Listening to Tami Simon reflect on how much spiritual practice has become mainstream is fascinating and important. She began her company Sounds True in the 1980’s with the intention to capture as much ‘spiritual wisdom’ as she could, and the company has grown into a behometh publishing and content house.
She says ‘back then meditation was for Hari Krishnas’ – and this conversation is SO important because even though it might seem human culture is deteriorating there is ALSO a beautiful emergence of a new type of phenomenon happening.
In this episide Tami shares the MOST important practices that we all need to be doing – and this is something based on working with countless legendary teachers and authors.
Listen to this one a pen and paper, Tami is simply incredible!
And my name is Todd Jason, and my plan for each episide is to give you a practical tool, framework or mindset shift that will have you feeling more inspired and hopeful that your highest potentials are very much reachable.
My life’s work is to help people understand and live their highest purpose. I’ve spent 20+ years working as a coach and course creator, working with some of the greatest teachers in the world – Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins and so many others – and my role has always been to streamline complex ideas into practical, useful tools!
If you ever want to work with me I run a LIVE 4-day program every month called The Purpose Accelerator and I’d love to meet you, check it out here:
And please SUBSCRIBE as I’m going to bring on some truly bad-ass spiritual warriors and my aim for this weekly show is to give you a fresh idea every time you tune in!
Full Podcast Transcript:
Todd: what a beautiful marriage of somebody who is able to have such a deeply entrenched personal mission that is also connected with contribution and service for other human beings and somebody who’s been successful in the business world. This is a rare human guys
Welcome everybody. My name is Todd Jason and welcome to another amazing and exciting episode.
We are joined by Tami Simon, who’s somebody. That I deeply, deeply respect and somebody who I’ve worked with, for many years. And I really consider Tami a mentor.
So I’m really excited about this interview. And if you’re not familiar with Tami’s work, she’s somebody who started an organization when she was rather young, 22 years old. She became obsessed with this idea of disseminating more spiritual wisdom in the world and just got out a tape recorder and started taping people that she thought had wisdom and it was because she was passionate about it, and all these years later, this recording process has turned into a big company called Sounds True, which has reached millions and millions of people all over the world. And there’s over 6,000 titles in Sounds True.
It’s books, it’s podcasts, it’s audios. Tami also runs one of the Biggest podcast in the spiritual development space called insights at the edge that has she just told me over 40 million views and so I’m really excited about this interview and this time together with Tami because It’s very much related to what we’re trying to do here which is to talk about how we can each have more potential.
And a lot of our guests, we talk about emotional stuff, mental stuff. And today we’re going to dive more into the spiritual and the wisdom related things. And there couldn’t be a better person to do this with than you Tami, because you spent so much time contemplating these things and working with so many of the great leaders on our planet.
And I’m just honored that you’re here with us today. So thank you for being here with us.
Tami: It’s my pleasure.
Todd: Yeah. So I actually want to start out by talking about wisdom. How do you define wisdom? What does that mean to you, just that term?
Tami: I’m going to answer that. And I’m also going to weave in something, because you talked about connecting with our potential, our greater potential. And the moment you said that I thought connecting with pure potential, which is our nature, pure potential. All of our nature is that it’s unlimited potential. And that is the space, the opening, the possibility of unlimited energy that can come into form through us.
So I want to say that because what is wisdom? Wisdom involves, traditionally the way it was defined from my understanding within Buddhism is knowing that there’s no separate self, not just knowing that intellectually, but realizing it, knowing it in how we sense our interconnectivity, our belonging in the web, our being a web of infinite pure potential.
So wisdom is knowing that and coming from that recognition in everything that we do.
Todd: And is wisdom a term that’s interchangeable to you with the term spirituality? Are they related? Are they the same thing? I’m just curious about the terminology here. Sure. In a way these are words and people use them in a lot of different ways.
Tami: And so they’re just words. I would have to know what does someone else mean by wisdom and what does someone else mean by spirituality? I think an important distinction is that for me, wisdom is not knowledge that you’re hearing from other people, it has to be recognized and discovered in your own experience for it to really be wisdom.
And then in terms of what is spirituality, people have so many different thoughts and ideas about that. For me, I like to link it to this notion of mystery, because even as I’m talking to you, Todd, about pure potential and being in that place of openness where that can come through us, you can see that there’s quality when we really start to tune into that, where things become quite beyond words.
You can’t nail it down because as soon as you nail it down and you give it a word and you define it and you say it’s an anchor, it’s here and it’s never going to change and it’s always going to exist, then to me it’s not quote unquote spirituality. It’s something else. It’s a defined XYZ that’s separate and not changing.
But when I think of spirituality, that’s when things get very beyond words, amorphous, expansive, boundless. And look, it can sound like I’m like, what’s Tami doing? She started off right here and she just dropped us in the deep end of space. Yes, like yes, because that’s actually when we look deeply inside of ourselves, in my own experience, that’s what we find.
And then it’s giving birth in each moment to an expression, but you can’t put it in a box.
Todd: When you speak, I just go into that deep place and in the coaching work that I do, and I know probably in some of the folks that you’ve touched, it’s amazing to me how often we forget to connect at that deeper level.
It’s almost like there’s something within us that has us forget our connection with our higher capacities or our connection with all things. I’m just curious in 40 years of doing this work. Why do you think that is? so?
Tami: Well, I think we’re living in a Western biased left brain world that teaches and tells us that we need to figure out.
So even just when you hear that phrase, you got to figure it out, girl. Okay, so you’re a figure that’s now separated out, and when I’m talking and I’m describing this quality of pure potential, I’m melting in. I’m not figuring out, so as soon as we graduate from the kind of academic training and success based training that we receive in our left brain over emphasized world, we become people who are no longer melted in. And I think that the kind of worldview that I’m describing, you could call it a spiritual worldview or a wisdom based worldview, is nature based. Indigenous people would say, yeah, yeah, of course. Like, okay, so now are you going to do something useful for the community because that view is so self evident.
So as a result, be a useful contributor. And it’s right there. Of course you want to, you know, cause you’re coming from this recognition and awareness of the whole and you want to give to it. It’s right there, but we’re in some different place. We’re figured out. And then we’re trying to come up with some strategic plan.
Todd: It doesn’t work. So what about this concept of letting go? I think a lot of what I’ve heard you say in the past is a lot about surrendering or letting go. And I think it’s letting go of that left brain component that is so steeped within us.
Tami: And also just to be clear, what I’m really interested in is something that I would call whole brain living.
Like I’m a, a fan of the left brain. What I’m not a fan of is the way it’s been so overemphasized and deified as what we need to do period, even when it contradicts the knowing of the heart, the knowing of our bodies, our instincts about reaching out to a neighbor, whatever that might be being generous.
Prioritizing time with our family, friends and et cetera. Like when it contradicts all that and we still put our chips on it, that’s screwed up. But the idea of whole brained living is what I am advocating, which is more balanced.
Todd: It’s a more balanced experience.
Tami: Very balanced. The epitome I would say of balance.
And we know when we talk about something like human health and our physical health, that balance is one of the key things that the systems in the body are flowing and our imbalance, that’s what we’re looking for and our body will express. symptoms and pain and give us really difficult feedback when we’re out of balance.
Now you asked me about letting go. And to me, letting go is not coagulating ourselves around this separate self control focus, but instead saying, I am going to drop my definitions. My, it has to be this way. It’s going to be my way. Well, guess what? Things don’t work that way, at least not in my experience.
And you know, Todd, it is very easy for me to want to be in control as a person. I don’t like being hurt. I like things going well. I like to succeed. I’ve been, the founder and then CEO of a company for close to 40 years. Like being in control is natural to me.
And the joy of my life And the spiritual discovery in my life has come from not acting from that place. It’s coming from a deep surrender to what is meeting me in the moment, not a super imposition on the moment.
Todd: You really do embody someone who has found that balance,
because you can speak to somebody that says, well, I haven’t just been living on a mountaintop meditating for the last 40 years. I actually have built a really successful business that’s reached millions of people around the world that has, what, at your height, 200 employees or so, I think, or even more than that, while also being very much on this wisdom path.
And so I want to know, how do you recommend people to start trying to get themselves back into more balance, right? something that maybe you’ve done, naturally, or maybe you worked really hard at it, you’ll let us know. But, when we’re trying to balance and getting back more into the surrender, more into the flow, more into the letting go, and trusting that there’s an unfolding that’s happening which has higher levels of alignment, How do we start to really do that and incorporate that into our day to day?
Tami: So I studied somatic meditation for more than a decade, and I’m gonna, which is a body based embodied meditation approach. And here’s one of the sentences that I took from the training I received that’s been really important to me, which is your body is a source of ego less wisdom. Now, okay, I realized this could sound a technical or whatever, it’s not that technical and it’s not that hard to understand.
The basic idea is that your body, egoless wisdom, has all the information you need. to come back into balance. It’s all right there. It’s all encoded. It’s all captured. So instead of this idea that you’re going to like take out a whip, if you will, in the form of another shot of caffeine, in the form of all the other ways we push ourselves to go beyond what actually feels natural to us.
Let’s pump it up in the morning and then let’s take all of our downers at night and go, go, go, go, go, go. Instead of that idea, actually tune in. And especially if you have any kind, and I mentioned this already, any kind, if you have back pain, headaches, some other physical problem, even worse than that. You feel chronically tired.
Like what’s going on? What’s needed? And you can dialogue directly with your body because this is the interesting thing. You’ll get intuitive answers. You will, right away. So if you simply say, what do I need? Oh, I need time in, outside of a closed environment. Like I need to walk outside, be by the beach.
This is a dialogue you’re having with yourself. So I don’t know what somebody’s physical symptoms could be, but even if it’s as simple as you need more rest. Okay, and then do it and then do it. Oh, I need more energizing activity. I think I’ll do some, some exciting breath work or I’ll jump in cold water or like what do I need to come into balance and let your body answer and you’ll know it’s your body answering because When it lands, you’re like, that makes sense.
Like you naturally find a sense of coherence with the answer. We all know we just don’t want to do it. And like, why don’t we want to do it? Cause we’d rather just complain and, our own inertia and our own, whatever, we all have our reasons and stuff.
But I think if what you’re saying in the question, Todd is someone’s on a growth path. They say that I’m on a growth path. Okay, if you’re on a growth path, if that’s what you want to contribute as much light and love that can flow through you to other people. If that’s who you are and that’s your commitment, your inner intention and commitment, then let your body teach you and show you what’s needed.
Todd: Does that also apply for somebody who says that I want to have the most success that I could possibly have, or I wanna have the most abundance? Does it matter what the intention is, or do we have to be oriented with just. a kind, peaceful world? What if there are things that we do want, is that ego?
How do you hold that?
Tami: Well,
Once again, I would need to understand more what people mean by the words. And often when somebody says, I want success, or I want financial prosperity, or whatever, I think a really just immediate, interesting question is, and then what would that give you? Oh, if I were successful, and if I had enough money.
I could relax. Okay. Good. That’s what we’re going to do. Let’s do it. And then as you say, I could relax. I could feel love. I could feel a sense of belonging. I could feel at home. I could feel good in my family because there’s plenty of financial flow coming in to support us. Great. Let’s be in that state.
Of flow relaxation abundance and there’s a natural kind of magnetic quality and you exude that and yeah, let’s go for it. And that is a lot of growth for somebody to go through a process like that to get to that place. Let’s spend all this time. As if it’s already happened. Let’s feel it.
Todd: Let me summarize my own journey on this very much related to what my own growth path has been. Which was first not recognizing the pain or mental agitation or suffering that I was in. And then learning through people like you, forms of meditation or contemplation. Which guided me to sit with it. And to feel it, just to actually allow my body to feel whatever was it was feeling without making up some mental narrative or story around it.
Just to feel it in the body, just to allow it to be. And what is interesting is that I found that that feeling of agitation or anxiety doesn’t last, it also comes up and passes like everything else does. And so the idea of allowing ourselves to feel with our body and then also to ask that question of, okay, if I want prosperity and I want my business to do really well, what is it that I really want? And usually what I found it’s a feeling, it’s a state.
And we can create that state now. Is that accurate? Is that a good summation of what you’re saying is that we can train ourselves to be in the state of mind, in the state of success, in the state of abundance, in the state of peace that we want. And we don’t need to have the external things happen in order to do that.
We can actually live that way now.
Tami: think that is a good summary and
I’d add a little bit to it as well, although I resonate with everything that you said, which is you asked me before about letting go. So what are the obstacles, the blocks, the contractions that we find when we do what you just described.
What are they? So we look inside and we’re like, well, I don’t believe this. And this is, whatever. So we find these areas where things are all knotted up. They’re all tied up. How do we let that happen? unwind, such that we’re then in this experience of absolute flow. So we are flow. We feel ourselves like that, because I think that’s the state of kind of electrical abundance, at least for me, that I’m looking for.
I’m not looking to like, hold on, to a pile of cash for some, oh, I’ll be dead. Great. I’m looking to be in a state where money and goodness and experiences and connection, it’s all flowing through me in an uninhibited way. And that’s why know, when you say going into these things in the body that have been rejected.
And have been avoided, anything that’s been pushed out, and avoided, and not looked at, is not included in this unbounded flow that I’m describing. It’s outside the boundary. It’s outside, and by nature of putting it outside, we’ve created this division inside of ourselves. We’ve figured ourselves out, and now we’re looking to solve this problem from the figured out person’s perspective.
What I’m describing is something different, which is this letting go, relaxing, being in the flow state, and just letting ourselves, you ready for this? Be the river. Be the river, really. And as the river, that’s the abundance that you mentioned. It’s also the kind of ultimate growth.
Todd: in my experience of coaching so many people, and I know you’ve been around so many as well, there’s usually one area or two areas that an individual gets stuck, and it could be related to work. It could be related to relationships. It could be related to physical health. It’s usually one of those big buckets.
While there are other areas that we tend to do, okay, like naturally we tend to let go and we tend to be more in flow, but we might have this one or this one area in our lives that no matter how hard we work at it. It’s just constantly what you talked about that very knotted, I can’t see it.
I can’t see my way out feeling, that does create circumstances in the world that are very real. And then I put quotation marks around when I say real, but they create challenges in our lives. It could be around money. It could be around not having the relationship that you want. It could be around not being physically healthy.
Let’s just use those three as an example. And so when we hear you speak, it sounds easy to let go and be in the flow. But let’s go in a little deeper right now. I’m just curious when someone really is struggling in this area, and they’re on the growth path. They said yes to a life of growth.
They’re like, you know what, I’m going to do whatever I can to get to the bottom of this. And I understand that this area Is my growth edge, that this is my opportunity to really transcend myself and expand. And I’m doing everything that I can to my power to do it, but I’m still experiencing some level of failure or lack of ability to transcend it.
How do you coach them? How do you say, how do you motivate them to keep on going, or what are they potentially doing incorrectly?
Tami: First of all, if I’ve given any indication that I think it’s easy to bring this kind of being a living fountain of pure potential into every aspect of your life, I would hit the nah, it’s not, at least not for me.
It has not been easy. In fact, it’s been incredibly demanding, deeply pain filled, it’s been, on my knees crawling in different parts of my life. My own experience is that for whatever reason, It was natural and easy for me to discover this, being by myself, sitting on a cushion. I was a natural. I’m a natural meditator.
I really am. Just leave me alone. And, that wasn’t good enough. And it wasn’t good enough for me, and it began, and I had a very difficult relational history. I had been in, a three year partnership, a six year partnership that I thought would be the love of my life that ended, tragically, then another three year rela so it was like, what?
And then I met someone at age 39 who was just a huge, gift to me. And I was like, oh my god, how do I do this? How do I do this? I don’t want to screw this one up. Don’t mess this up, Tami. So first of all, I immediately got, some very, very good mentorship and was mentored for 20 years in how to be in a relationship.
The whole notion that someone could have that much influence in my life and that I could be a we. with someone, a real living combined system where we coordinate all the time. Oh my god. Like I could talk all about flow alone. And this came up pretty early on when I would go on these month long meditation retreats between the middle of December and the middle of January, where I was being trained to be a certain kind of Tibetan Buddhism of ashrayana meditator.
And this is when The community got together over the winter break and this also happened to be my now wife’s birthday and Christmas and New Year. And she was not interested in the meditative path the way I was. She has a completely, different spiritual practice that she does. But I would disappear early in our, and she was just like, so you’re going to be with all these people so that you can feel unbounded love.
And it’s your wife’s birthday. She wants to be with you on Christmas. There’s something wrong with this picture when love is alone at the house. Feeling lonely without you. What’s wrong with this picture? And why don’t we go on a vacation instead? And I realized the idea of going, on a vacation with my beloved was terrifying to me.
The idea of having a flow state. Now, most people would say, what’s the problem? But anyway, we’re all built differently, which I think is the point. So, to answer your question, first of all, I knew it was the next thing I needed to work on, because that was the information that was coming directly in my environment from somebody I cared the most about.
Saying, hello? Hello, something’s really wrong here. Oh, meditator, glad that you’re this great spiritual warrior. You’re missing out on our marriage. And I had to go through a whole process of what happened in my early experience from birth and the first few years of my life in the bonding that I didn’t have successfully with my mom.
in some of the deepest and most important ways where I felt just off on my own and created a whole defensive structure around that. Anyway, I’m very happy to say that now, 23 years later, I have a beautiful, glorious, life giving marriage, but it took a lot of work, a lot of inner work. It wasn’t so much, yeah, there was communication work and things like that between us, but that wasn’t really where, the major shifts happen, the major shifts happened in each of us. She had her own work to do as well. Totally separate from mine, but I had so much that I had to do. And then, you mentioned, the business arena and I, what I’ve seen is that I was able to get to a certain point and be in the kind of flow state that I described, but that also to go to an even bigger level, which is a process that I’ve been going through over the last couple of years, requiring more letting go and greater expansiveness. I’ve had to deal with some intergenerational inherited patterns around money and what it means to to be an even larger person having more money come through my system that is outside any of the family rules, if you will.
And so there’s like an unconscious loyalty to operate within these past generations of the family system. And I’m breaking all the rules. What kind of process is that? It’s a big process. It’s a hard process. It’s moving outside of my comfort zone. I had a comfort zone. It was great. Ran the successful company to this phase, but I also knew there was something more wanting to come through me and that I had to do the work and I’m doing the work to open up to this greater expansiveness and flow.
Todd: So, so beautiful. So much wisdom there, guys. I just really hope you, you soaked in all that. You really are somebody that I consider to be such a mentor and the spiritual warrior, as Julie named you. And I also just want to iterate from my experience to, saying yes to a life of growth, saying yes to a life of, I want to experience that limitless potential within me, and I want to try to experience it within this lifetime. And I’m willing to put my hand up to do the work, to cut through any of the old cords, to open up and shine a light on any of the unconscious or subconscious beliefs that are holding me back.
It’s not easy. It isn’t just open up to you and boom, you’re there. And I think you really embody that. So I really appreciate you sharing your story with your past romantic pathway, because that area for you really was challenging. As you were sharing, I could just feel like real, real hard days and nights of being in pain and wanting that so badly.
And then even as it showed up, you were doing things that were sabotaging it potentially. And you needed that partner to come in and say, hey. This is right here. And I think that’s so applicable to all of us, right? If you’re listening to this, like in what areas of your life do you see that constant struggle or anxiety?
And how can you start to shine a light on where you are potentially self sabotaging, and then do that work to make a change. So I just really love what you just shared. I’m going to switch gears for a moment because there’s so much to talk with you about. I know that for those of us on the spiritual path, those of us that are really wanting to expand and experience that life of flow,
a lot of times. The comments that I’ll get is it sounds great to just work on yourself, but there’s so many problems in the world, right? There’s so many, look what’s going on in the world right now, it’s, it almost appears that some people feel that it could be selfish to sit on a cushion and meditate or to, look at our own healing, and do that because of all the things are in the world that we need more external activism where you’re somebody and so am I that stands for more of an internal activism.
I would love for you to talk about that with me. How do you hold the juxtaposition of so many problems in the world out there? And then the need for us to sit and do the work internally. Is it a selfish thing to do that? Or do you believe that changing the world really is a matter of us changing enough people of us one at a time?
Tami: For whatever reason, as you were talking, the image that I was seeing was that of an archer. and that each one of us has our quiver, I think it’s called, with arrows in it, and there’s the bullseye. And what’s the bullseye? The bullseye is when we’re wholly on purpose from our heart, all of the cells of us are, we’re all in.
There’s not even 100%. We are all in. And we only have a certain number of arrows. So I’m going to take an arrow and like what’s my arrow? Each one of us is different. So for someone it might be creating a certain kind of art.
For somebody else it could be working with preschool kids. For somebody else, It’s being a journalist who goes to the Mideast. For somebody else, it’s running for political office. For me, it has to do with broadcasting spiritual awakening. Okay, that’s, I got an arrow in my back. And it’s called Broadcasting Spiritual Awakening.
I am so lit up about it. I’m so turned on about it. That I will, do absolutely everything, whether you pay me, whether you don’t pay me, whether it’s Tuesday or Saturday. I don’t care. This is my arrow and I’m gonna shoot it. And so I think each one of us just has to be true to what that is for us and not compare.
It’s not, is that better or worse? That’s my job. That’s my job. I know it’s my job because I am completely turned on by it and I’ll sacrifice anything for it. So people just have to know what their job is and stop looking outside, this person said this, and this person said the most important thing was the transformation of business.
Well, this person said the most important thing was education. Well, this person said it had to do with the political systems, and we’re never going to solve climate change unless we change policies. Like, that’s all outside. What’s yours to do? And then effing do it! And when you’re effing doing it, you’re not so concerned about what other people think and about how it measures up and, the whole thing.
It’s a systems where all of us are needed.
Todd: And it reminds me of another interview that we had done with Rachel Konrad, who’s Somebody who’s had a lot of success in business. She worked for Elon Musk, believe it or not. She also worked for the founder of Impossible Foods. She’s been around a lot of movements that have launched and been at, the core of the PR about how to message it.
And the reason why I’m bringing her up is that what she talks about is that for people in business to have that level of success, it often entails a really deep level of clarity and simplicity of language about who they are in the world and what they’re doing. And I find that from you. It’s very clear who you are.
You’re here to do one thing, to broadcast and disseminate spiritual wisdom on the planet. That’s what you’re here to do. Everything else is just part of that story, and your own awakening and all things that are going on in your life are just part of that story. There’s a conciseness to your ability to have clarity about who you are and your mission in the world.
Is that something that you recommend people to get to?
Tami: Well, yeah, you have to know, but here you go. I’m going to add something. I’m going to take another arrow out. You ready? My second arrow. And this may surprise you, but I’m going to pull it back.
Todd: I’m nervous. I’m nervous.
Tami: Love, Julie Kramer.
Whoa. Could part of the purpose of my incarnation be to love one person? It is. I only have like five arrows back here or whatever. And this I’m picking one of them. And you may feel that about your children or your partner or a parent or a grandparent or whatever. And so I think we come up with this ideas that it has to be like, I don’t know, we have to come up with the cure for a disease or something.
But what I’m saying is something different, which is it has to just be so meaningful to you. That you will do anything for it, regardless of whether the world puts a lot of value on it or not. So anyway, I’m going to use one of my arrows for this.
Todd: And I’m sorry to go into detail on this, but I’m just curious because I think I’ve seen a lot of people not have that clarity that you have.
And you mentioned that you have five arrows. In your I just made that
Tami: up. What I mean by it actually is I’m there’s a very limited number. So I’m picking very carefully, very, very carefully. I have to be all careful
all cells go to do it because there’s a very limited number and I have a limited life. So I’m going to have to be very particular here.
Todd: This is really fascinating because you’re such a spiritual being, but we’re also talking here when you’re speaking like this, it’s also a great use of our mind, a great use of our analytical mind.
I would say it’s a great use of our whole brain, because, and the reason I say that, whole brain, whole body, all of us, because look, we all know when inside of us, there’s this feeling of being lit up, like we’re all lit up on the inside, versus some part of me is like, I don’t know. I’m not sure.
Tami: Maybe, I’m talking about this other thing. And that’s, it’s a way, yes, your brain’s involved, your mind, your thinking process, but it’s a lot to do with your feeling nature.
Todd: Let’s talk about this lit up feeling for a minute, because I think a lot of us get glimpse of it in my coaching programs, I’ll talk to my people and I’ll say, you know, when you’re walking around and all of a sudden you get that feeling of being fully free, that everything is possibility and potential and you’re excited or you wake up in the morning and it’s like, your eyes are bright
and even if the problems in your world still exist, you have this feeling that it doesn’t matter that you’re just on fire. This is what we’re talking about is catching that feeling and making it our default. That’s my question to you. Is it possible in your experience of doing this work for so many years to make that experience of life in the moment more of our default?
And then what changes, did the changes actually end up happening once we do that?
Tami: I think it’s a commitment to recognizing, first of all, when we’re stuck in some kind of mental loop because we’re not lit up on the inside when we’re worrying, when we’re like, and look, that’s what happens to all of us a lot of the time.
So do we have a commitment and do we have a skill set? And you can develop and cultivate a skill set like this, and it’s not easy to shift out of that mental worry, discursive, repetitive, useless scenario making about the past and the future. Can we find a way? To come into a heart space, so that’s key. Oh wow, now I’m breathing in, which for me is a really simple way to make a shift.
I can actually just take my attention and put it into the center of my chest. Into my whole heart center. And just breathe there for a bit. And just, so now my attention and energy, instead of following the storyline narratives, is right in my chest. And there’s a sense that a kind of heart light is coming on.
Oh, what’s in that light? Oh, I have a sadness there that I haven’t wanted to pay attention to. So instead of paying attention to that sadness, I’m up in my brain worrying and thinking, because that’s a way that we exit. Who wants to feel a bunch of sadness? I don’t want to feel a bunch of sadness.
But as I just checked in and went into my heart, I was like, wow, there’s some grieving, which for me always means letting go and you talked about turning into these uncomfortable feelings. Can I do that? Oh, so now I’m with that letting go of sadness. and releasing it. And suddenly what I’m feeling, instead of all that mental shenanigans, is connection to all the people who have things to let go of.
To all the people who might be listening to this, who have been avoiding some of their grief. And we’re letting go, oh, and now my heart’s bigger. And I have access to that space and it wants to call a friend up who called me that I haven’t called back. Why haven’t I called them back? Because I’ve been in my head worrying about 10 million things instead of actually connecting and I’m going to call them back and oh my god, now I feel a sense of love and belonging and like I like being alive again.
This is just, a momentary example, but it’s this notion of being willing to shift out of our narratives and move into, feeling heart space and how that opens us up.
Todd: I think that also ties back to what you talked about initially, which is like the mystery. You called it the mystery, the uncertainty, because when the mind is in control and we’re up here, there’s not a lot of mystery.
It’s just like very structurally moving forward on worrying about things or thinking about things that need to be done. But when we take the time to breathe and we go into our heart and we go into our body, mystery is often revealed. Things that we didn’t think about up here are actually what needs to happen.
In my experience, that’s part of unlocking the superpower of us. And allowing ourselves to just be and allowing whatever it is that we need to do to be driven by That part of us which is deeper. Is that another way to say it?
Tami: I like that Todd very much
Todd: You can use it. It’s fine.
Tami: Okay. Thank you.
Todd: So a couple more questions by the way how great is this guys for if you’re listening I’m so blessed to be friends with you and to be able to talk with you like this and your mission is so clear, it’s just large, you can feel the energy of it just expanding as we talk.
Are you hopeful, for the future for people, I’m just curious your thoughts on that, right? Because we do have a lot of problems in the external world. And I know you’re somebody that really focuses on expanding people’s inner. Have you seen in the 40 years an acceleration in spiritual awakening?
Have you seen the mission of yours expanding and coming more online for more people?
Tami: Yeah. So first of all, the first question about being hopeful, I don’t really spend a lot of personal energy either despairing about the collective future or being hopeful because I just don’t, it doesn’t really go anywhere.
To me, the place that feels more in alignment to me is to make the next few steps that feel like the right steps where I can contribute and just focus on the next few steps. Because I have steps I got to make today. And I just need to do that. So that’s my own attitude. Now, when you ask, how do I, when I look at the landscape today, compared to it was, Millions, tens of millions of people are interested in the Inner awakening journey than they were when I started, Sounds True. It’s been over 40 years. The level of, growth has been remarkable. You can get, a traditional medical doctor to tell you that meditation is going to be useful for high blood pressure and for your heart rate and things like that.
When I started 40 years ago, meditation was for Hare Krishnas. The world has come, the Western world has come a really far way in its acceptance, interest, and commitment to the efficacy of what inner work can do for your health in many different ways. People then say, well, yeah, at the same time, is the world in a more precarious situation in many ways? Feels pretty precarious to me, you know, in terms of, climate change and the environment and what we’re facing as a human species.
So there you go. But yes, more and more people are interested and committed.
Todd: I love how, you answered both questions, because the hopeful part for me is connected with your answer to that last question. I am inspired because I haven’t been doing this as long as you, but I’ve been in this game for 20 years and how much acceleration I’ve seen in 20 years and I extrapolate that out and I have a six year old daughter as you know and I’m like, okay what is it gonna be like in 20 years for her?
Tami: To go back to the arrows, I would do this regardless, I will distribute spiritual awakening and love Julie Kramer to my last breath, regardless of whether Sounds True has more customers or less customers
Todd: but that’s the wisdom in your method, right?
That I think is what I’m trying to get to. I think for you, it’s like, get really clear on who you are and what your mission is and what drives you and just do that thing. And lo and behold, it’s not a hundred quivers you have there. You probably just have a couple. And just focus on those things. This life is short. Yeah. This life is short. Do those things and let everything else fall into place.
Tami: And even as you say, getting really clear on who you are. I don’t know if I’m like, am I clear on who I am? I don’t know about that. I feel like there’s a lot of mystery in identity, but I’m clear on what I’m called to. I’m clear on what calls me and has my name on it. Like that calls me that calls me.
Todd: No, that’s clear. That’s clear. And I know you have our stop in a couple minutes and if you have You’re on the live call. If you have a question and that you want to ask Tami, we do these calls live in our membership.
If you’re listening to the podcast, then it’s a benefit, you can by all means ask a question. I think Tami can stick around for another few minutes. What I get from you just to sum up is just clarity of purpose. You’re somebody who just has clearly done the work or was given that, to be really clear about who you are and I just love the archer.
Maybe I’ll title this episode, the archer or something to do with the arrows. It’s a really good visual for me because it’s, it just allows us to be okay with getting really concise with who we are and just allow that to drive our actions, to drive our activities, and I think you just, embody that so clearly.
And I will say I’m excited about what’s in store for you in the future. I know you’ve made a big move from not being the CEO of Sounds True anymore, which really is a big deal for Tami, to move on from that, handed the reins over. But before we got on this call, she shared with me how it’s even amplifying her real mission to an even greater degree, that like just pushing this mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom is not over because you’re not the CEO of Sounds True. No, you’re just going to find different ways and containers to do that.
Tami: And I think through Sounds True and beyond Sounds True, it’s a liberation of my creative energy from how much of it was absorbed in the strategic execution details of a complicated media company. And so it’s liberating a lot of my energy to speak and host and convene in a broader way.
Todd: Beautiful. And then lastly, I just want to say what a beautiful marriage of somebody who is able to have such a deeply entrenched personal mission that is also connected with contribution and service for other human beings and somebody who’s been successful in the business world.
This is a rare human guys really like somebody that actually nails that triad is a very rare thing. And I want you to listen to this interview again, because she’s telling us how to do that in reality, embedded in here is how to actually find that matrix. Go ahead. I know you have something to say on that.
Tami: Well, I do have something to say because I think it’s terrific to be inspired by people. I think it’s critical to have mentors and coaches and guides, especially who will work with you on your areas that are in darkness and that you don’t see yourself. They’re unconscious for you and other people can see them and point them out.
And, each one of us is the only person who can chart our course. And I didn’t chart my course like I’m going to bring these things together and put no, it’s like from the inside, you get to be your unprecedented expression in the world. And so the most important thing is how you listen to yourself, not how you listen to anyone else.
Todd: You sure you don’t have another hour? Cause I can, I think we’re just tapping into even deeper levels of truth and wisdom here. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking this time. And, I look forward to our next encounter, which will be sooner than has been. So thank you, Tami.
Tami: Yeah. Sounds good, Todd. Okay. Thanks friends. Thank you.
Todd: Take care.
Tami: Hope to see you soon Todd. Bye.
Todd: Bye.
Tami: Bye.
