00:00:06 Shreya: There comes a point in life when the noise gets so loud that we can barely hear ourselves anymore. Expectations. Fear. Old conditioning. The need to please. The pressure to get it right. And somewhere under all of that, our own inner knowing starts to feel distant. But maybe it never really leaves. Maybe it just waits us for to return. And today we are talking about what it means to reclaim that inner quiet compass, that trust ourselves again.

00:00:39 Shreya: Welcome to inner light. The space where we slow down, listen deeper and come home to what feels true. I am your host, Shreya and today I'm joined by Tony Lamata, our spiritual coach, master teacher and transformational guide whose work has helped hundreds reconnect with their inner authority. In this conversation, we are exploring how we lose touch with our own truth, what it takes to come back to it, and how listeners can begin trusting themselves in a world that constantly pulls them outward. Welcome, Tony. I'm honored to have you on my show.

00:01:19 Toni LaMotta: Thank you so much, Shreya. I'm delighted to be here.

00:01:22 Shreya: Thank you so much to join our show. And Tony, before we get into like the deeper layers of the conversation, I would love to start. Like when you hear the phrase inner compass, what does it mean to you personally at this stage of your life?

00:01:42 Toni LaMotta: Well, it means a great deal because I have a very interesting background. I spent sixteen years as a Roman Catholic nun under a vow of obedience, and I understood it at that time that obedience meant I shouldn't trust my own knowing. I should listen to authority, and I would be told what to do. And so little by little I shut down that part of us that just knows. And it wasn't until a lot later, and a lot of reading and studying and courses that I learned to read, tap into that part. And that's what I call the inner compass. I find so many people give their authority away. They give it to maybe a boss, maybe their parents, they, you know, or a spouse. Sometimes one person, you know, just lets the other person totally take over their thinking. And so the inner compass is that quiet knowing of what our next step is, what's the right thing to say? What's the right thing to do? And it's born in all of us. It's not something we have. We need to learn to listen because shut it down. But we we have it automatically. It's in every one of us.

00:03:18 Shreya: I think that's such a beautiful place to begin, because it reminds us that this is not just an idea. It's a relationship. Like a relationship with our own truth, our own discernment, our own center. And I think a lot of people are longing for that, especially if they have spent years looking outside themselves for direction.

00:03:43 Toni LaMotta: Absolutely. And, you know, it's interesting, I'm thinking, as we're speaking of, one of my teachers is a woman named Sonia Choquette. And Sonia is was born an intuitive and she has tremendous abilities. But when she teaches people and now I use this with all my clients, we say there are two voices in all of us and one voice he calls the barking dog. And I love that. She even says, name your dog. And it's loud. And it's, this is what you should do. And it's that's not right. And constantly putting us down or yelling at us, scolding us. And the other voice is the voice of our spirit. And we also need to name that so that we know and have a relationship with that voice. And so the first step in really recognizing your inner compass is to start noticing the distinction between the two voices. When is it your barking dog? It's usually the loud voice. And when is it that quiet whisper that's peaceful. It doesn't always say what you want to hear, but when you hear it, you know it's said with love. And you know that it is your divine self, your spirit within you, speaking and telling you the next thing to do. I love those. It's such a simple thing and yet it takes practice. Most people aren't used to discerning those two voices. It's a powerful practice that.

00:05:25 Shreya: Yes. Thank you for sharing this. And I'm also curious about one of the biggest misunderstanding people tend to have here. Like sometimes when we talk about intuition or inner authority, people imagine it as something mystical, like instant or always crystal clear. So from your experience, what do people most often get wrong about reclaiming their inner compass?

00:05:53 Toni LaMotta: That's a really good point. People think that it's supposed to be, you know, like the mystics that you have an outer body experience, but it's so much more simple. You know what? It's as simple as noticing the Sensations in your body. That's another way of really knowing your inner compass. And most of us are out of touch with our bodies. And you hear all the teachers, all spiritual teachers always talk about living in the present moment, living in the now. And the only way to really do that is to come home to our bodies and to ourselves. You know, every meditation practice, for example, starts with breathing. But when you start, you know, with breathing all the time, but we don't even notice it. So when you sit and notice that I'm breathing and then start noticing as you're breathing, feel where that breath goes within your body. And you can start feeling sometimes in your extremities, like light tingling or some sensation, you might feel pain in a part of your body. You might feel a really you relax your shoulders? That's one of the ways of listening. It's. It's simple. It's ordinary. It's not something that is. You know, when we use the word intuition and intuitive, many people equate it with mystic or psychic. And it's like, I have this outer body. I have this extra knowing. It's not I mean, it could be that and somebody has that gift, but we're talking about everyone has the ability to know and to tap into what's happening, because what happens when you tap into your body, your heart begins to open and you start to feel, you know, let me let me go back a minute, because this is a practice that I want to invite everybody into, and it takes all of seven minutes. So even if you don't have time to meditate or keep saying, you know, everyone can find seven minutes and the first two minutes is spent really embodying yourself, feeling what you're feeling. Just allow yourself to recognize the breathing and the parts of your body that may be tingling, or any kind of electrical sensation. You'll feel them. And when you do, then your heart starts to open. And when your heart opens, you can start getting in touch with the deeper feelings. What's important to you? What lights you up? What makes you feel special? What makes you feel good? How do you feel right now? Where are the glimmers of joy and bliss in your life? And you can spend two minutes just on the heart. And when you do that, this is the real interesting thing. Your head actually starts to quiet down. It may still have messages going through. But what happens is that chatter that that chatter goes away. And you can start really listening to possibility. You can listen to, um, this is where your inner voice can speak really clearly. And it's a clarity and a freedom that starts to happen. And then you can become aware. So that's two minutes in each tensor, Veli, if you will. The heart and the head. And then one minute, just knowing that it's only one that you're integrated. And you can feel the connection among all three centers. And then I think you can call yourself a full human being. That's what it really means to be present. And it doesn't take long. And after you practice it for a while, you could do it in a minute. And whenever I feel a little off center, I simply stop and remind myself. Breathe with sensation. Open your heart. Listen to what is extraordinarily happening in in the brain. And it's, it's an amazing we call it the presence practice. It teaches us to be present to ourselves. And that's the opening to the inner compass. It all starts there. Hopefully that's helpful to to your audience here.

00:10:49 Shreya: That is really well explained. Thank you for sharing this with so much depth and explaining this so beautifully. And also like when someone has been disconnected from themselves for a long time, how do they begin to tell the difference between genuine inner guidance and fear are genuine inner guidance and fear, or like old survival patterns. Speaking very loudly.

00:11:18 Toni LaMotta: Well, I think that you use the word very well. Loudly. It's when it's speaking loudly and when it's negative, it's never inner guidance. It's always a patterning, if you will. One of the things that I teach people is something known as the Enneagram. And the Enneagram is both a psychological tool to understand personality and a real depth of how to grow spiritually. And the Enneagram, just an overview teaches us that there are nine different patterns and this isn't something new. This is going back to the ancient Greeks and and every religion talks about it at some point. And every one of us developed pattern to try to get back to the state of the divine that we came into this world with. And therefore, every one of us have a different kind of fear. It's something that we're, you know, we're afraid that we have lost touch with who we really are. And that's how our ego develops. And when our ego develops, we ego then is becomes much louder. So, you know, it's a fear voice when it's scolding, when it's loud, when it's uncomfortable in your body. And you know, it's the divine speaking. You know, it's your inner wisdom. When you sense peace, you really your whole body relaxes and you can start and it's almost like a whisper, somebody saying, do this. I've had loads of instances. I mean, I live it, but sometimes it's been somewhat dramatic where I, you know, get a message. It's time to move. Whoa. That's pretty scary. What are we doing here? But if I follow that and listen carefully, all the steps along the way are shown. And it's so amazing. Um, so listen to the quiet. You gotta get quiet in order to hear it. So many of us are so busy, and we've got that chatter going on, but we can't hear it. So that's the way. And and fear also shows up in our bodies. So when our, our, you know, jaw is clenched, when our stomach tightens, when we get a headache, those are messages of fear rather than of the inner compass itself.

00:13:55 Shreya: That feels so important because many people assume self-trust should arrive as certainty. But what I'm hearing is that it can actually begin much more quietly through awareness or like through honesty and learning the texture of your own inner voice.

00:14:15 Toni LaMotta: Exactly. It's it's getting attuned to presence. Most of us live in a fantasy world. We live in a fear of the future. We live in recollections of the past. We live in the busyness of the moment. And we're not even present. We're like going through the motions and we forget ourselves. And so you can't hear yourself when you're too busy, like following everybody else's rules and, and being in that outer world. And I'm not saying you need to go away to a monastery or be quiet, but it's just getting back. You could be in the midst of a meeting with lots of voices or in in the middle of a parade, and you can still start to pay attention to your body, pay attention to your breathing, and that's how you come present. And being present allows you to hear that voice much more clearly.

00:15:18 Shreya: And what tends to happen in a person's life that causes them to lose connection with that inner knowing in the first place? Is it conditioning, trauma, people pleasing, perfectionism, spiritual confusion, or is it usually a mix of all those things?

00:15:38 Toni LaMotta: Well, it's a little mix of all those things, but I mentioned the Enneagram has nine types and each type has a different, um, a different way that they lose themselves. Uh, for example, if you're type one, it is perfectionism. It's, I know there's a perfect way to live and they're constantly struggling to get to it and they shut out, you know, the, the inner voice need someone who's a type two, for example, is so in touch with everyone else's needs that they don't hear their own. Type three is out for achievement and success, and so they're doing what anybody is telling them they're supposed to do rather than hearing their own voice. I it's, it would be too long to go through every single type, but that just gives you a sense that everyone has a different response. And those responses come from childhood woundings. And I'm not talking about major trauma, although it could be that, but I'm talking about, you know, every baby is born perfect. It's amazing. You know, you look at a little infant, everybody smiles and all the time because infants are just hearing perfection and then something happens and it could be something very mild. Someone says something. An off chance remark. Usually in the first five years of life and all the psychologists will tell us, and the neuropsychologists are telling us now that the beliefs in our life are formed during those five years. And so we come into the world with a particular temperament. But then we have something in. Something happens and we make a decision about how we have to be, you know. And for example, I came in as an M seven and an Enneagram seven is the most joyful and enthusiastic person. It's a wonderful opportunity. However, any of them are in denial of any pain, and they are afraid that they have to take care of themselves. So, you know, you develop a whole personality Around some wounding that happened in your childhood. And I often think when people say, well, I can't remember any woundings. I have a little cat who's adorable. And every now and then I look at her looking up at me. I must look like a monster next to her. I'm so big next to her little body. And think about it. Every single child goes through that. We're little people next to this big world. But that alone causes us to feel inferior. We start believing we're not important. I don't matter all those negative beliefs that we put on ourselves as children happen, you know? And I'm not blaming parents. No parent will. Most parents aren't trying to hurt their children, but they inadvertently do. By the things they say, by the things they do and take on the meaning. And so part of my work is to help people look back over some of those experiences and through neuroplasticity to actually change what we made those things mean. You can't change the memory, but you can certainly change the meaning of the number. And we do a lot of work with that. And that frees you then to stop listening to that negative voice and to really hear the divine in you.

00:19:37 Shreya: That's that's beautifully said because there is something very compassionate in that, because it shifts the story from what's wrong with me to what did I learn I had to do feel safe to feel loved or feel worthy. And once we see that reclaiming the inner compass becomes less about fixing ourselves and more about gently unlearning what was never ours to carry. And, uh, yeah. And like when, when someone is out of touch with their inner compass, how does that usually show up in everyday life? Like, what are some of the signs that a person may be living from external pressure rather than internal truth?

00:20:25 Toni LaMotta: So one of them is anxiety. There's like this underlying anxiety about everything in life, but in particular, it's looking at decision making. When people have a hard time making decision, they have to, you know, write columns of pros and cons and they have to check with ten people. So if it's challenging or when they make a decision, they start questioning, overthinking. Did I do the right thing? Is this right? They're uncomfortable with themselves and it's because they're not used to yet listening. Uh, I just want to go back to something you said just earlier because it was so vital. I want to underline it. This whole teaching is about compassion for ourselves. And you're right, it's not about fixing anything. We took on beliefs because we didn't know any better. And so when we become conscious, they're all most of them are unconscious. And when we can become conscious of them, we can then free ourselves. So I remember many years ago telling a friend, I'm feeling like this low level anxiety, and there's nothing in my life that's causing that. And then when I studied the Enneagram and started studying some of these principles, I recognized that that is part of my personality. And I have learned. Now, when I'm feeling that, go back to presence and it totally changes it. It's amazing. And and to have compassion and stop trying to work on it. I mean, the spiritual teachers out there talking about working on yourself and fixing this and changing that. Uh, transformation happens through awareness. So if you start noticing a pattern of thinking, for example, that isn't serving you, the more you notice it, it will start to dissipate. It's not noticing it and not recognizing it that causes it to stay. And so it's not a matter of what do I do to fix myself and change myself. Just notice. Ah, there it is again. Oh, yes, I see that now. And when you keep seeing something, your mind shifts and begins to change it. It's it's an amazing transformation happens not by fixing, changing, doing. It happens by awareness and presence. Keep using that word because that's when we go back to our source, when we go back to our bodies, when we become conscious of the moment. Other things that resolve.

00:23:19 Shreya: That really lands because so many people are not falling apart visibly, they are just quietly abandoning themselves in small daily ways. And this is truly a very amazing conversation with you. I think the wisdom, the knowledge, the experience that you have shared, it's really commendable. And, uh, if after this, my listeners want to connect with you and want to learn more about your work, about, uh, you, then what's the best way to find you? Yeah.

00:23:51 Toni LaMotta: Thank you for that, Shreya. And the easiest thing, if you get the spelling of my name and that's the name of my website, it's Tony dot C o n I l a m o t t a dot com. When you go there, it gives you the option to sign in to my mailing list, and I will send you a quiz to see how well you're listening to your inner compass. And then when you get the results of that quiz, I'll be inviting you to look at possibly even have a conversation with me about the next step. For everybody, it's a little different. Uh, for some people, you might want to come in too. I have a complete six month training and coaching program where we meet twice a week, once for the training, and then the week later we do coaching on, you know what? How did you absorb that? How is that landing in your life? It's been very, very powerful. And I'm watching people transform before my eyes and and it's helping me along the way.

00:25:03 Shreya: Thank you so much, and I will make sure to attach all these details and links below so that the listeners can find them easily and get in touch with you. And if there is one insight I'm taking from this conversation is that reclaiming your inner compass begins when you stop outsourcing your truth and start listening to yourself with honesty, compassion, and courage. And to my listeners, thank you for joining us on Inner Light. If today's conversation starts something in you, maybe don't rush past it. Sit with it. Notice what part of you has been asking to be heard. Sometimes the way forward doesn't begin with a perfect plan. It begins with a pause, a truth, and the courage to trust what your inner self has been whispering all along. Is this episode resonated with you? Share it with someone who may need this reminder too. And come back for the next conversation. And until then, be gentle with yourself and keep listening for the light within. And do not forget to hit the follow button. Subscribe and feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve premium content. Thank you.