Search Results for: Sounds True – Page 152

Short-cutting the unfolding of love…

I was speaking with my friend and Sounds True author Tara Brach a few weeks ago about the many ways spirituality can serve a defensive function, resulting in the avoidance of unresolved emotional wounding. During our conversation Tara used a phrase “premature forgiveness,” where she was pointing to how in the rush to do the right spiritual thing – sending love, kindness, compassion, or forgiveness to a person who has deeply hurt us – we can act prematurely, before we’re ready to do so in a deeply embodied way. We to want to replace our yucky feelings of aggression, anger, and hatred with those noble qualities of love, kindness, and understanding. We want to transform the negative into the positive. This is so natural, of course. None of us want to hold these darker energies in our hearts, in our psyches, and in our bodies.

But when we move straight to forgiveness, compassion, or kindness, without first metabolizing those feelings of hurt, shame, pain, and grief which are inside us, perhaps we shortcut the unfolding of love. When we are able to first digest the deep hurt we have felt, resisting the temptation to transcend it or even heal it, we cut into a lifetime’s organization of turning from immediate, embodied experience. We see that we can begin to make a commitment to becoming deeply intimate with all parts of ourselves that seek our attention, holding them closely as guests of our hearts, as potential messengers from beyond. We do not need to ostracize our pain, orphan it, and send it away as part of our spiritual journey, for all is welcome here. There is no timeline, but only the one that our own hearts reveal. We can discover that what we are is an open, luminous, holding environment of awareness, a capacity to allow ourselves to be touched and transformed by whatever appears. It is not always easy, rarely fun, oftentimes terrifying; but we might come to see that by meeting these energies directly, they are able to show us the way Home; that, in fact, at the core of every emotion, every sensation, and every feeling that could ever be is the substance of love itself, the nature of awakened consciousness.

sunrise_mountainsThis energy or movement of forgiveness, which is of course an important and noble one, has a way of arising naturally, on its own, when our pain, grief, and hurt is metabolized in our hearts and bodies, when we allow it to be touched by the light of our awareness. In this sense, forgiveness is not so much a “practice” that we do or even the result of an intention that we’ve made; it lives and breathes and moves outside of the conceptual world entirely. We see that it is a somatic process, one that is effortless in a sense. As our pain and grief is processed, in a deeply embodied way, according to a timeline that is unique to each human heart heart, forgiveness may naturally be there waiting for us on the other side. Forgiveness, then, may not be something that we “do,” or try to do, and is no longer seen as evidence that we are a “spiritual” person and so forth. Many people that I speak with have concluded that they have “failed” because they have not forgiven, they feel shame that they are not good spiritual practitioners, that somehow the mere presence of sensations and feelings such as anger or rage or grief indicate that they are lost, unspiritual, and unworthy of love.

Forgiveness is not something we need to take on as a project. We come to see that there are times when forgiveness is not actually the energy that is being called forth in a particular situation and may not be the most skillful or, ultimately, the most loving or the most kind. It is very important to explore this. Setting boundaries, taking space, honoring the call of the body, listening to the heart, being angry – the total mandala of our situation may be calling for a different response. This call can be acknowledged and honored, and in this way these other responses can be just as “spiritual” as forgiveness; in actuality, more so, especially if the forgiveness is “premature.” It is possible the anger that is there, the shame, the hurt, the embarrassment, the jealousy, the grief, the terror, the fear – that these feelings, sensations, and qualities are inviting us to explore them deeply, to touch them, to hold them, to allow them all the way in; to honor them. Often, in our rush to forgive them away, to be good spiritual people, we lose touch with their essence, intelligence, and the gifts they may have to offer, thereby losing touch with our own hearts.

For those of you who are interested in the areas of self-compassion, working with shame, self-acceptance, and self-love, I really recommend Tara’s work for those who may not be familiar with it. Her audio programs – Radical Self-Acceptance, Finding True Refuge, and Meditations for Emotional Healing – are important and ones I recommend often. I’m really happy to note that Tara will be joining us at this year’s Wake Up Festival!

Your Cells Are Listening

Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Sondra Barrett, a nationally recognized speaker on mind-body medicine and a medical scientist whose cutting-edge research on cancer cells led to new healing strategies for children and adults with life-threatening illnesses. With Sounds True, Dr. Barrett has written a new book, Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body’s Inner Intelligence. In the first half of a two-part interview, Tami speaks with Dr. Barrett about how we can look at our cells from a scientific and sacred perspective, how our body’s intelligence resonates in the fabric of the cell’s cytoskeleton, and the life lessons she has learned from our cells—which she calls our greatest living ancestors. (60 minutes)

Kristin Neff: The Liberating Power of Self-Compassion

Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Kristin Neff, a professor of human development and culture at the University of Texas and a practitioner of Buddhist meditation. The recent book and documentary The Horse Boy illustrate her and her family’s adventure with autism. With Sounds True, Kristin has created the audio program Self-Compassion Step-by-Step, which includes clinical evidence of the importance of self-compassion along with techniques and exercises for cultivating this pivotal quality. In this interview, Tami and Kristin talk about three pillars of self-compassion, “self-compassion breaks,” and the importance of recognizing our common humanity during difficulties that feel unique and isolating. (69 minutes)

Cooking as meditation… with Dr. Andrew Weil

In many contemplative traditions, it is said that we can practice meditation during the most ordinary activities, such as taking a walk, washing the dishes, or even in the midst of a busy day of emails. Here, our friend and Sounds True author Dr. Andrew Weil shows how the simple art of cooking – when engaged in a present, mindful, and open way – can offer a gateway into the experience of meditation.

We’d love to hear from you on how cooking and other so-called “ordinary” activities offer you a portal into deeper love, awakening, and aliveness in the present moment.

 

Mothering and Daughtering

Tami Simon speaks with Sil and Eliza Reynolds, a mother-daughter team who are leading a revolution to overturn the conventional wisdom that creates rifts between so many mothers and daughters. Sil is a therapist in private practice, while Eliza is a student at Brown University. With Sounds True, they have co-authored a new book, Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong Through the Teen Years. In this episode, Tami speaks with Sil and Eliza about ways we can heal the mother-daughter bond especially during the difficult teen years, the essential tools that both mothers and daughters need, and what it means for mothers and daughters at any age to “keep it real.” (66 minutes)

Relationship as spiritual practice

My husband and I recently attended a talk that Bruce Tift gave at the Shambhala Center in Boulder titled Relationship as a Path of Awakening. Bruce Tift, LMFT, is a private-practice therapist and instructor at Naropa University here in Boulder. (In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that Bruce is also a Sounds True author with an amazing audio program titled Already Free.) In his talk, Bruce discussed at length the both magical and disturbing nature of intimate relationships and how important it is to continually nurture and accept one another, while simultaneously and unabashedly encouraging growth. He highlighted common relationship patterns that he often sees in his private practice and helped trace them back to childhood—namely survival skills that we established upon first connection with our mothers, which no longer serve us. It should be noted that Bruce was not talking about survival skills which could be considered obvious reactions to abuse or neglect from a parent. Instead, he was referring to seemingly innocent details, such as our mothers’ own self-confidence, and how those nuances come to fruition in our adult lives and inform how we ultimately view the world, connect in intimate relationships, parent our children, etc. For me, discovering how much our lives are perpetually infused by even the minutest aspects of intimate relationship was both a beautiful and terrifying realization. How can we ever be fully aware of the implications of our behavior?

In his talk, Bruce also emphasized the need for couples to develop what he calls “healthy intimacy,” which involves building a strong connection, while at the same time fostering a sense of healthy separation. In Bruce’s opinion, the juxtaposition of connection and separation encourages couples to build a sense of individual independence and to shed their own self-limiting behaviors, while also fostering a depth of adoration and understanding for one another and their collective experience. What most resonated for me in Bruce’s talk is that individual development is only as effective as collective development—for in intimate relationship, the two are ultimately one. No matter how much progress we may make individually, if we’re not progressing in step with one another, our collective experience will be perpetually fractured. While this has always been obvious to me when it comes to goals and alignment related to our outer life—finances, health, travel, family, etc.—I’ve never viewed our inner spiritual goals as those that require the most attention and ultimately make our relationship work.

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As relative newlyweds, my husband and I are continually exploring relationship and the role that intimate relationships in particular play in one’s practice or personal growth. While people typically rely on those closest for nurturing and support, it is also those close to us who are best equipped to cast light on all our shadows. But how do we strike the balance between building the nest and deconstructing old patterns? How can we encourage one another to be vulnerable and to break our hearts wide open in relationship, while simultaneously using that same openness to examine and cast each others’ skeletons out of the closet? How do we prevent the very delicateness that we create within intimacy from also being used against us? In Bruce’s words, how do we negotiate the hard fact that our most beautiful and unconditional relationships can also be the most disturbing?

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