600 Podcasts and Counting...
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Most Recent
Sara Avant Stover: The Portal of Heartbreak
Heartbreak is a universal human experience. Yet we often lack the vocabulary and the skills needed to move through heartbreak wisely. This was certainly the case for Sara Avant Stover, whose decades of spiritual practice and deep inner work could not prepare her for the “serial heartbreaks” that upended her life. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with the author of Handbook for the Heartbroken about the challenges of navigating loss in a “heartbreak-illiterate” society.
Discover how our most painful experiences can become a gateway to personal empowerment and healing, in this practical conversation on: taking on a disposition of tenderness; the impacts of cascading losses; entering the depths of our pain; the metaphor of the tightrope over the chasm; moving from self-judgment to self-acceptance; how Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy helps us during heartbreak; the quiet “soul” powers our pain can open us to; grief; supporting the heartbroken; rituals for letting go; the midlife initiation; 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 with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
Ep 7 Bonus: Seventh Generation Exercise
This bonus episode will support you to take the main insights from Episode 7: “We Are a Part of a River of Time” deeper into your life.
Jess will guide you through an adaptation of the Work That Reconnects exercise called “The Seventh Generation,” which she talks about in Episode 7. We recommend listening to the episode before doing this bonus. In this exercise, you will be invited to use your imagination and do some creative, guided role-playing with a friend, where one of you will speak as yourself, and the other will speak as a future being.
For this exercise, you’ll need a friend and a place that is quiet enough for you to sit face-to-face and talk freely.
We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.
Ep 7: We Are a Part of a River of Time
Jess and Joanna explore the third phase of the spiral: Seeing with New Eyes. In this part of the spiral, the fog of our pain begins to lift off, and what comes in its place is a feeling of greater connection and belonging. Jess and Joanna talk about Deep Time, a way of understanding ourselves as a part of a long lineage of human and planetary history, and how our imaginations are an essential tool for “plugging back in” to the great web of life we’re a part of.
In this episode:
- Discovering ways to truly feel our interconnection with all life, and how that profound reconnection transforms us
- Deep Time—slowing down and discovering a broader sense of ourselves in the world
- “Plugging in” to our part in the web of life to fuel our own work for the Great Turning
- Bonus Exercise: The Seventh Generation—connecting with those who came before and those who will come after us
We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.
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What Is Awake Awareness?
You might be asking: If awake awareness as the source of effortless mindfulness is already here, why haven’t I discovered it yet? This is a good question. One reason we don’t discover it is that we don’t have awake awareness on most of our Western psychological maps. Many people who have longed and strived to be free of suffering have missed awake awareness, not because they lacked desire or commitment but because they didn’t know what to look for or where to look.
The Shangpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism gives four insightful reasons we don’t naturally discover awake awareness, which I find quite helpful:
1. Awake awareness is so close that you can’t see it.
2. Awake awareness is so subtle that you can’t understand it.
3. Awake awareness is so simple that you can’t believe it.
4. Awake awareness is so good that you can’t accept it.
GLIMPSE: Awake Awareness Knows Without Using Thought or Attention
In this glimpse, instead of focusing on what we are aware of, we will have awareness be aware of itself. This may be something that has never crossed your mind. In learning about using awareness, instead of attention, we will look back to the source of mind, awake awareness, and then focus from here. Instead of following the flashlight of attention out to the movie screen of experience, we see if we can feel awareness directly. We have learned to experience life as a subject looking at objects, even internal objects like thoughts and emotions. One helpful practice of deliberate mindfulness is called “mental noting.” In the mental noting practice, our mindful witness becomes more precise by labeling thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise. In this mindful glimpse, we will let go of labeling and instead learn to trust the intelligence of awake
awareness. Now we will have awareness feel what awareness is like when it is both the subject and the object. It will be helpful to have this invisible, contentless awareness know itself as we separate the awareness-based knowing from thought-based knowing.
1. To begin, simply close your eyes while allowing your awareness to remain open. Feel your breath moving within your body. Feel your whole body from within while noticing your breathing happening by itself for three breaths. Be easy and comfortable. Relax while remaining alert.
2. Take a moment to see what is here now. Notice how your body is feeling. Is it uncomfortable, comfortable, agitated, relaxed, tired, or neutral? Just be aware of your body without trying to change it. Just be aware of it as it is.
3. Now simply notice what is aware of these feelings and sensations. Feel the awareness in which these sensations are happening. Rather than being aware of sensations, feel the awareness that is aware. Notice that the awareness is not tired, is not in pain, is not agitated or anxious. Feel how this awareness is with your body.
4. Now notice the activity of your mind and thoughts. Just be aware of whether your thoughts are agitated, calm, tired, emotional, anxious, or neutral. Without changing anything at all, allow your mind and thoughts to be as they are.
5. Now notice the space in which thoughts are moving. Be interested in the awareness instead of the thoughts. Shift to notice not just the content but the context. Feel the awareness that is aware. Notice how awareness allows your mind to be as it is without changing anything.
6. Begin to notice that awake awareness is alert, clear, and nonjudgmental. Feel the awareness that is not tired, anxious, or in pain. Notice that awake awareness is all around and inherent within your body and within your mind. Instead of being identified with the states of your body or mind or trying to accept or change them, simply become interested in what is aware.
7. What is awareness like that is already accepting of things as they are—right here and now? Notice the awareness of the next sound you hear. Does awareness have a location or size? What is it like to be aware of experiences from this pain-free, spacious awareness?
8. Now simply rest as the awareness that is aware of your thoughts and sensations. Hang out as awareness without going up to thought to know or down to sleep to rest. Be the awareness that welcomes your sensations and thoughts. Ask yourself: Am I aware of this spacious awareness? Or, What’s it like when I’m aware from this spacious awareness, which is welcoming thoughts, feelings, and sensations? Notice that the awareness is aware from all around and from within—spacious and pervasive.
9. Just let go of focusing on any one thing. Be aware of everything without labeling. Feel that your awareness is no longer knowing from thought. Feel what it is like to be aware from awareness, which includes your thoughts and sensations from head to toe.
10. Simply let be and remain uncontracted and undistracted, welcoming without effort.
This is an excerpt from The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life by Loch Kelly.
Loch Kelly, MDiv, LCSW, is a leader in the field of meditation and psychotherapy. He is author of the award-winning Shift into Freedom and founder of the Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch is an emerging voice in modernizing meditation, social engagement, and collaborating with neuroscientists. For more, visit lochkelly.org.
Buy your copy of The Way of Effortless Mindfulness at your favorite bookseller!
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Give Yourself Permission to Take Up Space
Dearest Friend,
We live in a world full of deadlines. Alarms. Screaming kids. Nagging bosses. More on our to-do lists than we could accomplish in three lifetimes. It’s easy for your needs to get buried underneath the rubble of daily life, and figuring out how to reconnect with your authentic self can feel touch and go… at best.
I wrote Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty to lovingly provide the space for you to better understand your needs, experiment with new habits that help you meet those needs each day, and build a resilient connection with yourself that you can rely upon for good.
You have needs—your needs matter. And yet, you’ve been taught that pushing your needs to the back burner is the only way to get things done, that your needs are an overwhelming burden, or that self-care is a luxury you can’t afford. But the presence of your needs is a fact and not a flaw. You can reclaim your energy and give yourself permission to take up space in the center of your own life.
In Needy, I share my unique approach to identifying, honoring, and advocating for the most tender and true parts of yourself that yearn to be acknowledged. It is an invitation to embody self-acceptance, which leads to meaningful growth in self-responsibility, self-care, self-trust, and self-love.
This book will be a delicious companion for your journey, but you actually can begin caring for yourself with greater tenderness and open communication right now.
I invite you to take the next three minutes to check in with yourself.
Put down your phone, close your computer, and put your hand on your heart.
Breath deeply into your belly and ask yourself:
How do I feel?
What do I need?
What does my body need from me?
What is ONE, doable need that I am ready, able, and willing to meet?
Real self-care is responsive, not prescriptive. The care you are aching for right now will be found in asking yourself those four questions. Give yourself permission to start with one, tangible action.
And repeat as necessary.
Need more? I will see you between the pages of Needy. I am so grateful to be able to share this book with you, and I hope you will share it with the humans in your life who struggle to take up space in this way.
xx Mara
Mara Glatzel, MSW, (she/her) is an intuitive coach, writer, and podcast host. She is a needy human who helps other needy humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy cycles. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it, and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Find out more at maraglatzel.com.
Learn More
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | Sounds True
How to Bloom in the Dark: Self-Compassion, Compost, an...
Compassion is the magic ingredient that turns our personal “compost” into personal evolution.
Some time ago, I found a strange bloom in the kitchen. It was elegantly twisted, like a dragon at a Chinese New Year celebration. It was frilled, purple, and pungent. This exquisite thing grew out of a chunk of purple cabbage that I’d put under the sink to go out for compost. Instead of fading quietly however, it burst into new life in the dark grotto of my cabinetry. It blossomed into something unexpected, unusual, and fiercely beautiful.
Reflecting on the discovery of this “flower” in the shadows, I’m reminded of, and heartened by, the fertility of dark times. Many people are feeling a collective spiritual darkness now, exhausted and frustrated, maybe also angry and scared. Having compassion for ourselves and others is especially important in times of literal and metaphorical darkness. How can we do this if we already feel overloaded?
Nature is our ultimate model and guide—in the light, in the dark, and in the most surprising and gorgeous ways. Cue the weird, glorious cabbage flower which came to life in the dark. What was being shown there?
There is the clear compost metaphor. Compost is the stuff we reject, the moldy, wilted, too hard, too soft, nasty bits that don’t make it to the table. It’s also the leftovers from delicious things we appreciate and enjoy, silky mango skins, green tea leaves, dark coffee grounds.
It all transforms into a rich sloop that eventually nourishes future plants. Our personal work includes processing our own “dark” sides, the parts we’d like to hide or discard. Self-compassion (and compassion for others) holds both the rejected and respected parts of who we are. Like composting, it isn’t always pretty, but it’s potent. Research shows self-compassion helps us stay present and kindhearted without sinking into absorptive empathy, which can lead to overload and burnout. This meditation is part of the toolkit in the audio course Shining Bright Without Burning Out.
The cycles of the natural world, into which we are interwoven, take time. It’s hard to be patient, to let everything, both scorned and enjoyed, stew in our symbolic personal compost piles. The speed with which that brew changes from nasty to nourishing varies widely with the internal and external conditions. Sometimes all those different elements take a long time to dissolve and break down. Sometimes it turns around faster than we think possible, like time-lapse photography of a log rotting on the forest floor with new green shoots springing to life overnight. Compassion is the magic ingredient that turns our personal “compost” into personal evolution.
The dark supports transformation. Times of literal darkness are needed for regeneration. Roots, seeds, and bulbs prepare. People and animals sleep. Times of symbolic darkness are also helpful. In darkness, transformative processes happen without spectators, often below the level of our conscious awareness. These are periods of catharsis, healing after trauma, cocooning in preparation for the next version of ourselves and our world.
We sometimes feel hopeless and helpless in the dark. Our society avoids sinking into it. Instead, we gravitate towards purveyors of easy “love and light!” spirituality, shying away from the deep, gooey work that happens to the larval versions of ourselves (and those around us) when we’re in the darkness of the cocoon. Self-compassion is most needed when we’re a mess.
The dark is a vital part of the wheel of our days, our years, our lifetimes. We need it to survive and be healthy in the long term. So, let’s embrace it, explore it, and be gentle with ourselves as we confront our fear of it. From this darkness we are nourished to bloom into the light.
@ 2021 Mara Bishop MA
Order Shining Bright Without Burning Out now!
Mara Bishop has
over 25 years of experience helping people find spiritual health and
well-being. Her Personal Evolution Counseling™ method blends shamanism,
psychology, intuition, energy healing, and nature-based practices. She
lives in Durham, NC with a beloved family of people, animals, and
plants.
More information about Mara is at www.WholeSpirit.com
