Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. I want to welcome you to the Sounds True Podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original, premium, transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, and special weekly live shows—including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us, and connect with others. You can learn more at Join.SoundsTrue.com.
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In this episode, my guest is Sarah Blondin. Sarah Blondin is an internationally beloved wisdom teacher. Her guided meditations have received over 10 million plays. She hosts the popular podcast, Live Awake, and with Sounds True, she’s published the book Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love, which now for the first time is available both as an audiobook and in the paperback format. In this conversation, I put Sarah on the spot and I ask her, it’s kind of like slam poetry, I ask her to lead us in two spontaneous guided meditations for the moment and she shares with us, most importantly, what it means to take up residence in the intelligence and the strength of our heart. Here’s my conversation with Sarah Blondin.
Sarah, welcome.
Sarah Blondin: Hi Tami. How are you?
TS: Wonderful. Now I want to talk about what you call being heart minded, but before we talk about it, maybe we can enter it. And if you would enter the state of heart mindedness, here you go. I mean, I guess it’s like when people say you’re a singer or a poet, can you say a poem for me? Can you sing a song? Can you lead us in a guided meditation so that we can enter this space of heart mindedness together here?
SB: Oh yes, I would love that. I love starting my interviews this way anyway. So everybody just close their eyes, and essentially we’re just assuming this gentle, soft posture. We’re softening into ourselves. And when we close our eyes, we kind of meet with our internal world, which can mean a lot of things for us depending on where we’re at, but we meet what’s here. And then we soften even further into that. And often I find physical touch, so touching the heart physically can help a lot. And then I just imagine that the heart is actually breathing. And I give the heart the chance to breathe with me and in my awareness, in my conscious awareness.
And this gentle act of just turning toward the heart actually just relieves a lot of our rushing, our running. It’s almost as if we’re climbing down a ladder from the mind and are doing this really strong operating system and looking for a different way to be in this moment. And I’m sure the reason most of you are here joining us in this conversation is because your heart has asked for a deeper, more meaningful conversation with your life. So it’s important, at the threshold or at the gate of these moments, to really bring the heart online with you, just in a reverent act of remembrance, which can be quite radical.
And with the heart breathing, softening with every breath—I always say to myself when I come home in this way, “I am here in this body, I am home. I am here in this body, I am home.” And to me that’s kind of like turning on the lights inside the heart, inside the body, down from the mind, turning on a different type of awareness. And we lean back as far as we can into this place and bringing it with us in our listening now, in our being together now. So just opening our eyes when you’re ready. So it begins.
TS: Thank you, Sarah. And just a couple of things to pull from that, this word “softening.” I noticed that word has a powerful impact on me. Sometimes I’ll just say it to myself, even in the course of a day. And I wonder if you can go into it a bit when you say it, the impact it has on you and what exactly are we softening? Everything?
SB: Well, in my experience with life since I was really little, I’ve always felt like I’ve been bracing against something. It’s almost as if I’m in this constant stance of readying myself for some sort of wave of something. And I’ve always had this sense that something’s coming to get me, nipping at my heels, and I kind of chalk that up to the energy that we’re most living in, which tends to be very vigilant and fast and rigid. And I think it’s because we’ve forgotten to tend to this part within us, that the scale is tilted so heavily towards this very automaton type of existence.
So the softening to me is such a visceral reminder as well, and a word to just help me remember that there is another way to be inside of this, and that there isn’t a wave coming to get me, and to remember that I can sit in a different way. And then immediately, my body kind of opens and becomes more porous and I’m more available and I’m more awake and I’m more alert. I’m not living in a very—I feel like it’s like a scarcity mindset or it’s just very fear-based. So softening, it’s important, I think, for all of us. We just haven’t been taught how to do it or that it’s important.
TS: And when you talk about putting our hand on our heart and bringing our energy into the heart center, do you have a feeling that it’s almost like the center of gravity in you shifts, or in the people who are listening, that there’s a shift from feeling all this energy in our head to our heart being bigger or more central? Or how does that go, do you think?
SB: When I close my eyes, that is exactly the feeling. It’s almost as if something kind of softens, expands, opens, and grounds all at the same time. So I not only become far more aware of a bigger version of myself and a larger capacity to hold my experience, I’m also aware that I’ve been living in another very polar kind of existence. So to see that those two polarities are operating at all times and to know that I have the power to actually wield and maneuver myself to sit in this softer, more available self is, quite frankly, something that—I don’t understand how this isn’t taught to our children or in schools because it’s so ignored. We always live in this upper part of our being instead of this other one that’s just easily, it’s right beside them. We’re walking down with one foot in either at all times, but we’re heavily focused on the tight grip, you could say.
TS: And then you talked about coming home in this moment, into our bodies right now, and you mentioned the lights going on inside or some reference to light in the body, and I’m very curious about that, what that’s like for you.
SB: I’m just going to check to see how it feels when I feel it.
TS: Thank you.
SB: I think when we all close our eyes, it’s like there’s a light and an inner world that we’re often neglecting and, living outside of that, we all of a sudden become very aware of. And for me, it’s almost like you can hear the pin drop inside of you. There’s this whole world that I’ve been living not aware of. So it’s like turning on the lights to this world that has a heart, that is protecting itself, that’s working really hard to be good in this world, to do good, to strive. And yet paradoxically, there’s another part of us that’s longing for our communion and our union with it. Turning the lights on, closing the eyes, and feeling the heart is just that. It’s realizing that we’ve been neglecting one part of our experience.
And that’s why when I wrote Heart Minded, I could sense that there was such an ache that accompanied the homecoming. It was almost like a pain of meeting a long-lost twin or something that you have spent your whole life without and finally coming into reunion with this part of you. And that’s why I really wanted to write the book, because that part of the homecoming is necessary. That ache is actually how the heart begins to open, suffuse, and take space in our being, but it’s the part we’re most afraid of. And it’s why we live so divided and so estranged from this part, because we haven’t really had the conversation around how to approach this part of ourselves, how to be in process with this part of ourselves. We’ve been so taught how to be in process in the world for the most part, how to go, do, be, get—and no one has given us a process for this inner language-less world.
And there was a really powerful line I heard when someone said, “We’re born with,” and I don’t remember who said it. But, “We’re born with a whole language and we only know half of it.” And I think the half we don’t know is this world, the one that lights up when we close our eyes and we go inside, that’s the one we don’t have language for. And when I was a really little girl, I used to sense there was an inner world inside of everyone. Everyone was a walking contradiction. I could see and feel it. And it made me really uncomfortable, because I didn’t feel like part of it was responsible, was conscious, so it felt like it wasn’t safe, something in me. You know how a horse, if you go up to a horse, it’s really fascinating, the horse is literally operating gut based, so it’s in its gut and if it meets your energy and you have any sort of conflicted energy, it’ll pull back. It’ll be like, “something’s not sound inside this body.”
And that’s what I sensed when I was little. There was something unsound, because it wasn’t being looked at, it wasn’t being talked about. And if you were to talk about it, it was like, don’t tell me I have pain and don’t make me look at my pain. And I remember my mom saying that a lot of her friends didn’t even want to be around me, because they felt as if I was looking into the soul and they were uncomfortable, because it’s almost like we don’t want to see this part of ourselves. We’re so divided. We’re just looking this way and there’s this whole other world that needs tending and cultivating and nurturing in order for us to feel safe to the world and to others.
TS: Now, Sarah, I wanted to start not just with the meditation, but then having you point to some of your inner experience of this inner world. Because it’s one thing to talk about heart mindedness, and it’s another thing to actually get to really start to taste it and swim in it, which is what I want for this conversation. And here though, to help us all enter deeply, I want to address the voice that some of us might have, and I have it in me. I’m going to say it for a moment in a kind of sarcastic way, because believe it or not, that’s how it occurs in me, which is, “Oh my God, one more Sounds True author asking me to put my hand on my heart. I don’t know if I can take it. One more time, really?”
And I recognize this judgmental part of me, and it comes up and it’s like, oh God, really? This is really what we’re going to do? This is really what we’re going to talk about? And it’s interesting, because you and I had a conversation about heart mindedness a few years ago, and one of the things I could track in my experience is how my judgmental nature has gone down a lot and I’m like, oh, that’s so interesting. It’s not as loud. Previously, maybe it was at this volume and now it’s at this volume, but I wonder if you can address that for people. You write about it in Heart Minded as an expression of a defense, a defensiveness in us. And so if you can address that defensiveness that some people might feel, even if it’s only a sliver of their experience.
SB: I still feel that experience. I’m not immune to that part of—I call all of these kind of habits very knee-jerk, built-in things that are just like, I don’t even want joy. I feel like there’s a part of me that’s even resistant to feeling joy. These are all these automatic, “Don’t go there. We don’t live in that place. We stay up here. It’s not safe here.” And so I can’t see an existence where I’m divorcing myself from that automatic part of me. So the only thing I would urge people to do is just to, well, what is that voice stopping you from doing? How can you embrace that voice and say, yes, I understand you’re here, you’re the gatekeeper. And am I willing to, just for a minute, just challenge that voice and say, yeah, I can bear to spend another minute with my hand on my heart? Why is this hard for me?
Because I think that is a question that we should all be asking ourselves. Why is that hard for me? If somebody asks me to do that with every moment, why do I avoid this slow, soft version of myself? Why is this hard? And once you start asking that question, that’s like the probing of the heart, right? That’s, why can’t I live here in this place? When I really want to. I don’t think you could honestly say I don’t want to live there. I don’t want to live in a way that feels tender and available and openhearted. I don’t want to do the work that reminds me I have a heart. You do want that, right, for your life? So what is it that we’re avoiding really? What’s really happening?
And today, I’ll just give you kind of a personal experience, I went for a walk in the forest and I met with—so my emotional heart, there’s a difference. I want to say that there’s an emotional heart and a spiritual heart. I guess that’s the best language I can come up with for it. The emotional heart is going to be the one that’s feeling pain and the emotional heart is the one that’s going to be calling us inward and toward the heart, but it’s for a curious reason. So I went for a walk today in the forest and I was feeling a sense of, I’m never going to get over this dark shadow that I feel is always inside of me. And it comes up when I’m in the most vulnerable state, kind of says, it almost looked to me like a dark nebulous cloud that was coming to take all of the joy and all of the goodness that I really believed in.
And when I closed my eyes and I sat under a tree, I realized that this feeling was—I was watching both parts of me. I was watching the joy and the love of my being and I was watching this dark nebulous cloud. And I was watching the two rival one another, in a sense, and I was completely absorbed with and in that experience to the point where I started crying because I felt like I was believing the dark cloud and I was believing my love being a threat. And then I realized that I just, when you go inside to meet the heart, the emotional heart will draw you forward because of a discomfort and a sense of pain. But it’s not there just for you to fall into and feel helpless to and to lose yourself in the conversations and the dialogue of your inner being. It’s there to show you you’re actually watching the two.
And the more you can lean back into the bigger heart, away from the emotional heart that brought you there in the first place, and you can lean back into the one that’s actually watching, that’s when you become more of your godself, more of your true self. You’re no longer lost in the toil of your inner world, which I don’t think is ever going to go away. I think this is part of the process. There’s a churn inside of us that’s going to get kicked up, no matter what, through our experience. And the only thing that I can understand to do is to spend those opportunities leaning back into this greater awareness. And that’s when I can get my footing, compassion moves in, I’m holding my life, it’s no longer holding me as a hostage too and inside of these forces. Does that make sense?
TS: Yeah. And it’s interesting, a couple times you’ve referenced this leaning back, tell me what happens in that physical gesture that shifts things for you.
SB: It’s a distance. So I see it so much like, this is looking in, so this is the watching the pain. It’s a very shoulders in, totally absorbed in the conversation, listening to the negativities, feeling the threat, feeling the pain, feeling the crucifixion of the paradox ultimately. And yet, understanding that you’re not these things, you’re watching them. You’re watching these two things rival within you. You’re not intended to take sides, you’re not intended to—I mean you can. You can lose yourselves within this, but the leaning back is literally a heart opening, a posture of surrender, and yet an undefendedness as well.
And that’s the part I think we’re really trying to get to, is never ever are we going to—I shouldn’t say that. We may at some point get to an area in our life where these forces inside of us go very quiet, but as far as I can tell, they’re there to come up and they’re there to teach me what’s beyond that. They’re there to bring me there so that muscle gets stronger. And that’s what I think the spiritual heart is. And it’s a muscle, it’s something that needs to expand, right? We need to lean into it.
TS: Now Sarah, for people who are meeting you here for the first time, and they’re a little bit like, OK, a wisdom teacher, how did Sarah Blondin become such a person? And how did she create all of these guided meditations that people love listening to? What was her journey to bring her to this moment? Can you give us a feeling for that, a sense of that?
SB: Let’s see, a retrospective here. I’ve always had, like I said, I wanted to understand the other language, the language that I felt like nobody was talking about. And I remember when I was little and I wrote my first story and I realized, oh my gosh, you can write a story that someone enters and feels and hears and sees all of a sudden. And I remember being like, whoa. So that was the first clue to me that writing and language was something that I really wanted to study. And so began years of reading spiritual texts or seeking books and trying to underline certain things that really resonated.
And following that thread, that’s kind of what I think is really unique about the heart. It’s the little things that spark our interests that we tend to follow without, not even by our conscious will, it’s just kind of happening. Like when you first started Sounds True. It was probably just some, I feel a distance. I feel an estrangement from my heart. And I feel like I want to remedy this somehow. And then, so begins the process of trying to find ways to remedy that.
So I guess when I look back, I’ve been doing it all along. I’ve been studying poetry and words that make me feel something. And I’ve always loved poetry because to me, poetry is the back door. It’s the back door to something. So it can help you unguard yourself quite easily. Poetry will help you enter this world where you say, OK, yes, I’m willing to listen to this because you didn’t go directly at my pain. You came at it from behind. So poetry was always, to me, something that opened my heart. So I’ve been studying writing and poetry.
I went to school for journalism. I absolutely hated journalism, because it was so technical and it felt like it had zero heart inside of it. I was supposed to show up and just give the facts and that, to me, felt like some sort of violation of this human experience. So I stopped journalism. But again, that was part of the language learning and it ended up teaching me a lot of technical skills, which was great.
And then I really changed when I moved to the country with my husband. So I’d always wanted to live in the forest. And when I got pregnant with my first son, it was kind of like it became urgent. I couldn’t stay in the city any longer. And when I moved to the country, that’s when I had what I would call a version of, or a similar feeling of a mental break of some kind, where I had no longer my routes of escape or my comfort zones of my friends. If I’d go to yoga, that was my community. Or even walking down the street, it gave me some footing. But all of a sudden, I was spit into this world that I realized I didn’t know myself, I didn’t know how to be with myself. And that’s when I got very disciplined in my writing.
It was the only thing keeping me alive was to flow write and purge. And then what I found is after the purging, after the very honest “I hate my life, I want to die” conversation took place, I allowed that to happen. I found the other voice, which is what I’ve come to know as the voice of the heart. And it’s all of ours. It’s available to all of us, but it’s almost as if I had to allow the screaming its place. I had to allow the voices their name. I had to give them their place. And then that’s when I started learning the lean back.
It was like, but this is also, yes, this is what is, but this is also here. And then I started writing these kind of things and I put them out with zero attachment or idea that it would do anything in the world. It was just an act of creativity to keep me sane in my first years of motherhood and pregnancy. And within a few years it was very shocking and a bit terrifying to all of a sudden have my very private internal things being heard and being received and being talked about. So that was a pretty intense period of my life, for sure.
TS: Tell me, Sarah, more about flow writing and, for somebody who wants to explore that, how they’d go about it. And then this notion that a voice comes on, there’s the complaining voice, we all probably know that. And then how do you invite something like the voice of the heart to come, or does it just—for you it just came, but I mean, let’s say here I am, I’m going to explore flow writing and I’d like to connect to something that’s not just a flow of complaint.
SB: I’ve been practicing flow writing as my way of connecting to my heart for probably close to 11 or 12 years now, under the tutelage and guidance of Natalie Goldberg, who’s my absolute hero. So she teaches this flow-writing practice, which is essentially to get rid of, not get rid of the mind, but at least rise above the censor of the mind and the dominating force that is our mind. And flow writing, you just sit down for ten minutes or however long you’ve decided and you let yourself express whatever it is that’s living inside of you at that moment, without censor and without stopping the pen ever. So you’re not punctuating or you’re not worrying about any of that.
And the whole aim of that, again, is to remove the censor and to find out what’s really going on for you underneath the surface. And then that’s often the most you need. You don’t really have to get to this voice that says beautiful things to you. And if that happens organically, then so be it, but I think the release is the whole point. And it is fascinating to see how the mind and the heart will actually begin communicating to one another, and the mind will show you why it has defenses. And then the heart will often show you the love on the other side of it and the paradox of it. And it just helps you get really comfortable inside your human experience.
TS: In Heart Minded, in the book, you have these beautiful letters from the universe and it’s obvious in the meditations, at least to me, when it’s this voice of the heart that’s guiding us into this inner space of heart intelligence. And I was thinking to myself, you must have been so relieved when you were doing flow writing, when this other wise, compassionate voice came forward that wasn’t just your discursive mind going in. You must have been so relieved. What did you make of it? What did you think was going on?
SB: That’s what I’m saying. To me, I had to write every day because it was like, all of a sudden, I had a lifeline. It felt like I was tied, it was like my umbilical cord to the divine is what I consider it. It’s like, all of a sudden, I tapped into something that said, there’s goodness, there’s hope, there’s love. And it didn’t have to do much convincing. That’s what I also found fascinating. It was almost as if you’re like, oh yeah, yeah, life is good. Life is kind. That’s what I also find fascinating is that that’s there, that’s a current that’s with us. We just have to get beyond and we have to be brave enough to actually begin the conversation with the parts of us that do have a really hard time in our experience. It’s a process as well. I mean , it’s really been a process and continues to be a process for me. It’s intimacy, it’s self-intimacy. And once we have self-intimacy, that’s when you really feel safe in the world and in yourself.
TS: Yeah, that’s an important point you’re making. Yeah. Now, you mentioned that this breakthrough came, if you will, this flow-writing breakthrough, after a really difficult period. You called it, I think you referred to it as a mental break and you write about it in Heart Minded as a time of depression. You call it soul sadness. And often I hear from people this link between intense mental suffering, intense suffering of some kind, and then a breakthrough, a spiritual breakthrough that comes almost as an outgrowth from that or related to that. How do you see the connection between the two?
SB: There were a few things going on, if I think about it. I think one of the things that comes with very intense periods of suffering is that you’re forced onto your back. So I literally felt like I didn’t have a will in me to do anything other than—I just felt like I had no hope. I had no anything. I was annihilated by the experience. And since then I’ve actually had a similar experience, and I find each time there is something revealed and a larger heart capacity is born to us and through us. I think there’s definitely a link, but I think we can refuse the conversation, we can refuse the opportunity, and that’s when I think we’ll get really stuck in the roasties and the mire of that if we’re not actually turning toward this in any way.
So in both instances, I had at least the wherewithal to have some form of practice that said, I’m going to show up for what I want to be true. I have to nurture something in me. I have to pull something out of the fray. And it’s not easy ever. It’s actually quite horrifying. I think you stand on the edge and you look into the great job, the unknown, and you actually realize how vulnerable you are. But once you actually allow that vulnerability to be received, say yes to that vulnerability, that’s when your experience changes as a human, the way you move through life. And I think each time that I have been forced to lay down in that way, I have found my authentic yes to life.
So I think we have to learn how to say yes to our lives, and that means the whole spectrum of it. And I think those moments of deep suffering are a deep yes. And that’s what I find within those places. I come out saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, more please. Because I’ve learned that there is a voice, a director inside of the being that’s there for me at the drop of a hat now and it just shows me everything. And it shows me how to be settled within the very unsettling and seductive forces of the mind. It shows me, this is what’s happening, and we can be seduced.
I find it so interesting, because I often say that I toe a very fine line between sanity and insanity. Because I feel like I’m walking along this edge of fully listening to what lives inside the human, which can be terrifying and frightening and painful, but I also am walking with this light of the heart that’s not only helping me walk with it but it’s a very fine line. Because you can dip. You have to have a practice of some kind. And that’s why I swear by flow writing as a means for maintaining a connection, so you don’t get lost in either direction.
TS: OK. This notion of a fine line between sanity and insanity, I can imagine someone thinking, I don’t want that. I would like to be firmly over here in sanity. I’m not sure I want this. I do want to be inhabiting, occupying the heart space, but I’m not interested in living that close to insanity. What would you say to that?
SB: My husband’s like that. He’s like, “I don’t see your need to be chewed by life.” He says he’d like to be chewed, chewed up by life, and he can easily exist in another arena that feels very, “OK, this is life. There’s no need to get too fussed about anything. I’m just going to sit here and watch it unfold.” I really believe him when he says he can live there. But for me, I love the feeling of feeling very lived. I love the feeling of joy that leaves me breathlessly in a puddle of love. I love that feeling. And I don’t know if he could say he’s ever felt that in his life.
So I go in search of it, which means I let all the things exist within my experience, because I’m curious. I want to know. And I want to know what I’m capable of walking with and through. And that’s my journey and that’s how I’ve chosen to exist in it. And the beautiful part being—I’m less afraid and I feel like I have a greater understanding of humanity in general. And so too a greater breadth of compassion that says, you can come to me with anything and I will be OK with it. I’m never going to push you away or compartmentalize you and say this is bad and this is good. I understand it because I’ve walked that line. So it’s really a personal choice, but that is what my heart has drawn me to. And I think it is out of the curiosity to see what the heart can withstand and what is given when we enter conversation with the whole spectrum of our experience, the deep, the nitty, the gritty.
TS: Now you mentioned that after this breakthrough in flow writing, then there was another experience that happened after that that, my own language here, put you down on your knees. And then there was some type of breakthrough to greater living awake as a result. Can you tell us about that? What happened?
SB: It was when I was writing this book, Tami, I think I told you—
TS: Oh, did your publisher put a lot of pressure on you?
SB: No, the publishing house was lovely. It was my own things living underneath. I think the biggest thing for me is to be seen, to be seen as who I am. And standing on a stage and saying, “This is who I am,” has felt very much like a firing squad or waiting for the firing squad. It’s like, this isn’t allowed, this isn’t where we live. This wasn’t accepted when I was little and it’s certainly probably not that accepted now. So it feels very unsafe in some way. So when I wrote the book, the whole prospect of being published, and at the same time I was having really big success with my podcast and all my meditation, so I was having this millions of people listening to your work and you’re being published and now go talk to this…
My first talk I ever gave was on a stage in front of 600 people—it wasn’t like 20 people. I went from zero to a hundred really fast, and it was almost as if the shock was too great, the expansion was too fast, and there was a part of me that just couldn’t hold that yet, couldn’t hold that yet. So I was put on my back and I had excruciating pain right around my heart, which was really fascinating. It was right in the solar plexus, and it never stopped. And I went to doctor after doctor trying to figure out what it was, and I had an echocardiogram on my heart because it actually felt like physically something was breaking down. And to no avail, nothing was found. But every day I did diligently, no matter the anxiety and the sleepless nights and the haunting—waking up with anxiety again as my companion, I showed up to nurse what was good in my life. And that was through my writing practice.
I have this image of myself walking through the forest in the snow with my journal, this shaking part of me with this still curious part of me that said, I accept. This is my way of accepting. I accept this place. I’m going to learn from this place. And I remember having so many experiences during that time, lying on my back, trying to feel into the physical pain, trying to talk to the physical pain. But the biggest one that it led to was a sincere and very real feeling of saying goodbye to myself. I remember saying, goodbye, Sarah. And what I mean by that is I remember saying goodbye to the Sarah who’s really stuck, the Sarah who’s really struggling. I just said goodbye, because I could sense there was another version of me beside and within this experience that I couldn’t fully access with her there.
And I remember just going so deep in meditation and just feeling, and smiling as I said goodbye. And this release happening and a crying happening and a very visceral sense of something leaving or being healed, you could say. And it wasn’t the pain. The pain lingered on and on and it wasn’t like anything really changed in that scenario, other than when I went walking out in the field and—I haven’t shared this with that many people, but I couldn’t find the part of me that was afraid anymore. It was like she had totally disappeared. And with that came, I remember even driving to my physical therapy appointment the next day and laughing while I was driving because I didn’t even feel like it was me driving. It was almost like I had distanced myself so far from this physical human form, but it was still happening. And I remember going into the appointment and laughing again when I started to talk because I hadn’t thought, I hadn’t had to think, I hadn’t had to do any of the things.
And it was like there was this whole noise missing. But with that, I stopped really wanting to talk. I didn’t want to engage. Everything felt like, “Meh, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh.” And I was like, there’s nothing I can contribute to this conversation. I felt very detached and I was drifting farther and farther away. And I remember feeling like, I don’t think I want that. Thank you for showing me that, but I think I want to explore the humanness, my humanness more. And I remember just slowly kind of reintegrating back into feeling emotions again and enjoying it. I was like, I think this is what I love. I love the conversation. Yeah, I don’t want to be detached.
TS: Do you have a sense that, for a moment, let me refer to these two different experiences that you’ve described as initiations into new ways of being. Do you have a sense that there’ll be more initiations, greater initiations—who knows how many and when, that there’s no end to this process? Is that your sense?
SB: That’s my sense. I expect to surprised by what shows up and what lives. Because I mean, if we are a process and life is coming in continually, not as we can control or expect, I mean we are most certainly going to be surprised by how we react and respond and what happens to us in the process. There’s certain things that I’m like, oof. I finally feel like I have this kind of understanding. My feet are on broad ground. I’m like, OK, I get it. I’m getting it. And then I go, ah, there’s conditions still. There’s don’t give me disease and please don’t take my child. Or there’s those conversations that are happening, so I’m sure there’s going to be endless processes.
TS: And what would you say, Sarah, to someone who’s in the midst of some type of process that they feel is initiatory and they’re in the difficult part of it?
SB: I would just really just try and encourage trust. Just trust, trust, trust. “I’m here in this body, I’m home.” And have some form of something where you’re nurturing something bigger than you. And a lot of my meditations that I would do when I was in that process were literally that I would close my eyes and I would drift into and I would say, “No one nowhere.” And I would let myself cellularly let go of this part that was going, oh my God, if I have to live through another day like this.
So I would find a way to at least have your nervous system able to regulate in some way. And I would make that of the utmost importance. And then just keep the word trust. I used mercy as a constant mantra, have mercy on me. I don’t take this lightly. I don’t think it’s easy and I think it can be quite frightening and I think if we were to normalize that, I think we’d have a far healthier world and relationship with one another.
TS: If we were to normalize the challenging nature of the spiritual journey?
SB: The challenging nature and what’s actually happening for us. Forget this facade of Sarah, the all-knowing spiritual teacher. I am a human being having a very real experience coming to face with all of the parts of me that are resistant to life, which is a lot of me. There’s a very large part of my body that epigenetically, or whether it’s ancestral, I’m not sure, that really doesn’t trust this life and doesn’t trust this existence. And to live close to that, it’s a trying experience, but it’s a wonderful one. I can’t think of a more beautiful type of wrestling, because when you do have those moments where there is grace, when grace does come, I remember hearing once in the thick of it, “Can you wait in peace until grace comes this time?” Instead of doing the whole dance and losing myself in the dialogue, “Can you wait in peace until grace comes?” Because grace always does come I find for those that are looking, I think, and at least physically trying to find ways to be in that conversation, not numbing out, not escaping.
TS: And if someone says, “Tell me what grace means to you?”
SB: Grace is the mysterious force by which you feel entirely held all of a sudden. And it’s usually something that comes as a surprise and it’s almost as if your body is infused with, or remembers, I would say, because I don’t think—I think when we wake up to really trust ourselves and our life experience, it’s almost as if that’s always been there, it’s just underneath so much other stuff. So grace to me is just by some hand of grace, all of the noise gets turned off or down, at least for a moment, and you can be buoyant for a moment. And that buoyancy is then what helps you walk again.
TS: Now, one of the things, Sarah, that I wanted to ask you about, this is a line from the book Heart Minded. “Part of the magic and mystery of the heart is that it begins to build a greater spine.” And I thought that’s so interesting, because I think sometimes when people are starting to explore their heart, there’s some idea that as I touch into greater sensitivity, I’m going to become mushier. And what you’re pointing to is, you may become mushier, but you’re also going to get stronger with your spine. And I wonder if you can talk about that interplay between our sensitivity and our strength.
SB: I had this really interesting experience where I remember just touching, or reading in the news or watching a video in the news where I was watching two children, kind of one towing the other. I think they were in Ethiopia. One was dragging its listless brother or sister to a watering hole and they were feeding water to their sibling and—non-responsive, the child was dead, had died. And I remember being swallowed by this entirely enormous pain that felt like it was bottomless and it was so big and so overwhelming and I was crying and crying and crying. And then this vision came to me that says, “What good are you in this state? In this form? Totally absorbed in the pain of this? Who else is here with you and what will actually be of service to this moment? Say you were with the child or the children?”
And then I had this vision of the spine, the mother, the mother who’s been with all the children who have died in this life and on this Earth. She’s strong spine, soft front. She’s not lost inside of anything, she’s holding it. And that’s been the greatest thing I’ve come to learn from the heart is, even as I’m getting older, Tami, I’ve noticed my mind’s not as fast. I feel like I’m very much at my bandwidth. Something’s like, I can’t contain any more information. I keep wanting to reference, what were the really magical experiences of my life? And they’re no longer there. They’re starting to leave. And even the memory, my children, my child, my youngest is only six and I’m still, his babyhood is like, was I there? Is it happening? So it’s taking on this very transient quality—and we want to hold on to all this information we have.
And I’m realizing what life is now asking me in the process is, what do you trust? What’s there? We see the mind and the body can be eroded, and we see they will erode and continue to erode, but there’s another ground inside of you which is the ground of the heart, which is this home. And if you haven’t spent any time in your life making this home conscious, meaning a relationship with, an intimacy with, you’ll have nowhere to land. And that’s why I think death and things like that will be quite terrifying. So that’s why we visit the heart, because it gives us a strong spine, a strong ground to stand on. It’s not mushy. Mushy is fun, but I don’t think mushy is the whole of it at all. I think with it comes this very courageous fierceness as well.
TS: Now, you mentioned trust as an offering to people if they’re going through a tough time. And the question that emerges for me upon reflection is, trust’s great when you can trust, but what about when you can’t trust? When that’s not available to you?
SB: No, and that wasn’t available to me in that time. In those hardest times of my life, I didn’t have trust. And I know how those kind of words of encouragement can feel almost abrasive and a slap in the face, because you’re dealing with so much suffering. But what more can we do but say, “I’ve been there?” And you do come out. You do come out. You will come out. And if you can’t trust now, you can’t trust now. That is what is. And what does your conversation with trust look like?
So oftentimes if I meet, this year has been my year for confronting joy. I want more joy. I think joy wants to infuse me. I think joy wants to live in every cell of my body—in my death, in my husband’s death, and my children’s—it wants to be here. And I feel a ceiling, there’s a capacity that I only allow small doses of it. So I’m then like, OK, well I have to have a conversation with joy. I have to sit joy down and let it have its full expression. So in this case, I have to sit trust down and ask it, why no trust? What can’t you trust? And you let that flow come, that non-censored flow, so that you can find what’s living in you that doesn’t want joy?
And when I met my refusal to joy, it is because I felt like the pigs fattened before the slaughter. You’re going to fatten me up with all this joy and this goodness and then it’s gone. You’re going to take it from me. But I had to reckon with that. And then I saw, the other voice came in and made it easier for me to stand with the paradoxical nature of life. I don’t think we get away from that. So to have a conversation with why you can’t trust, why it feels impossible, let that be heard because that is what is for you now. You can’t live in the denial of it any longer.
TS: And to conclude our conversation, let’s follow the energy that is asking to be expressed through you, the energy of joy, and have a heart-minded little meditative experience, if you will, into our joyous nature. What do you say, Sarah?
SB: Let’s do it, Tami. What’s your relationship with joy? Is it good?
TS: It comes only unbidden.
SB: Yes. It’s a surprise, it catches you off guard, right? OK. So let’s close our eyes again. I think that’s probably the most normal relationship we have with joy. But let’s deepen our breath, coming down from our listening minds, and receive a different quality and essence. What else lives here in us?
I like to imagine, or if you’d like to imagine yourself as a little baby, a wee babe. And if you ever watch a baby, the baby is enjoy watching light bouncing off the wall and laughing when it looks at its hand in front of its face. I believe that original kind of blueprint we came in with is a joyful, joyful by nature. And it’s important to remember that this nature doesn’t go away. It can’t be stolen or broken or hurt beyond repair. It’s just there at the periphery of our experience often. And we can learn to just say to ourselves that, I know there are parts of me that do not trust this joy and goodness, but I feel something calling me and I believe that I am a pioneer and I believe that trust and joy belong to me. They are to belong to me. So I’m going to work on this. So whatever parts of me can’t trust or don’t know what joy really is, I could allow more of it now.
And sometimes it can help to include our grandmothers and grandfathers, our parents, those that have struggled with joy as well, and just honor their experience and honor how pain can harden and calcify us. And we also want to honor that joy is still there, working to surprise us and take us by surprise. Working, working, working, calling to us by name. The two exist side by side, as with most things in our life. Everything is a paradox. So seeing both sides is very important. And then using our will, our courage, our strength to break the ceiling of our joy, at least announce with our strong lungs that we are going to trust this stream we hear, calling us toward it. Remembering this life is a process, it’s an ongoing conversation, and we kneel to greet the surge of all of it. Thank you, thank you. More, please. So be it.
We’re opening our eyes. It’s going to feel weak for a while. We have to build our capacity to receive the joy of our life.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Sarah Blondin. She’s the author of the book, now in paperback, Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love. And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in after-the-show Q&A conversations with featured presenters and have the chance to ask your questions, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community that features premium shows, live classes, and community events. Let’s learn and grow together. Come join us at Join.SoundsTrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.
