Category: Self-Compassion

Vulnerability, Intimacy, and Spiritual Awakening ̵...

Dear friends, we wanted to share with you this lovely two-part video teaching from our dear friend, Sounds True author, clinical psychologist, and meditation teacher Tara Brach, entitled, ” Vulnerability, Intimacy, and Spiritual Awakening.”

According to Tara, we each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These videos explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.

We hope you find these teachings as life-giving as we have, and that they reconnect you with your own innate sense of love, kindness, warmth, and compassion.

Part I – Vulnerability, Intimacy, and Spiritual Awakening

Part II – Vulnerability, Intimacy, and Spiritual Awakening

You are willing to give your heart to this world

You thought that as you awakened, you would feel less. But you are seeing that love continues to ask you to feel more. There was an idea that as your heart opened, your vulnerability would lessen, but you are more raw and tender now than you’ve ever been. You wondered if as you grew spiritually, you would be more detached, not care quite so much, and rest as the “witness” of your life from beyond it all. But, alas, you care so much you are burning up inside.

Something new is being born in you, but something else is dying. Everything you thought you needed is falling away, but what it is being replaced with is not yet clear. You are between the worlds, dancing between broken and whole, with light and dark being weaved within you.

You are so open it is almost as if a certain kind of sadness has come to permeate your life. Even the light in the snow, the color in the sunset, or the wind passing is almost too much; you are not sure you can let it in all the way. Even the orange and the red in the sky, if you let it come inside, might take you to the ground. There is a sense that you could die of astonishment at just how much grace is here. There is a purple that has never, ever come into being until now; give everything to know it. It is so precious here. The beloved is pouring colors throughout this dimension so that she may evoke her qualities in your body and through your senses.

You know that things will never be the same again, but you still do not know what is coming next or even where you are, or what is truly being asked of you. This unknowing groundless ground is your home now, and the creativity and the intelligence here are overwhelming. Yes, things are colored by a certain fragrance of sadness, but it is a sadness the mind could never know, for it has nothing to do with something being missing. It is a sadness which is pouring out of your overflowing heart. You are willing to give your heart to others and to this world, for you are seeing that this is why you have come here.

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Life Visioning

Nobody else possesses your unprecedented blend of gifts, experiences, and perspectives. So why have you been given this singular treasure, and what will you do with it? This is the focus of Michael Bernard Beckwith’s book Life Visioning: A Transformative Process for Activating Your Unique Gifts and Highest Potential. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Beckwith about the four evolutionary stages of the development of consciousness and how the Life Visioning Process works in each stage. Tami and Michael also discuss some of the biggest obstacles people experience with Life Visioning, and the importance of unconditional love as the atmosphere for the Life Visioning Process. (64 minutes)

Working with Difficult Emotions – a special free...

Many of us struggle with the experience of difficult emotions, such as anger, jealousy, sadness, grief, shame, anxiety, and depression. In the face of such challenges, how can we keep our hearts open? What is the most skillful way to work with these difficulties in a way where we remain fully embodied and radically committed to our lives as they are? Is there such a thing as a “negative” emotion? How can we most powerfully grow from the experience of difficulty and to view these challenging experiences as messengers and allies on the path of awakening and love?

We hope you enjoy this special video dialogue with Sounds True authors Karla McLaren and Robert Augustus Masters, two pioneering teachers on the healing potential of skillfully working with difficult emotions, for this inspiring dialogue, moderated by Sounds True publisher, Tami Simon.

Free, 12-part video series of self-acceptance

Access the Self-Acceptance Project free of charge

Self-aggression, self-acceptance, self-love, and issues of self-worth can be challenging for contemporary spiritual practitioners, even for those who have meditated or engaged in psychotherapy for years. There are many ways we can be unkind to ourselves, often subtle and unconscious, which can affect the way we perceive and engage in our lives, especially in interpersonal and intimate relationship.

In this free, 12-week video event series, I invited 23 psychologists, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers to speak with my friend and longtime colleague, Tami Simon, to explore these areas and how we might move toward the creation of a certain kind of holding environment in which we can grow, heal, and transform together.

All episodes of the Self-Acceptance Project are now posted and can be accessed as video or audio downloads, or can be streamed at no cost from the comfort of your own home. We invite you to join us for this pioneering series and look forward to sharing our discoveries with you – and hearing what you have learned. It is our intention that you benefit deeply from this work and that it guide you along your own journey of love and awakening.

Episodes include

  • Developing Shame Resilience with Dr. Brené Brown
  • Waking Up from the Trance of Unworthiness with Dr. Tara Brach
  • Turning Towards Our Pain with Dr. Robert Augustus Masters
  • Begin Exactly Where You Are with Jeff Foster
  • Taking in the Good with Dr. Rick Hanson
  • The Human Capacity to Take Perspectives with Dr. Steven Hayes
  • What if There is Nothing Wrong with Raphael Cushnir
  • No Strangers in the Heart with Mark Nepo
  • Transforming Self-Criticism into Self-Compassion with Dr. Kelly McGonigal
  • Faith in Our Fundamental Worthiness with Sharon Salzberg
  • Developing a Wise Mind with Dr. Erin Olivo
  • Embodied Vulnerability and Non-Division with Bruce Tift
  • Perfect in Our Imperfection with Colin Tipping
  • Staying Loyal to One’s Self with Dr. Judith Blackstone
  • Compassion for the Self-Critic with Dr. Kristin Neff
  • Curiosity is the Key with Dr. Harville Hendrix
  • Kindness is the Means and End with Geneen Roth
  • Healing at the Level of the Subconscious Mind with Dr. Friedemann Schaub
  • Embracing all of Our Parts with Dr. Jay Earley
  • Understanding Empathy and Shame with Karla McLaren
  • Integrating the Shadow with Dr. Parker PalmerLetting Life Be in Charge with Cheri Huber

selfacceptance

Breaking the Approval Addiction and Expressing Our Cre...

Jamie Catto is the creative catalyst behind the popular philosophy/music/film project 1 Giant Leap and the author of the Sounds True music program Internal (with Alex Forster). In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami and Jamie discuss how to tune into our woundedness as a gateway to creativity, how our shadow material can become our life’s “rocket fuel,” the meaning of Jamie’s “Creativity Manifesto,” and much more. Plus you’ll hear samples of three new tracks from Internal. (63 minutes)