Category: Relationships

LaRayia Gaston: Love Without Reason

LaRayia Gaston is a former model, actress, and the founder of the nonprofit Lunch On Me, an organization dedicated to offering organic, healthy food and holistic healing to those experiencing homelessness. She’s also a regular public speaker, podcast guest, and activist. She filmed a documentary, 43 Days on Skid Row, which shows her time living with LA’s Skid Row residents and offers up a true picture of what life is really like in one of America’s largest homeless communities. In this podcast, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with LaRayia about her new book, Love Without Reason. They discuss the superpower called “love”; why connection and empowerment are central to ending hunger; gratitude as an action, not just an attitude; transforming our “withholding” and scarcity mindsets; seeing humanity “on every corner, in every person”; and more. 

David Deida: Conscious Light Through Two Bodies: The Y...

David Deida is a bestselling and provocative author that continues to revolutionize the way that people grow spiritually and sexually. His 10 books are published in more than 25 languages. He is regularly included in the Watkins Review Spiritual 100 list designating the most spiritually influential people worldwide. With Sounds True, David Deida has published numerous books over the years, including the bestselling, The Way of the Superior Man, which is now available in a special 20th-anniversary edition with a new foreword by David. In this podcast, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with David about knowing ourselves as the light of consciousness, masculine and feminine energetic essences, personal growth through the yogic art of intimacy, and much more.

Valarie Kaur: Activating Revolutionary Love

Valarie Kaur is a seasoned civil rights activist and celebrated prophetic voice at the forefront of progressive change. She’s the founder of the Revolutionary Love Project and author of the book See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. With Sounds True, Valarie has created The People’s Inauguration—a 10-day online program to help us reckon with all we have lost and point us toward a vision of the society we can build together, grounded in love. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Valarie discuss “revolutionary love” as a guiding ethic for our times. They explore what it is to extend love to all people without limit and how opening our hearts in this way is both an ancient and radical act. Valarie also talks about “the heart and the fist,” and why both are necessary in order to create the systemic, cultural, and environmental transformations our world needs. Finally, Valarie shares what we can learn from our rage and grief, as well as the importance of connecting with our joy and our ancestors as we keep showing up for the labors of love before us.

Matthieu Ricard: Finding Inner Freedom

Matthieu Ricard is a French author, photographer, translator, and Buddhist monk. With Sounds True, he has joined with coauthors Christophe André, a well-known French psychiatrist, and Swiss philosopher Alexandre Jollien to create two books: In Search of Wisdom: A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on What Matters Most and, most recently, Freedom for All of Us: A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on Finding Inner Peace. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Matthieu about the path to inner freedom. They discuss the obstacles we encounter on the path, such as addiction or confusing our willpower with true freedom. Matthieu also explores what supports inner freedom, the nature of optimism, and the training we must go through. Finally, they move into the “harvest” that comes from cultivating deep and lasting inner freedom.

 

Thomas Hübl: Healing Collective Trauma

Thomas Hübl is an Austrian-born contemporary spiritual teacher and the founder of the Academy of Inner Science. With Sounds True, he has recorded the audio training The Power of We: Awakening in the Relational Field and written a book titled Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Thomas about healing collective trauma as the work of our time. They discuss how we can feel and are affected by major traumas of the past, even if we didn’t directly experience them, and the ways in which this contributes to our collective separation. Thomas also explains the concept of “retrocausality,” or the potential for the healing we undertake in our lifetimes to benefit our entire family lines. At a time when so much ancestral trauma, multigenerational trauma, and cultural trauma is in our midst, Thomas invites us to turn toward it and join together to heal and integrate the pain of the past as we create a different future.

Dilip Jeste, MD: Wiser, Faster

Dr. Dilip Jeste is a professor of psychiatry and neurosciences and the director of the Center for Healthy Aging at UC San Diego. He’s spent the last 20 years studying aspects of healthy aging and the neurobiological roots of wisdom. With Sounds True, Dr. Jeste has written a new book titled Wiser: The Scientific Roots of Wisdom, Compassion, and What Makes Us Good. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Jeste about wisdom—what it is, how we can cultivate more of it in our own lives, and how we can grow into a wiser society. They explore a new definition of wisdom that incorporates neurobiological and evolutionary components of what makes us wise, as well as the social and cultural ones we might be more familiar with. Dr. Jeste and Tami also discuss the future of wisdom, including the potential of a metaphorical “wisdom pill.” Finally, they speak on the importance of helping our society become wiser, faster.

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