Please Support The Show With a Donation   This week we talk to Claire Hoffman Claire Hoffman works as a magazine writer living in Los Angeles, writing for national magazines, covering culture, religion, celebrity, business and whatever else seems interesting. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a freelance reporter for the New York Times. She has a masters degree in religion from the University of Chicago, and a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University. She serves on the board of her family foundation, the Goldhirsh Foundation, as well as the Columbia Journalism School. Claire is a native Iowan and has been meditating since she was three years old. Her new book is called: Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood. In This Interview, Claire Hoffman and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable Her new book: Greeting from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood. Growing up in a transcendental meditation community How that community changed over time The meditation only trailer park Rationality versus belief How things can be so much more beautiful and strange than logic allows Moving away from the meditation community in her late teens Being tired of the negative cynical voice in her head Revisiting the meditation community many years later Can meditation cause people to levitate? Quieting the cynical doubting mind Is evolution antithetical to happiness? Yogic flying: what it is and what it looks like How she felt about seeing her mom attempt to fly The desire to escape being human, to be divine That part if being who she is is feeling uncomfortable Accepting what it's like to be a person Her evolution as a meditator That she doesn't aspire to being enlightened Claire Hoffman Links Homepage Twitter Facebook Please Support The Show with a Donation