600 Podcasts and Counting...
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Russ Hudson: The Enneagram: Nine Gateways to Presence
Russ Hudson is one of the world’s foremost teachers and developers of the Enneagram personality typology system, having coauthored (with Don Richard Riso) five bestselling books on the subject. With Sounds True, Russ has created an 11-CD audio-learning program called The Enneagram: Nine Gateways to Presence. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Russ about the original purpose of the Enneagram, how our personality types are linked to a deeper level of awareness, and how we can use the Enneagram system to continually discover that we are much more than we may habitually think. They also discuss accessing the gifts of our personality types while avoiding the associated pitfalls or “fixations” of any given type, an overview of each of the nine types, Russ’ guidance in determining your own type, and much more.
Poetic Mindset Tip: Your Awe Can Be Connective
POETIC MINDSET TIP: YOUR AWE CAN BE CONNECTIVE
Try applying a mentality of awe when you’re interacting with someone who lives a life very different from yours. Let your awe be the inspiration for a connection. How did they come to believe something that makes you so uncomfortable? What is the root of their behavior? Maybe this person has a dissimilar political view. Maybe they live in a rural town, and you live in a city. Maybe they grew up practicing a particular religion, and you didn’t. These are the big facts that surround the difference between you, but maybe this contrast can be intriguing instead of off-putting? When I find myself on a disparate page from someone else, I try not to close up. I try to lean in to discovery. It’s frequently these occasions that surprise me the most and give me new insight.
When I let myself stay curious about another person’s point of view instead of shutting down, I’m challenged to see with a new lens—and that feels creative. What would I have overlooked if I hadn’t led with a sense of reverential respect? For example, through Poem Store, I developed very unlikely friendships that are still a huge part of my life.
From a familial bond with a timber baron to a deep camaraderie with a wealthy businessman, I found myself open to all kinds of folks I might normally shut out if I weren’t in the mode of poetic openness.
These relationships continue to teach me how to develop compassionate language and an availability for dialogue that focuses on similarities, respect, and humanity, as opposed to difference, disdain, and judgment.
Letting your interest in a person’s inner world outweigh your differences could have unifying results. Awe is often the key to the similarities we all share. It’s our curiosity that links us, and these connections can cause the largest transformations.
Housemates
Pierre Talón lives
in the kitchen,
close to the kettle
with an invisible web.
His brothers and sisters
share the same name.
Long glass-like legs
and dark teardrop bodies.
Penelope is on the front porch,
blending with the potted plant,
her green abdomen longer each day,
her hind legs like mechanical armor.
Pierre Talón catches the flies
and Penelope reminds me
to pause, peering between blossoms.
The spider never leaves, just changes
corners and sizes, and dodges the steam
when I make tea. The grasshopper
greets me for months, until one day
she sheds her skin and leaves me
with a perfect paper version of herself.
This is an excerpt from Every Day Is A Poem: Find Clarity, Feel Relief, and See Beauty in Every Moment by Jacqueline Suskin.
Jacqueline Suskin has composed over forty thousand poems with her ongoing improvisational writing project, Poem Store. She is the author of six books, including Help in the Dark Season. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Yes! magazine. She lives in Northern California. For more, see jacquelinesuskin.com.
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Lauren Geertsen: Cutting the Strings of the Invisible ...
Lauren Geertsen is a body connection coach, intuitive mentor, and nutritional therapy practitioner. With Sounds True, Lauren has published a book titled The Invisible Corset: Break Free from Beauty Culture and Embrace Your Radiant Self. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami and Lauren discuss how we can shift from trying to dominate and control our bodies, to entering into a state of true body partnership. They explore the many layers of history and culture that have led us into our current paradigm of ownership over women’s bodies, both the obvious ways in which the beauty industry emphasizes appearance, as well as more deeply embedded and insidious societal messages. Lauren also breaks down the five key “strings” that keep the invisible corset in place, helping women recognize their own internalized oppression. Finally, Tami and Lauren talk about the power of intuition, and how taking off their corsets allows women to access their natural intuitive capacities as bodily awake, intelligent beings.
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Lissa Rankin: Love and Guidance from Your Inner Pilot ...
Lissa Rankin, MD, is a New York Times bestselling author, public speaker, and physician. Her books include The Fear Cure, Mind Over Medicine, and The Anatomy of a Calling. She has worked with Sounds True to publish The Daily Flame: 365 Love Letters from Your Inner Pilot Light. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lissa about the Inner Pilot Light—the deepest, most essential aspect of Self whose divine spark can never be extinguished. Lissa shares some of the letters from The Daily Flame and explains how their encouraging words are based on years of engagement with her innermost values. Tami and Lissa discuss how her work deals with the theme of longing and why we need to lean into the places we find uncomfortable in order to truly grow. Finally, Lissa shares the story of how she met her writing mentor and what it means to “own stock in the company of yourself.” (66 minutes)
E10: Overcoming Lower Vibrations and Embracing Spiritu...
Human consciousness is often distracted by lower vibrations like fear and insecurity, which prevent us from experiencing higher energies such as love and joy. Spiritual growth is a constant process of learning to handle reality’s vibrations without being pulled down. By mastering how we react to reality, we can experience higher states of being and, ultimately, serve others through love and compassion.
For more information, go to michaelsingerpodcast.com.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2024 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
A Personal Message from Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush
Dying is the most important thing you do in your life. It’s the great frontier for every one of us. And loving is the art of living as a preparation for dying. Allowing ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of love is not just about leaving this body; it is also the route to Oneness and unity with our own inner being, the soul, while we are still here. If you know how to live and to love, you know how to die.
In this book, I talk about what I am learning about death and dying from others and from my getting closer to it. And I talk about what I have learned from being at the bedsides of friends who have died, including how to grieve and how to plan for your own death as a spiritual ceremony. I talk about our fear of death and ways to go beyond that fear so we can be identified with our spiritual selves and live more meaningful lives.
I invited my friend Mirabai Bush into a series of conversations. Mirabai and I share the bond of being together with our guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and over the years, we have taught and traveled and written together. I thought she’d be able to frame the conversations for you, the reader, and also draw in some of what I’ve said in the past about dying, while keeping my current words fresh and immediate. And I wanted to discuss her thoughts on dying as well.
From Mirabai Bush . . .
This is a book about loving and dying and friendship. It is a conversation between old friends, in which we talk about love and death in an intimate setting. I hope we’ve captured Ram Dass’s wisdom, expressed in a new way now that he is 86 and close to death himself.
“It’s about sadhana, spiritual practice, and I want both our voices to be in it,” he said. “I want it to be a conversation.”
“But I need to ask a basic question,” I said.
He nodded.
“Why are we writing this? Who are we writing it for?”
“I want to help readers get rid of their fear of death,” he answered. “So they can be,” a long pause, “identified with their spiritual selves and be ready to die. If you know how to live, you know how to die. This will be a link between my teachings about Maharaj-ji and about death. And people who are living who can see that they are dying each day, that each day is change and dying is the biggest change—it could help them live more meaningful lives.”
After a while, Ram Dass continued, “I’m also thinking about people whose loved one has died, who may live with grief, or guilt and regret, and I’m thinking about those beings who are sitting bedside with the dying . . . this could help them prepare for that role. And people who are dying, who could read this book to help prepare them for dying more consciously, more peacefully, being in the moment.”
Okay, I thought. This will be a good book to write. We’ll be exploring the edge of what we know.
From Ram Dass . . .
I have had aphasia since my stroke 20 years ago. Aphasia impairs a person’s ability to process language but does not affect intelligence. Sometimes I pause for long periods to find a word or figure out how to express a thought in just the right way. I like to say that the stroke gave me the gift of silence.
When I thought about the best way to write a book on dying while having aphasia, I knew it would be important to express these ideas and experiences clearly, subtly, truthfully. I realized that these days I have been expressing what I know best when I am in dialogue with another person—someone who is comfortable with silence and listens for new ideas as they arise. Why not create a book that way?
I like that this format for the book draws you into the room with us, into this conversation that we all need to have. I invite you to watch this video of us talking together, to give you a sense of how our conversations unfolded.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Tq7kLnYqIs%3Fautoplay%3D1%26utm_source%3Dbronto%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3DR180831-Dass-Bush%26utm_content%3DA%2BPersonal%2BMessage%2Bfrom%2BRam%2BDass%2Band%2BMirabai%2BBush
With love,
Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush
