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May love be resurrected in your heart today…

Sounds True — March 31, 2013

May love be resurrected in your heart today, and may it wash through each and every cell of your most sacred body, dripping out through your words, your presence, the way you listen, your willingness to care and get gooey messy and sticky in love, and through the way you touch and hold another. May love make use of your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your words to speak sweetness, your body to hold and touch; and may that love that keeps the stars from falling out of the sky guide you and show you the way home.

May it be revealed to you that this love is not something that you will find one day, something that will come to you, or something that you will finally reach as part of your quest. Love is not and never was separate from what you are, but is what this precious body is made of. It is the substance of every cell of your heart, every synapse in your outrageously miraculous brain, every strand of every light particle of your miracle-DNA, and of every petal of every flower in this and all universes.

Wishing all of my sisters and brothers the most precious Easter, and may each one of you – whether gay, straight, transgendered, or utterly undefineable as we all truly are – allow love to have you, finally, once and for all, as we are told Christ did… to take this body, this entire sensory organism, and to make use of it to scatter its secret essence in the four directions.

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A Guide to Restoration: November 2017

Sounds True — November 6, 2017

Welcome Dear Friend,

The Fall and Winter months are often noted for their long nights and cool temperatures. It is also a time for hibernation, hunkering down with loved ones and contemplation.

Restoration is our guide for the month of November! Restoration is defined as the act of restoring; renewal, revival, or reestablishment. Just as dusk comes sooner these days, we also hope the light and warmth burn brightly.

November will be filled with weekly content on rest and renewal. Please check out our content guide for dates! We look forward to going on this adventure with you!

With love on the journey,

Your friends at Sounds True

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The Urban Monk’s Inner Stillness Training

Pedram Shojai — September 7, 2017

Dear readers,

I’m honored and proud to announce the release of The Urban Monk’s Inner Stillness Training. It’s the work I’ve been longing to do because the world has been saturated with superficial “how-to” advice and quick shortcuts to enlightenment, peace, happiness, weight loss, and whatever else can be promised.

That’s not reality.

In actual reality, we work to find our inner truth and delve deeply into the awareness that’s cultivated through our practice. It’s a process and it brings us home. The real work is authentic, meaningful, and restorative. It isn’t always easy, but it is raw and it is real.

When I entered dialogue with Sounds True, I laid it out there. I wanted to speak freely about the work and deliver a proper download from my lineage that can help people really get there. They jumped on the idea. I’m proud to say we have produced a very powerful program that “goes there” and doesn’t pull punches. It doesn’t make silly promises and doesn’t linger on the tabloid nonsense. It’s what I got from my teachers and what you deserve—an authentic path toward inner stillness.

The premise of the Taoist alchemical work I’m teaching is about cultivating the light of awareness and turning it around to discover one’s true Self. It is profound and rewarding— should you choose to do the work.

I invite you to take a journey with me and explore the inner realms. There’s so much richness, wisdom, peace, and strength you can draw upon once you’ve found the connection. It’s yours to discover.

Let’s take a walk,

Pedram Shojai, OMD

New York Times Bestselling Author, Producer, and Founder of Well.org

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Wake Up San Francisco! – March 28, 2015

Sounds True — September 9, 2014

Dear friends, we are excited to let you all know about Wake Up San Francisco: One Extraordinary Day of Transformation, featuring Adyashanti, Alanis Morissette, Caroline Myss, and many others.

Learn more here!

How can we stay sane, resourceful, and connected to the limitless depths of our being right in the midst of our busy lives? Is such a thing possible? Is spiritual awakening reserved for people who travel to retreats and monasteries, or is it possible that we can touch spiritual awakening and the depths of the human heart right in the midst of the chaos of our lives? Wake Up San Francisco is a one-day event on Saturday, March 28th that immerses participants in the awakening of the human heart. Bringing together spiritual teachers, poets, musicians, yogis, psychological researchers, healers, and lovers of life, Wake Up San Francisco promises to be a day of reflection, new insight, and transformation.

You are warmly invited to join pioneering spiritual teacher Adyashanti and music sensation Alanis Morissette for a one-of-a-kind dialogue about waking up in the midst of everyday life. The author of books including Emptiness Dancing and Falling into Grace, Adyashanti is one of today’s most sought-after teachers, especially when it comes to his rare public appearances. Alanis is most recognized for her album Jagged Little Pill (which still ranks as the number one top-selling debut album for a female artist). The dialogue will be hosted by Sounds True founder, Tami Simon, and will be followed by an intimate concert with Alanis Morissette.

In addition to Adyashanti and Alanis Morissette, presenters at Wake Up San Francisco include:

Caroline Myss, New York Times bestselling author and leading voice in the field of energy medicine
Mario Martinez, clinical neuropsychologist lecturing worldwide on how cultural beliefs affect health and longevity
Sally Kempton, author of Awakening Shakti and Meditation for the Love of It, on the transformative power of kundalini
Roger Housden, author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life and Keeping the Faith Without a Religion, on beauty as a portal to awakening
Sera Beak, Harvard-trained scholar of comparative world religions and author ofRed Hot and Holy: A Heretic’s Love Story

When we touch a limitless sense of being—vast, open, undivided—and do so in an embodied way, we paradoxically become more uniquely ourselves, more empowered, and on fire to bring forward our unique gifts. We wake up to our courage, to our authenticity, and to contributing to the well-being of others in fresh and meaningful ways. We welcome you to join us at Wake Up San Francisco!

WUSF

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Noah Levine’s Revolution of Kindness

Noah Levine — April 10, 2014

Noah Levine is someone whose name I was familiar with long before I had the opportunity to record with him last fall in Los Angeles. I’d been intrigued by his story. He was someone from my own generation, 20 or 30 years younger than the most prominent American-born Buddhist teachers. He had a punk sensibility and a made-for-movies backstory of anguished teen years filled with drug use, incarceration, and suicide attempts—all chronicled in his first book Dharma Punx.

Through Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, which he founded, Noah has worked to bring the dharma to inner city youths, prisoners, and many others. With his shaved head and tattooed torso featuring a giant OM symbol over the heart, he seemed like the quintessential outsider.

Yes, he was also an insider, inheriting a rich lineage through his father, Stephen Levine and his teacher Jack Kornfield. As I headed west for our recording, I wondered how those two strands would weave together.

Effortlessly, as it turns out. Noah’s desire to make the tools of meditation available to all certainly stems from his own experience as an outsider, and the sense of rebellion that fueled his teen years has not diminished—but now it’s turned inward, toward an inner revolution whose goal is ultimate freedom.

His teachings—especially on lovingkindness practice and what he terms “kind awareness”—fall squarely within the tradition, but have a flavor and energy that I find really resonate for me.

My usual meditation practice, such as it is, is simply to sit and see what arises. The more formal structure of lovingkindness practice took me a little while to get used to, but, while editing the program I recorded with Noah last fall—Kind Awareness: Guided Meditations for an Inner Revolution—I took time to work with all the guided practices, and I found them to be extraordinarily powerful.

In particular, I was moved by the practice of asking for forgiveness from those I’ve harmed, and in turning compassionate acceptance toward myself. Doing so, I discovered a tenderness just beneath the surface—one that, when I softened, brought me to a new sense of openness and quietude. If you haven’t done a guided lovingkindness practice recently, give it a try—especially if you ever find your meditation practice becoming dry or detached. There’s an emotional sweetness to be found here—right on the other side of our vulnerability.

Footsteps of Buddha, United States, 2005

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Preparing you for what is next

Sounds True — September 14, 2013

Look close and see what it is that you do not want to feel, that you will do anything to avoid, that no matter what you… will… not… go… there. Your dependency. Your aloneness. Your hatred. Your utter despair. Your conviction that you are not actually lovable as you are.

Take pause. Things are not what they seem. For love is alive, and is all. Touch the earth. Look up into the sky. Call out for help. Crumble to the ground. Fall apart and give up the fantasy that you will ever, ever, ever be put back together again. Breathe this abandoned feeling into your heart. Hold it. Touch it. Let it unravel its secrets. Let it dance within you. Let it unlock each and every strategy, defense, and piece of armor protecting you. It will not destroy you. It has come as fierce grace to reveal how infinite you really are.

What you are is pristine, luminous consciousness itself. Even the greatest despair, the most terrifying fear, the most profound grief – these rise and fall in you, liberating in your awareness, in your care, and in your kindness. Your body and your heart are a sanctuary for love’s movement. Your body is a factory of grace.

See that there is nothing here working against you. Everything in this world is comprised of the same particles of love, which take shape as the galaxies, the oceans, and as the cells of your heart. They illuminate the strands of your DNA and the synapses in your brain. Love is everywhere.

Watch carefully how love appears as light and appears as dark, as wisdom and confusion, as joy and as sadness, and as human and divine, come only to prepare you for what is next. And what is next after that.

May love be resurrected in your heart today…

A Guide to Restoration: November 2017

The Urban Monk’s Inner Stillness Training

Wake Up San Francisco! – March 28, 2015

Noah Levine’s Revolution of Kindness

Preparing you for what is next

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