• E183: The Impersonal Nature of Reality

    Michael Singer — May 21, 2026

    The personal mind creates suffering by taking everything personally and forming preferences about how life should be. In truth, life’s events are the outcomes of vast chains of...

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Tami Simon

Meet Your Host Tami Simon

Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.

Author photo © Jason Elias

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E183: The Impersonal Nature of Reality

The personal mind creates suffering by taking everything personally and forming preferences about how life should be. In truth, life’s events are the outcomes of vast chains of cause and effect stretching through time and space. Suffering arises when we deny the reality of these causes and resist the events that are unfolding before us, as well as those that have unfolded in the past. Spiritual liberation comes from learning to align with reality as it is and then working to raise it as it passes before us.

© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2026 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.

nico and devon hase: Buddhist Volcanoes In Love

What if everything you believed about a healthy relationship—the harmony, the peace, the perfectly matched wheels—was the very thing getting in the way?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with nico and devon hase—married Buddhist teachers, longtime meditation practitioners, and co-authors of the new Sounds True book This Messy, Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnership—about what it actually takes to build a partnership that transforms rather than just endures.

Join Tami, nico, and devon to explore:

  • Why relationships are inherently rough—and why accepting that is the first act of real intimacy
  • The three conflict styles (volcanoes, diplomats, and dodgers) and how to work skillfully with your own
  • The tightrope principle: why lasting partnership means always finding your balance, never holding it
  • The daily check-in practice nico and devon discovered during three years of solitary retreat—and why it’s deceptively powerful
  • How death contemplation can dissolve petty resentments and bring fierce clarity to what actually matters
  • The “third space” in relationship: listening to the partnership itself as its own living being
  • Body shame, shifting desire, and sexuality as an awakening path—from devon’s own retreat discoveries
  • Why bodhichitta—the awakened heart of service—might be the most honest metric for whether a relationship is worth tending

Whether you’re navigating a decades-long partnership or wondering if intimacy and spiritual depth can coexist at all, nico and devon offer both radical honesty and genuine hope.

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. Originally aired on Sounds True One.

This episode is sponsored 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. Discover what calls to you at eomega.org/true.

E182: Stop Closing Your Heart—The Real Path to Love ...

The key to opening the heart is learning not to close it. The heart is very sensitive, and it closes due to stored past impressions that create a sense of fear and the need for self-protection. Thus, people seek external conditions for the heart to feel safe enough to open. But as conditions change, the tendency to close is still there. The true path to living with an open heart is learning not to close, by handling life’s experiences without resistance. Through awareness and practice, one can release stored impressions and live in a naturally open, loving state.

© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2026 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Favorites

Donna Eden: Uplifting Energy

Tami Simon speaks with Donna Eden, a renowned energy medicine expert who has taught throughout the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and South America. Along with her partner, Dr. David Feinstein, Donna is author of the books Energy Medicine and Energy Medicine for Women. With Sounds True she has produced the multimedia program The Energy Medicine Kit. In this episode, Tami speaks with Donna about her experiences as someone who both sees energy and has healed herself from serious medical challenges. Donna also shares two energy practices: a technique to evolve our fight-flight-or-freeze response, and another for opening with total trust to the energy of the heavens. (1 hour, 3 minutes)

Joan Chittister: Presence and Perpetual Goodness

Sister Joan Chittister is an American theologian, Benedictine nun, and the author of more than 50 books. For over 40 years, she has passionately advocated on behalf of peace, human rights, women’s issues, and church renewal. This week’s podcast shares with you an excerpt from Sister Joan’s audio program, Catching Fire: Being Transformed, Becoming Transforming, a seven-hour conversation with Tami Simon intended to spark the fire of the divine within each one of us.

Becoming Who You Are Meant to Be

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, is a Jungian analyst and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. An internationally renowned lecturer and workshop leader, she is author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Close to the Bone, Like a Tree, and more. She is also a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and a past chairperson of the Council of National Affairs of the APA.

In this podcast, Dr. Bolen joins Sounds True founder Tami Simon to reflect on her many years as a writer, teacher, and activist, and how doing our “soul work” becomes the path to self-actualization, connection, and contribution throughout our lives. They also discuss our innate capacity for love and awe; becoming a whole-brain person; speaking up as a key aspect of individuation; gratitude and appreciation; the dandelion effect, or how seeds of beneficial ideas are carried to fertile ground; navigating liminal times; the predicament of “just doing time” with our lives; connecting with loved ones we’ve lost; becoming more familiar with your “dark side of the moon”; the metaphor of the millionth circle; and more.

Timeless Classics

Lance Allred: The New Alpha Male

Lance Allred is a former NBA player (who was the first legally deaf player in the league), public speaker, and author. With Sounds True, he has published The New Alpha Male: How to Win the Game When the Rules Are Changing. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lance about the experiences he had in professional sports that led him to reevaluate what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Lance explains how his upbringing in a rural, polygamous commune informed his original ideas about masculinity, highlighting the subconscious assumptions about money and power that affect American men’s self-worth. Tami and Lance also discuss the roles of emotional vulnerability and surrender in the lives of modern men. Finally, they talk about the principle of perseverance and the increasingly urgent need for all cultures to reexamine their assumptions and core values.(63 minutes)

Micah Mortali: Rewilding

Micah Mortali is the director of the Kripalu School, a certified yoga teacher, and a longtime wilderness guide. With Sounds True, he has published Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Micah about humanity’s growing disconnection from the earth and how “rewilding” can help slow that trend. They talk about rewilding both as individuals and as part of whole ecosystems. Micah also shares the story of an intense, revelatory trail encounter with a bear and comments on the “species loneliness” of urban environments. Mulling the sense of grief they have for humankind’s effects on the environment, Tami and Micah consider how modern people can grapple with being in exile from the natural world. Finally, they discuss the barriers many have to reentering nature, as well as ways to initiate your own rewilding experience no matter where you are.(64 minutes)

Christian Conte: Healing Conflict: Listen, Validate, a...

Christian Conte, PhD, is a mental health specialist and leading authority on anger management. With Sounds True, Christian has published Walking Through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon talks with Christian about his Yield Theory of emotional management, focusing on the process of “listen, validate, explore options.” Christian explains the events that led to his interest in anger management, as well as the origins of Yield Theory. He emphasizes the importance of meeting others where they are, giving them the opportunity to drain anger’s charge from their limbic system. Christian and Tami discuss why it’s necessary to cultivate humility and how Yield Theory might be applied to our currently divisive culture. Finally, they speak on “the cartoon world” that angry responses often create, as well as the importance of watching what we add to our minds.(63 minutes)

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