Reginald A. Ray: The Awakened State

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Reginald A. Ray: Hard Questions for a Vajra Master

Reginald A. Ray — September 16, 2015

Reggie Ray is a lineage holder of the great Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a faculty member of Naropa University, and spiritual director of the Dharma Ocean Foundation based in Crestone, Colorado. He is the author of several books, including Touching Enlightenment and Secret of the Vajra World. With Sounds True, Reggie has released audio learning programs such as Meditating with the Body and Meditation in Seven Steps. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon—who is a student of Reggie—poses a series of challenging and difficult questions to her instructor. (52 minutes)

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The Tantric Consort: Awakening Through Relationship

Reginald A. Ray — October 1, 2013

Friends, I wanted to let you know about a four-part online video course that we created with Reggie Ray which explores intimacy as one of the most radical vehicles of spiritual transformation. The Vajrayana, or tantric tradition of Buddhism, teaches ways of being in relationship that serve as unique gateways to spiritual awakening. These teachings on the consort represent some of the most advanced teachings in Buddhism, and have been guarded and kept secret for the most part over the last 1000 years. What Reggie has discovered is that contemporary practitioners are uniquely situated to undertake some of their deepest spiritual work in the context of intimate relationship, however lack the perspective and practices needed to do so.

Watch Reggie’s video introduction here:

Learn more and access The Tantric Consort online course here.

Who Is the Tantric Consort?

The tantric tradition asserts that spirituality in its fullest sense cannot be an isolated, solitary, purely self-involved enterprise. Rather, we make the deepest journey of transformation and ultimate fulfillment only in relationship—with our deepest nature, with our unique karmic situations, with the people in our lives, and with the living universe around us. Through being in connection with these others, we are inspired, we love, and we open. We learn at the deepest levels that we are never one alone but always two-by-two, always in connection, always in the love relationship with all that is; and therein lies our life and our realization.

The tantric consort is the ultimate other. In fact, in the tantric tradition, it is said that moment by moment, he or she represents to us the entire phenomenal world. In other words, in the consort, we most deeply and completely meet the sacred universe in its entirety—a perhaps outrageous claim, but one that experience proves. Through the practice of taking the consort as representing the sacred totality, we learn to love more deeply than we ever imagined possible: first the consort, then everything that is. We see where we habitually hold back and hide out; we practice ways to release our masks, blockages, and obstacles; and ultimately we find union, where releasing our narcissistic fixation on ourselves and discovering our profound and eternal oneness with the consort—and through him or her the world—are the same thing. Ultimately, our ability to journey on the path of the tantric consort comes down to our own willingness, bravery, and devotion in cultivating an open heart and in learning to love the beloved openly and without limit.

By sharing ancient Vajrayana teachings on the view of the consort relationship as well as guiding us through specific, powerful meditations, Reggie leads us to both an understanding and an experience of the tantric consort as the gateway to our own awakening. He emphasizes learning practices that can be carried forward into our lives, including several heart-based meditations to be practices on our own or with a partner.

Many believe that the goal of spiritual practice is enlightenment or liberation, but the human being actually longs for much, much more. Instinctually, we yearn for what we know is possible: fulfillment, joy and union with all creation. Opening to our longing to connect with the tantric consort is the gateway and learning to relate with him or her openheartedly is the path.

Here is a summary of the course’s four parts:

Session 1: Relating with the Other as Sacred

The Vajrayana View of Consort Practice

Why is relationality the essence of Vajrayana spirituality? What special role does the consort play within the Vajrayana? Where do these teachings come from and how can the ancient practices of working with a consort be applied to our modern lives? What differentiates the consort relationship from conventional relationships? How does the consort appear in our life?

The guided meditation we will learn in Session One is The Thousand-Petaled Lotus Practice: Beginning to Open the Heart. Just as we establish the view on a conceptual level in order to engage in consort practice, we must also establish the ground of an open heart on a visceral level. The Thousand-Petaled Lotus Practice will become a gateway to all further consort practice for us.

Session 2: Genuine Presence

The Practice of Being a Consort

In Session Two we will discuss the qualities of a consort relationship—as well as each partner’s individual practice—that create a powerful container for spiritual transformation. Themes will include: staying close to your inspiration, becoming vulnerable, the nature of commitment in the consort relationship, courageous honesty, and relaxing the judgmental mind.

The commitment of tantric consorts to work with one another’s fullness—the brilliant array of light and dark, wisdom and neurosis, empowerment and injury that we each possess—becomes an invitation for consorts to explore their own vastness and become who they truly are.

We will also learn a meditation called Dissolving Blockages and Uncovering the Heart’s Unconditional Openness. Through our persistent, gentle practice we begin to wear away the armor that surrounds our hearts, revealing a luminous love that naturally opens to and receives our partner.

Session 3: Obstacles and Antidotes

Practices and Techniques for When the Going Gets Rough

In the consort relationship we are bound to encounter even more emotional and psychological “triggers” than in a conventional relationship, because we have explicitly committed to spiritual awakening, which requires that we go to and through the uncomfortable places; that we surf the endless waves of our own growth edges.

When those unavoidable experiences arise, how can we learn to welcome them with open arms, rather than to cower and escape into habitual behavior patterns? Session Three’s discussion will be on cultivating our bravery as spiritual warriors so we can engage these encounters differently than we have in the past.

In this session Dr. Ray will lead us through a meditation that applies especially well to moments of upheaval in relationship: Learning to Behold Our Intimate Partner with Our Heart.

Session 4: Meditation in Action

Healing Core Traumas with the Consort

It is said in the tradition that the consort “unbinds the fetters of the heart,” meaning that he or she frees us at the deepest levels of our being to love and to open that love to the world. Through consort practices, over time, the most hidden, unconscious blockages are called into consciousness so that we can see them, work with them, and resolve them. Often the emotional twists and distortions that underlie our current conscious ego prison go back to preverbal levels. Yet, as modern psychology shows us, these unconscious patterns control and limit what we can feel and see and experience, and ultimately block our ability to love fully.

This session will discuss the path of consort practice in its ability to heal and resolve our deepest wounds. Facing these traumas with the support of our tantric consort is a slow but liberating process that opens up our own capacity to experience life’s joy and fulfillment.

This session’s final guided meditation is a powerful one that can be practiced on one’s own or with a partner: A Consort Meditation for Dissolving Core Traumas and Obscurations. Dr. Ray will lead us through this meditation technique that can be applied again and again, either when core traumas arise naturally, or when we sit down with the intention of specifically engaging certain aspects of ourselves or our partner that we know need healing.

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The Purpose of Life is to Love

Reginald A. Ray — July 31, 2013

Within all of the great wisdom traditions we find an emphasis on love, kindness, and opening our heart to others. It is quite natural to open in this way to our family and friends, but what the great traditions teach is that this reservoir of love inside us is unlimited, extends to all living beings, and even to the universe itself. This reality of love is not an abstract experience, notes respected meditation teacher Reggie Ray, but something that is alive the core of who and what we are. One way to envision the spiritual journey is as a pathway which unlocks the love in our hearts, thereby enabling us to become fully human.

Please enjoy this short video from Reggie on the unfolding of love.

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Zulma Reyo: The Radiant Sun of the Heart

Zulma Reyo — March 11, 2025

Each of us has a sense of ourselves as a separate and distinct individual, or what’s commonly called the personality or the ego. Yet beneath the surface of who we take ourselves to be shines a radiant and holy true Self, or who we are at the soul level. In this podcast, Sounds True’s founder, Tami Simon, speaks with celebrated spiritual teacher and author Zulma Reyo about the continual work of releasing the limitations of the egoic self to uncover and express the light and love of our deepest nature.

Drawing on insights from the books Inner Alchemy and Emergence of Consciousness, Zulma and Tami explore: the gift of etheric sight; the relationship between the personality and the soul; ego death; objective self-observation; the lifelong process of clearing out stuck emotional energies; the three energy bodies of the personality; turning your attention from the personality to your deeper, inner self; finding community support; seeing the purity within others; working on yourself as an act of service to the world; humility and self-honesty; the practice of letter writing; giving yourself the love and acceptance you didn’t receive as a child; a guided experience of Zulma’s alchemical alignment practice; connecting to the radiant sun within yourself; forgiving the unforgivable; the emergence of a new group consciousness; examining your attachments; 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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Love: The Shining of Being in Every Heart: A Message f...

Rupert Spira — March 5, 2025

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?

Rev. Jacqui Lewis, PhD — March 4, 2025

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.