There is a light alive within the darkness

Sounds True —

December 27, 2013

Will you hold another who has been touched by the darkness within? Will you love them enough to allow them to fall apart in your arms? To unravel, to become unglued, and to feel unbearably lost as the wisdom of their process unfolds? Will you be the space in which they can finally meet the feelings and emotions that have been kept at bay for a lifetime?

To love another in this way you must touch everything that is unresolved within you – all of your own unmet sadness, abandoned shame, discarded grief, and deserted aloneness. You are willing to no longer stay safe on the sidelines. You are willing to get messy. Even gooey and drippy.

Will you set aside your need for the other to change, to be different, to be “cured,” to be transformed, and to be healed? Will you resist the temptation to talk them out of their embodied experience, to tell them everything will be okay, and to dishonor the creativity hidden inside the unwanted? Will you allow your heart to break with them, and endure the urge inside you to put it all back together again? Will you fall into the unknown with them, holding them close, and provide a home for their brokenness?

To care about others, yourself, and the world in this way you must stay radically embodied. You are no longer interested in transcending suffering, confusion, and neurosis, for you see these as thundering expressions of the path itself. Please don’t turn away. As your attention moves out into the conceptual world, return to the wild intelligence of your body, for it is there that love is working behind the scenes, giving birth to its sweet activity in this dimension.

It is in this factory of love, which is operating as the temple of your own body, where the sacred world is revealing its essential secrets of healing: there is no “other,” there has never been an “other,” and there could never be an “other.” There is only the reflection of your own being.

Love is taking the pieces of your heart and is using them to re-assemble the world in front of you, each as an invitation sent to reveal to you the preciousness of what is really happening here.

Posted December 27, 2013

Author Info for Sounds True Coming Soon

Products By Author

Sounds True eGift Card

$5.00

Starting at: $5.00

Also By Author

See All

blog

Post Views: 520

Six Summer Reads You Won’t Want to Miss!

Sounds True — July 3, 2018

After the stillness of winter and the slow waking of spring, summer is a time for getting up, getting out, and getting our hands on what inspires us the most. Here are some recent Sounds True releases for tapping into a life well lived.

1. The Biophilia Effect – Clemens G. Arvay

Summer Super Sale - The Biophilia Effect

This is a book that celebrates our interconnection with nature and shows how to deeply engage the natural world wherever you live to dramatically improve your health. Clemens G. Arvay presents fascinating research, practical tools and activities,

inspiring stories, and more in this accessible guide to the remarkable benefits of being in nature.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-biophilia-effect.html

2. The Healing Code of Nature – Clemens G. Arvay

The Healing Code of Nature - Clemens G. Arvay

Human beings are inseparable from the natural world, coevolving with all of life. In order to thrive, we need to nourish this bond. In his latest book, biologist Clemens G. Arvay illuminates the miraculous ways that the human body interprets the living “code” of plants, animals, and our larger natural habitat for healing and sustenance.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-healing-code-of-nature.html

3. Book of Beasties – Sarah Seidelman

Summer Super Sale - Book of Beasties

“From an ancient perspective, everything—including all natural things, like rocks, flowers, trees, insects, birds, and mammals

—is alive and infused with conscious energy or spirit,” writes Sarah Seidelmann. If you’re one of the many people looking to reconnect with the creativity, wisdom, and vital energy of the natural world, here is a fantastic guide for tapping into the power of animal totems, or “beasties.”

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/book-of-beasties.html

4. No Recipe – Edward Espe Brown

“Making your love manifest, transforming your spirit, good heart, and able hands into food is a great undertaking,” writes renowned chef and Zen priest Edward Espe Brown, “one that will nourish you in the doing, in the offering, and in the eating.” With No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice, Brown beautifully blends expert cooking advice with thoughtful reflections on meaning, joy, and life itself.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/no-recipe.html

5. Yoga Friends – Mariam Gates & Rolf Gates

Summer Super Sale - Yoga Friends From the creators of Good Night Yoga and Good Morning Yoga comes a beautifully illustrated city adventure that introduces children to the delights and benefits of partner yoga.

Perfect for teaming up with a friend, sibling, parent, or caregiver, each easy practice shows how cooperation helps us to imagine, move, and have fun in a whole new way.

Includes a back-page guide for parents and caregivers, showing how to do each pose and how to connect them into an easy-to-follow flow.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/yoga-friends.html

6. Happier Now – Nataly Kogan

What if you could be happier, right now, without radically changing your life? As nationally recognized happiness expert Nataly Kogan teaches, happiness is not a nice feeling or a frivolous extra. It’s a critical, non-negotiable ingredient for living a fulfilling, meaningful, and healthy life—and it’s a skill that we can all learn and improve through practice. In Happier Now, Nataly shares an illuminating, inspiring, and science-based guide to help you build your happier skills and live with more joy, starting now.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/happier-now.html

Have other books you’ve read by the poolside or under a shade tree ended up changing the way you see the world? Tell us about those summer reads that ended up being more than you expected!

blog

Post Views: 1,277

Singing Bowl Meditation Sounds True Spotify Playlist

Sounds True — November 29, 2017

Sounds True is on Spotify!

Need some tunes for rest and relaxation? Check out our Singing Bowl Meditation Playlist! A variety of artists who make a soothing mix of infinite rhythms using Tibetan singing bowls. Perfect throughout a meditative practice.

blog

Post Views: 314

November New Releases and Giveaway

Sounds True — November 20, 2017

NOVEMBER NEW RELEASES

The Integrity Advantage by Kelly Kosow

Are you ready to open up to new levels of self-trust and self-love, to get where you want to go?

You vowed to speak up at work, and then sat silent in the meeting yet again.

You told yourself “this time the diet is going to stick,” only to watch the scale inching up.

You felt that something just wasn’t right about someone that—until you learned the hard way that your instincts were right.

“Every time you bite your tongue,” teaches Kelley Kosow, “you swallow your integrity.”

Before Kelley Kosow was a renowned life coach and CEO, she constantly second-guessed herself, let her “to-do” lists and others steer her dreams and passions, and played it “small and safe.”

Inspired by the groundbreaking principles of her renowned mentor Debbie Ford, who hand-picked Kelley to be her successor, The Integrity Advantage is Kelley’s step-by-step guide for facing the fear, shame, and false beliefs that cause us to lose our way.

Through life-changing insights, true stories, and proven strategies, this book will show you how to live on your own terms—according to you—from the inside out.

Daring to Rest by Karen Brody

As modern women, we’re taught that we can do it all, have it all, and be it all. While this freedom is beautiful, it’s also exhausting. Being a “worn-out woman” is now so common that we think feeling tired all the time is normal. According to Karen Brody, feeling this exhausted is not normal—and it’s holding us back. In Daring to Rest, Brody comes to the rescue with a 40-day program to help you reclaim rest and access your most powerful, authentic self through yoga nidra, a meditative practice that guides you into one of the deepest states of relaxation imaginable.

It’s time to lie down and begin the journey to waking up

Breathe and Be by Anna Emilia Laitinen and Kate Coombs

Teaching mindfulness helps kids learn to stay calm, regulate their emotions, and appreciate the world around them. With Breathe and Be, author Kate Coombs and illustrator Anna Emilia Laitinen team up to present a book of poetry and art for young readers to make mindfulness easy, natural, and beautiful. Here is a book sure to delight parents and kids alike, blending lovingly illustrated nature imagery with elegant verse about living with awareness and inner peace.

Leopard Warrior by John Lockley

A Teaching Memoir That Crosses the Barriers Between Worlds

A shaman is one who has learned to move between two worlds: our physical reality and the realm of spirits. For John Lockley, shamanic training also meant learning to cross the immense divide of race and culture in South Africa.

As a medic drafted into the South African military in 1990, John Lockley had a powerful dream. “Even though I am a white man of Irish and English descent, I knew in my bones that I had received my calling to become a sangoma, a traditional South African shaman,” John writes. “I felt blessed by the ancient spirit of Africa, and I knew that I had started on a journey filled with magic and danger.” His path took him from the hills of South Korea, where he trained as a student under Zen Master Su Bong, to the rural African landscape of the Eastern Cape and the world of the sangoma mystic healers, where he found his teacher in the medicine woman called MaMngwev

Things That Join the Sea and the Sky by Mark Nepo

A Reader for Navigating the Depths of Our Lives

The Universe holds us and tosses us about, only to hold us again. With Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark Nepo brings us a compelling treasury of short prose reflections to turn to when struggling to keep our heads above water, and to breathe into all of our sorrows and joys.

Inspired by his own journal writing across 15 years, this book shares with us some of Mark’s most personal work. Many passages arise from accounts of his own life events—moments of “sinking and being lifted”—and the insights they yielded. Through these passages, we’re encouraged to navigate our own currents of sea and sky, and to discover something fundamental yet elusive: How, simply, to be here.

To be enjoyed in many ways—individually, by topic, or as an unfolding sequence—Things That Join the Sea and the Sky presents 145 contemplations gathered into 17 themes, each intended to illuminate specific situations.

NOVEMBER GIVEAWAY

WIN OUR NEW RELEASE BUNDLE:The Integrity Advantage, Daring to Rest, Breathe and Be, Leopard Warrior, and Things That Join the Sea and the Sky

TO ENTER: Simply reply in the comments with why you’d like to win!

You Might Also Enjoy

podcast

Post Views: 4,966

Emily Nagoski, PhD: Pleasure Is the Measure: How to Ha...

Emily Nagoski — October 8, 2024

Why is it so hard to talk about sex? How can we be a better friend and lover for our partner? What’s the secret to maintaining “the magic” that first brought us together? Acclaimed sex educator and New York Times bestselling author Emily Nagoski views these questions through a unique lens that centers pleasure—not desire—in her counseling work with struggling couples.

In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Emily about the empowering insights in her newest book, Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. Listen now to their conversation on: breaking free from the desire imperative; the groundbreaking work of Helen Singer Kaplan; the dual control model of sexual response and the analogy of brakes and accelerators; “turning on the ons and turning off the offs”; reducing your stressors as a key aspect of centering pleasure in your life; friendship and admiration: two essentials for long-term relationships; trust, vulnerability, and emotional accessibility; creativity, play, and freedom; following your own rules; talking about sex; the fear of rejection; how “good communication gets you good sex; great communication gets you great sex”; incompatibility; the interplay of attraction and self-worth; body acceptance; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

podcast

Post Views: 4,078

Valarie Kaur: Sage Warrior

Valarie Kaur — October 1, 2024

Through the eyes of the sage, all of humanity is kin. And all of our ancestors are available to support us if we relate to them with integrity and respect. So teaches social activist and author Valarie Kaur in her new book, Sage Warrior. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Valarie about how we can navigate the time of cultural transition that we find ourselves in by “reclaiming love as a force for justice, healing, and transformation.”

Give a listen to this conversation that is at once highly informative and deeply inspiring, as Tami and Valarie discuss: bringing together the heart of devotion and the fist held high in the name of liberation; taking our saints and sages off of the pedestal; a brief history of the Sikh tradition; the city of Punjab in the 15th century; the warrior-mystic; dismantling hierarchies; walking the path of love without following a leader; the legendary female sage warrior, Mai Bhago; acts of love that change everything; the power of story; sustaining one’s energy throughout long labor; releasing that which does not serve you; the Revolutionary Love Bus Tour—and how you can get involved in this work; and more.

podcast

Post Views: 2,133

Elizabeth Earnshaw: ‘Til Stress Do Us Part

Elizabeth Earnshaw — September 24, 2024

What if the problem in your relationship isn’t you or your partner but the mountain of stress you’re both dealing with? It’s a no-brainer to say that too much stress kills intimacy, but what do we really mean when we say “stress”? And what can we actually do about it? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with couples therapist and author Elizabeth Earnshaw about her new book, ’Til Stress Do Us Part: How to Heal the #1 Issue in Our Relationships.

Give a listen for a wealth of actionable insights and wise approaches to navigate and manage the stressors in your relationship, including how to comfort a partner under stress; the art of nervous system co-regulation; awareness: the prerequisite for change; learning the signs of dysregulation and how to self-soothe; Gottman’s “Four Horsemen”: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt; stress as a physiological cycle; step one: identify your own stressors; the narrative of a gap between who you are and who you want to be; intentional sacrifice; making structural changes that make life less stressful; discernment around what we can and cannot control; and more.

Jennifer Shepherd-Dawson says:

January 31, 2014 at 6:35 am

I went through a divorce in 2007. Just recently,I reconnected with a friend who is going
through a divorce now. I know that my purpose is to help her through this difficult time and that this is my opportunity to finally heal. Do you have any advice?