Search Results for: Ruth King – Page 3

Gabor Maté: Healing Principles to Embody in a Traumat...

Why do we suppress our authenticity? How do we reconcile the need to accept things as they are with a desire to change them? What is the pathway to healing in a world that’s breaking our hearts? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with renowned physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté about these profound questions, and how the approach he calls Compassionate Inquiry can help us find the answers within ourselves. 

Listen in to this informative, inspiring, and at times “fiery” conversation exploring how to bridge the gap between understanding and embodiment; the “full heart beneath a broken heart”; paying attention to tension; growth, not perfection; the neuroscience of emotions; the connections between sensitivity and addiction; activism and advocacy as an element of healing; the dance of acceptance and agency; psychoneuroimmunology; the search for truth and where it emanates from; 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.

Megan Devine: Acknowledging Our Grief and Carrying Wha...

When we suffer a serious loss, we come face-to-face with the fragile nature of this world. Yet in today’s culture, we often try to avoid or deny the deep emotions associated with losing the people and things we love. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with therapist and grief consultant Megan Devine about her uniquely helpful books with Sounds True, It’s OK That You’re Not OK and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed

Tune in for a much-needed conversation on the best ways to tend one another’s pain during periods of loss, as Tami and Megan discuss: the cover-up narrative that “bad things help us grow”; the roots of today’s grief phobia; pain vs suffering; grief without a story; the healing power of acknowledgment; tolerating feelings of helplessness; the impulse to fix things; the weaponization of acceptance; time and the notion of complicated grief; the dangers of pathologizing grief; the lost opportunity to reframe grief during the pandemic; naming the awkward instead of silencing yourself; offering concrete assistance rather than an open offer to help; three kinds of hope: transactional, functional, and inhabitable; speaking our truth and allowing others the same; 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.

A.H. Almaas: Love in Its Boundless Dimension

We come into this world with a basic trust in the goodness of life. And our trials, tribulations, and traumas cover up that trust, or shatter it completely. In this discussion of his new book, Nondual Love, Tami Simon speaks with author and teacher A.H. Almaas about spiritual self-inquiry and the path toward reclaiming our sense of the boundless benevolence of the universe. 

Take a deep, relaxing breath in a quiet, comfortable place and dive in to this inspiring, expansive conversation exploring: the Diamond Approach to spiritual realization; inner work as the quest to understand the content of consciousness; how truth is a continuum; the nature of experience and knowing; satchitananda; the Buddhist concept of selflessness; universal love and Sufism’s “ocean with no shores”; permanent realization; the ego and the inner Jabba the Hutt; “living daylight” and the overcoming of fear; how full embodiment frees us from our “diamond issues”; relaxation as the first step in experiencing nondual reality; asking yourself, “what’s in the way?”; and more.

To learn more about the Diamond Approach, visit https://www.diamondapproach.org/

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.

Five Dos and Don’ts for the Minimalism-Curious

My recent book Travel Light is a how-to guide for the practice of what I call “Spiritual Minimalism,” which is not to be confused with regular old minimalism.

Long story short, in 2018, I was living in a beautiful two-bedroom apartment in Venice Beach when I felt an inner calling to get rid of everything that didn’t fit inside of my 22-inch carry-on bag. My bag would effectively become my new apartment as I would begin living nomadically around the world.

It took me 30 days’ worth of yard sales and Craigslist posts to get rid of over four decades of furniture, art, photo albums, yearbooks, letters, clothing, knickknacks, winter coats, books, my cars, Vespa, and everything else.

And about six months into my nomadic journey, I realized something: I still had too much stuff. So I got rid of the carry-on bag and downsized into a backpack. And now, five-plus years later, I’m still happily living from a backpack as I continue to hop around the world, from hotels to Airbnbs to friends’ extra bedrooms.

Travel Light is written for those who also feel called to live with less, but you’re not sure where or how to start. Truth be told, there are numerous ways to start, depending on your individual situation.

If this approach intrigues you, I want to share five common mistakes many new minimalists make—and a handful of simple recommendations to get you started on a more mindful, purposeful minimalism journey:

Don’t get rid of too much too fast
Although I completely emptied my entire two-bedroom apartment within 30 days, I had been intentionally prepping to live from a carry-on bag over the previous year by experimenting with taking only what I actually used while on my dozens of work trips. So in 2018, getting rid of my stuff was merely the final step in a long progression of steps.

    My first recommendation is to go slow. Decide what sort of end result you desire, and start experimenting with what it would be like to only use what you envision keeping. Maybe get a storage room and put a handful of items in it each week until you run out of things you don’t use. Otherwise, going too fast could prove to be unsustainable and discouraging.

Don’t make it about the external space
Getting rid of clutter doesn’t resolve deep emotional wounds or past trauma. And some of that could be the root cause of why you engage in retail therapy or why you may cling to stuff you don’t use or wear. And until you start doing deeper work on yourself, you can live in the most minimal-looking setting, but still feel cluttered inside.

    Commit to daily meditation as a means of efficiently releasing stress, and engage in other inner work, such as therapy, journaling, seva (service), and daily gratitude practices to clear away the internal clutter. This is what is meant by Spiritual Minimalism. It’s minimalism practiced from the inside-out.

Don’t treat minimalism as a one-time experience
Minimalism is less of an act, like Spring cleaning, and more of a lifestyle, like getting into shape. It doesn’t end once you get rid of your stuff. Like being in shape, minimalism continues to inform what you do, how you do it, where you go, why, and pretty much every other choice you make in life. In other words, you recognize that every choice you make is either supporting the lifestyle or taking away from the lifestyle.

    Start seeing everything you do (big and small) as an opportunity to reinforce the minimalist mindset, and make choices that support your desired mindset.

Don’t forget to adopt a larger purpose Getting rid of stuff for the sake of looking like a minimalist is ultimately unfulfilling, and it’s recommended to adopt a larger purpose for your minimalism adventure. That way, you will bring more enthusiasm and passion into your minimalism choices. You’re not just getting rid of something for the sake of getting rid of it. It’s going to help you by making space to exercise, create content, or to use as the meditation corner of your home.

    My recommendation is to answer this question: How does becoming a minimalist help you help others? The answer is a clue into your purpose, and just know that there is no wrong answer. Or rather, it’s an ever-evolving answer that will come into greater focus as you begin your journey. All you need for now is a loose idea of your why.

Don’t compare yourself to others
The quickest way to make minimalism a drag is to compare yourself to other, more popular minimalists. It’s certainly good to be informed of best minimalism practices and get tips from minimalist influencers, but their paths or suggestions may not work as well for your situation.

    Be open to blazing your own path into minimalism, and be willing to adjust along the way. If you treat the entire thing as a learning experience, there are no mistakes. And you’ll have a lot more fun along the way.

For more tips and insights on the ways of the Spiritual Minimalist, I invite you to check out Travel Light: Spiritual Minimalism to Live a More Fulfilled Life.

Light Watkins

Turn your understanding of meditation inside out and u...

Meditation has found a home in the West. Countless scientific studies tout its benefits, and a multitude of students proclaim its life-changing value. I am one of those students. For over forty-five years I have practiced this ancient art, and I continue to reap its remarkable rewards. While I remain a follower of many wisdom traditions, and believe that no one has a patent on truth, thirty years ago I took refuge in Buddhism. The adage “Chase two rabbits; catch none” points out the necessity of commitment, and the dangers of spreading yourself too thin.

My passion for meditation led me into the traditional Tibetan three-year retreat, where I became a monk with robes and a shaved head, meditating fourteen hours a day in a remote monastery. I even slept sitting up in meditation posture, practicing the nocturnal meditations of dream and sleep yoga. Three-year retreat is like a meditation university, providing the opportunity to practice dozens of meditations in the most nurturing environment. It remains the most transformative experience of my life.

Of the many practices I was introduced to in retreat, one meditation stands out: the quirky, intense, multifaceted, and revolutionary practice of reverse meditation. I learned these practices within the context of Mahāmudrā (Sanskrit for “great seal”), a lofty tradition in Tibetan Buddhism that explores the nature of the mind. This was over twenty years ago, and since then these radical meditations have become a cornerstone of my spiritual path.

They’re called “reverse” meditation for a number of reasons. First, these practices are the opposite, or reverse, of what many of us associate with meditation. Most people think that meditation is about feeling good, getting “Zen,” or otherwise chilling out. But this is just one small aspect of meditation. Complete meditation is not about feeling good—it’s about getting real. And getting real requires dealing with the reality of difficult situations.

Second, these unique meditations are designed to reverse our relationship to unwanted experiences, which means going directly into them instead of avoiding them. In so doing we can discover the basic goodness of whatever arises, which is deeper than interpretative goodness. Basic goodness refers to the ineffable “suchness, isness, thatness” of whatever occurs—good or bad.

If we capitulate to our usual avoidance strategies, we push the acute, conscious psychological discomfort of avoidance into becoming a chronic, unconscious mental cramp. The discomfort is still there, but now it’s buried deep in our body-mind matrix, where it works backstage to dictate much of our onstage life. The rejected experience then manifests symptomatically—it becomes an undiagnosed reflection of an underlying discord that expresses itself in virtually everything we do. Our actions then become evasion tactics—reactivity, psychological duress, physical illness, and all manner of unskillful responses to the challenges of life—as we try to skirt these buried, uncomfortable feelings.

The reverse meditations give us the opportunity to relate to our mind instead of from it—and also to establish a relationship to our evasion tactics, which otherwise become obstacles that act like scar tissue to sequester the unwanted experience from consciousness. Relating from our mind, from our reactivity, is no relationship at all. In place of conscious relationship, we respond with knee-jerk reflexes to difficult experience, a reactivity that kicks us out of our feeling body and into our thinking head, and into unnecessary suffering. Instead of dealing authentically with the challenging somatic sensation, we leap into inauthentic conceptual proliferation (confabulating and catastrophizing) to buffer ourselves from the discomfort of our feelings. We run from the honest pain and real news that come with being human, and into dishonest commentary and fake news. The truth is that many of the worst things in our life are things that never really “happened”!

Third, the reverse meditations upend our sense of meditation altogether. They represent a revolution in spiritual practice that turns our understanding of meditation inside out and upside down, and therefore radically expand our practice. Situations that were once antithetical to meditation now become our meditation. Obstacles that previously obstructed our spiritual path now become our path. This means that everything becomes our meditation. Nothing is forbidden. We can enter lifetime retreat in the midst of ordinary life.

Excerpted from Reverse Meditation: How to Use Your Pain and Most Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Inner Freedom by Andrew Holecek.

Andrew Holecek is an author, speaker, and humanitarian who offers seminars internationally on meditation, lucid dreaming, and the art of dying. His work has appeared in Psychology Today, Parabola, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Utne Reader, Buddhadharma, Light of Consciousness, and many other periodicals. Learn more at andrewholecek.com.

Sherianna Boyle: Energy in Action

“Focus on your thoughts.” That’s the first instruction most of us receive when we begin to explore the practice of manifestation. Sherianna Boyle has a different suggestion: focus on your emotions. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Sherianna about her new book, Energy in Action: The Power of Emotions and Intuition to Cultivate Peace and Freedom. They discuss Sherianna’s CLEANSE approach to emotional detoxing, how we can align with universal truths and our own intuition to improve our health and happiness, and how our manifestation practice can become an offering of service to all beings. 

Listen in for these topics and more: clearing reactivity and toning the vagus nerve; looking inward to identify how your thoughts make you feel; the hum mantra; resting in the “I am” space; when to “allow and receive” and when to “notice and observe”; abundance, flexibility, and security; a spectrum of colors associated with spiritual laws; the teaching, “as vibration goes up, thinking goes down”; how we’re always creating something; plus, a guided meditation for our collective healing.

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.

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