Category: Spirituality

It’s okay to be broken

In our own ways, each of us hears that most sacred call – to return home, to come to know ourselves at the deepest levels, and to somehow allow this precious life to be organized around love. We have also come to see that to respond to this call requires everything we have (and more); we are asked to step all the way into the unknown, taking the risk that love always requires. We sense that there is no way to make this journey without the breaking open of our tender, vulnerable hearts, in response to this blessed world.

We want so badly to figure this life out, to resolve the sticky, gooey, messiness of the heart, and to control the movement of love. We know we can do it, we can hold it all together, we can remain strong, we can find a way to not completely shatter in response the tenderness of this life as it is. But in one moment out of time, we’re flooded with a certain kind of grace, and it becomes so clear: It’s okay to fall apart, to let love take this life apart, and to reassemble it as the master architect that it is. There is no need to push this back any longer, for you were never together to begin with. What you are is love itself, which can never be contained, limited, resolved or pinned down. Love is never “together,” but is always moving within the unknown, as a raging fire seeding this world with its ever-purifying flames. Fall apart and resist the temptation to put yourself back together again – and see what is forever and into eternity untouched by concepts of “together” and “apart.”

There are lovers content with longing. I'm not one of them. ~ Rumi

It’s okay to be broken, for in your brokenness love can then pour through the cracks of your being by way of the most luminous light. As you open in this way, you watch in awe as that same intelligence and creativity which birthed the stars moves through your body, making use of your entire sensory system to seed this world with its essence. Through all the ways you touch and deeply listen to another, wanting so sweetly to come to know how they organize their experience and how they make meaning of their lives, through the kind words that you speak and presence that you offer them – and even (especially) through all of your broken-open places – this life comes to be revealed as something much different than you originally thought. It is seen, finally, for what it is – a grace-field; and what you are is a unique, alive, unrepeatable expression of this field, a transparent vessel for love to move in this world.

 

The Two Languages of Spirit: Silence and Art

Tami Simon speaks with Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest, activist, internationally acclaimed spiritual theologian, and author of 30 books. After 34 years with the Dominican Order, Matthew was asked to resign because of his outspoken views on feminism, homosexuality, and other issues. With Sounds True, he created the audio program Radical Prayer: Love in Action, and he will speak at Sounds True’s Wake Up Festival this August. Here, Tami and Matthew speak about the “Cosmic Mass,” group ritual and prayer, the reinvention of culture, and spirituality without religion. They also discuss the marriage of the sacred masculine and the divine feminine and how this marriage is imperative in our time. (64 minutes)

See Matthew Fox live in August 2013. Visit WakeUpFestival.com for more information.

Turning Towards What’s Difficult

Tami Simon speaks with Lama Tsultrim Allione, an author, former Tibetan nun, internationally known Buddhist teacher, and founder of the Tara Mandala retreat center. Lama Tsultrim has created several audio programs with Sounds True, including The Mandala of the Enlightened Feminine and Cutting through Fear, which helps us meet and release the demons of fears and other unhelpful emotions and obsessions. In this episode, Tami and Lama Tsultrim speak about the sacred feminine within Buddhism and how to understand it without creating duality. They also discuss the eleventh-century Tibetan yogini Machig Labdrön and Lama Tsultrim’s journey through grief over the sudden loss of her husband. (69 minutes)

Insights from a Nondual Rabbi

Tami Simon speaks with Rabbi Rami Shapiro, an award-winning author of more than two dozen nonfiction books, whose poems and short stories have been anthologized in over a dozen volumes and whose prayers are used in prayer books around the world. A congregational rabbi for 20 years, Rabbi Rami will be a featured presenter at Sounds True’s 2013 Wake Up Festival in August. In this episode, Tami and Rabbi Rami speak about his early experiences of nonduality and how his nonduality teachings have evolved dramatically over time. They also talk about preparing for death, teachings and practices to help people “die into the arms of love,” and Rabbi Rami’s unusual take on the practice of forgiveness. (67 minutes)

See Rabbi Rami Shapiro live in August 2013. Visit WakeUpFestival.com for more information.

Cynthia Bourgeault: When Two Become One: Love Beyond D...

Tami Simon speaks with Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, author, and teacher of prayer in the contemplative Christian tradition. She is the principal teacher and advisor to the Contemplative Society and a passionate teacher of Centering Prayer. Cynthia is the author of Love Is Stronger than Death and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, and with Sounds True she has created the audio learning course Encountering the Wisdom Jesus and the audio program Singing the Psalms. In this episode, Tami and Cynthia speak about new insights on the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the concept of the “abler soul”—when two souls come together to form something greater. (64 minutes)

A.H. Almaas: Love of the Truth, Without End

Tami Simon speaks with A.H. Almaas. A.H. Almaas is the pen name for Hameed Ali, best known as the originator of the wisdom path known as the Diamond Approach. He is the author of 14 books, including The Unfolding Now, and his works with Sounds True include the audio learning course The Diamond Approach and Realization Unfolds, a dialogue with Adyashanti. In this episode, Tami speaks with Hameed about some of the distinct characteristics of the Diamond Approach as an approach to investigating both reality and oneself as a path to liberation, why he makes no distinction between a psychological and spiritual approach to inquiry, and how the love of truth drives the process of realization. (73 minutes)

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