“You have to want the freedom more than you want to be right about it.”
That’s what Reverend Dr. Michelle Wadleigh offers to anyone who has tried forgiveness and found that it didn’t take. Not a technique. A decision.
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Wadleigh—ordained minister in Centers for Spiritual Living, retreat facilitator, co-founder of the Planned Happiness Institute, and author of Forgiveness, Shadow Work, and the new Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: The Soul’s Journey to Courage, Authenticity, and Self-Love—about what it actually takes to stop living at the mercy of our own stories.
Join Tami and Michelle to explore:
- Why forgiveness practices fail when they skip the body and the subconscious—and what to do instead
- How shadow work and forgiveness depend on each other, and why projection drives so much of the divisiveness we see
- “Functioning on top of dysfunction”: our addictions to being nice and being liked, and how they train us to dumb ourselves down
- The 15 to 20 minutes before sleep, when the mind turns porous—and how Michelle guards that window
- Fire walking, cold plunges, and the discovery that fear is a choice rather than an automatic
- What it means to demand to be me without excuses—and who, exactly, that demand is addressed to
- Why a book about bold self-expression closes with instructions for a solo silent retreat
- Presence as a practice, learned while walking beside a dying husband
Michelle speaks throughout from the middle of her own hardest passage, which gives everything she says about buoyancy, beauty, and determination a weight it would not otherwise carry.
Listen now. →
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 originally aired on Sounds True One.
Insights at the Edge is supported by Omega Institute, a global gathering hub for lifelong learning and spiritual exploration. Located in upstate New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley, Omega offers weekend workshops, special events, rest and rejuvenation retreats, professional trainings, online learning, and more.
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