It is okay to be broken, to allow yourself to fall apart
You need not hold it together any longer for you were never together to begin with
Fall apart and resist the temptation to put yourself back together again
See what is forever untouched by the concepts “together” and “apart”
It is okay to be broken, for it is through the cracks in you that light can pour through
After the stillness of winter and the slow waking of spring, summer is a time for getting up, getting out, and getting our hands on what inspires us the most. Here are some recent Sounds True releases for tapping into a life well lived.
This is a book that celebrates our interconnection with nature and shows how to deeply engage the natural world wherever you live to dramatically improve your health. Clemens G. Arvay presents fascinating research, practical tools and activities,
inspiring stories, and more in this accessible guide to the remarkable benefits of being in nature.
Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-biophilia-effect.html
Human beings are inseparable from the natural world, coevolving with all of life. In order to thrive, we need to nourish this bond. In his latest book, biologist Clemens G. Arvay illuminates the miraculous ways that the human body interprets the living “code” of plants, animals, and our larger natural habitat for healing and sustenance.
Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-healing-code-of-nature.html
“From an ancient perspective, everything—including all natural things, like rocks, flowers, trees, insects, birds, and mammals
—is alive and infused with conscious energy or spirit,” writes Sarah Seidelmann. If you’re one of the many people looking to reconnect with the creativity, wisdom, and vital energy of the natural world, here is a fantastic guide for tapping into the power of animal totems, or “beasties.”
Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/book-of-beasties.html
“Making your love manifest, transforming your spirit, good heart, and able hands into food is a great undertaking,” writes renowned chef and Zen priest Edward Espe Brown, “one that will nourish you in the doing, in the offering, and in the eating.” With No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice, Brown beautifully blends expert cooking advice with thoughtful reflections on meaning, joy, and life itself.
Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/no-recipe.html
From the creators of Good Night Yoga and Good Morning Yoga comes a beautifully illustrated city adventure that introduces children to the delights and benefits of partner yoga.
Perfect for teaming up with a friend, sibling, parent, or caregiver, each easy practice shows how cooperation helps us to imagine, move, and have fun in a whole new way.
Includes a back-page guide for parents and caregivers, showing how to do each pose and how to connect them into an easy-to-follow flow.
Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/yoga-friends.html
What if you could be happier, right now, without radically changing your life? As nationally recognized happiness expert Nataly Kogan teaches, happiness is not a nice feeling or a frivolous extra. It’s a critical, non-negotiable ingredient for living a fulfilling, meaningful, and healthy life—and it’s a skill that we can all learn and improve through practice. In Happier Now, Nataly shares an illuminating, inspiring, and science-based guide to help you build your happier skills and live with more joy, starting now.
Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/happier-now.html
Have other books you’ve read by the poolside or under a shade tree ended up changing the way you see the world? Tell us about those summer reads that ended up being more than you expected!
Sounds True is on Spotify!
Need some tunes for rest and relaxation? Check out our Singing Bowl Meditation Playlist! A variety of artists who make a soothing mix of infinite rhythms using Tibetan singing bowls. Perfect throughout a meditative practice.
The Integrity Advantage by Kelly Kosow
Are you ready to open up to new levels of self-trust and self-love, to get where you want to go?
You vowed to speak up at work, and then sat silent in the meeting yet again.
You told yourself “this time the diet is going to stick,” only to watch the scale inching up.
You felt that something just wasn’t right about someone that—until you learned the hard way that your instincts were right.
“Every time you bite your tongue,” teaches Kelley Kosow, “you swallow your integrity.”
Before Kelley Kosow was a renowned life coach and CEO, she constantly second-guessed herself, let her “to-do” lists and others steer her dreams and passions, and played it “small and safe.”
Inspired by the groundbreaking principles of her renowned mentor Debbie Ford, who hand-picked Kelley to be her successor, The Integrity Advantage is Kelley’s step-by-step guide for facing the fear, shame, and false beliefs that cause us to lose our way.
Through life-changing insights, true stories, and proven strategies, this book will show you how to live on your own terms—according to you—from the inside out.
As modern women, we’re taught that we can do it all, have it all, and be it all. While this freedom is beautiful, it’s also exhausting. Being a “worn-out woman” is now so common that we think feeling tired all the time is normal. According to Karen Brody, feeling this exhausted is not normal—and it’s holding us back. In Daring to Rest, Brody comes to the rescue with a 40-day program to help you reclaim rest and access your most powerful, authentic self through yoga nidra, a meditative practice that guides you into one of the deepest states of relaxation imaginable.
It’s time to lie down and begin the journey to waking up
Breathe and Be by Anna Emilia Laitinen and Kate Coombs
Teaching mindfulness helps kids learn to stay calm, regulate their emotions, and appreciate the world around them. With Breathe and Be, author Kate Coombs and illustrator Anna Emilia Laitinen team up to present a book of poetry and art for young readers to make mindfulness easy, natural, and beautiful. Here is a book sure to delight parents and kids alike, blending lovingly illustrated nature imagery with elegant verse about living with awareness and inner peace.
Leopard Warrior by John Lockley
A Teaching Memoir That Crosses the Barriers Between Worlds
A shaman is one who has learned to move between two worlds: our physical reality and the realm of spirits. For John Lockley, shamanic training also meant learning to cross the immense divide of race and culture in South Africa.
As a medic drafted into the South African military in 1990, John Lockley had a powerful dream. “Even though I am a white man of Irish and English descent, I knew in my bones that I had received my calling to become a sangoma, a traditional South African shaman,” John writes. “I felt blessed by the ancient spirit of Africa, and I knew that I had started on a journey filled with magic and danger.” His path took him from the hills of South Korea, where he trained as a student under Zen Master Su Bong, to the rural African landscape of the Eastern Cape and the world of the sangoma mystic healers, where he found his teacher in the medicine woman called MaMngwev
Things That Join the Sea and the Sky by Mark Nepo
A Reader for Navigating the Depths of Our Lives
The Universe holds us and tosses us about, only to hold us again. With Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark Nepo brings us a compelling treasury of short prose reflections to turn to when struggling to keep our heads above water, and to breathe into all of our sorrows and joys.
Inspired by his own journal writing across 15 years, this book shares with us some of Mark’s most personal work. Many passages arise from accounts of his own life events—moments of “sinking and being lifted”—and the insights they yielded. Through these passages, we’re encouraged to navigate our own currents of sea and sky, and to discover something fundamental yet elusive: How, simply, to be here.
To be enjoyed in many ways—individually, by topic, or as an unfolding sequence—Things That Join the Sea and the Sky presents 145 contemplations gathered into 17 themes, each intended to illuminate specific situations.
Fear, self-doubt, and emotional pain have a way of showing up uninvited, and most of us spend enormous energy trying to push them away. What would shift for you if turning toward those experiences, with curiosity and care, became the most healing thing you could do?
At Sounds True, we have spent four decades connecting people with teachers who ask exactly that kind of question. Our library of transformational teachings, digital courses, and programs exists to help you move through life’s harder moments with greater awareness and inner strength.
We will cover the feeding your demons practice, Lama Tsultrim Allione’s approach to turning towards difficulty, the ancient roots of Machig Labdron Chod and Tibetan shadow work, and how relating to demons as teachers can open a path toward lasting inner growth.
Lama Tsultrim Allione is a recognized Buddhist teacher, author, and the founder of Tara Mandala, a mountain retreat center dedicated to contemplative practice and spiritual study. She has spent decades teaching within the lineage of Machig Labdrön, the 11th-century Tibetan yogini who founded the Chöd tradition, and has brought her work on Dzogchen teachings to students around the world.
When we treat challenging emotions as teachers, space opens for greater awareness, resilience, and emotional freedom. Her teachings show that turning towards difficulty is one of the most courageous acts of self-care we can practice. Her work sits alongside that of many respected voices we are proud to carry, all of whom you can find on our All Teachers & Authors page.
Most of us instinctively turn away from difficult emotions, painful memories, or persistent inner struggles. The practice of feeding your demons offers a different path. Meeting fear, anger, or shame with curiosity and compassion, and asking what those feelings truly need, can begin to shift even the most entrenched patterns.
Lama Tsultrim Allione developed a five-step process for working with disowned emotions without becoming pulled into spirals of negativity. Rooted in both shamanic and Buddhist traditions, this approach weaves ancient practices into a form that feels accessible to modern practitioners.
Our Spirituality & Awakening collection brings together teachings like these, spanning presence, healing, and inner exploration for those ready to go deeper. Now, let’s see what makes this practice possible.
The practice teaches you to map your demons and recognize how they interconnect. A fear of failure, for example, often links to a deeper sense of unworthiness that surfaces across professional and personal life, creating patterns that repeat until they are met with awareness and care.
One of the practice’s most compelling insights is that tending to your demons can yield real physical results. Chronic tension, restless sleep, and emotional exhaustion often ease when we begin to meet what is present with openness. Practitioners describe a quality of release that resistance alone never creates.
Working with your demons can become a potent gateway to spiritual awakening. When we stop avoiding what frightens us, those very struggles often reveal where we are clinging, where healing is needed, and what genuine growth looks like in practice. These skills help subdue fear and embrace openness, laying the groundwork for deeper spiritual engagement.
Tibetan shadow work offers a compassionate framework for working with the parts of ourselves we often reject or ignore. When we meet uncomfortable thoughts with openness, we begin to recognize them as invitations for insight and transformation. The more willing we become to face these hidden aspects, the more inner balance we can cultivate.
The feeding your demons practice is rooted in the ancient tradition of Machig Labdron Chod, a Tibetan Buddhist lineage that teaches transformation through generosity and openness. Machig Labdrön’s teachings hold that we can learn to relate to suffering in a new way, meeting it with care. Symbolically offering nourishment to our fears softens habitual avoidance and creates conditions for lasting healing.
Alongside Chöd, other exercises within this tradition draw from both shamanic and Buddhist practice, including visualization techniques, body-centered awareness, and practices that help us move toward what we would avoid.
Addressing our demons directly is one of the most powerful commitments we can make to personal growth and transformation. Our Subtle Energy collection supports this kind of inner work, bringing together teachings on energetic awareness for those ready to go deeper.
The principles behind this practice are available in ordinary moments, during daily challenges and quiet pauses alike. When stress surfaces in a difficult conversation, when anxiety arises before something uncertain, or when a familiar pattern pulls at you, meeting what is present with kindness and curiosity can create a real shift.
Begin by noticing when a difficult emotion arises, without immediately trying to resolve it. Naming what you are experiencing, whether fear, grief, or frustration, loosens its hold and creates just enough space to respond with care. This small pause can become one of the most transformative habits.
Returning to Lama Tsultrim Allione’s five-step approach during moments of emotional intensity gives the practice a clear container. Working with it consistently, even briefly, builds an inner capacity that makes responding to difficulty with compassion feel more natural. Pairing this with regular meditation can deepen the effects.
Connecting with teachers who share this path makes the practice feel less solitary. Many of our teachers share this kind of practical wisdom on the Insights at the Edge Podcast, where leading spiritual voices discuss awareness, compassion, and how to bring transformation into daily life.
Demons as teachers become most vivid when we commit to meeting them consistently, with the same warmth and curiosity we bring to any other form of inner work.
The practice of feeding your demons reminds us that lasting transformation often begins by turning toward the parts of ourselves we would rather avoid. Through Lama Tsultrim Allione’s teachings, the wisdom of Machig Labdron Chod, and the tools of Tibetan shadow work, we can learn to meet fear with compassion and recognize demons as teachers.
As that relationship shifts, more space opens for healing, self-awareness, and inner peace. We are here to walk alongside you in that journey, with teachings, digital courses, and a community that meets you wherever you are on the path.
The purpose of feeding your demons is to change your relationship with fear, emotional pain, and inner conflict. Instead of trying to eliminate these experiences, the practice encourages understanding and compassion as a path toward healing.
No. Many people practice feeding their demons regardless of their religious or spiritual background. The method focuses on self-awareness and emotional healing, making it accessible to anyone interested in personal growth.
Many practitioners find the practice helpful for understanding anxious thoughts and emotional patterns. It is intended to complement personal growth and is not a substitute for professional mental health care.
The term “demons as teachers” reflects the idea that our greatest challenges often reveal important lessons about our fears, habits, and unmet emotional needs.
They share similar intentions but differ in approach. Tibetan shadow work draws from Buddhist teachings and guided visualization, while other forms of shadow work may use psychological or therapeutic methods.
Yes. Beginners can start by learning the core principles through books, guided audio practices, workshops, or teachings from qualified instructors before developing a regular practice.
There is no fixed schedule. Some people use the practice during periods of emotional difficulty, while others include it as part of their ongoing spiritual or mindfulness routine.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant, and intuitive healer. She is the author of six books, including Skill in Action and Finding Refuge. Amy Burtaine is a leadership coach and racial equity trainer. With Robin DiAngelo, she is the coauthor of The Facilitator's Guide for White Affinity Groups. For more, visit https://www.michellecjohnson.com/wisdom-of-the-hive.
What if the first step on your spiritual path wasn’t about fixing something broken in you, but about recognizing how whole you already are? Matthew Fox has spent decades asking this question, and his answer, rooted in the teaching of original blessing, invites us to begin our spiritual lives with wonder rather than with shame.
At Sounds True, we are dedicated to sharing the living wisdom of trusted spiritual teachers through immersive podcasts, digital courses, and transformational programs that support personal growth and awakening.
Here, we’ll walk through Matthew Fox’s teachings on original blessing, creation spirituality, the influence of Meister Eckhart, and how these ideas offer a grounded, compassionate path forward for anyone who longs for a more reverent relationship with life.
Many spiritual traditions begin with the idea that humanity arrived in this world already broken, separated from the divine through original sin. Matthew Fox gently but firmly challenges this starting point. His teaching of original blessing asks us to return to the very beginning, to the opening pages of Genesis, where something far warmer is waiting.
In the first chapter of the Bible, God’s spirit hovers over the waters like a brood hen watching over her eggs, nurturing and alive with creative energy. Fox sees this image as living, not static. God here is a verb, a dynamic creator who calls all of life good. This reading opens with vitality, growth, and a love that precedes any misstep. When we begin from goodness, the spiritual journey takes on a different quality.
Readers who feel called to go deeper into this kind of spiritually grounded inquiry will find our Spirituality & Awakening collection brings together teachings that help cultivate that sense of sacred connection in daily life.
The original sin alternative that Fox offers is a reorientation, not a rejection of accountability or depth. Original blessing invites us to arrive in this life carrying a gift to live, and to let that gift be the foundation. This shifts the entire atmosphere of the spiritual journey.
When we start from goodness, compassion flows more naturally. Responsibility becomes something we can embrace openly. Care for the Earth, for one another, and for ourselves becomes an act of reverence. Fox honors the full complexity of being human. His invitation is simply to stop making the hard parts the foundation.
Creation spirituality teaches that the sacred is woven into creation itself, present in a forest, in a conversation, in a piece of music that stops you mid-step. The divine isn’t something we reach only by turning away from the physical world. This path invites us to encounter God within it.
Fox describes creation spirituality as a recovery project, a return to the awe that the earliest humans felt standing inside a world too vast and beautiful to explain. That sense of wonder is still available to us. Readers drawn to practices that cultivate this kind of felt presence may find resonance in the teachings within our Subtle Energy collection, which opens pathways into the deeper dimensions of human experience.
The conversation around fall redemption vs creation spirituality highlights two distinct starting points. The fall/redemption framework begins with human failure, emphasizing original sin and the need for rescue. Creation spirituality begins with God’s creative energy already alive and generous in the world. While one starts in the wound, the other starts with the gift.
In fall redemption theology, faith centers on trust in an external authority to restore what was lost. Creation spirituality offers something complementary: faith as trust in the aliveness already present within you and around you. Compared to the fall redemption theory, creation spirituality is feminist and gender-balanced. To hear this conversation in Fox’s own voice, visit our Insights at the Edge Podcast, where he and other teachers speak openly about these ideas in conversation with host Tami Simon.
Few thinkers have shaped Matthew Fox’s work as deeply as Meister Eckhart, the 14th-century German Dominican mystic whose writings continue to stir spiritual imagination centuries after his death. Eckhart taught that the divine is not remote or indifferent but present at the very ground of every soul, a living God who dwells within all things.
Fox engaged with Eckhart as a living guide. He saw in Eckhart’s teachings a confirmation of what creation spirituality already sensed: that the sacred pervades the world, that creativity is a form of prayer, and that every person carries a spark of the divine. Fox’s deep engagement with Eckhart helped bring these 700-year-old ideas to contemporary seekers in language they could feel and act on.
Those who want to learn more about Matthew Fox and the many teachers whose work touches these themes can visit our All Teachers & Authors page for a full look at the voices in our community.
Receiving original blessing isn’t a single moment of insight. Living it is an ongoing practice, a way of meeting each day with a different set of assumptions. Fox’s vision of creation spirituality gives us language for that practice and a few grounded ways to begin.
Matthew Fox’s teachings ask us to do something both simple and radical: begin with ourselves as good. From that foundation, creation spirituality opens into a way of living that honors the sacred in everything, in other people, in the natural world, in the creativity and care we bring to ordinary days. The influence of Meister Eckhart runs through all of this as a reminder that this longing to find the divine close has deep roots.
Matthew Fox is a spiritual teacher, theologian, and author known for developing creation spirituality, a path that emphasizes the sacredness of creation and humanity’s inherent goodness.
Matthew Fox introduced the concept of original blessing to encourage a more life-affirming view of spirituality. His teachings invite people to begin with gratitude and sacred connection instead of focusing on human faults.
Original blessing is a spiritual perspective that can resonate with people from many faith traditions. It emphasizes the goodness of creation and encourages a deeper relationship with the divine through everyday life.
Creation spirituality teaches that the natural world is sacred. This perspective encourages respect for the Earth and inspires people to care for the environment as an expression of their spiritual values.
Meister Eckhart was a Christian mystic whose teachings emphasized experiencing the divine within. His writings continue to influence spiritual thinkers, including Matthew Fox.
Readers often find a renewed sense of purpose, compassion, and connection with the world. His teachings encourage a spiritual practice rooted in gratitude, creativity, and reverence for life.
Matthew Fox views creativity as a reflection of the divine. Artistic expression, problem-solving, and innovation can all become meaningful spiritual practices that celebrate the gift of creation.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant, and intuitive healer. She is the author of six books, including Skill in Action and Finding Refuge. Amy Burtaine is a leadership coach and racial equity trainer. With Robin DiAngelo, she is the coauthor of The Facilitator's Guide for White Affinity Groups. For more, visit https://www.michellecjohnson.com/wisdom-of-the-hive.
Happiness is often seen as a destination, but Sharon Salzberg reminds us that it is a practice we cultivate each day. Rather than seeking a life free from challenges, she encourages us to meet every experience with mindfulness, compassion, and an open heart. Her teachings offer a practical path toward greater peace and emotional resilience.
At Sounds True, we have been sharing the wisdom of trusted spiritual teachers for more than four decades, making transformational teachings accessible through audio recordings, digital courses, and programs that nurture personal growth and mindful living.
In this piece, we’ll discuss Sharon Salzberg’s perspective on real happiness, the myth of permanent happiness, and how loving kindness meditation and metta meditation can help cultivate lasting well-being.
Sharon Salzberg has been a student of Buddhism since 1971 and began leading meditation retreats worldwide in 1974. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of deep study with Burmese, Indian, and Tibetan teachers, her work centers on two foundational traditions: vipassana, also known as insight meditation, and the cultivation of lovingkindness and compassion, called the Brahma Viharas.
As one of the most respected insight meditation teachers, she brings ancient wisdom into language that is warm, accessible, and deeply practical for the rhythms of modern life.
Insight meditation is a practice rooted in direct observation of experience. Instead of trying to control or silence the mind, practitioners learn to witness thoughts, sensations, and emotions with steady, non-reactive awareness. That quality of clear seeing allows us to recognize that all experience, including the uncomfortable kind, is impermanent.
Sharon Salzberg says that expecting permanent happiness often creates unnecessary suffering. Joy and sorrow naturally come and go, and trying to hold onto pleasant experiences only leads to frustration. Rather than measuring life by how often we feel happy, she encourages developing the inner stability to face every experience with openness and care.
Real happiness, in Sharon’s view, grows from acceptance rather than control. As we grow more aware of our thoughts and emotions, we come to see that difficult moments do not define us. Sharon’s teachings on this topic are part of an ongoing conversation we host through the Insights at the Edge Podcast, where leading spiritual teachers share practical wisdom for navigating everyday life with greater awareness and heart.
One of Sharon’s most influential teachings is loving kindness meditation. This practice invites us to cultivate goodwill toward ourselves before extending that same warmth outward to others. Rather than forcing positive emotions, loving kindness meditation strengthens our capacity to respond with patience and compassion, even when life makes that difficult.
Sharon’s Loving-kindness program gets at something essential about why this practice matters. Metta meditation is a way to dissolve the mental barriers that quietly separate us from the people around us, and from ourselves. Through consistent practice, we can release feelings of isolation and awaken real compassion. We free ourselves from cycles of needless suffering while learning to trust the loving, wise heart that lives within each of us.
Loving kindness meditation also helps soften self-criticism while opening the door to more connected, authentic relationships. The shift may be gradual, but it is real and lasting.
Metta meditation is a structured practice of silently repeating phrases of well-being directed first toward yourself, then extending outward to a close friend, a neutral person, someone with whom you feel friction, and eventually to all beings. The phrases themselves are simple, something like “May you be safe. May you be at peace.”
Sharon explains that these intentions may seem small at first, yet they reshape how we respond to ourselves and those around us. Rather than waiting for compassion to arise naturally, metta meditation gives us a way to practice it every day. With patience, kindness becomes less of an idea and more of a natural response to life’s changing circumstances.
To see how this works in real life, consider someone navigating tension with a family member after a disagreement. Compassion can feel out of reach in the middle of that kind of friction. A metta practice offers a place to begin, not by pretending the conflict does not exist, but by silently extending well-being first to yourself, acknowledging your own hurt, and then, when ready, to the other person.
Resources in our Meditation & Mindfulness collection bring together teachings from Sharon and other respected guides, exploring both the depth and the daily application of these traditions to help you build a sustainable practice.
A loving kindness practice does not require long formal sessions. Even a few quiet moments offering kind wishes can create real shifts in daily life. Sharon encourages beginning where we are, knowing consistency matters far more than perfection:
Those looking to develop greater gentleness and emotional balance alongside their meditation journey will find resources in our Self-Compassion collection, which brings together teachings from some of the most respected voices in this space.
As Sharon Salzberg shares, real happiness grows through presence, compassion, and a willingness to meet each experience with an open heart. By embracing practices like loving kindness meditation and metta meditation, we can develop greater resilience, deepen our connection with others, and cultivate a more peaceful way of living.
If you would like to continue learning from Sharon and many other respected teachers, visit our All Teachers & Authors page to find teachings that support your own path toward greater presence and compassion.
Sharon Salzberg’s interest in meditation began during her studies in India, where she encountered Buddhist teachings that shaped her lifelong commitment to mindfulness and compassion.
Her teachings combine timeless Buddhist wisdom with practical guidance that is accessible, compassionate, and relevant to everyday life, making them meaningful for both new and experienced meditators.
Yes. Loving kindness meditation originates from the Buddhist tradition and is based on cultivating unconditional goodwill. Today, it is practiced by people of many backgrounds, regardless of religious belief.
Even five to ten minutes a day can be beneficial. Building a regular habit is generally more effective than practicing for long periods only occasionally.
Absolutely. Loving kindness meditation is one of the most approachable meditation practices because it focuses on simple intentions of kindness instead of trying to quiet every thought.
Many people are accustomed to self-criticism and may initially feel uncomfortable directing compassion inward. Like any skill, self-kindness becomes more natural with consistent practice.
Mindfulness meditation focuses on observing present-moment experience with awareness, while metta meditation intentionally cultivates feelings of kindness, compassion, and goodwill.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant, and intuitive healer. She is the author of six books, including Skill in Action and Finding Refuge. Amy Burtaine is a leadership coach and racial equity trainer. With Robin DiAngelo, she is the coauthor of The Facilitator's Guide for White Affinity Groups. For more, visit https://www.michellecjohnson.com/wisdom-of-the-hive.
© 2024 Sounds True. All rights reserved.
16 comments on It’s okay to be broken
We at unity church of tustin have been considering the phenomena “spiritual bypass” as we call it for years. we have added shadow work as a core component of our spiritual practiceas a community.We would love to see your work as it progresses and possibly participate. the main ph # is714-730-3444. address 14402 so prospect tustin ca. 92780 best of success LARRY
Thank you for your kind note, Larry. I’d be happy to stay in touch with you regarding the research on spiritual bypassing. The interviews are completed and that portion of the study is now finished. I will make a note to be back in touch when the project is finalized. I’m really happy to hear you are exploring this as a community, and am inspired to hear that you have added shadow work as a core component of your work together. I really wish you all the best… -Matt
Beautiful blog post, Matt!
Thank you, Nicole, for reaching out and making the connection here. Lots of love…
I am like beside myself with delight when I see writings that encourage acknowledgment of the brokenness we must all eventually face. It’s either voluntary or not but we will end up broken, that light WILL come through one way or another. I had it happen. The agony of being broken only lasted until I realized the necessity of the 2×4. Finally I saw the light come through the cracks. Now, I could not be more ecstatic, knowing falling apart is the natural momentum which needs to occur before awareness (light) can enter.
So, thanks Matt
Thank you, Theresia, for sharing a piece of your heart with all of us. In my experience, when we can come to see that we were never actually together to begin with, that love never actually asked this of us, that there is a natural freedom that emerges – and allows us to truly be there for life and for others. It sounds as if you know this in a very personal way. How beautiful. Lots of love, matt.
Yes, and I am more then grateful for it.
And it always feels good being understood, some sort of verification I’m not nuts, so thanks for the response.
It seems to me that it is through the cracks in the ego that light can pour through. The soul and the ego need to walk side by side through life. As long as the ego closes its eyes and ears to the language and the rich content of the inner soul and spirit, this life-giving light cannot break through to pour out its clarity and warmth into the world.
Images speak to us without the use of words. So many words are needed to explain one image.
Heartwarming, Matt. Thank you.
Thank you, Hilde, for your beautiful words and sharing your experience here. In my experience, the deeper and wider we go – and are willing to be broken-open – the clearer it becomes, as you suggest, that there is no absolute difference or separation between the soul and the ego. These dimensions of our experience co-arise, interweave with one another, and make use of one another to show us the mystery of this sacred human world. Take care, my friend.
“…You need not hold it together any longer, for you were never together to begin with…”
Such powerful words and so comforting at the same time, I don’t have to exhaust myself to fix anything, I let me just be.What a great idea! In a world, where most people, including mental health professionals are breathlessly trying to fix or better, numb any unpleasant feelings the moment they become apparent, through the use of medications, alcohol, drugs, even food, it is refreshing , to see another way of looking at one’s pain and capacity to heal. Allowing for discomfort and being broken, makes room for patience, resilience and trust to develop and opens us up to the meaning of our true essence in this moment. It’s not easy being human but is always a wondrous feeling. Your photo vividly illustrates the story. I love it!Thank you. Eugenia
This is beautiful, Eugenia, it sounds like you speak from direct experience. In my experience, there is nothing inherently problematic in trying to heal or fix or improve our lives. However, as you suggest, this process often takes us away from our immediate, embodied experience. When we can learn to meet directly whatever challenging feelings and emotions that arise, we find ourselves on a direct pathway into the body, where all healing occurs (in my experience). There is an energy that is released when we stay with that which is uncomfortable; you could say it is a certain kind of grace which allows us finally to metabolize those difficult energies and experiences from the past. You are right, it is not easy, it demands everything (and more), to allow love to reveal to us the totality its qualities. Sometimes grace can be so sweet; other times it can be quite fierce. But always, still grace. Take care.
I am going through a period of my life where I feel broken….and it’s in the quest of acceptance of this brokenness that I know I can heal. It’s such a hard lesson and path to take – not for the faint of heart.
Thank you for your post.
Thank you, Catherine, for sharing your heart here. In my experience, when we can find some way to turn toward the brokenness it will often reveal that part of ourselves that could never be anything less than whole. Brokenness, togetherness, confusion, clarity, sadness, joy – these all arise and dissolve, they all come and go in that totality that you are. It is never easy to touch these places in ourselves, however in my experience they are not always what they seem. They extend a very special sort of invitation, open a unique kind of portal, and offer to take you home. I really wish you the best on your journey, my friend; and thank you for your courage.
So appropriate to have read this today after working with a client in group terrified of “breaking down and falling apart” and trying her best to stop herself. I look forward to sharing this with her tomorrow. Thank you.
Can you tell me the name of the artist?
Dear Hella, the artist is Paige Bradley. You can learn more about her work here – https://paigebradley.com/sculpture/goddess/expansion/. Take care, matt.