There’s an elephant in the room anytime someone talks about energy healing, an elephant named Placebo. For most of us, placebo means you got the sugar pill. It means...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco.
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.
Your inner mental voice is not your true self but a reflection of stored emotional preferences and unresolved experiences from the past that surface as mental chatter. Suppressing this voice only leads to deeper suffering, whereas true spiritual growth comes from working with and letting go of the inner blockages causing mental and emotional disturbance. The path to peace involves relaxing through inner resistance, which ultimately leads to a state of natural joy, strength, and divine union.
What would change if you could witness your thoughts and emotions without being consumed by them? What if the energy you seek through external circumstances has been flowing within you all along, simply waiting to be untethered?
This week, Tami Simon revisits a beloved conversation with Michael Singer—bestselling author of The Untethered Soul and its profound sequel, Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament. Michael is also the author of The Surrender Experiment and the creator of Sounds True’s transformative online course Living From a Place of Surrender.
Join Tami and Michael to explore:
The seat of awareness and what it means to truly be “in there” • The three-ring circus of consciousness: sense perceptions, thoughts, and emotions • Shakti—the energy flow within that either expands or contracts based on our internal blockages • Samskaras: the stored impressions from past experiences that shape our present reactions • Practical techniques for letting go: positive thinking, mantra repetition, and witness consciousness • The profound process of transmutation—how blocked energy transforms into love when we stop resisting • The difference between the conditional lower heart and the boundless spiritual heart • Why “you must die to be reborn”—letting go of who you think you are to discover who you really are
If you’re ready to stop bothering yourself about the moments in front of you, to untether from patterns that no longer serve you, and to discover the inexhaustible source of energy already flowing within—this conversation offers a clear, practical roadmap home.
Listen now and discover what it means to live untethered.
True spirituality is about aligning with reality—what is actually happening—rather than resisting or clinging to what the mind likes or dislikes. By storing emotionally charged impressions of past experiences (samskaras), we create inner resistance, which becomes the root of suffering and distraction from our divine nature. The path to liberation lies in relaxing instead of resisting, allowing all of life to pass through without suppression, thereby purifying the inner being and becoming a force for peace in the world.
Matt Licata is a practicing psychotherapist, a co-facilitator of a monthly online membership community called Befriending Yourself, and the author of The Path Is Everywhere. With Sounds True, he has written a new book titled, A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Matt about what it is to be a healing space, that is to hold space for ourselves and others, as well as how we can feel held by something greater than ourselves during challenging experiences. They also explore our inner wounds and self-abandonment, spiritual bypassing and the ways in which many practices allow us to gloss over the real healing needed, and how coming into an embodied state can open us to greater inner depths. Finally, Tami and Matt discuss becoming an alchemist of your own life, discovering the inner gold that each of us has within, and befriending all of ourselves.
Elizabeth Stanley is a Georgetown University professor and the creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, an approach taught to thousands in civilian and military high stress environments. A U.S. Army veteran with service in Asia and Europe, she holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, and MIT. She is the author of the book, Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Elizabeth Stanley about her 8-session online course, Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training: A Trauma-Sensitive Online Course to Build Resilience and Thrive During Stress. They also discuss why MMFT is a practice we can all benefit from; the value of expanding our “window of tolerance”; the relationship between personal agency and trauma; the “thinking” brain versus the “survival” brain; when stress becomes trauma; the importance of recovery from stressful situations; and more.
Are certain individuals more inclined to awaken spiritually? Do some of us have a natural proclivity to experience spiritual states of oneness? Welcome to the first episode in our new podcast series, Being Open: Spirituality and the Neurodivergent Mind. In this illuminating conversation, Tami Simon speaks with intuitive energy healer and awakening trail guide Sarah Taylor about the empowering revelations and approaches she has discovered throughout the course of her life—including the late-in-life realization that she has both autism and ADHD.
Give a listen to this compelling and informative dialogue on: waking up to our interconnection; the shift from “head awakening” to “heart awakening”; Dzogchen and “the one taste”; the receptivity and porousness of neurodivergent people; the healing power of integration and embodiment; the critical importance of downtime and self-care; experiencing equanimity; unraveling the adaption strategies that no longer serve you; living with a high level of “raw sensitivity”; owning your truths—instead of masking your wants, needs, and authenticity; the misunderstood habit of “stimming” (or self-stimulation); the concept of samskaras (or energetic blockages in your subtle anatomy); reckoning with grief; the futility and harm of self-labeling; reframing limitations as gifts; managing your energy and seeking support when you need it; the connection between our increased understanding of the neurodivergent brain and the collective evolution of humanity; 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.
Who are you in the eyes of the universe? Here, Michael talks about our perceptual relationship with the universe—illuminating how we project ourselves onto the unfolding of reality.
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.
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.
How do you know when you’re actually walking the path or when you’re just strengthening your ego? Here, Michael considers the gateways to and pitfalls of spiritual work.
The world’s great wisdom traditions all speak on the value of surrender. In this episode, Michael discusses what it takes to grow beyond spiritual resistance.
Have you ever pushed a thought aside or stuffed an emotion away deep inside? Most of us have! Michael Singer teaches that this is an act of will stemming from a simple intention: to feel better. In this podcast, he discusses the incredible power of our human will and how we use it, (for better or worse) in this deep exploration of intention and the pathway to self-realization and spiritual freedom.
Surrender is not about giving things up, practicing self-denial, or always accepting life’s circumstances. True surrender begins by recognizing that you are not the doer—the universe is continuously unfolding everywhere by itself: babies are being created, flowers are blooming, planets are orbiting, trillions of galaxies are spinning through space, and atoms are binding into molecules without human control. Yet we create in our minds the notion that we are the creator and controller of life. As we inwardly relax and allow reality to pass through us, we are left in such a state of peace, joy, and freedom that we naturally end up serving life instead of ourselves.
While we do not create objective reality itself, we do create our personal experience of reality through the psychological filters formed by our past experiences. Every event that we resist or cling to becomes an internal impression that shapes future perceptions and strengthens the ego’s preferences about how life should unfold. Spiritual freedom comes from letting experiences pass through without resistance, and allowing consciousness to experience life directly, openly, and joyfully as it unfolds in the present moment.
The personal life is driven by ego, preferences, and the attempt to make life conform to what one wants. In contrast, the impersonal life begins when one stops being governed by these inner dictates. Spirituality is the process of letting go of attachment to the personal self rather than trying to manipulate the world to satisfy it. As personal reactions are released, consciousness naturally expands into a state of freedom, peace, and ever-new joy that is independent of external conditions.
You are not your thoughts, emotions, preferences, or psychological patterns—you are the consciousness that is aware of them. Suffering comes from holding onto experiences, building an ego out of what you could not handle, and then trying to manipulate life so you never feel discomfort again. Spiritual liberation comes through remaining established in the seat of consciousness, letting experiences pass through without resistance, and eventually dissolving the separate self back into universal consciousness.
The essence of spiritual growth is learning to work directly with your inner energy rather than trying to affect it indirectly by controlling outer circumstances. When the outer world does not meet your preferences, your inner energy gets disturbed, and you either try to suppress it (which creates blockages) or reactively express it (which can cause its own problems). Instead, by relaxing in the face of the disturbed energy, welcoming it, and allowing it to rise and purify—the energy can be transmuted into spiritual growth. Practiced steadily in everyday life, this returns you to the seat of the Self, where joy is natural because the energy flow is unblocked.
Suffering arises when consciousness becomes distracted by experiences, identifies with them, and forms the personal mind filled with preferences, fears, and attachments. Spiritual growth comes not from stopping thoughts but from developing witness consciousness and learning to allow life’s experiences to pass through without resistance or clinging. The practical spiritual path is to continually practice “I can handle it,” while relaxing and releasing our reactions until we rediscover ourselves as awareness itself, rather than the collection of experiences we have accumulated.
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.
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.
Who are you in the eyes of the universe? Here, Michael talks about our perceptual relationship with the universe—illuminating how we project ourselves onto the unfolding of reality.
In this season opener, Michael Singer guides us into the understanding and practice of what he calls “the highest technique,” that of relaxing in the midst of your resistance to life’s events—and then fully experiencing the present moment.
There’s nothing even remotely spiritual about going through life reacting to events. In this episode, Michael Singer explores how to become aware of our emotional reactions, navigate the energies that drive them, and learn to respond to triggering events with greater consciousness.
Like a boat sailing on the sea, there are two significant forces guiding our journey through life: the natural forces all around us and the practical skills needed to reach our destinations. Here, Michael Singer explores the essentials for making our way on the spiritual path.
