I have been maintaining an outdated view about what “businesspeople” are like. (Although as astrologer Caroline Casey says “Until Now!” is the appropriate exclamation to make when saying such things). Granted, over the past two decades, I have met a few exceptional business leaders (I could count them on one hand), people who are genuinely led by their hearts (not their egos) and by a sense of serving a greater purpose. However, even in the face of these meetings, I have held tight to the perspective that such people are very rare. I have held on to this view because that has been my experience. Until now!

Recently, I attended a four-day conference on “Catalyzing Conscious Capitalism” convened by the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods, John Mackey. In attendance at the conference were CEOs from Patagonia, Men’s Warehouse, Joi De Vivre Hotels, The Container Store, Jamba Juice, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Life is Good, and The Motley Fool, among others. I learned many things at the C3 event, but the most important thing I learned is that “I am not alone” (far from it, actually) when it comes to seeing business as a vehicle for fulfilling our heart’s highest ideals.  In fact, in an interview that I recorded with John Mackey that is published by Sounds True along with a lecture by John on his theory of Conscious Capitalism, I asked John if he felt it was fair to call “Whole Foods” his “ministry” in a certain sense. To my great delight, he agreed that the word “ministry” does, in some important ways, describe the animating force underlying his business.

I spent much of the four days of the C3 Conference crying. In the midst of discussions about the theory of conscious capitalism (more on that in a moment) what moved me the most was the sense of having “arrived.” I had arrived by coming into contact with a philosophical framework and a group of highly successful people who mirrored my own deepest convictions about the power of entrepreneurship to simultaneously create benefit for individuals and for society as a whole, in what John Mackey calls “a virtuous circle.” I felt like I had been a young girl crawling in a dark forest for two plus decades, really on my own, and I had somehow emerged into relatedness with a group of strong older brothers (and a sister or two…I am still looking to meet more such women business leaders), and that I could now walk in allegiance with this strong larger group.

One of the presenters at the conference was Roy Spence, co-author of the book It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business Is Driven by Purpose. As part of his presentation on how purpose is the nuclear force at the center of everything we do (my words, not Roy’s), he offered the following slogan “The road may be long, but we are ready for the walk.” This sentence touched me at my core. Of course, no matter what our purpose is, we need to be ready for a long walk, especially if our purpose is “disruptive” (and according to Roy, when our purpose moves society forward in a significant way it will of necessity be disruptive). This slogan, “The road may be long but we are ready for the walk” hit me in the chest because I realized that catalyzing conscious capitalism had become a “walk” that many people were now walking together, a walk in which I had lots of strong allies at my side.

So what is “conscious capitalism”? It is a term coined by John Mackey to describe how businesses can bring consciousness to what they do and how they do it so that they become a force for collective good (to learn more in John’s own words, I suggest visiting his blog at www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey or check out the Sounds True audio with John on “Passion and Purpose.”). At the conference, I learned that a business that is catalyzing conscious capitalism (what we could call a C3 business) has three pillars or anchoring principles:

•    A C3 business has a clear purpose, which is its reason for being. This purpose forms the core identity of the business and is its offering to others.
•    A C3 business honors all of the stakeholders of the company, which includes its customers, its employees, its investors, its suppliers, the community, and the greater environment. This is what John calls “the interdependent stakeholder model,” and it requires a view to making decisions that harmonize and balance the needs and interests of all parties that contribute to a company’s success.
•    A C3 business is managed by conscious leadership, by leaders that focus on stewardship and facilitation not “command and control.”

John further makes the point that C3 businesses over the long-term are more profitable than comparison companies who do not employ these principles (and he offers statistics to back up this claim). The reason for this is quite simple – if you don’t honor all of the stakeholders in your business, at some point this will catch up to you and backfire in some way (your reputation with customers will suffer, it will be harder to attract star employees, the community will boycott your business, etc). In a nutshell, the case was clearly made at the conference that C3 businesses are the businesses of the future because they will be the companies that customers love to love, and as a result these businesses will thrive.

It was also exciting to see the investment community represented at the conference. Investors are also recognizing that this is not just a “feel good” approach to business. It is an approach that will generate the most long-term financial success.

I returned from the C3 conference about three weeks ago, and I have been letting the lessons of the conference sink in. Perhaps the most important lesson for me is that I am not alone in the business part of my life, not as “freaky” as I thought. And more importantly, I am probably not alone in any part of my life. That I need to “update my file”—as a friend who is a therapist once said—regarding beliefs I held as a child about other people and the world.

Over the past six weeks, I have been hosting the Mother Night online event with Clarissa Pinkola Estés (or CPE, as I call her). One of the most interesting things I have noted is how many Sounds True listeners have written in questions for CPE that say in essence, “I feel so alone. Where is my tribe?” We have literally received dozens of such questions. CPE’s response to listeners has been that the tribe you are seeking is right here in our shared experience, that the potential exists for us to find belonging when people connect with each other who hold dear similar ideas.

And over these past few weeks what I have been reflecting on is how each one of us is probably nowhere near as alone as we imagine ourselves to be. We may be pioneers. We may be being disruptive in our way and in our own spheres. But there is probably a huge yet-to-be-discovered network of people who are nursing similar ideas and ideals, working in their own way, waiting to be found. We may feel like we are crawling head down alone, but I am beginning to warm up to the notion that if we open our eyes and look up and out, we may very well find more brilliant and capable allies than we ever could have imagined.

I often feel like I don’t fit in. Into what? Conventional forms.

When I was in elementary school, I was often asked by students in other grades, “Are you a boy or a girl?” I secretly enjoyed the question but never gave an answer.

I went to Swarthmore College and dropped out after my sophomore year because I felt alienated from the philosophy department (where there was very little room for a personal voice), and I couldn’t see myself getting an academic degree in religion (would any of the mystics I loved have chosen to earn a degree in mysticism?).

I started my own company because there were no ready-made jobs that made any sense for me.

Two and a half decades later, I still feel “freaky” quite a bit of the time. I enjoy spending time with successful businesspeople (I learn a lot watching how their minds work) and yet I notice how different I feel from most entrepreneurs. Most businesspeople I meet evaluate a business in terms of its capacity to scale, its gross margins, and its mass appeal. I feel more like someone running a messenger service who wants to make sure there is a flow of income to support future delivery.

I have been a member of a practicing spiritual community for the past 8 years. Recently I had the experience of feeling like I didn’t fit in, even though the group welcomes all serious spiritual practitioners and has been my “tribe” for almost a decade. I felt like I didn’t fit in because a certain practice form is followed, level after level, and my inner experience is not tracking along with these levels in a linear way. The spiritual teacher of our community told me I was “atypical” and that I need to follow my own inner sense of how to practice. This was quite a relief. I could still be part of the group and be in my integrity. However, the whole process of discovering that I was not progressing “normally” was painful. It reminded me of all of the other times in my life when I have not fit in.

I have received many gifts from Sounds True authors over the years, but one of the most important gifts has come to me from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, best known as the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves. I first met CPE (as I call Dr. Estés) in 1987 when she was a guest on a radio show I hosted on KGNU, Boulder County Public Radio. CPE saw that I was not a “this” or a “that,” but something one-of-a-kind. She affirmed that in me, and I believe her work does that for many, many people.

In just a few days, CPE will be launching a new series of online events called Mother Night: Learning to See in the Dark” (you can listen to a new free podcast with CPE on “Diamonds In The Dark” if you want to get more of a sense of what she will be covering in this new series). For me, part of learning to see in the dark involves accepting my “freakdom” – accepting the fact that the conventional, daylight world does not hold my future. I can’t fit into a pre-made path – academic, business, or spiritual – and find my way. What I can do is descend into the darkness, into the unknown, into the never-before created and give birth to my own uniqueness. When I look at myself through the outside eyes of convention, I still sometimes feel like a “freak”. But when I look at myself with inner vision, seeing in the dark, I feel like a mystery—a geyser of unknown energy coming into form.

I could take this even further and say that one of the things that is needed now is for more and more people to descend into their own darkness and find the unprecedented expression of their individual life. The pre-made forms are obviously not working (and in fact are collapsing around us). Will you join me — by, of course, not joining with me, or with anyone or anything, but instead by giving birth to your own uniqueness?

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview Pema Chodron, the author of When Things Fall Apart, in a retreat cabin in Crestone, Colorado. The purpose of the interview was to create a question and answer session to be included in an upcoming Sounds True program by Pema entitled “Unconditional Confidence: Instructions for Meeting Any Experience with Trust and Courage.”

The very first question I asked Pema was “How do you define this term, ‘unconditional confidence,’ and is it really possible to be confident in every situation?” Her response stunned me. She said, “Unconditional confidence really means unconditional gentleness, and yes, we can train so that we are gentle with ourselves in the face of whatever is happening.”

When Pema gave this answer, I “exited” in a certain kind of way. Everything turned white; it was similar to a blackout, but it was a white-out. The experience was brief, and I kept listening and moving along with the interview, but at the same time something had hit a deep nerve in me, and I wasn’t quite sure what the nerve was. It was as if her answer slapped me in the face.

Since the interview, I have been investigating internally the connection between gentleness towards myself and confidence in the world. The first thing I have seen is how many times a day I say something to myself that is ungenerous and even mean. I am sure this has been going on for, well, a lifetime, but the truth is I had never seen it so clearly before. Usually the commentary is about something minor: “Why weren’t you more articulate during that conference call?”, “Why did you say such and such to that person?”, and on and on. But sometimes this inner commentator takes on bigger issues, in a more aggressive way. “You will never be able to open your heart fully because it hurts too much,” or “You are not a real businessperson because you react instead of plan,” or other such indictments.

During the interview, I asked Pema what to do in these kinds of instances, times when we are just not gentle with ourselves. Her instruction was to interrupt the self-talk any way you can. I took the question further: what if interrupting this inner voice just doesn’t work? What if the situation feels impossible, and this mean voice is persistent, like a radio you can’t turn off? Her response was very direct and clear: drop the storyline and feel the underlying energy.

I have found this technique to be extremely effective (when I can remember to do it!). Dropping the storyline is like a thunderclap. A gap is created and what remains is pure energy.

At a certain point, this energy finds a direction. It moves. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist once said to me something he learned through the therapeutic exchange, “Even if you say something you regret, what really matters is what you say next. It is all about what you do next.”

And this is what I have discovered about the connection between gentleness to myself and confidence in the world. When I am gentle towards myself, I take the next action that is needed in the situation; gentleness allows me to be resourceful and responsive. If I know I can count on being kind to myself, then I can risk “failure.” I can step into a new challenge, knowing that no matter how the situation turns out, I will be able to extend again and again. These days, I am consciously cultivating this kind of unconditional gentleness towards myself because this is exactly the kind of confidence I need.

I have known Ed and Deb Shapiro for over twenty years. Deb is the author of the ST book Your Body Speaks Your Mind and Ed (whom I call “Swami Eddy”) is a true Boulder character and one of the most active networkers I know. Together they have written a new book called “Be the Change: How Meditation Can Transform You and the World.” The book looks at how meditation can positively affect every aspect of our life including our relationships, our environment, and the greater world. For the chapter on “Silence in the Boardroom” (about meditation in the workplace), Ed and Deb asked me to contribute a short, practice-oriented piece on meditating at work. Here is my contribution:

Meditating in the workplace requires that we learn to meditate “on the spot,” in the midst of challenging circumstances and difficult conversations. Three techniques I’ve found useful for interrupting identification with discursive thinking and introducing a quality of spaciousness at work—and in any situation—are attending to physical sensations, bringing attention to the back of the body, and beginning meetings with silence.

Attend to the sensations of physical tension, and let go

By paying close attention in meditation we discover the following equation: if our mind is agitated, our body is tense; if our body is tense, our mind is agitated. By letting go of physical tension in the body, we create space in our mind to listen to others and act creatively.

In the midst of a meeting, a phone conversation, or any interaction in which you feel yourself becoming impatient or agitated, bring your attention to the part of your body that is holding tension. You can do this on the spot by internally scanning your body from your toes to the top of your head, zeroing in on any part that seems tight, clenched, or contracted. Perhaps you will discover that your lower belly is in a knot, or your shoulders are up by your ears. Maybe your hands feel like they are gripping something, or the bottoms of your feet are recoiling from the ground. When you discover an area of physical tension, use your in-breath to connect with that sensation. Then, on the out-breath, simply release, relax and let go. You can actually “ride the out-breath” and let it carry your physical (and mental!) holding into space.

Bring your attention to the back of the body, and make space for others

Different physical and energetic postures carry different modes of being. If we want to exert and express ourselves and move forward into action, we can bring our energy into the front of our body. If we want to make space for other people, listen deeply, and avail ourselves of new creative ideas, we can benefit from leaning slightly back and bringing our attention to the back of the body. Have you ever been in a meeting in which everyone was interrupting one another and it felt like no one was really being heard? If even one person in the group brings their attention to the back of the body, a quality of space and receptivity is introduced that can change the tone and course of the meeting.

Allow time for renewal by beginning meetings with silence

Often a busy day can feel like being on a non-stop train with one action item following the next without a break. Creating moments of silence, moments of getting off the train, interrupts our tendency to fall into habitual reactivity and drops us back into the depth and generativity of our being.

A simple way to introduce silence into the workplace is to begin meetings with a few moments of being quiet together, what I sometimes like to call “taking a good minute.” People use this shared silence in different ways – to breathe and relax, to appreciate a few moments during the day that are calm and spacious, to let go of previous work concerns, or to connect in a silent, energetic way with everyone else at the meeting. When we introduce “a good minute” at the beginning of a meeting, we are introducing a practice that is totally secular and fitting for a working environment, where people regenerate and renew themselves in different ways. What we are saying is that we value that renewal and that we want people to bring their full presence to the task at hand.

When we use these and other practices to bring meditative awareness to the workplace what we are doing is creating space – space for our own feelings, space for other people, space for brilliance and originality to shine through. Of course, the more we practice meditating in a formal setting, creating space for ourselves in a relaxed way outside of the work setting, the more depth and precision we can bring to meditating on-the-spot in the pressure-filled environment of the workplace.

Featured in Be the Change, How Meditation can Transform You and the World by Ed and Deb Shapiro, to be published Nov 3. Pre-order the book now.

I was recently on a vacation with my partner of 8 years Julie Kramer (spending time in British Columbia kayaking with orcas), and I asked her how well she thought I was doing “living up to my highest potential.” These are the kinds of questions I seem to gravitate toward on vacation, a type of existential “taking stock” if you will. Julie’s response surprised me. She said something to the effect of, “I think you are asking the wrong question. How about asking instead, ‘Am I living in a wholehearted way?’”

The question itself stung (Julie seems to have a gift for delivering “zingers” very calmly and sweetly). I thought to myself, “I am not truly whole-hearted about anything. Not about our relationship. Not about my work. There is often a part of me that is holding back, looking and evaluating everything from the sidelines, measuring and comparing, reserving just a bit of ‘hedge’ room to protect myself if things go south.”

During this vacation, I thought about this question a lot (and took all kinds of new relational risks as well!). One interesting point here is that there are two Sounds True authors and spiritual teachers I greatly respect, Adyashanti and Hameed Ali (who writes under the pen name A.H. Almaas and is coming out this Fall with a new ST learning program called The Diamond Approach), who emphasize again and again how sincerity is the most important quality on the spiritual path. I have never much connected to this word “sincerity,” however when Julie asked me to inquire into whether or not I was “wholehearted,” I suddenly realized that this was the same question Adyashanti and Hameed have been pointing to when they talk about what it means to be sincere.

That’s when the light really went on for me. I have always been curious about how some spiritual practices seem to work fabulously well for some people and other people can do the same practices for years (sometimes even decades!) and there is no real growth or transformation. I had previously attributed this to different people simply being at different points in their development (and of course, there is some truth in that). But what if one person is engaging in a practice (say the practice of forgiveness) in a wholehearted way, and another person is doing the same practice with only a portion of their genuine heart “on the line”? Of course, the results are going to be wildly different.

Or take another example: how some couples see a relationship counselor and radical change happens in a very short period of time, while other couples can go through a similar counseling process with little or no change occurring, even after years of therapy. Is it possible that the couple whose dynamic did not change were not really wholehearted in their willingness to grow and transform?

Now, I know there are lots of factors that account for how people change and at what speed, but what if wholeheartedness is one of the most significant and powerful factors of all? What if my partner Julie was right, that asking this question “Am I wholehearted?” is the most important question I could ask if I want to experience life in as full a way as possible?

At one point a few years ago, I was engaged in a devotional practice called “prostration” which involves throwing yourself down on a mat over and over again, while offering yourself fully and completely to life, for the benefit of all beings. I remember talking with Adyashanti about the practice I was doing, and he said “if you do one prostration with the whole of your being, that one, single prostration will liberate you.” This type of “gonzo wholeheartedness,” packed and exploding–in one prostration, one kiss, one moment of total surrender and vulnerability—is what interests me, and what I hope to experience again and again and again.

Every so often I find myself “in love” with someone I work with. Now let me explain: I am not talking about a love that needs to express itself sexually or in intimate partnership. I’m talking about the love that comes with the recognition of an “essence connection” that holds the promise of destiny unfolding. It is the feeling that somehow this other person and I have a gift that we need to share with each other, a gift that, once exchanged, will leave us and others transformed.

I get this type of “in love” feeling with Sounds True authors, with business partners, and with co-workers (at the moment, I am in love with a dozen or so such people, just to give you the idea about what I mean here). I usually know I am in love when someone or something has captured my imagination – I daydream and swim in the feelings evoked. Internally, my code language for this experience is the recognition that I have “karma” with someone. What I mean by having karma is that we have work to do together, that something is wanting to be exchanged, something is wanting to be born through a joining of forces.

I wanted to toss out this topic of “Love at Work” because it is so often considered taboo to talk about Big Feelings in the workplace. And yet, it makes sense that if we are creative in our jobs and if we are bringing forth our soul’s gifts, we will of course encounter big feelings of love (and many other types of big feelings, by the way) at work. So I would like to break open this taboo and welcome eros, which is the life force itself, into the workplace, and proclaim that we can welcome these feelings of intense love in a way that is respectful, life-giving, and follows all necessary HR guidelines!

When we invite love into the workplace, our work world begins to sing with the fullness of life. Meetings become a chance to connect with people we love; new projects become a way that we can combine energies with others to magnify the potential of our individual gifts. We become available for real partnership, which for me only happens through a heart-level exchange. We also begin to acknowledge what I consider to be the real fuel for work life – relationships with other people which are overbrimming with shared heart in the context of a shared purpose.

Are you more interested in finding happiness—or finding out what is true? This is the question that Adyashanti, an innovative spiritual teacher out of the Zen tradition and the author of a provocative new book from Sounds True entitled The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment, asked his wife Mukti on their very first date.

This is the kind of question I love. It reminds me of a question I often like to ask meditators: What is the goal of your meditation practice?

For me the goal of meditation (and spiritual practice of all kinds) is wholeness or inclusiveness. What this means is that I am practicing not to achieve a certain chosen state—be it ecstasy or deep bliss—but instead, so that I can accept and embrace everything that I am and everything that is arising.

I have often met people on a spiritual path who say that the goal of their practice is to feel something in particular—usually peacefulness or happiness or some other positive state. And although this sounds nice, I find this approach problematic for several reasons.

1) Focusing on feeling a particular way can lead to what John Welwood calls “spiritual bypassing.” “Spiritual bypassing” means using spiritual ideals (like feeling peaceful) to bypass personal developmental challenges. For example,  a friend of mine is terribly angry at her boyfriend for all kinds of really good reasons. He is not a very attentive listener and is unwilling to see many things from her perspective, instead simply trying to convince her of his view. Yet my friend is determined not to be angry. In her world view, her “practice” is to be understanding and forgiving and compassionate. Yet I know that, just beneath the surface, she is fuming.  (I think she knows this, too.) She is “bypassing” her anger, and in the process is avoiding the growth that would come from confronting her partner in a constructive way. In the meantime, where is her anger going? Will it simply dissolve if she doesn’t acknowledge it? I don’t think so. When we bypass emotions in favor of “living our spiritual ideals,” we stuff these feelings into our body, where they hide out, simmer and wait to erupt.

2) When we’re seeking a particular feeling state, our spiritual path, which is supposed to free us, becomes another method of control. When we try to control the moment-to-moment experience of our lives by insisting that we feel a certain way, we end up telling ourselves things that are not true—i.e., that we are feeling something we are not actually feeling. (Again, I hear Adyashanti’s question in my ear: are we interested in discovering happiness or knowing what is true?) Instead of our spiritual path opening us to a fresh experience of each moment, we are now using spiritual ideals (like happiness or peace) as a control funnel through which reality is filtered.

3) If we’re hoping for positive mind states, we run the risk of abandoning our path when uncomfortable experiences surface and challenge our stated objective. If we use being “comfortable” or “peaceful” as a yardstick of our path’s success, then we might stop working with a particular practice just as it is beginning to do its work, revealing some hidden material that could prove to be the next step in our evolution.

One of the spiritual teachers who has spent more than five decades mapping what he calls “the transformative process” is Benedictine monk Father Thomas Keating.  (This fall, Sounds True will be releasing a home study course with Father Thomas on centering prayer and the transformative process it catalyzes.) Father Thomas uses Christian language to describe the process of prayer and transformation, and yet I find his work to be completely universal and, interestingly, perfectly resonant with my own experience of meditation and transformation within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. According to Father Thomas, God could be called “the Divine Therapist.” When we rest in God’s presence, there erupts within us what he calls “an unloading of the unconscious.” If we are able to accept this unconscious material without repressing it or reacting to it, a further “evacuation” of unconscious material occurs. (I just love the use of the word “evacuation” in this context!) This leads to greater interior freedom and an increase in our overall capacity for awareness.

I recently had my own experience of an “evacuation,” which was quite dramatic. Last summer, I went on a solitary meditation retreat for 10 days in a cabin in Crestone, Colorado. This is the third solitary retreat I have been on, and I have learned from my other two experiences to enter retreat with an open and innocent mind—an attitude of “who knows what will happen?” About three days into retreat, I started having what I can only describe as a “panic attack” – my breathing changed and I started gasping for air as if my life were at risk. At first, I thought the panic attack had to do with a new house I had just purchased—or, more accurately, with my new mortgage. (The amount of the mortgage kept repeating over and over in my head as I panicked.) At the same time, it was clear to me that the panic I was feeling was about something deeper. In reality I was safe, in a lovely cabin, and I could afford my new mortgage. And yet, after three days of meditation practice, I was on my knees gasping for air for no reason I could name.

After several hours of gasping, I collapsed outside on the ground.  I gave myself to the earth and to whatever process was unfolding in me. The insight that came later was that a core panic I’d been carrying inside since birth was being released from my being into awareness. Here on this retreat, I was finally ready for the somatic memory of my birth—a difficult delivery that was experienced by my infant self as a life-or-death drama—to come forward, be known, and be released.

What if the real goal of our spiritual path is to have the courage to face everything, and I mean everything, without turning away? Might there be a type of unshakeable peace and unshakeable happiness that denies nothing but instead welcomes every experience as exactly what is needed? Could that type of unconditional acceptance rightly be called faith?

In The End of Your World, Adyashanti talks about how he has worked with many students who have had breakthrough experiences of spiritual awakening, and how all of these students report that the experience is not  what they had imagined. Adya comments that awakening has to be beyond our preconceived ideas, since we can only conceive of something based on past experiences. Spiritual awakening is a total shift in perception, completely unprecedented in our lives. According to Adya, when we awaken, our “world ends”— the world that is held together by our ideas of subject and object, of how the world functions, and of who we are in its midst. When Adya had his great spiritual awakening he says he “awoke from Zen,” meaning that even the tradition and its practices no longer defined his experience. What if any goal we can describe for our spiritual path will be outgrown? What if there is literally nothing we can hold on to, not even our maps and presumed destinations?

A couple of years ago, I was driving Reggie Ray from one retreat center to another in the New York/Boston area. Reggie is a meditation teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition with whom I have been studying closely for the past 7 years. When I heard he needed a driver, I thought it would be a good chance to spend some one-on-one time with him, in a closed situation—a vehicle—and to pummel him with questions.

As we were leaving the Garrison Institute to drive to a E-Vam, a small retreat center devoted to the work of Traleg Rinpoche, I asked a receptionist at Garrison for directions. Much to my relief, they were incredibly simple and straightforward. (The truth is that even though I volunteered to be Reggie’s driver, I actually have very little confidence behind the wheel; you might say driving is one of my “inferior functions”.) As we got into the car, I exclaimed to Reggie that this drive was going to be easy: just one turn and we would be on the expressway to our destination.

When I said this, Reggie looked at me and said, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Whatever,” I thought, “Reggie is just being negative.” Well, you guessed it—after driving for only 2 miles, we started hearing a strange thump, thump, thump. We had somehow developed a flat tire. I remembered his comment about “not being so sure” and asked him if he had had a premonition or something. He said, “No, you just sounded awfully confident.” Well, now I was panic-stricken and anxious. (Here I have the meditation master in a rental car with a flat tire and we are stuck on the side of the road!) But Reggie just looked at me, smiled, and said, “Don’t worry, I live for this kind of thing.”

Well, he might have enjoyed the unanticipated newness of the experience, but for me it was uncomfortable and stressful. And this is the same way I felt after I wrote my first (and only) “manifesto” a few weeks ago, on the topic of “manifestation” (see “Manifestation Manifesto”). After I confidently posted that entry, which extolls the virtues of listening to one’s inner voice and claims that following its directives is the key to creating, I was immediately plunged into a period in which I couldn’t hear any inner guidance at all. Nothing. Static. It was like a sudden flat tire inside.

Now, there were outer causes. In January and February, Sounds True had very disappointing top line sales due to the overall contraction in the retail marketplace, and we were having some issues with our line of credit (which, fortunately, have since been resolved). What I noticed was that my inner system was “jammed up” in a flight or fight response, and in that state, the last thing I could do was tune in and hear my inner voice clearly. And yet, I had just written a “Manifesto” that made it sound like listening to one’s inner voice and following its call is as simple as driving a few miles and making one turn onto an expressway.

During this period of hearing static inside, I asked myself two critical questions:

1. What works for me when I find that I need to “un-jam” my circuits so I can receive inner guidance?
2. How do I distinguish between what could be called “the voice of ego” and “the voice of the knowing self”?

Here is what I discovered:
When my “circuits are jammed” (which is what it feels like to me), I can conclude that I am terribly afraid of something or other (in this case, potential economic doom) and that the first thing I need to do is release the fight or flight response from my body. A friend of mine recently wrote a PhD thesis on a somatic approach to resolving conflict in couples and he called it “Fight, Flight, or Feel,” a title which I quite like. When I am in conflict with myself, let alone with another person, what I need to do is move beyond fight or flight and into feeling.

Okay, you may ask, but how do I approach “feeling” when I am terrified of feeling how terrified I feel? (Now that’s a mouthful of a question.) I found three things that worked for me: 1) Deep bodywork, 2) Loving and intelligent friends who truly know how to listen, receive and reflect, and 3) Intensive meditation practice.

What I found was that I could restore my sense of inner connectedness when my body relaxed, when I felt loved, and when I could connect with a vast sense of spaciousness. During this particular period, I participated in a 5-day meditation training program.  Being at this program , I felt that I regained the antenna that had been lost in the fight or flight attack; instead of hearing static inside, I once again had clear reception of what you could call a “grace field”—a sense of being informed as to what was being called for in each moment.

The second question I examined during this recent difficult period was “how do I distinguish between what might be called the voice of the ego and the voice of the knowing self?” For me, it is all about how my body feels. I have come to recognize the feeling of genuine guidance in a kind of somatic “rightness.”

And so I pose these two questions to you, the readers of this blog. When you are going through a challenging time, how do you “un-jam your circuits” so you can receive guidance in a clear way? And how do you distinguish between what could be called the voice of the ego and the voice of the knowing self?

I have been asking people these questions in an informal way and discovering that people have their own inner language and signaling system. What is this for you?

Finally, as you respond to this question, I offer one last thought.  I feel a bit strange writing a blog post that is as confessional as this one. (First a manifesto, now a confession.) And yet I know that vulnerability is real strength. I recently interviewed Terry Tempest Williams as part of a new Sounds True podcast series. (She was in our studio recording an audio adaptation of her new book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, which will be available this Fall.)  In the interview she talks about how one of the reasons she writes is to create community—and how ironic it is to engage in a totally solitary act for the purpose of connecting with other people. The writer and the audience are, as they say, “alone, together.” As I connect with you, the Sounds True community, through this new experiment of a “Publisher’s Blog,” I want to do so in a way that is real and vulnerable and raw. I want the exchange to be genuine and at eye-level. I want to “manifest” something that leaves no residue of “half-said” but instead is a reflection of our collective wholeness—and in your responses, I invite you to do the same.

–Tami Simon
Publisher

Over the past few years, I have heard more and more people talk about “manifesting.” From what I can tell, the going definition of manifestation is “learning how to use spiritual principles to get what you want out of life.” Of course, it is usually stated in more palatable language like “how to realize your dreams” or “how to create the life you want.” Often, when I hear people describe this view of manifestation, I find myself feeling irritated. So, I decided it was time to write my own “Manifestation Manifesto.” (As you can see, I’m using this Publisher’s Blog as a chance to constructively express – at least I hope I’m being constructive – many of the pent-up frustrations I have been feeling as a publisher in the field of personal and spiritual transformation for the past 24 years.)

So in response to all of the manifestation talk I‘ve heard over the past few years, here is my “Manifestation Manifesto”:

Step 1. Listen to your inner voice.

Step 2. Do what your inner voice says.

Step 3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2.

That’s my manifesto (very short!). And although it sounds quite simple – and it is from a conceptual viewpoint – that doesn’t mean it is easy.

Step 1: Listen to your inner voice.

I believe we all have a trustworthy inner voice. You might experience it in the form of words spoken internally or as a gut feeling, an intuitive vision, a flash of insight, or a spontaneous sense of knowing. In traditional religious language, this inner voice might be called “the voice of our conscience,” which may not be too far off the mark. I do believe we each have an internal guidance system that is always available, if we are willing to stop and listen.

You might ask, “Where does this inner voice come from?” That’s a good question – and I don’t have a good answer. What I do know is that for me this inner voice is a compass. It feels to me like a reliable, benevolent, evolutionary messenger service, something that is guiding me to express more, to love more, and to extend more for the benefit of others.

It’s my experience that there is no shortage of available inner guidance. What is in short supply, however, is our willingness to tune in and listen. Most of us are too busy, busy, busy (ironically, trying to manifest our dreams, right?). Imagine how much power and impact we could have if we paused and listened to make sure we were actually scurrying in the right direction.

If we are interested in manifesting more in our lives – more abundance, more happiness, more contribution to others – one interesting question to ask ourselves is why we don’t spend more time listening to our inner guidance. Caroline Myss, the medical intuitive and author of Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, has investigated this question in some detail. She posits that the reason many people don’t listen to their inner guidance is that they don’t actually want to change – certainly not in dramatic ways. We may say we want change in our lives (we want to “manifest” something that doesn’t currently exist, right?), but we usually want it on our terms, not on unconditional terms, not if it costs us something like our current sense of security, our current network of relationships, or our current identity structure.

And this brings me to why I often feel irritated when I hear people talk about “manifesting their dreams.” It is as if this all-powerful ego-based person wants to orchestrate a new world order according to their likes and dislikes, as if this whole universe exists to line up around our personal wishes. I really see things in quite the opposite way. The way I see it, we are servants, not masters. What are we serving? That is for each person to answer in their own being. In my case, I am serving a higher field or finer dimension of vibration that has qualities to it like truth, beauty and justice. I am also serving and partnering with all of the beings, seen and unseen, who have worked and are working to bring these qualities into form. To put it another way, for me the central question around manifesting is not “What do I want?” but instead “What is wanted from me?”

Step 2: Do What Your Inner Voice Says

Once we hear our inner guidance, we need courage – or to use Caroline Myss’ language, “a backbone, not a wishbone” – if we are to manifest in the world. This is complex territory, because there are all kinds of unconscious reasons we don’t want to act on the messages we hear.  I will give you an example from my personal and professional life:

For about 5 years, I knew I needed to hire a President at Sounds True. The company needed day-to-day operational leadership, and I needed the time to explore other avenues of self-expression and contribution. I was, however, terrified about making this change. What if I hired someone who ruined the 20 years of work I’d put into the company, eroding the value of the business? What if I hired someone who was better than me at running the company, and I ended up feeling like a horse put out to pasture? What if and if and if?

Finally, my inner voice stopped talking to me in clear sentences and started creating difficult circumstances in my life – including a schedule that was totally unmanageable and a love partner who could not tolerate how little time and attention I had for our relationship. It was as if my guidance system could no longer get my attention by whispering so it started shouting through the circumstances of my life.

A year and a half ago, the shouting got so loud I couldn’t help but listen. So I finally made the decision to hire a President. (Happily, April 1st 2009 will be the one year anniversary of a fellow spiritual traveler and business professional named Grant Couch filling this role.) Why did it take me 5 years to take this step? Because, as Caroline Myss says, I was afraid of how much and how quickly my life would change. In a certain sense, I was “hiding” behind all of the tasks that I had to do. I knew this just below the surface of my consciousness, but I didn’t really want to acknowledge this knowing because I was hiding for some very good unconscious reasons. Suffice it to say I was protecting my heart; it can be quite scary to change in ways that radically – and publicly – increase our level of vulnerability.

So for me, when it comes to manifesting, a useful line of inquiry is “Why am I not doing what I know I need to do right now”? That is a totally different approach than “visualizing what I want” or expecting hoped-for external events to happen. It’s about deeply inquiring into our own resistance and what lies underneath it. My experience is that when I can archaeologically dig up that unconscious material, feel it and release it, it’s like untying a knot. Once that knot is untied, the energy to manifest flows swiftly and generally, unimpeded. Doors fly open. Surprising allies arrive. Magic happens.

Step 3

Repeat steps 1 and 2

There is no end to manifesting and expressing who we are. I recently spent some time with Eckhart Tolle. We were filming a trailer for Eckhart Tolle TV, a new online television service that Sounds True is launching in partnership with Eckhart Teachings. I asked Eckhart why he was bothering to create this new service at all. I wanted to understand his motivations. Obviously, Eckhart can be spending his time in whatever way he wishes; why get involved in a multi-year commitment requiring so much energy and creativity? When I asked Eckhart the question “Why are you bothering to create Eckhart Tolle TV?” he paused for about a minute. Then he looked directly at me and said, “I am responding to the evolutionary impulse.”

I love that answer. When we are responding to an evolutionary impulse, we manifest in a way that is pure and selfless. We tune in. We are given instructions. We respond boldly, wildly and unconditionally. And as a result, we manifest in ways that serve evolution itself.

–Tami Simon
Publisher

Here at Sounds True, we have seasonal meetings (called “creative direction” meetings) where our creative team gathers to brainstorm (and argue—in a constructive way, of course) about how best to position each one of our new titles. By creating a position for a title we are launching it into the world as a new and unique being—what it will look, sound, and feel like; what makes it unique from every other title that has ever been born.

The writers at Sounds True have historically advocated describing each program in terms of its benefits to the customer. The idea is that people want to gain something—intelligence, peace of mind, greater health—when they spend their money on inner learning and spiritual development. Well, those “benefits” sound good (they sure do!), but here’s the rub: The spiritual journey is often more about loss than gain, as much about embracing our darkness as it is about basking in the light. Advertising that promises the spiritual journey will be easy, fun, and always filled with light and bliss has some very real problems attached. Specifically:

It makes us misunderstand and reject our own experiences of “descent.”

Experiences of “descent” are those times when we need to be deep within ourselves—when we are called to inner silence and inquiry, when we are letting go of something that needs to be let go of, when we are grieving, when we are wrestling with and sorting out our priorities, when we are grappling with physical illness. These times of descent are part of life and are intrinsic to the spiritual journey. They are not times of failure or of being off course; they are passageways that need to be traversed so we can emerge with greater depth of being and, dare I say, wisdom.

If we ingest advertising that says that the spiritual journey is all about peace and feeling positive all of the time, then we are prone to believing that we are somehow “failing” during such times of descent. We will reject ourselves and our experience; we will actually pull away from the initiatory experiences we are having that hold so much richness and information, and we will instead stay on the surface of our lives and wonder why we feel like something is missing. Without the descent there is no real ascent; it is like wanting all of the vitality and energy of springtime but being unwilling to experience winter.

We are not prepared for the real work of the spiritual journey.

If we believe that the spiritual journey is quick and easy (like following the instructions on the back of a bag of microwave popcorn), we will not be prepared for the real work, the “heavy lifting” of genuine transformation. What I mean by “genuine transformation” is a process by which everything that is false in us—our emotional defenses, limiting beliefs, and self-structures—are seen and released, and a new unbounded and mysterious sense of self emerges which is fluid and ever-changing. Of course, this heavy lifting is more about “un-doing” than doing. But in my experience, when it comes to letting go of my need for power and control and safety, as well as my need to be universally well-liked by others, this process is quite a process indeed!

The problem with believing that the spiritual journey does not require real and sustained work is similar to the problem that emerges when a partner in a love relationship believes that the relationship should continuously unfold beautifully and perfectly without either partner needing to work at it. When tough spots emerge, there is no willingness to engage, to go deeper. The real treasures, those that can only be discovered through sustained engagement, remain hidden.

We lecture others about our theories of happiness instead of meeting them in their unique experience.

If we believe that the spiritual journey is formulaic, that there is a one-size-fits-all series of easy steps to follow, then when other people are suffering, we insist on sharing with them our winning formula. I do not believe this is what people really need or want from us when they are in emotional pain.

Recently, I spent three days in a studio in Madison, Wisconsin with Parker Palmer recording a series of talks about “The Undivided Life.” He is a beautiful writer and educator and someone who has written courageously (and now spoken courageously!) on the topic of depression. Parker himself has gone through three periods of clinical depression (he describes the most recent experience which he underwent during his sixties as “becoming the dark”). One thing he learned in these periods was how people could best relate to him in ways that were truly helpful instead of simply driving him deeper into isolation. He named this ideal form of relating as being “neither invasive nor evasive” and he compared it to how a dying person might want to receive a visitor—the visitor would not try to “fix” the dying person (for who can fix the fact that we are going to die and this is actuality the situation we are all in?) but would instead be at the bedside with total presence and a full heart, neither invasive nor evasive.

If we know that the spiritual journey is mysterious, complex, and totally individual (not reduced to a series of simplistic steps) then we can be with each other in this way—present, open, attentive, warm, and available. We can be fellow travelers instead of salespeople with one-size-fits-all answers.

The irony here is that the spiritual journey is the most exciting, the most rewarding, the most benefit-packed focus we could ever have for our lives. I remember at one point approximately seven years ago speaking with spiritual teacher Reggie Ray about my own ambitious nature. I wondered if a life focused on inner growth could ever really satisfy me. His comment was that the inner journey would nourish me and fulfill me in ways outer accomplishments never could—that instead of feeling drained and empty from working in the world (even with the purpose of being of benefit to others), I would feel overflowing from the inside out with a sense of richness and fulfillment.

So yes, we can describe Sounds True titles with benefit language galore, but we need to be careful we never sell the spiritual journey as something that is easy, quick, formulaic, and without challenge. That would be a serious disservice. As Parker Palmer says, there is no resurrection without death. As I see it, our real job at Sounds True is to communicate the great glory of dying.

–Tami Simon
Publisher