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A Guide to Self-Compassion – October 2017

Welcome Dear Friend,

 

We are thrilled and honored to be present with you on this journey!   We’d love for this space to be a map to your highest self and a beacon to creativity and expression. The coming months will be full of guide posts and inviting spaces, awaiting your contemplation’s and discoveries.  We’d love to spark, share and sustain well-being with you.

Self-Compassion is our guide for the month of October!  Self-compassion can be a hard thing to come by these days. Too often than not, we have an inner critic that is bigger than our inner cheerleader. It’s time to notice those thoughts and be kind to them.  Self-compassion is not always innate, but it can indeed be learned.

October will be filled with weekly self-compassion content.  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

Honoring an Irreducible Truth in Ferguson

During this morning’s run, I was talking with my friend about the fear and frustration we’d both been feeling about Ferguson, Missouri, among other places. What can we do? we asked each other. If it came down to it, would we be able to stand against the so-called authorities armed with tear gas, guns, and hoses?

I told my friend about the only time I’d come close to anything like it. The KKK was marching in a little town a few miles east of my college campus, and a small group of us organized ourselves in protest. We brought in advisors to teach us how to remain calm in crisis. We knew our history; we’d seen the footage; we were afraid. We also knew that remaining silent wasn’t an option. We boarded the bus in silence, and when we got there, we linked arms and lined the street peacefully, waiting for the hate group to come streaming up the road. It was summer then, but I remember feeling a chill that raised gooseflesh on my arms.

A few minutes later a pathetic bunch of ragtag malcontents rounded the corner—the odd skinhead here, old grizzled men there, and bored teen goths sprinkled in—all spewing the tired epithets we’d heard before: “____ go home… .”

After our protest, we boarded the bus and headed back toward campus.

Once returned to the relative safety of familiar surroundings, we’d talk about how sad the hate group looked. Their outfits didn’t even match! we’d laugh. They weren’t even marching in step together! Weren’t they supposed to be organized better than that?

But this morning, we weren’t laughing.

Every time events like these erupt, I wonder what there is to do about it. Up to this point, I’ve signed petitions, I’ve written essays and articles, made calls, protested, volunteered, minded my business, went back to bed, wrung my hands, paced the floors, pumped my fists, prayed, held loved ones close, fundraised, danced, run, sung, and sweated for the cause. I’ve cried, fretted, and did it all again. And I’ll keep on doing it.

I recently turned to a memorial delivered by Dr. Howard Thurman in the aftermath of Dr. King’s murder. I was searching for words to articulate the frustration, pain and loss of another senseless killing and the ongoing struggle for equality and peace for so many in America. The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman remains painfully, powerfully, resonant today:

Tonight there is a vast temptation to strike out in pain, horror, and anger. Riding just under the surface, all the pent up fury, the accumulation of a generation’s cruelty and brutality. A way must be found to honor our feeling without dishonoring him whose sudden and meaningless end has called him forth. May we harness the energy of our bitterness and make it available to the unfinished work which Martin has left behind. It may be—it just may be—that what he was unable to bring to pass in his life, can be achieved by the act of his dying. For this there is eloquent precedence in human history. He was killed in one sense because mankind is not human yet. May he live because all of us in America are closer to becoming human than we ever were before.

I wish I could tell you of the tremendous love and worry I feel for my brothers, for my beautiful nephews, especially, and for the precious children of my friends.

Today, I’m open to new ideas—to whatever helps me keep my heart open, my love alive. It’s an imperative for me because I am the beneficiary of an irreducible truth, which is this: love is all there is.

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Your unlived life is always appearing before you

What is it that you have disowned in yourself? What is it that you will avoid feeling at all costs? What parts of you have you relegated into the shadows?

When you were a little boy or girl it was intelligent to split off from overwhelming experience and pieces of yourself that you could not integrate at the time. But these pieces are looking for you. They only want to show you their light and their wisdom, and be allowed back inside. They will continue to search for you, and will appear as your friends, your children, your emotions, your lovers, your life circumstances, and even in the most precious orange leaves that are looking up at you in the morning.

Look carefully as your unlived life is always appearing before you.

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our most precious San Juan mountains, in the glory of Autumn

 

E98: The Guru Within: Returning to Consciousness

True spiritual masters are not mystical icons, they are beings who have transcended the distractions of mind and emotion to rest in the constant ecstasy of pure consciousness (Sat Chit Ananda). This is in drastic contrast to the suffering we incur by allowing our preference-driven mind to control our lives. The path back is simple but profound: begin by noticing the reactive nature of your mind, then work on relaxing and releasing those impulsive reactions. Stop always needing life to match your preferences, and instead, learn to honor and appreciate life as a miraculous gift.

© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2025 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.

E62: Breaking Free from Negative Thought Patterns

In most cases, the quality of your life is not determined by external circumstances but by your own mental dialogue. Your awareness is trapped by thoughts, desires, and past experiences, which dictate your ability to enjoy life. The key to liberation is learning to let go of these mental preferences, rather than trying to manipulate external circumstances to satisfy the mind. Through awareness and conscious practice, you can learn to embrace life’s experiences and explore the higher states of your being.

For more information, go to michaelsingerpodcast.com.

© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2025 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.

Rev. Jacqui Lewis, PhD: What Would Love Have Me Do?

Provocative questions and life-changing answers. That’s what the Insights at the Edge podcast is all about, and this episode is no different. Here, Tami Simon speaks with celebrated minister Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis about her new book, Fierce Love, and our shared calling to follow the compass of our hearts as we navigate these times of uncertainty. Tune in as Tami and Dr. Lewis explore how to find joy and inspiration amid grief and despair, gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to love your neighbor, and more.

They explore recovery and resilience through community; the honesty that love demands; the “holy other” that is both of and outside of us; how a familial sense of the divine boosts faith amid uncertainty; the aquifer of joy; the sustaining grace of God’s steadfast presence; entering a transformative, not transactional, relationship with God; embodying fierce love when tragedy strikes; holding up a mirror to the best parts of ourselves; the qualities of fierce love, and the writings of Saint Paul; the shift from fear and overwhelm to wise action; loving your neighbor and the essence of Christianity; the extraordinary kindness and generosity often offered by complete strangers; nonpossessive delight; hand-to-hand reckoning and accompanying; interrogating our self-limiting identities; discovering “the sweetness in the sorrow”; making amends; a special blessing to support us in responding with love; 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

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