Ep. 593 – A Journey Through Psyche & Spirit with Melinda Edwards, MD
Mindrolling with Raghu Markus
Be Here Now Network
4.7 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Melinda Edwards sits down with Raghu for a journey through psyche and spirit, revealing the doorways that led her out of trauma, into healing, and ultimately home to her heart.
This time on Mindrolling, Raghu and Dr. Melinda Edwards discuss:
- How Dr. Melinda Edwards grew up as a child of medical missionaries in Guatemala
- The build-up of trauma in Dr. Edwards’ life and how it manifested as an eating disorder
- How meeting Ram Dass transformed Melinda’s life and guided her to Neem Karoli Baba
- Ram Dass’ example of holding unconditional love and compassionate presence for others
- Using our issues and contractions as an individualized path forward for spiritual growth
- Considering the value of psychedelics for accelerating a spiritual journey
- The powerful impact of full commitment and surrender during meditation retreats
- Addressing common misconceptions about autism and how autistic individuals process emotions
- Dr. Melinda’s experience teaching her daughter “how to be human” and to navigate this chaotic world
- Living Darshan, Dr. Edwards’ non-profit, aimed at increasing the understanding of neurodiversity
- The challenge and importance of keeping our hearts open, even in moments of resistance
- Finding shared humanity in the people and traits we fear, reject, or dislike in others
- Facing our inner rage, grief, and pain in response to the global political and emotional climate
This episode is sponsored by Reunion & Dharma Seed:
Mindrolling is brought to you by Reunion. Reunion is offering $250 off any stay to the Love, Serve, Remember community. Simply use the code “BeHere250” when booking. Disconnect from the world so you can reconnect with yourself at Reunion. Hotel | www.reunionhotelandwellness.com Retreats | www.reunionexperience.org
Join Krishna Das, the most well-known voice of Bhakti chanting (Kirtan) in the West, and David Nichtern - a senior Buddhist teacher, founder of Dharma Moon, guitarist in Krishna Das’ band, and producer of several of his albums - for a warm and engaging conversation about these two paths, their shared roots, and how they intersect in contemporary spiritual practice. Learn more about this FREE online gathering - THE HEART & MIND OF PRACTICE: BUDDHISM & BHAKTI
About Dr. Melinda Edwards:
Melinda Edwards, MD is a mother, writer and physician in Charleston, SC. Her medical training and her life’s journey home to her own heart inform her work as a psychiatrist. Supporting others in their discovery of the love that we all are is one of her greatest joys. She is the founder of the 501c3 nonprofit organization Living Darshan and is the author of Psyche & Spirit: How a Psychiatrist Found Divinity Through Her Lifelong Quest for Truth and Her Daughter’s Autism. Keep up with Dr. Edwards on her website or on her Instagram.
"Our psychology, our contractions, our issues, whatever comes up is itself the doorway back home to our hearts. Isn't that a miracle? Each of us has a perfectly individualized path laid out right in front of our noses each moment." – Melinda Edwards, MD
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, it's Ragu, and I'm back with Mind rolling, and I'm here with Melinda Edwards. |
| 0:26.7 | And Melinda, welcome to the podcast. |
| 0:29.8 | Thank you, Raghu. It's great to be here. |
| 0:37.9 | So this, well, this podcast is rich with a few different things. |
| 0:41.4 | Melinda has a wonderful book called Psychian Spirit, |
| 0:45.8 | which describes her journey and the journey of her daughter. |
| 0:49.8 | And so this is a spiritual journey, and it's a journey around what is much more common than we think, which is autism. |
| 0:58.5 | And so we're going to talk about that as well. |
| 1:02.2 | But, you know, I thought I had a really screwed up growing up. |
| 1:11.2 | And, you, you, I mean, your story isn't that different than many, many, many people who grew up in the |
| 1:19.1 | fundamentalist movement. |
| 1:22.6 | And, but to get the detail of it, I don't think I've gotten that kind of detail that you shared. |
| 1:31.1 | It's extraordinary. Now, of course, I had, I didn't grow up in a fundamentalist household, |
| 1:38.1 | but I grew up with a tyrannical father, and you seem to have experienced that as well. |
| 1:52.8 | I was fortunate that my guru named Kuroli Bava got my father, |
| 1:57.7 | it got me to give my father acid when he came to visit us in India, which I was completely not ready for whatsoever, either him coming or me giving him acid, and it changed the |
| 2:06.5 | course of our lives. So we were very fortunate, my father and I, both of us. So, and that happened for |
| 2:15.1 | you. I think it had a longer gestation period. But can you, yeah, I think everybody would love to hear how you grew into and out of what this karma dictated for you. |
| 2:31.9 | Well, you know, first, just the broader perspective as you were talking, |
| 2:36.1 | what came to mind was what a friend said a few days ago to me. He said, you know, some people |
| 2:41.2 | say that when our souls come in, as a soul, we meet with a group of elder souls, and we |
| 2:50.0 | discuss the karma that we're going to work out in this lifetime. |
... |
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