decision to engage this practice.  See the parallel?  Make a conscious choice; loose sight of that decision; recognize that you've forgotten your commitment; recommit yourself.

So ... there's a way of looking at the distractions of your hyper-active minds that might just eliminate that as a hurdle to engaging in a meditation practice.  (Or that can support you in sticking to it.)  On Friday we'll tackle the last of the most frequently named challenges -- boredom, the experience that nothing seems to be happening.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Meditation for People Who Don't Like Meditation (pt. 1)

Meditation.  It's one of those spiritual things we're supposed to like to do.  It's important.  Everyone tells us that it's important.  Yet a lot of us don't do it.  (Like flossing -- we know it's supposed to be good for us, but, well ...)

The other night I led a class at the congregation I serve which had the same title as this post -- "Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate."  I began by asking people to introduce themselves, including a little something about what had brought them to the class.  I suggested that people seem to fall into one of three groups:

• People who've tried meditation in the past who've just found it too hard for one reason or another;
• People who've thought about trying to meditate, yet haven't, because they assume that they are going to find it too hard for one reason or another; and,
• People who've got a great meditation practice going, and who come to things like this class because they just really love talking about meditation.

Virtually no one identified as belonging in that third group.

When I asked people what the reasons were that people'd found meditation challenging (or figured that they would), there were some common responses:

• My mind wanders too much;
• I don't have time for it;
• My body hurts if I sit still for too long;
• Nothing happens.

In the next two posts this week I'm going to look at the wandering mind and the lack of "results."  Today I want to address the concerns about how to make room for a meditation practice, and what to do about a complaining body.

The Vietnamese poet, peace activist, and Buddhist monk the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh says in one of his books that if you want to engage with a meditation practice you should set aside 30 minutes morning and night.  Unless you can't.  If you just can't manage to carve out that much time from your day, then try 15 minutes morning and night.  Unless you can't do that, either.  If not, do 10 minutes in the morning.  You guessed it -- unless you can't.  He keeps reducing the mandatory time needed for meditation to simply smiling a real, true smile when you wake up in the morning.  If that's all you can do, he says, then do that.

Other teachers would disagree, of course.  Yet Nhat Hanh's point is that if the purpose of meditation is to train us to be mindful of the reality in which we're living in at this very moment, then shouldn't one true, fully aware, fully present smile each day also accomplish that?  After all, being present is being present, whether it's for an hour or a moment.  As he says in one of his breath prayers (or gathas), "Breathing in, relax body and mind; breathing out, I smile.  Dwelling in the present moment, I realize this is the only moment."  This is the only moment and, so, being present to this moment -- that moment during which you smile a deep, real smile -- is the only moment you can be present.

The longer times are recommended because, as I've noted elsewhere, spiritual practices are just that -- practices. I like the analogy to playing a musical instrument:  if you only pick it up once in a while, or only for a few minutes, you can make sound, but you won't make real music.  And that's true.  So 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night -- with periodic times of even longer periods, such as during a retreat -- gives you more of a chance to practice.  Still, one of the most exciting sax solos I've ever heard is in the Miles Davis classic, In a Silent Way, when the incomparable Wayne Shorter plays just two notes.  But they are the perfect notes, in the perfect place.  You don't need to play an entire symphony -- a note or two can be music.  You don't need decades of dedicated meditation practice -- a moment or two of clear mindfulness is not to be sneezed at.

Now, what about that persnickety body?  After 10 minutes of sitting your lower back starts to ache, or your legs fall asleep.  Almost immediately after you start your meditation your nose starts to itch.  What can you do about that?  The first Zen retreat I attended at Zen Mountain Monastery in New York, I was a zazen rockstar.  I sat strong and still ... and I paid for it.  On the last day we each went to sit knee-to-knee with the Abbot, John Daido Loori.  We had the opportunity to ask him any question, but when I kneeled, I was flooded with white hot pain, so all I could say was, "I'm in too much pain to think."  "Well," the Abbot responded, "why didn't you sit in a chair?"  He went on to say that you should not let aches and pains distract your during your practice, yet neither should you intentionally set yourself up for pain.

It's true, there are all sorts of teachings about how one should sit, perhaps especially within the Zen tradition.  And sometimes these instruction include esoteric meanings in the postures -- this represents the teaching of non-duality; this other thing represents holding the cosmos; etc.  Fundamentally, though, there are some pragmatic explanations for why you do what you do.

Sitting on the front ends of a cushion, with the legs folded in full lotus, it was explained to me, is an extremely stable position.  You are grounded, unlikely to move.  (One monk said that it was really so that monks wouldn't fall over and knock each other down if they fell asleep during those early morning sittings!)  So, whether you sit on the ground, or in a chair, do so in a way that's sold and stable.  The same is true for just about every other traditional teaching about meditation posture -- taken as a whole their purpose is to help the body to remain as still as possible, since Buddhists new thousands of years ago that a restless body and a restless mind generally go together.

So when you sit, sit comfortably, yet solidly.  Don't let yourself be so comfortable that you'll slouch (which is actually an uncomfortable position to hold for too long), and so that your body can remain still yet alert in the same way you'd like your mind to be.  Thich Nhat Hanh even speaks to the proscription against moving while meditating with his profound gentleness.  He says that if your nose itches, why not go ahead and scratch it?  Just do so with intention and awareness.  And if your leg falls asleep and you'd like to move it, go ahead -- just be as aware of that decision and its concomitant movement as you are of your breath.

So ... there you go.  Time and body aches need no longer be a hurdle.  On Wednesday let's look at that wandering mind.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Types of Prayer

As noted in the last post, the prayer bead practice I describe in my book Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life uses what I call the two "styles" of prayer -- rote and improvisatory.  Today I want to say a little something about the four "types" prayer incorporated in this practice.

When you look at prayer practices from a distance, looking at them across traditions and without attaching any particular theological limitations to your exploration, you'll notice certain types of prayer are present just about anywhere the concept of payer, itself, is present.  The wonderful Anne Lammott suggests in her book Thanks, Help, Wow: the three essential prayers, that there are, well, three essential prayers.  Those prayers can be summed up in those three words:  thanks, help, and wow.  I think that she's missed one, so my practice leads you through four.

First, there are prayers of gratitude.  While there are "technical" differences, I think that you can take prayers of thanksgiving, and prayers of praise, and consider them both to be prayers of gratitude.  And it makes sense to me that any practice of prayer should start with a recognition, a conscious awareness of and attention to, the beauty, the miracles, around us.   One of E. E. Cummings' most well known poems begins:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

I discussed this poem in an earlier post, and how many people start their day reciting this poem, or at least this stanza.  "i thank You God for most this amazing day."  The 14th century German philosopher, theologian, preacher, priest, and mystic Meister Eckhart famously said, "If you pray only one prayer in your life, and it is 'thank you,' it will be sufficient."  In the prayer bead practice I describe I call these prayers of Naming.  In and through them we name the things in our lives for which we are grateful.

Next there comes what I refer to as prayers of Knowing.  These are perhaps more traditionally known as prayers of confession, although that term carries a great deal of baggage and is something I'll explore in a later post.  As is so often the case, I think that the 12 Step programs once again give us very helpful language to understand traditional religious concepts in more accessible ways.  In the 4th Step we make, "a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," and in the 5th Step we, "[Admit] to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

In the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous explains the 4th Steps through the analogy of a business which, in order to stay successful must routinely take an inventory of its stock, getting rid of things that have, for instance, passed their expiration date, become moldy, etc.  It's also important to get a clear idea of just what usable items you have on your shelves, so that you don't run out of them when you need them most.  For our inner lives, too, it's important to regularly take stock, to look at what's no longer serving us, what's getting in the way of our growth, and what may actually be causing us harm, as well as to see what good things we might want to "order" more of.

The purpose of the 5th Step is described as being vitally important because it seems to be human nature to try to hide those parts of ourselves that we consider "broken" or "bad."  We can so easily become trapped in feelings of shame and worthlessness.  If we don't honestly acknowledge our whole selves -- our "bad" as well as our "good" -- we can never actually be whole.  So it's important to admit to ourselves where we are less than we want to be.  Yet if that's all we do, we still might live with that all too common sense that, "if they really knew me no one would like me."  Admitting to "another human being," then, is a way of demonstrating to ourselves -- actually experiencing -- that who we are is okay.  When we share the "shocking" with someone who doesn't immediately shun us, we step out from beneath the weight of shame and begin to experience the kind of freedom the spiritual life is all about.

In case it's not clear, this prayer of Knowing has nothing to do with groveling or adding to our feelings of shame and worthlessness.  Rather, it's about knowing who we are -- all of who we are -- and recognizing that in this moment we are what we are ... a mixture of positives and negatives, weaknesses and strengths, things we're proud of and things we'd like to change.  Having grounded ourselves by naming all that is good in our lives, we have the context to fearless face the knowing of all that is not.

Next comes what I call prayers of Listening.  Every religious tradition we humans have ever created has had practices designed to help us quiet our inner monologues, let go of the cacophony which often surrounds us, and tune into what the Hebrew Scriptures call, "the still, small voice" of God. (The New International Version translates this as "gentle whisper," and a friend's direct translation is, "a voice of quiet stillness.")  Whether you call this meditation or contemplation, whether you think of it as listening for "the voice of God" or getting in tune with your own "inner wisdom," there is not a religious/spiritual tradition that does not advocate for developing a practice of silence and stillness.  And, so, after naming the ways life's beauty and goodness are manifested in our lives, and then fearlessly facing and knowing ourselves in our fullness, we are then prepared for some deep listening.

Coming out of this listening, we are then able to really engage in the prayer practices which some traditions call petition or supplication.  There are what I'll call "technical" differences between these two types of prayer, yet it seems to me that they boil down to prayers aimed at caring for others (and ourselves).  This could be asking "God" to help someone who's sick or going through a hard time, sending these people (or ourselves) "good vibes," or simply lifting them up for us to consciously and intentionally become aware of.  In short, I think of these as Loving prayers, the last of the four types of prayer that are incorporated in the prayer bead practice I developed and encouraged.

Next week I'll use another approach to explain the process of this practice.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Our Place in the Cosmos - We Are All Connected

Many years ago now I stumbled across the work of a musician, remix artist, and video maker that has inspired me ever since. He goes by the name Melodysheep, but his real name is John D. Boswell.  While he's done a great deal more than this, what has touched me so powerfully is his "Symphony of Science" series.

In his Symphony of Science videos, Melodysheep (Boswell) takes ordinary science lectures and documentaries, and mixes them with original music (and using technology to make the scientists "sing").  These visual and musical creations are sermons, as far as I'm concerned.  (I'm mindful that Saint Francis is remembered as saying, "Preach always.  When necessary use words.")

In the next few posts I'm going to share some of my personal favorites from this series, and I encourage you watch and listen meditatively.  Afterward you might want to think about how you felt during the video, as well as what you might have been thinking about.  (From the point of view of spiritual direction, how we feel -- physically and emotionally -- can be much more revealing that what our intellects think.)  Some questions that might guide you meditation include:

How do I feel while watching this video?

Which effected me more -- the words, the visuals, or the music?

Did the video in any way change the way I look at myself or the world?

Am I continuing to reflect on the video for some time after watching it?

What might this video -- and the act of engaging with it -- have to do with my spiritual life?

You also might to share these videos with friends and family members -- encouraging them to also watch the meditations, or perhaps watching them together.  You could then talk with each other about your experience(s).

The first one I'll share is the first one I discovered, "Our Place in the Cosmos."  It includes clips fro m Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Richard Dawkins' Genius of Charles Darwin series as well as his TED Talk, Stephen Hawing's Universe, Michio Kaku's interview on physics and aliens, along with added visuals from the films Baraka, Koyaanisqatsi History Channel's Universe series, and IMAX Cosmic Voyage.

* * * * *

This second video, "We Are All Connected," includes clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, The History Channel's Universe series, Richard Feynman's 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Cosmic Sermon," and Bill Nye's Eyes of Nye series.  It also includes visuals from NOVA's The Elegant Universe, Stephen Hawking's Universe, Cosmos, and Powers of 10 (plus others).

Enjoy!

Pax tecum,

RevWik