What do Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, a roadside run-in with the law, and conversations with Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Rob Bell, and Liz Gilbert have in common? In this month’s Point of Insight, Tami Simon follows a single image — the river — through her own life and through the teachers she’s spent twenty years interviewing, and asks what it means to finally stop resisting the current and enter it.
In this Point of Insight, Tami explores:
- How Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha first introduced her as a young person to the river as a symbol of timelessness and impermanence
- A humbling roadside encounter with a police officer that became an unplanned teaching on the dangers of “self-congratulatory” thinking
- Eckhart Tolle’s answer to a question he’s asked often at retreats: how do you know if you’re making progress on the spiritual path?
- A practice from Caroline Myss’s new Spiritual Homebase community, viewing a current challenge first through the lens of fear, then through the lens of faith
- Author and former megachurch pastor Rob Bell on reframing risk, and why the risk of not taking a risk is often the greater one
- Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, All the Way to the River, her relationship with Rayya Elias, and the “two doors” conversation that changed the course of her life
- The Buddhist teaching of the “stream-enterer,” one of the earliest stages of awakening to an impermanent, flowing nature
For anyone standing at the edge of a change, a risk, or an uncertainty they haven’t yet stepped into — press play and enter the river.
And if you’re intrigued by any of the guests mentioned in this episode, be sure to visit soundstrue.com/podcast to find their full episodes of Insights at the Edge.
