SOUL FRIENDSHIP & THE CONTEMPLATIVE PATH | The Free Radical Podcast # EP 71 — Carl McColman 6/3/26

Join us for an upcoming episode of the Free Radical Podcast, featuring spiritual director, teacher, retreat leader, and author Carl McColman.

Carl McColman is a lay practitioner under formal spiritual guidance from sisters and monks associated with the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit. His formation in Christian contemplative spirituality and contemplative leadership was shaped through the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, and he also received training in the practice of spiritual direction through the Institute of Pastoral Studies.

He is also the author of more than a dozen books, alongside contributions to publications such as Huffington Post and Evie of the Arts, and he continues to travel widely, leading retreats and speaking on contemplative spirituality.

Alongside this deep grounding in the Christian contemplative tradition, Carl’s path has also moved through goddess spirituality, nature-centred practice, and interfaith encounter. His early studies in comparative spirituality, together with a sustained engagement with the Christian mystics, have shaped a sensibility attuned to the hidden depths running beneath all religious forms—the presence that is both beyond and within what can be named.

In this conversation, we enter a contemplative space where language begins to loosen its edges: where the divine feminine is encountered as a living presence rather than merely a theological idea; where duality and non-duality are held in creative tension; and where awe, imagination, and wonder become ways of seeing rather than ideas to be held. We reflect on the sacredness that pulses through the natural world, and on scripture as a field of encounter rather than explanation.

on Youtube! Swami Padmanabha – YouTube