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.
Most Recent
NEW PODCAST: We Are the Great Turning
The climate crisis is something we can no longer ignore. Yet in this time of global upheaval, how can we face our collective challenges with our hearts and integrity intact? We Are the Great Turning is a new 10-part series exploring the spiritual roots of the climate crisis and how to turn toward our heartbreak, honor it, be informed by it, and, in the process, transform our grief and anger into agency and action.
In our first episode, renowned activists Joanna Macy and Jess Serrante invite you into “a climate conversation that welcomes all of you,” discussing “standing afresh with what it’s like to live on Earth at this moment”; loving a world engulfed in crisis and separation; the Work That Reconnects—Joanna’s term for her multifaceted approach to global activism; why cheering each other up doesn’t help in the long run; embracing all of our feelings; the loneliness of “the unheard witness”; overcoming the “cultural amnesia of a hyper-individualist society”; and more.
Ep 2: The Three Stories of Our Time
What’s really going on in the world right now? “Business as Usual”—a comforting narrative in which industrial growth and progress overcomes all? “The Great Unraveling” —a planet careening toward inevitable destruction? Joanna‘s work introduces a third story, “The Great Turning”—a paradigm shift on an epic scale, the creation of a just and life-sustaining society. The stakes are high, the outcome uncertain. This conversation invites you to devote yourself to the Great Turning even as you grasp the truth in all three stories.
In this episode:
- Three outlooks on these times: Business as Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning
- What’s behind all three—how they affect us in conscious and unconscious ways
- What the Great Turning means, and how to devote yourself to it
- Bonus Exercise: Envisioning the Great Turning
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.
Peter A. Levine: From Trauma to Awakening and Flow
After 50 years of helping thousands of clients in trauma recovery and now in his 80s, Peter A. Levine, PhD, continues the work of healing—both others and himself. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with the beloved Sounds True author and groundbreaking creator of the Somatic Experiencing® method about his personal journey and ongoing mission.
Give a listen to this inspiring conversation about the importance of community, the power of compassion, and the profound wisdom of the body, as Tami and Dr. Levine discuss: personal writing as a tool for working with trauma; self-compassion and kindness; conception trauma and procedural memories; the archetype of the wounded healer; the body as healer; how both trauma and wisdom are passed from generation to generation; conversations with Einstein; getting to the root of where you’re stuck; the promises and pitfalls of psychedelics; lessening our fear of dying; on-the-spot techniques for feeling safe in your nervous system; the ongoing nature of healing; the journey from trauma to awakening and flow; 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.
Customer Favorites
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.
Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Bookshop
Tara Brach: True Refuge
Tara Brach is an author, clinical psychologist, and the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. A longtime Sounds True collaborator, Tara is one of the creators and main teachers for the in-depth Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Tara about “the Trance of Unworthiness”—a state in which we believe that we are too inadequate, incomplete, and broken to love ourselves. Tara explains why we are so tough on ourselves and the steps needed to cultivate self-compassion. Tami and Tara also discuss how we can find refuges within no matter our current difficulties. Finally, they talk about the need for mental health professionals to understand contemplative practices such as mindfulness. (56 minutes)
Your original face
There is a famous Zen koan that asks, “What is your original face, the face you had before you were born?”
Whenever I have heard this koan, my first response is, “I have no idea how to answer that.” And of course, that is the purpose of a Zen koan, to confound the thinking mind and in so doing, wake us up to a deeper form of knowing.
One thing I have noticed is that the more I am able to sit in that not knowing state, to rest in a sense of “just being”, the more I can relax and feel what, if anything, is needed next. It is not a conceptual process; it is more like a listening. And from that listening, originality emerges (“original” meaning “from the origin” or “from the source”).
Waking up is not about copying anyone or anything. It can’t be. Because as soon as we are mimicking something, we are recycling someone else’s experience. We are one step removed from the source; we are no longer rooted in our own moment-to-moment revelatory experience.
My basic point here is that the more we discover our own Original Face, the face we had before we were born, the more confident we become in expressing ourselves in unique ways. In a sense, great spiritual teachers feel to me like great “artists of the spirit.” And like an inspired musician, poet, or painter, a spiritual artist knows that he or she must spend time in the space of not knowing and then trust the melodies, visions, words, and guidance that come through.
Sometimes people say to me that they are afraid of spiritual awakening because they are afraid of being erased, afraid that they will turn into a paste of nothingness. What I have found is that the more we drop the sense of being separate and disconnected, the more we tune to the underlying, unifying “hum” of being, the more we become plugged in to a current that begins to animate our life. And sometimes, the life force expresses through us in pretty outrageous ways. We take chances. We speak from our heart. We become a mystery to ourselves and a creative force in the world.
To take this even further, what if the more we discover our Original Face, the more our one-and-only physical face starts to express the love and beauty of the cosmos in unusual and distinctive ways? Abraham Lincoln is attributed with saying “Every man over 40 is responsible for his face.” I take this to mean that each one of us has a responsibility for the love and kindness and warmth and openness that our face communicates. What if the quality in our eyes, the shape of our mouth, the openness of our forehead, and even the character of our nose, is a direct expression of our capacity to know and rest in being?
At Sounds True, we often refer to the Wake Up Festival as a celebration of the “many faces of awakening.” And I love that phrase. I look forward to seeing each and every person’s one and only original face this August in the Rocky Mountains.
