Somewhere between the human being you know yourself to be and something you can only call mystery—that's where this one lands. In this Point of Insight, Tami Simon follows...
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Tami Simon’s in-depth audio podcast interviews with leading spiritual teachers and luminaries. Listen in as they explore their latest challenges and breakthroughs - the leading edge of their work.
Tami Simon’s in-depth audio podcast interviews with leading spiritual teachers and luminaries. Listen in as they explore their latest challenges and breakthroughs – the leading edge of their work.
Your psyche becomes fragmented because of suppressed emotions and unintegrated past experiences. These suppressed energies block the natural upward flow of Shakti, which leads to psychological suffering and confusion. Trying to fix internal issues by changing the outside world only results in temporary relief and greater entanglement. True spiritual growth comes from releasing the suppressed parts of yourself, practicing non-resistance, and refusing to store more disturbances. By doing this, you become whole, integrated, and attuned to the divine energy within, realizing you were always a great being all along.
The most basic function of mind is to receive messages from the senses so the indwelling consciousness can experience the outer world. Suffering begins when consciousness fixates on certain experiences and refuses to let them pass. These fixations become stored impressions that form the ego mind, distorting the perception of reality. Liberation comes not from controlling life to match the ego, but from letting go of identification with the personal mind so experiences pass through freely and actions arise from clarity and compassion instead of ego.
Can the simple act of being kind to yourself actually be a doorway to awakening?
In this special episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon brings together two remarkable teachers whose friendship has sparked a revolutionary approach to inner transformation. Kristin Neff—the researcher who first measured self-compassion and author of Fierce Self-Compassion—joins Caverly Morgan, a meditation teacher and former Zen monk, to explore how self-compassion practices can become what they call “a lifeboat” to our deepest nature.
Together, they reveal why self-compassion isn’t just a psychological tool for feeling better—it’s a direct path to recognizing who we really are beyond our limited sense of self.
In this interview, Tami, Kristin, and Caverly explore:
Why every moment of self-compassion is a moment of “letting go of identification with the small, separate, limited self”
The difference between witnessing awareness and embodied loving awareness—and why it matters
How gender conditioning shapes our relationship to both compassion and awakening practices
The power of “relational dharma” and why we sometimes need another person to help us access self-compassion
A guided practice for moving from suffering into the “stance-less stance” of presence
If you’ve practiced self-compassion but sensed there’s something deeper available, or if awakening teachings have felt too abstract or disembodied, this conversation offers a bridge between heart and awareness that could transform your practice.
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. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
A filthy home is an open invitation for rats and roaches to move in. In the same way, Michael reveals that neglected thoughts and emotions attract destructive unconscious behaviors.
The subconscious mind has a critical role in our lives—a role that it’s always busy fulfilling. But it also has a problem, explains Dr. Friedemann Schaub: “It pretty much does whatever it started to do early in our lives.” In this podcast, the visionary physician and researcher speaks with Tami Simon about how we can begin to teach our subconscious “not just to go for safety, but to go for fulfillment, purpose, and passion.”
Listen in for insights from his Sounds True publication, The Fear and Anxiety Solution, and his new book, The Empowerment Solution, as Tami and Dr. Schaub explore consciously collaborating with your subconscious; positive and negative emotions; how the subconscious deals with a sense of conditional acceptance and love; changing the filter of not being good enough; discovering the essence of being and the peace that comes with it; the power of yoga, meditation, and other spiritual practices; a guided journey to your core self; escaping oneself versus propelling oneself forward; beliefs, the laws of our life; breaking the habit of people-pleasing; the difference between empathy and compassion; growing through our pain; setting relationship boundaries; finding the marriage between head and heart; trauma healing; learning to treat ourselves like we treat those we love; helping your subconscious trust your conscious mind; self-appreciation; stopping the pattern of defining yourself by your achievements; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
Even when you’ve devoted yourself to spiritual work, it can be difficult to maintain mindful awareness. In this episode, Michael speaks on the difficulty of maintaining consciousness and equanimity when we seem hardwired to be hooked by outside stimuli.
There is a fundamental difference between knowing something intellectually and experiencing it directly. In spiritual practice, realization arises not from thinking or believing but from resting in the seat of consciousness and ceasing to be distracted by thoughts, emotions, and ego. The ultimate path to enlightenment involves letting go of identification with the personal self and returning to the direct, experiential awareness of one’s divine nature. God-realization is not a belief, it is a lived experience of merging back into the ocean of universal consciousness.
Shakti is the universal life energy that flows through the body, mind, and heart, and its flow is the basis of all emotional and physical experiences. Blockages created from suppressed past experiences distort this flow, leading to mental, emotional, and physical suffering. Instead of releasing these blockages, most people try to manipulate the external world to avoid triggering them. True spiritual growth is the art of letting go of these blockages and allowing Shakti to flow freely. Ultimately, this leads to a life filled with love, joy, and Self-Realization.
Human beings are living inside a kind of “virtual reality” created by their own minds. This VR is built from thoughts, past experiences, emotions, and beliefs that they hold onto and identify with, forming their egos and self-concepts. Spiritual awakening involves stepping back from this constructed reality, witnessing it without getting lost in it, and ultimately letting it go to merge with a higher, freer state of consciousness. True liberation is compared to taking off the VR goggles and realizing the infinite reality beyond the limited personal world created by these mental constructs.
Life feels complicated only because we become entangled in our thoughts, emotions, and external experiences. Spiritual growth involves recognizing that our conscious awareness, which is transcendent to these phenomena, is the essence of our being. As such, we do not have to become overly identified with these fleeting experiences. By learning to handle all of life’s experiences without reactive resistance, we can maintain inner peace and return to the source of our being.
The mind is a field of infinite energy that generates thoughts like wavelets or ripples in a lake. These wavelets are transient and harmless unless we hold them in place by focusing undue attention on them. Held in place, these wavelets freeze and become the mental patterns of our ego and belief systems, which distort our perception from then on. Liberation comes from learning to relax and not resist energy as it passes through, and by letting go of the older patterns as they arise.
The mind is not inherently a problem—it becomes one when used to narrowly define reality based on our extremely limited personal experiences. This limited frame of reference leads to suffering, judgment, and a compulsive need to control life to match our preferences. Spiritual freedom comes from recognizing the vastness of existence, surrendering the egoic mind, and appreciating the miraculous nature of reality as it is.
