What do you say when you tried atheism — genuinely tried it — and it just didn't hold? When the mystery of your own consciousness, the fact that humans...
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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.
Join the New York Times bestselling author of The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, and Living Untethered for this free series of curated teaching sessions, recorded at his Temple of the Universe yoga and meditation center.
The mind and heart are vibrational fields shaped by past experiences we’ve clung to or suppressed, resulting in the reactive inner world we live in. Liberation begins by stepping back into witness consciousness, seeing that we are not our thoughts or emotions, but the awareness behind them. The path to freedom is through inner purification—letting go of stored impressions and no longer adding more disturbance by resisting or clinging to what life presents. Serve life, don’t fight it.
What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming brighter—like a meteor that grows more luminous even as it falls through the atmosphere?
Tami Simon speaks with beloved poet-philosopher Mark Nepo about his deeply moving new book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. Drawing from Chinese wisdom traditions and his own journey through chronic pain and back surgery, Mark illuminates aging as the “heavenly pivot” (love that phrase) which is the transformative shift from living outwardly to inhabiting life from the inside out.
Join Mark and Tami for this episode to explore:
The meteor metaphor: how we grow brighter as our outer casing flakes away • “Entering time” versus moving through it—and why slowing down opens the eternal moment • The paradox of limitation: how loss simultaneously deepens and expands us • Breaking through to joy as the depth of being that holds all the waves • Why the heart, not the mind, must lead in the second half of life • Living with chronic pain and learning to let beauty in while suffering • The difference between being victims of life versus initiates into life • How grief changes everything and why we don’t get over it, we get under it • Being swift of heart—living without hesitation from the inside out
Mark’s wisdom arises from decades of spiritual practice, surviving cancer, and facing the inevitable losses that come with a long life—essential listening for anyone navigating aging, chronic pain, loss, or simply seeking to live more fully present to the life they have.
Listen now to discover how the second half of life can be your most luminous yet.
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.
The mind becomes a problem when it is filled with stored emotional impressions (samskaras) that we resisted or clung to, shaping our preferences, beliefs, and ego. These inner patterns distort reality, create suffering, and cause us to constantly judge life based on past experiences. True liberation comes not from controlling the mind but from understanding these roots. We can then learn to let go of the stored disturbances and allow life to unfold freely without resistance.
Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. Her clinical publications include The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation and The Polyvagal Flip Chart: Understanding the Science of Safety, and her Sounds True publications include the audio program, Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory, and her new book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.
In this podcast, Tami Simon converses with Deb Dana to offer listeners a practical understanding of Polyvagal Theory and how we can begin to decode the language of our body for better health and better relationships. Tami and Deb also discuss the dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral states of our nervous system; the gifts of becoming “anchored in ventral”; neuroception, your nervous system’s way of taking in information to assess your safety; curiosity and the capacity for self-reflection; the importance of self-care; co-regulation as a biological imperative; why self-regulation is especially critical for therapists and other helping professionals; music and nature as healing resources; the practice of self-compassion as a means of “getting our anchor back”; and more.
Michael Singer is a spiritual teacher, entrepreneur, and the bestselling author of the spiritual classic The Untethered Soul. He has collaborated with Sounds True to release the online course Living from a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Michael about the core idea of his teachings: that it is only through complete surrender to the essence of the moment that we experience life’s full potential. They talk about what this sense of surrender actually means when it comes to decision-making and day-to-day activities, as well as how to recognize when we are still clinging to resistance. Michael explains how to take a “witness position” and let go of the arbitrary attachments that inhibit surrender. Finally, Tami and Michael discuss the application of these ideas to those things we truly value, including bringing the idea of surrender to social and environmental activism. (63 minutes)
Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist, and fully trained lama of the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. With Sounds True, he is presenting during the upcoming Wisdom of the Body Summit, an online event devoted to tuning into the natural intuition and awareness of our physical forms. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lama Rod about the basics of Vajrayana and how its practices can be applied to modern life. Tami asks Lama Rod how his identity as an African-American, queer man informs his practice and teachings. In turn, Lama Rod comments on how spiritual teachings should meet people where they actually live and those parts of the Tantric tradition that he had to leave behind. Finally, Lama Rod explains how Vajrayana brings you into greater harmony with the body, as well as why love and anger aren’t the polar opposites you might assume.(63 minutes)
What we consider the “self” is just a construct of experiences and thoughts we’ve accumulated and identified with, forming the ego or self-concept. True spiritual growth begins by detaching from this mental construct and discovering the witness consciousness within. The great yogis achieved this by going inward, letting go of distractions, and recognizing the source of consciousness itself. They discovered that pure consciousness is actually the same force that creates and sustains the universe, called “Chit Shakti” or conscious energy. By learning to release past mental impressions, one can awaken to their true divine nature, the conscious energy that is the basis of all creation and existence.
There is great spiritual depth behind the phrase “Let It Be.” It presents the wisdom that resisting reality leads to psychological suffering. By understanding how perception is filtered through the mind and influenced by past experiences, we learn that true freedom lies in allowing experiences to pass through us without clinging or pushing away. Spiritual growth involves learning to relax in the face of discomfort and reclaiming the awareness behind it all—the consciousness that is always present, whole, and free.
Modern physics has shown us that all form, including our bodies, is simply vibrations in an underlying omnipresent field, the quantum field. Through deep meditation, ancient yogis also found an underlying omnipresent field, consciousness. Could these fields end up being the same? The key to exploring this for yourself is to realize that you are not your thoughts, emotions, or experiences—you are the consciousness observing them. To remain seated in this state of awareness, you must learn not to be distracted by these objects of consciousness. Spiritual evolution is not about becoming something; it’s about ceasing to identify with what you are not.
Have you noticed that you live with a personal mind that is shaped by your past experiences? In that mind, you develop a self-concept of how life should be. This ego-mind leads to tremendous suffering and distorted views of truth. True spirituality involves recognizing that you are not your thoughts or experiences, but the consciousness that observes them. By ceasing to identify with your ego and facing reality without resistance, you can awaken to a deeper truth and experience lasting peace and fulfillment.
There is a line—below this line you are being pulled down into your psyche and above it you are pulled up into the source of Self. You generally live below this line and identify with your thoughts and emotions. This leads to suffering and an ego-driven existence. True awakening comes from recognizing that you are not your body, thoughts, or past experiences but the consciousness that is aware of them. By letting go of ego-based attachments and conditioned responses, you can transcend suffering and experience inner peace, love, and true spiritual awakening.
It should be obvious that most of life unfolds beyond your control. Your heart beats, your lungs expand and contract, 35 trillion living cells provide you with your body, atoms bond into molecules, and billions of other vital things go on every moment that you do not control. In spite of all of this, you suffer by resisting reality instead of appreciating it. Your desires and struggles come from storing the past experiences you liked and didn’t like and then comparing reality to what you want it to be. Eventually, you will realize that true peace and joy arise not from controlling life but from letting go of your inner blockages and learning to appreciate and fully embrace the gift of creation.
Most human suffering stems from being addicted to the mind and its narratives. The mind uses past experiences to shape expectations and to resist reality. You must shift from identifying with thoughts and ego to realizing yourself as pure consciousness—the observer behind all experiences. True spiritual freedom comes from embracing reality without resistance and allowing inspiration to flow through you. The mind, while a powerful tool, should serve the deeper self rather than dictating your life. Joy, wisdom, and clarity arise naturally when you stop trying to control life and instead accept and let go.
Stress and suffering arise not from external events but from our internal resistance to them—based on our inner preferences, fears, and desires toward what is happening. The outer world manifests from vast cosmic forces beyond our control, while our inner reactions are shaped by past impressions we have held onto. The path to liberation lies in relaxing and letting go of resistance, allowing life to flow through us without obstruction, thus opening to inner peace, joy, and spiritual freedom.
Spiritual growth involves realizing that our lower self is the ego-driven construct that arises from past experiences, emotional reactions, and stored mental patterns. Most people live disconnected from their true self and are constantly entangled in their thoughts, emotions, and external perceptions. True spirituality is the realization that one’s higher self is the consciousness observing these transient experiences, not the experiences themselves. This leads to liberation from identification with the ego. The ultimate goal is to return to the seat of consciousness and achieve a state of peace, love, and unity while engaging with life as a fully conscious, nonreactive being.
The mind’s natural state is pure, quiet, and expansive, but it appears restless because of unresolved experiences that were not allowed to pass through. These stored impressions generate the personal mind, a constant stream of likes, dislikes, fears, and desires that you mistake as “you”. Liberation comes through the daily practice of handling life’s experiences and living from the witness rather than from these stored impressions.
Consciousness is the most important aspect of existence, without which nothing has meaning. We suffer because we contract our awareness onto one small, self-centered point of creation—our own thoughts, emotions, and preferences—rather than letting consciousness remain open and expansive. Daily life becomes a spiritual path by using our relationships, experiences, and internal reactions as opportunities to stop focusing on our egos and begin allowing consciousness to remain open, free, and in harmony with all that is.
The true meaning of Mother’s Day is to celebrate the idea of unconditional love—a love that does not judge or withhold. Most humans misunderstand this because the mind judges everything, creating inner resistance and leading to closure of the heart. Spiritual growth is the process of learning how to stop judging by understanding the root of judgment: past experiences stored in the personal mind that we couldn’t handle. By consistently relaxing through these blockages, instead of resisting their release, they will dissolve naturally, allowing the spiritual energy to rise. This culminates in the realization that God is love, and our own consciousness is that same ocean of love.
While some physical suffering is unavoidable, most psychological suffering is self-created. We do this through resisting reality and clinging to preferences, attachments, and past experiences. By learning to let go of these stored emotional responses and fully accepting each moment without judgment, you can overcome this inner suffering. Embracing the present with openness allows for a life rich in genuine experiences filled with love and deep compassion for yourself and others.
Spiritual experiences are inspiring but very different from the permanent state of spiritual realization. Momentary highs are temporary because, afterward, our consciousness is still lost in our thoughts, emotions, and learned preferences, which continue to drive our reactions and struggles in life. Deep growth begins by realizing you are not your thoughts or emotions but the observer of them. The everyday commitment to inner work that releases past emotional blockages, fears, and preferences is how you climb the permanent stairway to heaven. The ultimate goal is transcending the ego and experiencing the eternal oneness of your existence.
The ego is a construct of learned experiences that defines your personal identity, desires, and fears. Trying to transform the ego into something it is not creates a tremendous struggle that could last a lifetime. Instead, by cultivating “witness consciousness,” you can observe the ego without attachment, leading to clarity and compassion toward yourself and others. As judgment fades, seeing others not as their egos but as the divine consciousness behind the ego leads to living in the world with respect, love, and humility while aligning with your deeper spiritual purpose.
Human suffering arises from resisting experiences and holding onto preferences shaped by past events. Liberation is achieved by letting go of attachments and embracing the present moment with openness and acceptance. Through consistent practice and self-awareness, you can transcend psychological pain, rediscover inner peace, and experience a life filled with joy and equanimity. Once you reach this state, you are ready to selflessly serve others.
We live on an extraordinarily amazing planet compared to any others we have seen. Yet, despite this, we are prone to complaining on a daily basis. Personal dissatisfaction arises from judging and resisting reality and suppressing past emotional pain. This creates the buildup of lifelong inner blockages that cause even more suffering and dissatisfaction. By releasing these blockages and transcending the limitations of the personal mind, we can achieve spiritual growth and experience true contentment and joy.
True understanding of consciousness comes not through philosophical thinking or external experimentation but from the direct experience of Self. When awareness is no longer distracted by thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs, you can remain in the seat of objective observation and directly experience the true nature of consciousness. Ancient yogis achieved this state through practices that quieted the mind and withdrew attention from external distractions. This led to a profound merger with the universal source of consciousness. True spiritual evolution involves turning inward to explore consciousness directly.
