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The Basics of Natural Awareness 101: Broadening Attention

    —
September 12, 2019

The Basics of Natural Awareness: Broadening Attention Header Image

There are three deliberate mental shifts you can make during classical mindfulness meditation that can help point you toward natural awareness: relaxing effort, broadening attention, and dropping objects.

If you have not read the first step yet, you can find Relaxing Effort on our blog.

Broadening Attention

Your attention can be very narrowly focused or broadly focused. It can also be somewhere in between. You might notice the differences because you naturally adjust the breadth of your attention in life all the time. You are driving your car, and you focus first on your dashboard, and then you automatically shift to a wider peripheral sense of the road in front of you. You are talking with a friend, and you focus on her face, then shift to her whole body, and then notice the room in which you both are sitting.

We can think of the mechanism of attention as being like a camera. Sometimes you use a telescopic lens in order to focus on something quite narrow—maybe taking a close-up of a flower, seeing the intricacies of the stem and petals in detail. Usually we take midrange photos—of our kids, friends at the game, or whatever the selfie du jour is—employing a lens that is not too narrowly focused, but open in a general way. The far end of the spectrum would be when we use a panoramic lens to take an elongated, comprehensive photo of, let’s say, the Grand Canyon.

When we meditate, we can apply a narrow or panoramic attention. An example of using a narrow focus would be attending primarily to your breath (or any single object of focus). The panoramic attention would be when our attention is wide open—when we notice many things going on or just have a general wide view. When, for example, we listen to sounds coming from all directions surrounding us, this is a panoramic attention, or wide focus.

We can even apply an attention in meditation that’s somewhere in between these two. A somewhere-in-between attention might be when a few things are going on and our attention can encompass them, either simultaneously or consecutively. Our lower back is achy, and we’re trying to attend to the pain. And then perhaps we move our attention to a global sense of our body or to a part of our body that feels okay at the moment (typically our hands or feet), so that we’re not overwhelmed by the pain. (This is a helpful recommendation if you’re experiencing pain in meditation.)

Broad, panoramic attention tends to be the type of attention present when we do natural awareness practice. Because most of us gravitate toward a focused attention both in meditation and in daily life, opening up panoramically can actually invite in natural awareness. It counteracts our usual forward-focus tendencies and allows our minds to rest and reset, kind of like a brain vacation.

But broad or panoramic attention does not equal natural awareness; instead, shifting into broad attention will point us in the direction of natural awareness. That’s why many of the glimpse practices in this book focus on broadening our attention. Sometimes as we practice broadening our attention, we find ourselves thoroughly and completely aware, which is close to how I defined natural awareness earlier in the book. And it is also possible to have natural awareness without noticing broadly.

Try broadening your attention right now.

Close your eyes if that is comfortable to you. Start by narrowing your attention to a single area of focus in your body—your abdomen, chest, or nostrils. Try to keep this narrow focus for a few minutes.

Now begin to listen to the sounds around you. Start with sounds nearby, but then listen with an expansive ear. How far away are the sounds you can hear? Listen to the sound that is farthest out. Try this approach to listening for a minute or two.

Now notice your whole body. Can you fully feel your body seated here? Relax and unclench your belly. Imagine you could expand that sense of your body, feeling your body moving out in all directions, including above and below. Try being aware of your expanded body for another minute.

Finally, open your eyes and let your gaze become peripheral—wide open, noticing the space around you. Let your eyes be soft, but take in an expansive view. Keep your stomach relaxed. Explore this expanded view for a few minutes, resting here, and then notice what happens to your awareness.

Continue reading the next step, Dropping Objects, or read the previous step Relaxing Effort.

This is excerpted from The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness by Diana Winston.

 

Diana Winston headshot

Little Book of BeingDiana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the coauthor, with Dr. Susan

Smalley, of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness. She is a well‑known teacher and speaker who brings mindful awareness practices to the general public to promote health and well‑being. Called by the LA Times “one of the nation’s best‑known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulness since 1993 in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, schools in the US and Asia, and online. She developed the evidence‑based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide.

Her work has been mentioned or she has been quoted in the New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; the Los Angeles Times; Allure; Women’s Health; and in a variety of magazines, books, and journals. She is also the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens, the audio program Mindful Meditations, and has published numerous articles on mindfulness. Diana is a member of the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. She has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma. Currently, Diana’s most challenging and rewarding practice involves trying to mindfully parent an eight‑year‑old. She lives in Los Angeles.

For more information, visit dianawinston.com and marc.ucla.edu.

Buy your copy of The Little Book of Being at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Diana Winston

Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the coauthor, with Dr. Susan Smalley, of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness (DaCapo, 2010). She is a well‑known teacher and speaker who brings mindful awareness practices to the general public to promote health and well‑being. Called by the LA Times “one of the nation’s best‑known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulness since 1993 in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, schools in the US and Asia, and online. She developed the evidence‑based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide.

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Meditation Mindfulness

The Full Spectrum of Awareness

Diana Winston — July 13, 2021

Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, where she developed the Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum. With Sounds True, Diana is the author of a new book, The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness, and the creator of a new audio teaching series called Glimpses of Being: A Training Course in Expanding Mindful Awareness. In this experiential episode of Insights at the Edge, Diana introduces us to what she calls the “spectrum of awareness” through a series of guided practices. She talks to Tami Simon about the various ways we can access and experience awareness, from narrow and focused to effortless and spacious—states we are constantly moving between. They touch on ways to deepen and explore awareness through “glimpse practices” and discuss how we can work toward making natural awareness our default state. Finally, Diana explains why tapping into the full range of awareness can act as a good antidote for those feeling stuck or restless in their meditation practice.

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Meditation Mindfulness

The Basics of Natural Awareness 101: Dropping Objects

Diana Winston — September 12, 2019

The Basics of Natural Awareness: Dropping Objects Header Image

There are three deliberate mental shifts you can make during classical mindfulness meditation that can help point you toward natural awareness: relaxing effort, broadening attention, and dropping objects.

If you have not read the previous two steps, you can find Relaxing Effort and Broadening Attention on our blog.

Dropping Objects

When you’re practicing classical mindfulness meditation, probably the most important shift you can make to invite in natural awareness is to move your attention from objects to objectless-ness. Now what on earth does that mean?

Objects of meditation are, simply put, the things we focus on, such as the breath, body sensations, emotions, thoughts. An object can also be something outside us, like another person, sights, or sounds. Any kind of thing can be an object of meditation. Taking something as the object of our awareness is basic to classical mindfulness meditation, as you saw in the previous chapters. Focusing on objects and attending to them is generally how we live our life as well.

Objectless awareness, typically developed in meditation and uncommon in daily life, is when we focus less on the objects of awareness and instead focus on the awareness itself. There will be objects arising in our meditation—thoughts, emotions, sensations, for example—but since they are not the focus, they are less distinct, and we become aware of awareness itself. So instead of our anchor being our breath, for example, our anchor is awareness itself.

People tend to experience objectless awareness in three different ways: that in which everything is contained, that which knows, and that which just is.

That in which everything is contained. Broadening attention from a narrow focus to a more panoramic perception is closely aligned with the experience of objectless awareness as that in which everything is contained. You will notice me using analogies like “Our mind is like the sky, and everything in it is like clouds floating by.” This helps me convey the idea that awareness contains everything. So when we turn our attention to the sky-like nature of our mind, noticing the boundless space around things, we are noticing the field of awareness in which everything is contained. Some people experience objectless awareness in this way.

Think about looking out a window at a busy street. When we look out the window, we take in the full view in a relaxed way. Rather than specifically focusing on individual vehicles, we somehow are aware of everything that is happening simultaneously, and our vision seems to contain everything.

That which knows. The second idea that objectless awareness focuses on is a little tricky. Most of us are used to focusing on objects when we meditate, but what happens when we make the shift to noticing that which is being aware—to seeking the knower? Oftentimes this shift can feel quite joyful and freeing. Many of the practices in the book move us toward awareness of awareness, as you will see. If you start searching for the knower, what do you find?

The idea is that we can notice things, and we also notice the thing that notices things. We can take our attention from an outward focus on objects and turn it inward, as if we are reversing our attention—trying to move from that which we are aware of, to that which is aware of what we are aware of.

This is excerpted from The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness by Diana Winston.

Little Book of Being

Diana Winston headshot

Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the coauthor, with Dr. Susan

Smalley, of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness. She is a well‑known teacher and

speaker who brings mindful awareness practices to the general public to promote health and well‑being. Called by the LA Times “one of the nation’s best‑known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulness since 1993 in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, schools in the US and Asia, and online. She developed the evidence‑based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide.

Her work has been mentioned or she has been quoted in the New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; the Los Angeles Times; Allure; Women’s Health; and in a variety of magazines, books, and journals. She is also the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens, the audio program Mindful Meditations, and has published numerous articles on mindfulness. Diana is a member of the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. She has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma. Currently, Diana’s most challenging and rewarding practice involves trying to mindfully parent an eight‑year‑old. She lives in Los Angeles.

For more information, visit dianawinston.com and marc.ucla.edu.

Buy your copy of The Little Book of Being at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Meditation Mindfulness

The Basics of Natural Awareness 101: Broadening Attent...

Diana Winston — September 12, 2019

The Basics of Natural Awareness: Broadening Attention Header Image

There are three deliberate mental shifts you can make during classical mindfulness meditation that can help point you toward natural awareness: relaxing effort, broadening attention, and dropping objects.

If you have not read the first step yet, you can find Relaxing Effort on our blog.

Broadening Attention

Your attention can be very narrowly focused or broadly focused. It can also be somewhere in between. You might notice the differences because you naturally adjust the breadth of your attention in life all the time. You are driving your car, and you focus first on your dashboard, and then you automatically shift to a wider peripheral sense of the road in front of you. You are talking with a friend, and you focus on her face, then shift to her whole body, and then notice the room in which you both are sitting.

We can think of the mechanism of attention as being like a camera. Sometimes you use a telescopic lens in order to focus on something quite narrow—maybe taking a close-up of a flower, seeing the intricacies of the stem and petals in detail. Usually we take midrange photos—of our kids, friends at the game, or whatever the selfie du jour is—employing a lens that is not too narrowly focused, but open in a general way. The far end of the spectrum would be when we use a panoramic lens to take an elongated, comprehensive photo of, let’s say, the Grand Canyon.

When we meditate, we can apply a narrow or panoramic attention. An example of using a narrow focus would be attending primarily to your breath (or any single object of focus). The panoramic attention would be when our attention is wide open—when we notice many things going on or just have a general wide view. When, for example, we listen to sounds coming from all directions surrounding us, this is a panoramic attention, or wide focus.

We can even apply an attention in meditation that’s somewhere in between these two. A somewhere-in-between attention might be when a few things are going on and our attention can encompass them, either simultaneously or consecutively. Our lower back is achy, and we’re trying to attend to the pain. And then perhaps we move our attention to a global sense of our body or to a part of our body that feels okay at the moment (typically our hands or feet), so that we’re not overwhelmed by the pain. (This is a helpful recommendation if you’re experiencing pain in meditation.)

Broad, panoramic attention tends to be the type of attention present when we do natural awareness practice. Because most of us gravitate toward a focused attention both in meditation and in daily life, opening up panoramically can actually invite in natural awareness. It counteracts our usual forward-focus tendencies and allows our minds to rest and reset, kind of like a brain vacation.

But broad or panoramic attention does not equal natural awareness; instead, shifting into broad attention will point us in the direction of natural awareness. That’s why many of the glimpse practices in this book focus on broadening our attention. Sometimes as we practice broadening our attention, we find ourselves thoroughly and completely aware, which is close to how I defined natural awareness earlier in the book. And it is also possible to have natural awareness without noticing broadly.

Try broadening your attention right now.

Close your eyes if that is comfortable to you. Start by narrowing your attention to a single area of focus in your body—your abdomen, chest, or nostrils. Try to keep this narrow focus for a few minutes.

Now begin to listen to the sounds around you. Start with sounds nearby, but then listen with an expansive ear. How far away are the sounds you can hear? Listen to the sound that is farthest out. Try this approach to listening for a minute or two.

Now notice your whole body. Can you fully feel your body seated here? Relax and unclench your belly. Imagine you could expand that sense of your body, feeling your body moving out in all directions, including above and below. Try being aware of your expanded body for another minute.

Finally, open your eyes and let your gaze become peripheral—wide open, noticing the space around you. Let your eyes be soft, but take in an expansive view. Keep your stomach relaxed. Explore this expanded view for a few minutes, resting here, and then notice what happens to your awareness.

Continue reading the next step, Dropping Objects, or read the previous step Relaxing Effort.

This is excerpted from The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness by Diana Winston.

 

Diana Winston headshot

Little Book of BeingDiana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the coauthor, with Dr. Susan

Smalley, of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness. She is a well‑known teacher and speaker who brings mindful awareness practices to the general public to promote health and well‑being. Called by the LA Times “one of the nation’s best‑known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulness since 1993 in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, schools in the US and Asia, and online. She developed the evidence‑based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide.

Her work has been mentioned or she has been quoted in the New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; the Los Angeles Times; Allure; Women’s Health; and in a variety of magazines, books, and journals. She is also the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens, the audio program Mindful Meditations, and has published numerous articles on mindfulness. Diana is a member of the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. She has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma. Currently, Diana’s most challenging and rewarding practice involves trying to mindfully parent an eight‑year‑old. She lives in Los Angeles.

For more information, visit dianawinston.com and marc.ucla.edu.

Buy your copy of The Little Book of Being at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Basics of Natural Awareness: Broadening Attention Pinterest

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What if the antidote to a world coming apart isn’t a bigger plan, but a smaller, daily act of devotion?

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Tracee opens and closes this interview with a short guided ritual you can practice along with.

Listen now, and let something be reshaped. →

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.

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Reverend angel Kyodo williams: Warrior Spirit

Amy Burtaine
Michelle Cassandra Johnson — September 15, 2026

Most people come to meditation looking for a break, a few quiet minutes away from a world that rarely slows down on its own. Reverend angel Kyodo williams spends much of this conversation gently taking apart that assumption, suggesting that real stillness was never about leaving the world behind at all. It’s a small shift in framing that ends up changing everything about how the rest of her teaching lands.

Rev. angel is an ordained Zen priest, activist, and founder of the Center for Transformative Change, recognized as the world’s second female Zen teacher of African descent and the author of Being Black and Radical Dharma. 

Sounds True has featured her teaching across our Meditation Summit and A Year of Mindfulness precisely because she refuses to separate inner practice from outer justice, treating the two as a single continuous act rather than competing priorities. What follows traces her case for a warrior spirit built on presence rather than escape, and the meditation practice she offers as its foundation.

Key Takeaways:

  • Retreat Isn’t the Goal: Learn why angel Kyodo williams reframes meditation as engagement, not escape.
  • Effort Meets Release: Understand the meditation practice she developed for people doing social change work.
  • A Different Kind of Fearlessness: See what warrior spirit means when it’s rooted in love rather than force.

Retreat Is Not What It Looks Like From Outside

Rev. angel opens by naming something many practitioners feel but rarely say aloud: the pull toward meditation often comes wrapped in a longing to retreat from an overwhelming world. She doesn’t dismiss that longing, but she does redirect it, suggesting that genuine practice engages our inner fullness rather than fleeing from outer noise. What looks like withdrawal from the outside, she argues, is closer to a deepening than a departure, a distinction that reframes the entire purpose of sitting down to practice in the first place.

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Effort and Release Meditation: A Practice Born From Movement Work

Rev. angel developed a specific meditation practice she calls Effort and Release after years spent working alongside people doing demanding social change work. The practice blends deliberate effort with intentional letting go, addressing a pattern she noticed constantly among activists and organizers: a strong pull toward doing, accomplishing, and pushing that rarely leaves room for rest. She describes meditation and social change as inseparable, since the way a person relates to their own mind directly shapes what they find themselves willing to engage with in the wider world.

  • Naming the Pattern: Many changemakers carry a constant urgency that outlasts any single campaign, even during rest.
  • Effort With Purpose: The practice doesn’t reject action, only unconscious, exhausting overdrive.
  • Release as Skill: Letting go is treated as an active discipline, not passive collapse or avoidance.

Hear the complete teaching in her episode, Reverend angel Kyodo williams: Warrior Spirit

Inner Life and Outer World as One Continuous Fabric

A central thread running through Rev. Angel’s teaching rejects any hard line between internal awareness and external action. She describes our self-talk, the noise level of our minds, and our capacity for presence as directly shaping how we show up for others and what we find acceptable in the wider world. This isn’t a metaphor for her; it’s closer to a working principle behind everything she teaches, from meditation instruction to movement strategy. 

What we tolerate in the world outside us, she suggests, tends to trace directly back to what we’ve grown accustomed to tolerating within our own minds first, which is why she treats internal clarity as a precondition for meaningful external change rather than a separate, optional pursuit.

Warrior Spirit Rooted in Fearlessness, Not Force

The phrase “warrior spirit,” drawn from her earlier book Being Black, describes something quite different from combativeness or aggression directed outward at the world. For Rev. Angel, this spirit is built on truth-telling and responsibility, a foundation for genuine happiness rather than a posture of defensiveness. It asks practitioners to stay engaged with difficulty, including the difficulty of racism, patriarchy, and other inherited harms, rather than looking away or numbing out. This framing has resonated widely since the book’s original publication, offering readers across many backgrounds a way to hold fearlessness and tenderness together rather than treating them as opposites.

  • Truth Before Comfort: Warrior spirit requires naming what’s actually happening, even when it’s unwelcome.
  • Grace Alongside Fearlessness: Strength and tenderness are treated as complementary, not opposites.
  • Responsibility as Practice: Taking ownership of one’s own patterns becomes part of the discipline itself.

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Bridging Personal Transformation and Collective Justice

Rev. angel has spent more than fifteen years shaping what she calls Transformative Social Change, a field built on the belief that lasting justice work requires equally serious inner work. She resists treating meditation as a private escape hatch separate from activism, instead framing contemplative practice as fuel for sustained, clear-eyed engagement with collective harm. Burnout among organizers, in her view, often stems from skipping this inner dimension entirely, treating stillness as optional rather than structural to the work itself. She has described this field as one she helped name and shape, watching it grow from a personal conviction into a recognized approach embraced across activist and spiritual communities alike.

What Radical Dharma Adds to This Conversation

Rev. Angel’s later book, Radical Dharma, co-written with Lama Rod Owens and Jasmine Syedullah, extends this same warrior spirit into a direct examination of race, love, and liberation within Buddhist communities themselves. The book argues that spiritual communities are not exempt from the patterns of harm found elsewhere in society, and that genuine awakening has to include an honest reckoning with those patterns rather than a spiritual bypass around them. This willingness to hold institutions, including her own tradition, accountable runs consistently through everything she teaches, from her earliest writing through her more recent contributions to Sounds True’s programming.

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Final Thoughts

Reverend angel Kyodo williams doesn’t offer meditation as a rest stop from the world’s demands. She offers it as a training ground for staying present with those demands without losing ourselves inside them. That distinction, subtle but significant, may be exactly what separates spiritual bypass from spiritual maturity, and it’s the thread that ties her meditation teaching to her justice work without contradiction. Listeners who come looking for a quick escape often leave with something more durable instead: a practice for staying rooted precisely where things are hardest. 

Sounds True continues sharing her teaching because our mission to wake up the world has never meant looking away from what’s hardest to face, and few teachers hold that tension as steadily as she does. Her books and audio programs remain in our library for anyone ready to bring the same steadiness into their own life and work.

Frequently Asked Questions About angel Kyodo williams

Who is Reverend angel Kyodo williams?

She is an ordained Zen priest, activist, author, and founder of the Center for Transformative Change.

What books has she written?

Her books include Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and Radical Dharma.

What is the Effort and Release practice?

A meditation method blending deliberate effort with intentional letting go, developed for activists and organizers.

Is this teaching only relevant to activists?

No, her ideas on presence and inner work apply to anyone navigating stress, urgency, or burnout in daily life.

What does warrior spirit mean in her teaching?

A fearless, truth-telling posture grounded in responsibility and grace, not aggression or combativeness.

Has Sounds True featured her in other programs?

Yes, she has appeared in Sounds True’s Meditation Summit and A Year of Mindfulness series.

What is the Center for Transformative Change?

An organization she founded connecting inner personal work with large-scale social transformation.

Where can I hear more conversations like this one?

Explore our Insights at the Edge Podcast for further interviews on mindfulness, justice, and social engagement.

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.

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Iyanla Vanzant On Truth Is Light

Amy Burtaine
Michelle Cassandra Johnson — September 15, 2026

What happens when the world around you feels like it has lost its grip on truth, and you’re left wondering how to hold onto faith anyway? That question sits at the heart of the exchange between Tami Simon and Iyanla Vanzant, one of the most trusted voices in personal empowerment today. 

Over 40 years, we at Sounds True have been devoted to bringing you the living wisdom of teachers like Iyanla Vanzant, an author of five New York Times bestsellers and a familiar face to millions as the host of Iyanla: Fix My Life. As the world’s largest living library of transformational teachings, and home to Tami Simon’s Insights at the Edge, we exist to preserve these conversations in their true, unscripted form. 

What Iyanla and Tami uncovered reaches into territory many of us have been quietly longing to name: intimacy with the divine, the erosion of trust and integrity, and the calling that shapes who you really are. 

Key Takeaways:

  • Faith Is a Practice, Not a Belief: Intimacy with the divine is a relationship you return to daily. Iyanla Vanzant reminds us that faith in difficult times is the practice that keeps you grounded when certainty runs out and the path forward feels unclear. 
  • Reclaiming Values We’ve Lost: Integrity, accountability, and trust are slipping quietly from modern life. Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon reflect on what this costs us personally and collectively, and what it takes to reclaim these values through honest daily living. 
  • Your Calling Reveals Your True Self: Rather than searching for purpose separately from identity, Iyanla Vanzant teaches that answering your calling is what gives birth to your most authentic self, with truth as the light that makes the path visible.

Cultivating Intimacy With The Divine

At the heart of what Iyanla Vanzant shares is something many of us long for but rarely name aloud: an intimate, ongoing relationship with God. A living connection you return to daily, the way you would a trusted friend. This is where everything else begins. 

Iyanla Vanzant reminds us that faith is lived, returned to moment by moment, a practice built most steadily through the very times when doubt feels easier than trust. That distinction matters more than it might first appear. Trying times reveal whether your faith is a story you tell about yourself or a relationship you live inside, moment by moment, choice by choice. 

We invite you to sit with that difference for a moment. Where in your life are you being asked to move from believing in something to actually leaning into it, even when the outcome is not yet clear, and even when trust feels like the harder path?

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Values We’re Losing And Why They Matter

Beyond the personal work of faith, Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon turn their attention outward to something both women see slipping away in modern life. It is a quiet loss, the kind that shows up in small daily interactions long before it becomes a headline. Their conversation names three specific casualties worth sitting with:

Integrity

Iyanla Vanzant speaks to integrity as something deeper than simply telling the truth. The alignment between what you say, what you believe, and how you show up in the world each day. When that alignment breaks down, even in small ways, something essential within a community begins to quietly erode. A person who values honesty but withholds difficult truths from the people they love is already living out of alignment. 

Accountability

Accountability emerges as a value that seems increasingly rare: the willingness to own your actions and their consequences without deflecting or minimizing what happened. Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon reflect on what it costs a society when people stop holding themselves responsible to one another and to the truth. When accountability disappears from daily life, trust erodes alongside it, and the small moments of honesty that rebuild it become more vital. 

Trust

Perhaps most tender is their reflection on trust itself. Iyanla Vanzant speaks to how trust, once assumed as a baseline of human connection, now feels harder to extend and even harder to earn back. That raises an honest question about what it truly takes to rebuild something so foundational to how we relate. 

Build Relationships That Nourish and Sustain.

Your Unique Calling And The Self It Reveals

The exchange moves toward something deeply personal: the idea that every person carries a calling that is theirs alone to discover. Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon treat this as a truth available to anyone willing to sit with it. Three related threads open from there: 

  • Everyone Carries A Calling: Iyanla Vanzant speaks to the idea that a calling is not something reserved for the chosen few. It belongs to every person, waiting to be recognized rather than invented. This reframes the search for purpose as less about creating something entirely new and more about quietly uncovering what was already there within you all along.
  • Calling As The Birthplace Of Authenticity: Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon reflect on how answering your calling is what gives rise to your most authentic self. Purpose and identity are born together. The calling gradually shapes who you become, gently and surely, as you live in closer alignment with what you are here to do. Many of us spend years trying to figure out who we are before we feel ready to act. 
  • Truth As The Light That Reveals The Path: This is where Iyanla Vanzant on Truth Is Light offers its most grounding insight: truth is the light that makes your calling visible. Living honestly, with yourself and with what you believe, is what allows your calling to come into focus, clearing away the confusion and doubt that keep it hidden.

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Final Thoughts

What stays with you is a felt sense of what it means to live honestly, with yourself, with the divine, and with the people around you. Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon remind us that faith in difficult times is about staying in relationship with something larger than the moment you are in, even when that moment feels unresolved. The quiet challenge they leave us with is this: notice where integrity, accountability, and trust have faded in your own life, and consider what living in closer alignment with your true calling might look like.

The teachings Iyanla Vanzant brings forward are part of a larger body of work we have been honored to carry for over 40 years. At Sounds True, we believe that wisdom shared becomes wisdom lived. Wherever these ideas meet something real in you, we encourage you to keep going. Our courses, community, and programs are here to hold you as you do.

Frequently Asked Questions About Iyanla Vanzant On Truth Is Light

Who is Iyanla Vanzant?

Iyanla Vanzant is an author and television host known for five New York Times bestsellers and her role as host of Iyanla: Fix My Life, along with several audio programs created with Sounds True.

What is this Iyanla Vanzant episode about?

This episode is a conversation between Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon exploring intimacy with the divine, fading values like trust and integrity, and the unique calling that shapes your most authentic self.

How do I hold onto faith when life feels hard?

Iyanla Vanzant reminds us that faith is not something you simply have but something you practice daily, especially when life gives you every reason to doubt and lose your footing.

Why do integrity, accountability, and trust matter so much right now?

Iyanla Vanzant and Tami Simon reflect on these values as ones quietly fading from modern life, and what is lost personally and collectively when we stop holding each other accountable.

How do I discover my own calling?

Iyanla Vanzant teaches that your calling is uncovered through living in truth with yourself, not invented from scratch. Our online courses offer structured paths for going deeper into this kind of work.

What does it mean to cultivate intimacy with God?

For Iyanla Vanzant, intimacy with the divine means a living, ongoing connection you return to daily, much like a trusted friendship, rather than a distant faith reserved only for hard times.

Where can I listen to more conversations like this one?

You can hear the full episode on Insights at the Edge, and find more conversations like it through Sounds True One, our community membership for ongoing teachings.

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.

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Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company founded in 1985 by Tami Simon, with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. The company is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

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