Tami Simon speaks with Patricia Aburdene, one of the world’s leading social forecasters and is the author of the Sounds True audio program Megatrends 2010. Patricia discusses the rise of conscious capitalism, living your spiritual values at work, and what she calls, “the spiritual transformation of capitalism.” (46 minutes)
Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Rubin Naiman, an internationally recognized leader in integrative sleep and dream medicine. Dr. Naiman serves as the sleep specialist at the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine, directed by Dr. Andrew Weil. With Sounds True, he has produced the audio programs Healthy Sleep (coauthored with Dr. Weil) and The Yoga of Sleep, as well as the online course Ask the Sleep Doctor: Relieve Insomnia, Sleep and Dream Deeply, Wake Up Refreshed. In this episode, Tami speaks with Dr. Naiman about how hyperarousal interferes with healthy sleep, the power of weaning ourselves off the alarm clock, and how we can embrace the deeper dimensions of sleep and dreams. (57 minutes)
Michael Gelb is an internationally recognized authority on creative thought and visionary leadership who has provided his expertise to companies such as IBM and Nike for more than 30 years. The author of the bestselling How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael’s new book with Sounds True is Creativity On Demand: How to Ignite and Sustain the Fire of Genius. In this episode, Tami Simon speaks with Michael about what it takes to develop a “creative mindset” rather than a “fixed mindset.” They also talk about the most effective qigong practices for renewing energy and supercharging the creative process. Finally, Michael speaks on how embracing uncertainty is one of the key aspects of learning to be truly creative. (64 minutes)
What is spiritual awakening? Author, respected energy healer, and medical doctor Ann Marie Chiasson speaks of the journey as waking up to the reality that “we’re all in a flow together.” Rather than perceiving reality through the lens of what we want, we begin to see things as they are, which releases a tremendous amount of energy in our lives. Filmed live at The Wake Up Festival, Dr. Chiasson describes her experience of awakening and its implications in our lives.
We at Sounds True are committed to exploring the many faces and facets of awakening, and would love to hear from you as to your experience and understanding. Perhaps it is the case that there are 7 billion doorways into awakening, one for each human heart.
Hey, far be it from me to offer instructions on how to host a stress-free holiday party, since I can’t remember the last time I even hosted a holiday party, let alone stress-free. Still, as someone who has spent decades in the kitchen, what I do know is that people spend way too much time and effort trying to follow recipes rather than enjoying themselves and making food for one another. So if I was to host a gathering this season, here’s what I would aim to keep in mind.
First things first, lower your standards enough to have a good time. The best story about this is one that Robert Bly tells at his readings about his friend William Stafford, who was confirming to an interviewer that he had a practice of writing a poem each day. “How,” the interviewer wondered, “can you do that day in and day out? How can you be that creative?” To which Stafford replied, “I lower my standards.”
This is a brilliant piece of advice that requires a sleight of hand: Lowering your standards for making sure that others think highly of you. To engage in trying to control what others think of you is stressful, exactly because it is impossible. To lower your standards, you let them think whatever they do. And they will! At least it’s not going out on Yelp! (unless it is..)
So instead of trying to be impressively masterful, you could aim to enjoy yourself alongside your family and friends. Enjoyment in this case is a choice to rest easy doing what you are capable of doing, and letting go of the rest. And tuning into warmth, gratitude, and well-being.
Sure, make some plans, consult some culinary bibles or online cooking sites, but leave room for your plans to change as the holly hour approaches. If things are getting stressful, reassess what to do and what not to do. Decide to do less! Perhaps if people are not too busy with being impressed with the spread, they will have more energy for happily engaging with one another.
Be entirely willing to ask for help. When I’ve wanted to appear masterful, I have hesitated to do this, as then others might see me as being needy and helpless, and my project to appear capable and competent would be a disaster. Then nobody helps. But they do tell you to calm down, which doesn’t help.
So ask for help, whether it’s for food dishes from others, drinks to bring, people to serve, help with cleaning up. Inspiration, assistance, guidance, support—the more you ask for it, the more it appears.
Again, it’s not up to you to make sure that everyone has a good time. That’s their job. After all most of them are probably adults now, and they may choose to enjoy themselves. It’s your job to offer what you have to offer, sincerely and wholeheartedly. Letting go of the results.
And when you let go of assessing the results, you may be pleasantly surprised that you are smiling. You discover what’s in front of you can be sweetly beyond compare.
Happy hosting!
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Edward Espe Brown was the first head cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and later helped found Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He is the author of several bestselling cookbooks, including The Tassajara Bread Book (Shambhala, 1970) and the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. His newest book, No Recipe, is being published by Sounds True and will be on sale on May 1, 2018.
Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting, evolving, and refining over 2
0 years of my poetry, which includes 217 poems collected in this book. These poems cover much of the ground in which I’ve been learning and growing with regards to the inner life.
One poem that is fundamental to the book is “Being Here.” When I was young, I found it hard to be here and to move through the world. Like many romantics, I wanted to transcend out of here. Of course, experience only landed me deeper into life. After my cancer journey, it became clear that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to transcend to but here. The image of sweeping a path though there is always more to sweep became a great teacher for me. That image led to this poem, which helps me stay on the path of living the one life I have to live.
BEING HERE
Transcending down into
the ground of things is akin
to sweeping the leaves that
cover a path. There will always
be more leaves. And the heart
of the journey, the heart of our
own awakening, is to discover for
ourselves that the leaves are not
the ground, and that sweeping
them aside will reveal a path,
and finally, that to fully live,
we must take the path and
keep sweeping it.
For me, the poems are the teachers. They arrive with their wisdom and become my guides. What they surface becomes my inner curriculum and by staying in conversation with them, I grow. We’re all drawn to what we need to learn, which if engaged with honesty reveals insights common to us all.
My hope is that the arc of these poems will be aids in living, listening, and beholding each other. I offer them as small wonders found and cared for through the years. I hope you might find one that, held close to your heart, will serve as a guide.
By Mark Nepo
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