Human suffering comes from trying to control the outside world so that our inner state feels good, all of which is based on impressions from our past experiences. Spiritual growth begins when we stop clinging to these impressions and instead learn to handle whatever reality presents. By letting experiences pass through without resistance, inner energy rises naturally, eventually dissolving the personal self and leading to liberation.
The essence of a spiritual life is to do the absolute best you can in each moment and renounce attachment to the results. This is the core teaching of the Bhagavad Gita. When actions are motivated by the desire to gain something or avoid loss, the ego creates anxiety, disappointment, and endless striving. True fulfillment comes from giving your whole being to the moment as an act of service to the Universe, allowing growth, freedom, and inner expansion to arise naturally.
What are you paying attention to—and is it the life you actually want to be living?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Cody Cook-Parrott—writer, artist, movement practitioner, and author of the new Sounds True book The Practice of Attention: Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World—about what it takes to reclaim focus in an age engineered to steal it.
Cody’s path to this book wasn’t theoretical. It began with their own Instagram addiction, a recovery from alcohol, and the growing realization that fractured attention isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s a creative crisis. What emerged is a deeply personal and practical guide to getting back to yourself.
Join Tami and Cody to explore:
The attention audit: a simple, powerful practice for noticing where your time and energy actually go
Why social media addiction and alcohol addiction can mirror each other—and what “zero” looks like as a choice
Structure with softness: building devotional creative habits that flex without breaking
Agency over urgency—and why that principle is especially vital for neurodivergent and queer creators
The emotional car: how to bring difficult inner parts along for the ride without letting them take the wheel
Consistency over intensity: why a 25-minute Pomodoro session beats an eight-hour grind
What’s really driving the urge to distract—and how asking “what am I avoiding?” changes everything
Why attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer
Whether you’re a creative trying to protect your focus or someone who’s quietly wondered what you’d make if you could actually sit with yourself, Cody offers both the tools and the permission to begin.
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.
In its natural state, the heart contains a constant flow of love, but ego-based preferences, judgments, and fears block that flow and cause the heart to open and close conditionally. Spiritual growth comes from observing these inner reactions, relaxing instead of resisting them, and allowing stored emotional impressions from the past to release. Through consistent awareness and practice, the heart becomes increasingly open, allowing unconditional love and inner energy to flow freely.
Success, money, relationships, or reputation cannot be the sole meaning of life—because all these can come and go, especially at death. People walk through life trying to be conditionally okay by making it match their preferences and protect their ego. The real meaning of life is self-realization through evolution—learning to handle reality as it unfolds rather than resisting it. Every one of life’s experiences—pleasant or painful—is calling on us to expand our boundaries. Growth comes not from controlling life but from increasing one’s capacity to handle it with awareness, honesty, and openness.
Something shifts when you encounter Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work. The food in your bowl starts to look different. The tree at the corner of your block becomes something more than scenery. The world, quite suddenly, feels alive with relationship.
This is how her writing impacted Tami, and this week Tami and Robin—botanist, MacArthur Fellow, National Humanities Medal recipient, enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and author of the beloved Braiding Sweetgrass—talk about what it means to move through the world not as a consumer of natural resources, but as a participant in a web of living gifts.
Join Tami and Robin to explore:
Why Robin calls this moment in history “the Age of Remembering”—and what humanity is being called to reclaim
The profound difference between a commodity and a gift, and how that shift in perception changes everything
Brain chauvinism—why we’ve dismissed the intelligence of plants, rocks, and the more-than-human world, and what science is now revealing
The landmark sweetgrass experiment that proved humans can be partners to plants, not just threats
How to practice reciprocity with the earth, from small daily acts to systemic advocacy
Plant Baby Plant—Robin’s new movement offering a counter-narrative to extraction culture
How to hold grief, outrage, and love for the living world simultaneously—without surrendering to despair
In a time when the relationship between humans and the earth feels broken, Robin Wall Kimmerer offers something rare: a vision of healing rooted in science, indigenous wisdom, and the simple, radical act of giving your gifts back to the world.
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.
