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E90: How to Stop Minding and Start Living
Michael Singer — June 29, 2025
“Do you mind?” We “mind” everything, from traffic to childhood memories, and this habitual...
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Caroline Myss: From the Love of Power to the Power of Love
Caroline Myss — June 24, 2025
Few luminaries in modern times have opened the doors to the spiritual dimensions of who we are, why...
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Honey Tasting Meditation: Build Your Relationship with Sweetness
There is a saying that goes “hurt people hurt people.” I believe this to be true. We have been...
Written by:
Amy Burtaine, Michelle Cassandra Johnson
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Many Voices, One Journey
The Sounds True Blog
Insights, reflections, and practices from Sounds True teachers, authors, staff, and more. Have a look—to find some inspiration and wisdom for uplifting your day.
Standing Together, and Stepping Up
Written By:
Tami Simon -
The Michael Singer Podcast
Your Highest Intention: Self-Realization
Michael Singer discusses intention—"perhaps the deepest thing we can talk about"—and the path to self-realization.
This Week:
E89: Freedom from Preference: The Evolution of Caring -
Many Voices, One Journey
The Sounds True Blog
Insights, reflections, and practices from Sounds True teachers, authors, staff, and more. Have a look—to find some inspiration and wisdom for uplifting your day.
Take Your Inner Child on Playdates
Written By:
Megan Sherer
600 Podcasts and Counting...
Subscribe to Insights at the Edge to hear all of Tami's interviews (transcripts available, too!), featuring Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Adyashanti, and many more.
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E57: Love Is Not Found, It’s Freed
Love is not something found outside but an internal energy that flows through your heart when you are open and unblocked. Your past personal experiences and emotional defenses create barriers that prevent you from feeling love continuously. The key to unconditional love is letting go of these blockages, embracing openness, and allowing life’s experiences—both positive and negative—to flow through without resistance. If you learn to do this, you will find that true love is not based on the conditions of people, events, or circumstances—it is about removing the blockages you have put in love’s way.
For more information, go to michaelsingerpodcast.com.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2025 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
Love: The Shining of Being in Every Heart: A Message f...
Being is the shared element in all people, animals and things. Just as there is one universal physical space that pervades all individual buildings without being limited to them, likewise there is just one unlimited being from which everyone and everything borrows its apparent existence.
Just as the space in a room is not contained within its walls but is an apparent limitation of universal space, likewise the individual being that each of us seems to be is not contained within or generated by the body but is an apparent limitation of the one infinite being.
Infinite being is felt by each of us as the amness of our self. This feeling of ‘I am-ness’ is infinite being shining in each of our finite minds. Just as universal space seems to acquire the limitations of the four walls within which it seems to be contained, but in fact always remains the universal space,likewise infinite being – God’s being – seems to acquire the limitations of the body within which it seems to be housed, without ever actually ceasing to be infinite being. The apparent mixture of infinite being plus the content of experience seems to create a temporary finite being, a separate self or ego.
As a concession to the separate self or ego that we seem to be, most spiritual teachings give us something to do to become enlightened. This is like giving the space of a room a practice in order to become universal space. But the space needs no liberation, for it was never bound. The space inside is always and already identical to the space outside.
Likewise, our self needs no liberation or enlightenment. If we go deeply into the simple experience of being, we find no limit there – it is already infinite, already free. While thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and so on have limits, these limitations do not pertain to our being.
Even to say being is mixed with experience isn’t quite right. Just as space remains unmixed with the walls that seem to contain it and the objects that it seems to contain, our being is never really mixed with experience. It always shines in its original condition: untarnished, unmixed, unlimited, unmodified. Inherently free and at peace.
Infinite being needs no enlightenment or spiritual practice. So, for whom are the teachings and the innumerable practices that have been elaborated in the various religious and spiritual traditions? For the temporary, finite separate self we seem to be. They are, as such, compassionate concessions –legitimate ones – but ones that ultimately perpetuate the illusion of a separate self. Therefore, the highest teaching is no teaching, no teacher, no effort, no practice – just the shining of being, the one being we all are.
Imagine that the vast physical space of the universe is conscious. If you were to ask the aware space in the room in which you are sitting about its nature, it may look at the walls around it and describe itself in terms of their limitations. And it would imagine that the space outside the walls was separate from it, and might engage in various efforts to know it or unite with it. But if instead it looked only at itself, it would recognize that it contained no inherent limitation. It would recognize that it is already the vast space of the universe. All its efforts would cease with that recognition.
Similarly, our apparently finite being, seemingly located in and bound by the body, looks beyond its limitations at the vast universe and ponders the nature of its reality. It may even engage in great efforts to know that or unite with it. But all we need do is look closely, to taste the nature of our own being. If we do so, we find no limitation there – our being finds no limitation in itself. Our being is already the one infinite being, the only being there is – in religious terms, God’s being. There is just that, just this.
This utter absence of anything other than itself – this absence of otherness, separation, duality – is the experience we know as love. Love is, as such, the shining of infinite being in each of our hearts. It is the taste of God’s being in us, as us.

Rupert Spira discovered Rumi’s poetry at age fifteen, sparking a lifelong journey to understand the nature of being. He studied Advaita with Dr. Francis Roles, explored Sufism, and drew inspiration from Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, and Nisargadatta Maharaj. He also pursued an interest in ceramics, training with British pioneers before opening his own studio. Meeting teacher Francis Lucille in the 1990s deepened Rupert’s understanding, integrating the teachings of Advaita and Kashmir Shaivism. Rupert holds regular in-person retreats, as well as online retreats and webinars. For more, see rupertspira.com.

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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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Damien Echols: Building the Light Body
Damien Echols was wrongfully convicted of murder in the infamous “West Memphis Three” case and spent more than 18 years on death row before his exoneration and release. Now he teaches Western ceremonial magick—the same practice he credits with saving his life in prison. With Sounds True, Damien has published the book High Magick and a practice-oriented audio companion, A Course in High Magick. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Damien about magick and how it is meant to “constantly ingest more of divinity.” Damien describes two of the central practices of magick—the Middle Pillar and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram—and details why they are so foundational to the modality. Damien explains how he first discovered magick while in solitary confinement and details the concept of “will” in relationship to the Buddhist concept of dharma. Finally, Damien and Tami talk about what it means to manifest a “light body” and the overall goal of spiritual liberation through magick. (83 minutes)
Tami’s Takeaway:
Damien Echols is a “current-bearer”—someone who is able to pass to others an experience of boundless light. When I met with Damien in November of 2018 at a launch event for his new book, High Magick, I could tell that something had recently happened to him that had dramatically increased the intensity of this current. In this conversation, he describes how the practices of magick, which he calls “a Western path of enlightenment,” brought him to an experience of ego dissolution, which he describes as “experiencing myself as a small handful of sand that someone threw into a tornado.” The takeaway: an invitation to let go of any feeling of separateness, enter the abyss, and discover the interconnected light that awaits us.
Gabor Maté: The Roots of Healing
Dr. Gabor Maté is an author, speaker, and physician who specializes in addiction, stress, and childhood development. His many books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and When the Body Says No. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Maté about his views on modern mental health evaluation—specifically the widespread diagnoses of ADHD and depression. They discuss the connection between emotional expression and immune response, as well as how the body can be an effective teacher. Finally, Dr. Maté comments on how mental health issues can often be rooted in compensating behaviors from childhood and how healing can be approached from a bio-psycho-social perspective. (68 minutes)
Becoming an Active Operator of Your Nervous System
Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. Her clinical publications include The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation and The Polyvagal Flip Chart: Understanding the Science of Safety, and her Sounds True publications include the audio program, Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory, and her new book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.
In this podcast, Tami Simon converses with Deb Dana to offer listeners a practical understanding of Polyvagal Theory and how we can begin to decode the language of our body for better health and better relationships. Tami and Deb also discuss the dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral states of our nervous system; the gifts of becoming “anchored in ventral”; neuroception, your nervous system’s way of taking in information to assess your safety; curiosity and the capacity for self-reflection; the importance of self-care; co-regulation as a biological imperative; why self-regulation is especially critical for therapists and other helping professionals; music and nature as healing resources; the practice of self-compassion as a means of “getting our anchor back”; and more.