Dear, dear listener, hi, this is John Duque.

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Thank you.

Welcome to part two of our deep dive into the wisdom and logos of Tammy Simon.

Welcome to Deep Transformation.

Self, Society, Spirit, life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists.

With Dr.

Roger Walsh and John Dupuy, join us in the evolutionary fast lane as we take a deep dive into transformational practice.

Peak experience, profound understanding, powerful contribution.

Tammy, another whole line of things that just absolutely intrigued me are the fact that you've probably published and interviewed as many people as almost anyone on the planet, and you've interviewed, viewed and promoted some of the people who are really on the cutting edge of psychological, cultural and contemplative frontiers.

So I want to start with a big open question, and that is who, what are some of the people and ideas that really stand out to you from all the people you've worked with?

It's a good question.

It is.

It's a question I've been asked before and it's hard for me to answer, although I will, I will.

I want to start by saying, though, that one of the things I've discovered, and this is not a throwaway, it's actually really something I have been surprised by, is how I've been able to learn something from every single person I've interviewed.

It's interesting to me, like, even sometimes I'll be like, oh God, who's on my list?

This is where, you know, this is the person I don't want to do this.

And then I start getting into it and I'm like, oh my God, I'm so surprised.

This is so interesting to me.

This is something I'd never thought of.

And so it's this willingness to sort of step into the clothes they're wearing, put on the shoes they're wearing, look inside their life experience.

And suddenly a whole new world has opened up to me and I've really learned and benefited some from it.

So that's just interesting to me that every Single interview has given a gift.

And there's something analogous in psychotherapy, Tammy, and that is you can have somewhat really problematic people walk into your room and the more you get to know them, the more you care and empathize and even love them in all their suffering and failures.

Yeah, it's a beautiful analogy and it shows you what an open hearted therapist can come to that discovery.

Okay, so now you've asked me though, of all the people and I guess I think of a few different things.

First, I want to share the story that in my own life journey, I was recording a teaching series on Buddhist Tantra with Reggie ray.

We spent 10 days in the studio doing somatic practices from the Buddhist Vajrayana tradition.

And I knew I needed to study within that tradition and I did for 12 years.

And it was very, very, very important to me in my own journey.

And that came not from an interview, but it came from working on a 12 set CD series together and experiencing the somatic bodywork practices, learning how to drop into the earth and the energy of the earth.

That's where I discovered this central channel and even the fullness of the heart space.

So that just important in my own journey from the interview process, I met Adyashanti.

And that was extraordinarily important to me because I've never met anyone who had so much.

I jokingly called him Mr.

Goodness.

He's the goodest human I ever met in a very, very, very pure way.

And I wrote him several notes and I said, and it's true, because you're here.

I feel I can be here.

It's a strong thing to say to another human and especially someone.

It's not like the person I'm living with or you know, I don't even have that much actual interaction with him.

But just knowing him and his sincerity and the utter purity of his being was like a beacon to me in my life and has been so important.

So it's like, was it because of the interview or.

No, it wasn't really that.

It was something else.

And this is possible, it's possible for a human.

I know it's weird to even use that word good, but to be so thoroughly generous, thoroughly self reflectively pure, I don't know if I have any other language for it that was hugely important to me.

And then I'll just put, well, I guess I'm going to have to say, see this is going to make me go on and on.

Now, Roger, I'm going to have to go on and on this question.

But you know, my interviews and engagement with the Diamond Approach and AH Alnus have been extraordinarily important to me.

And I always feel every single time that I speak to Hamid and read his books that something that has been just outside of my awareness or sometimes quite a bit outside of my awareness comes in and I learn and grow and there's an expansion of my knowledge of what's possible in the spiritual universe.

So that's huge.

Huge.

And I feel like there's so much more to be discovered there for me.

And then I've also had some very important interactions with two other authors through the creation of their recordings.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes as a brilliant storyteller who really helped me come into the notion of original voice and being one of a kind and never following a recipe that anyone else puts out for you but being your one of a kind self.

And then I've also developed quite important relationship with Carolyn Mace, who is medical intuitive, who has inspired me a lot really about shadow work and seeing things that I didn't see in my own personality development.

I always feel whenever I talk to her, it's like I've been held by my feet and shaken upside down and all these things come pouring out of my pockets that I didn't even know were in my pockets that were hidden somewhere deep inside a pocket of me.

I was like, I didn't even know that was there.

Oh, it's there.

It comes out on the ground.

And then I'm looking at it after we've interacted.

So that gives you a little bit.

Of a taste and a very beautiful taste too.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I think John and I would both want to say that we've had a very similar experience in our dialogues with Hamid.

It just has been transformative in ways we had not understood or anticipated.

So there is something very transformative about the study of his work and the dialogues with him.

So yeah, we understand and you really.

Have to work at it because it ain't easy.

You know, we're doing.

What's the name of the book that we're doing?

The Inner Journey.

Inner Journey Home.

Or as you call it, the Endless Journey.

I call the Long Journey Home.

And you know, just the first reading is just shocking.

And then the more you work, the more you get, the second, third time it just gets deeper.

And such an appreciation.

Also wanted to say about Ajahn Shati, I early on in my young life I had some culty type experiences.

So I came out there with not trusting spiritual teachers very Much.

I mean, they had to prove themselves to me.

And when I discovered Adyan Shanti, he's, like you said, his goodness, his humility, his clarity just came through.

And some of my distrust from.

I got to go out in Vision Quest and get it all by myself because I can't trust anybody to give me this.

And he was an important person for me.

And of course, this connections that we have with Hamid has just caused us both to grow in an extraordinary way.

And each time it's like, I do my homework, God help us not to screw this one up, you know, because he's an important man and he's also very humble that it's not about me.

It's just like it's what's coming through me.

And you can just say that as a shtick.

Anybody can say that.

But I really believe when he talks, he has that.

That purity of transmission and heart and deep humanity that's just life enhancing, life changing.

Holy Tammy is an analog of the corollary of the people.

You've been exposed to so many cutting edge ideas.

What are some of the ideas that have most struck you and perhaps even continue to animate you?

I think one of the interesting things is how tremendously free, liberated, visionary someone can be and how messed up they can be at the same time.

Yes, boy, ain't that the truth.

And that's also true about us.

So it's true about our journey and how I think in the beginning I didn't see that, I didn't know that.

And it would always shock and disappoint me when I would discover these spiritual teachers I was working with and the parts of them that were sealed off even from their own awareness, that were their areas of unconsciousness that created harm for other people and they didn't even see it.

And yet I could interact with other parts of them that were so luminous and bright and pure.

And I was like, how could this all be?

So I think the journey of understanding that map has been a huge one for me and has also given me a lot of mercy and acceptance of my own path as a person.

As I keep discovering parts of me that have yet to come into consciousness that are coming forth now here in my 60s, to be seen and healed and, oh, okay, that's okay.

That's what we're doing here.

And I think I didn't know that early on.

That's such an important realization, particularly in life in general, but especially for anyone who takes up a spiritual practice because there's such a tendency to idealize in multiple ways to idealize teachers, to idealize the goal.

I hate the word enlightenment, but I'll use it.

What enlightenment, what awakening, what opening is?

And it feels like such an important realization to remember that, you know, religions are problematic because they're practiced by people, and people we are endlessly, we're bottomless, endless, et cetera.

And there's always more.

There's always problematic areas that remain to be illumined and healed and worked through.

And you're right, it does bring a certain compassion for ourselves and others, but also feels very important because a lot of problems come from the idealization of teachers and from the path.

And Tammy has that what you're talking about, having compassion for these teachers who have, you know, some lines that are extremely well developed to talk in integral terms and others not.

Have you been able to transfer that to just the human family as a whole?

You know, that we do these incredibly beautiful things at the same time we do monstrous, horrible things.

Does that spread from the individual to the bigger picture?

I think so, yeah.

And I think not having an idealized fantasy for ourselves, I think that's also what I was trying to point to.

So it's, yes, compassion for other people and for the whole process of the world.

And evolution and our souls.

Evolution seems a safe assumption that there are always parts of the shadow, hidden elements of our psyche, our depths, etc.

That remain to be discovered.

I have great appreciation for one of the things Amid says with all his realizations and openings, et cetera, but delusion always remains, which is a very different stance from most contemplative traditions, most spiritual traditions there is, which they tend to be idealistic.

And I think we probably need to acknowledge that one of the contemporary edges of our time is this bringing together both psychological and spiritual perspectives and approaches, because it's become very clear that we will.

We have been transmitted very idealized narratives and myths about the spiritual life and the nature of realization.

And that partly that's solidization, partly it's an idealization, but partly it's a result of ignorance that only very recently have we had the psychological tools to identify psychological defenses and psychodynamics and aspects of the psyche which don't come into awareness in.

In meditative experience.

Well said, Roger.

And where do you.

Is there somewhere you take that.

You know, I think the.

The wholeness of spiritual vision and psychological health is something that I spend a lot of time with as a person.

And, you know, I remember when I first interviewed Hamid, I said the diamond approach brings psychology and Spirituality together.

And he said, who took them apart, Tammy?

And I said, wow, that's such a funny answer.

That's such an interesting answer.

Who took them apart?

And I think what I love about the diamond approach is how they seamlessly come together in the model where it's the theory of wholes, this part of us where we separated from our essence early in our life, and this created the hole in us that we're trying to fill with in our outer life, but ultimately has to be filled with our essential nature.

So that's the diamond approach idea.

But now I'm going to go over to another Sounds True author whose work I quite like, Bruce Tift, who's a Buddhist psychotherapist.

We published a book with him called Already Free, and he talks about how there is both a fruitional spiritual vision and the developmental work of psychotherapy and how these two approaches can coexist without any hope of resolution.

You can alternate between working between these two different ways of working with yourself and growing without any hope that they'll ever come together in a coherent model.

And I remember sharing with him, well, what about the diamond approach?

And there are other people that have these coherent models.

And he's like, maybe, maybe, maybe not.

Maybe it's an alternation, Tammy.

And here I am, the kind of person I've stayed open.

I don't know.

You know, Roger, in the beginning of our conversation, you said whatever it is we can discover is far beyond our capacity to imagine what it is right now.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm just talking to you all straight from the truth of me.

What I do know, and this is the deep respect I have for quote, unquote goodness, is that if our spiritual vision doesn't translate into treating ourselves and other people and the environment and the world well and building a just society, I'm not interested in it.

That's what I'm interested in.

I'm interested in something that goes all the way through.

That's what matters to me.

And the litmus test is always, to me, somebody's wake.

What's behind them, their behavior, the ripples of their life and how they've impacted others and the beauty and love and justice that lives in the wake of a person.

So I'm interested in that kind of wholeness.

And for me, it obviously requires both a lot of psychological work and a lot of spiritual insight.

And I'm very curious how they weave together into a comprehensive model.

And maybe they don't.

And Maybe it's a both.

And as so many things are, and they weave together partly.

And they have their separate dynamics and trajectories.

Yeah.

But I love that you're open to all possibilities and don't know is a magical word and magical phrase in life.

It undoes so many problems.

You can call that the title of my deep transformation podcast.

Tammy.

Don't know.

Simon.

There you go.

That's next.

Well, let me.

You feel to me pretty integrated, Tammy, that put all these things together and you are, you know, Jesus said, wherefore by the fruits you shall know them.

So you bring it together.

And just to me, impressive.

And Roger and I are basically rookies at doing this kind of thing.

We've been doing how long, Roger?

Three years doing these conversations and something like that.

And been doing it such a long time.

And it obviously has been a path for you and kept transforming you.

And you have this.

You have this passion and openness and beauty and love that comes through.

And I guess that would lead into a question after all of these years of doing sounds true.

And connection with all these extraordinary teachers, what's the current state of your practice?

What does Tammy Simon do now to just honor that universe within a better Tammy, if you will, and to be a channel of what you're obviously coming.

Through here at a certain point.

I'm going to answer your question, John, but I'm going to do it through this story I was recording with Sally Kempton, meditation teacher, and we had published a book with her meditation for the Love of It.

And she was talking about how this is what I discovered in the conversation that she teaches and approaches meditation and now taught meditation, bless her soul, Sally, differently to people before Kundalini awakening and then after Kundalini awakening.

And I just want to explain a little bit about how I understood this, which is before people have this sense of the inner shakti, or you could say inner teacher.

Or when I talked about that notion of integrity, that river of energy running inside the body that you can return to, that regular practice is so helpful in, in a type of disciplined way, because you're basically lost.

You don't have an inner resource that you can go to.

But afterwards, once that sense of, you know, there's lots of words for it.

I've said shakti, or the goddess inside, or an inner teacher, the one who knows once that's available to you and you can just sit and tune into it and it's like right there you have a resource.

And for me, what I discovered was that at a Certain point in my practice life, it didn't make sense to me and it felt forced to follow a kind of disciplined approach where I'm going to wake up at this time and do this meditation and check my body.

I did that for a long time and I went on a lot of intensive retreats and it felt natural and I felt called to it.

And then later in my life, I felt, oh, actually there's a resource inside of me and what I need to do right now in this moment, on the spot is sit and be with my internal intelligent nature and find out what's needed right now.

What's needed?

Oh, what's needed is I have to go talk to my wife about something because I think what I said earlier was very misleading and I need to go have that conversation.

Oh, what's needed is I need to lie down and take a nap.

Oh, I need to go for a walk.

I need to go to bed early tonight.

I need to write a long letter to somebody.

What's needed now?

And so my quote unquote, practice has become more of an on the spot.

What is needed now?

By tuning in and listening and then responding to what I hear.

Yeah, beautiful.

Yeah, It's a moment by moment, touching in and into oneself and into the moment and feeling what's called for and.

Yeah, very beautiful.

And that sometime in the discussions of wisdom that are going on now in the research community, there's the understanding, practical wisdom.

Well, more deep, far more deeply.

In the Confucian tradition, the definition of practical wisdom is in terms of.

Yeah, the idea of responding appropriately in each moment.

And there's a beautiful question, the Zen tradition, what is it the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are doing in each moment?

And the response is acting appropriately.

Anyway, I just wanted to reflect on what you said, Tammy.

I was very touched by that idea.

I mean, you not been a lazy person, let's say, as far as spiritual practice.

You put years into it, but you opened up that place, the wisdom voice.

Sometimes I call it, you know, where you can just.

Okay.

There's a lot of different traditions that talk about that, but I've experienced it at times, not always, but when you just have that sense of kind of, okay, that's it.

I know what I'm supposed to do now.

It's very clear.

And I know what I'm supposed to say to this person.

And I want to add in something which is being sensitive to the feedback of others in our environment as part of that process, because I find that the world is always Saying what's needed right now in terms of acting appropriately.

Well, what's needed, yes, there's the internal asking, but there's also simply paying attention to what is being said to us in our environment and being willing to pay attention.

I think the people we work with and our intimate partners and friends, they often have really important messages for us to attend to.

And when you listen to people that way, it opens up something in them.

They can sense it.

Most people anyway, you know, it just starts.

Some kind of field is created or some kind of flow is created and it's.

Yeah, if anything that we've learned, I think from this podcasting, talking with these amazing people, including yourself, is just to deeply listen, you know, and people can sense it when you're there, respectfully, just open.

You're not just closed down and trying to get your own ideas or control in the moment or something.

It's very, it's very transformative.

It's very, very important.

And I think part of the reason I wanted to emphasize that is when it's this notion of life being your teacher, like what does that actually mean?

Well, look around and the people closest to you and listen to them and life will be your teacher.

Yeah, yeah.

Particularly intimate partners.

That's as you implied before, that's the advanced yoga.

Yeah.

I've asked about people and ideas, but I'd also like to ask about movements.

You have be witnessed and nurtured people at the cutting edge of several kind of movements, one kind or another.

I.

I'd be intrigued to know there are fads and there short lived fads and there are longer, enduring, deeper, more beneficent movements.

I'd love to know if there are any that stand out for you as having been particularly striking or important and what are the qualities of those that enable them to both endure and contribute.

Well, as you're asking the question, I thought first of all of a movement we all have in common, which is the integral movement and what has allowed that to endure.

I think it pointed to something in our experience that had never been named quite so clearly.

That is very important to bring forward an I perspective, a we perspective and an external context, systems based perspective into any discussion.

And I think it has been enduring because it's inherent and we benefit from having it in our consciousness.

That's my experience of thinking in terms of I, we and then systems.

Interestingly, now I'm watching internal family systems become a movement in our time.

This is something Dick Schwartz is an author that we work with.

That sounds true and A couple years ago he mentioned, I think ifs could be a movement.

And I thought, huh, really?

I wonder.

And now I see so many people who are writing books incorporating ifs into their approach and referencing this notion of being self led in any given moment in our work, our relationships.

And what does that mean?

That quality of self or our essential nature or our Buddha nature?

There's lots of words for it.

And how this psychological approach of embracing all of our parts has become a movement in our time to help people outside of spiritual traditions, or maybe who have a crossover with spiritual traditions, appreciate this energy of being self led, being calm, confident, compassionate, curious, creative, courageous.

These are the words that Dick Schwartz offers in association with self.

Huh.

I never would have thought, but what a great movement.

And it's a terrific movement in our time, at a time when people are accepting, oh, there's this still untransformed part of me that's been hiding out.

Oh, I wonder what that is.

I need to find a way to embrace this exile inside myself so I don't ask my partner or other people to be taking care of this exiled energy.

So that's interesting to me.

And then a movement that I feel part of, and you both have pointed to it in this conversation, is a movement for business to be a force of positive contribution and a crucible for personal growth in the world.

So you could say conscious business or conscious capitalism.

And this is a movement that I find myself being a torch bearer and torchbearer being a word, traditional image that's used for a teacher within Tibetan Buddhism.

And I think I find myself being a torchbearer because I've spent four decades having a foot deeply in spiritual practice and the spiritual journey and in the world of business and organizational life.

And seeing that there's absolutely no reason that our businesses can't be not just a terrific place for spiritual practice, but the way we give our gifts to other people.

And then your business is beloved and you have a sense of fulfillment working in such a company.

So that's also a movement.

You could say the conscious business movement.

So those are the ones that occur to me at the moment.

Roger, to underline.

Yeah, beautiful.

And the question that comes to mind immediately is, okay, may the movement be successful.

And what strikes me in your work is how much your business is a reflection of you.

As organizations in general tend to be a reflection of the instantiation of the personality of the person who at the top.

But in this particular case, your ideals, your practice have been the frame and guiding light for your company.

And unfortunately, most companies, the primary motive seems to be profit.

And, you know, it's understandable.

And so how do you see beyond being example?

Well, a couple things.

First of all, I think really, companies that are beloved brands and successful long term, their primary motivation, I don't think, is profit in many instances, because profit is an outgrowth of doing inspired things that genuinely serve people's real needs and pleasing and delighting and surprising them and anticipating needs they didn't even know they had and solving those issues for your customers.

And then profit comes down the line.

But if you just go for money, I mean, what I mean, that's not a recipe for success at all.

A recipe for success is to really connect and deliver value to someone.

And when that happens, oh, there you go.

And then value comes back from value being delivered.

And then in terms of my founding role, it sounds true.

A year and a half ago, I passed the CEO baton.

I am no longer the CEO of the company.

I'm also no longer the publisher at the company.

Two people who have worked at the company for quite a long time were promoted into those roles.

People who embody the heart commitments of the business.

In some ways, the person who's now the CEO, I think, is better suited to the complexities of running the company in its current size and with the media business challenges we face right now.

And so I think as the founder, I set the core DNA.

But then other people have come in who have a deep resonance and are embodying its expression in their own way.

Beautiful, hugely important, important part of inspired leadership.

Knowing when it's time to do that, to turn it over.

And you can say that President Biden did that.

You know, he's just like, okay, they're right.

I'm getting too old to be president.

And, you know, give this huge thing to give up.

You know, when you've struggled in your whole political career to give up power, it's really.

It's really remarkable.

So, yeah, a lot of respect for that.

And I had one last question for you.

We've been going on for a long time.

Has there been anything in your years of this path and starting out with your little tape recorder, cassette recorder, talking to, you know, these inspired teachers and whatnot, what was the biggest challenge?

What was the darkest time?

When you write, maybe this is not the right thing, or I'm not the right person, or was there a time like that?

Sure.

The darkest times, and I'm going to say that plural, have been when sounds true, has been under extreme economic pressure and that has happened several times throughout the company's growth and development, some from errors that we made in making investments in product lines that didn't turned out some.

In 2008, our sales went from 20 million a year to 13 million the next year.

Whoa.

And that had to do with the Great Recession at the time and the Borders bookstore chain closing, which was one of our biggest accounts.

So I think when the company has gone through economic hardship and has resulted in employees being laid off, that has happened for.

Sounds true.

Post pandemic.

We grew a lot during the pandemic, when there was a lot of increased demand in our offerings, especially our offerings online and also our nonfiction books.

And when the pandemic eased up in 2022, that demand fell off a cliff, and we had to shift the size of our staff in order to come into alignment with our sales.

And that's really, really hard.

And yet we didn't know of any other way forward to protect the business, to be a flourishing entity than to make reductions in staff.

So that's really, really, really hard.

Yeah.

I wanted to add on to that one thing.

I'm a CEO of a much smaller company, but I feel, you know, a deep responsibility for the people that work for us, like I almost would Family.

They become that close.

And sometimes that keeps me going when I don't want to do it, because these people are relying on me for their income and for the work that we're doing together.

And that may be a strength and a weakness.

How do you deal with that part of it and being able to make those hard decisions.

But the love and the responsibility you feel for the people that have been part of the journey with you, the.

Thing I always feel is that what I owe people is the truth and navigating together in partnership to the best of our ability.

I can't guarantee anyone, you know, lifetime employment or anything like that.

That's not possible.

I can't be relied on for that.

What I can be relied on is to be a warm, empathetic truth teller.

And that won't figure this out together to the best of our abilities.

Beautiful.

Tammy, as we come to the end here, is there anything you'd like to add?

I noticed that when we talked about idealization on the spiritual journey, I was really happy for that part of our discussion and that I never want to be idealized in any way by people, for example, who are listening right now.

I've wanted to be true, and I continue to want to be true.

And the little audio program I made for hours of teachings was under the title Being True.

And I set up a little company here in Canada, where I live now, and I called it Being True Productions as part of my Canadian business life.

There was a requirement for me to do that.

My emphasis here, though, is what does it mean to be true?

That's what matters to me as a person.

That's where I find my integrity.

And there's not an idealization in that.

There is a.

Just a return to.

Yeah.

To that journey.

So that's what I.

I guess the note I wanted to end on.

Well, thank you very much.

This has been, as John and I anticipate, the beautiful discussion and a.

Yeah.

Just a gift.

So thank you very much for all the gifts you've given over so many years and the work you've done on yourself and the work you've enabled the rest of us to do.

So a deep thank you.

Yeah, you've been.

You've been a revelation, Tammy.

Thank you.

I knew some about you and all this thing, but.

But there's just.

Anyway, there's a lot of treasure and wisdom and honesty that comes through very clearly in what you say, and you don't find that every day.

So thank you for being.

I don't know, in integrity with yourself and your path.

It's helped us a lot.

So thank you.

Thank you both.

Friends.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation.

We hope that you were moved, as we are moved, being part of it ourselves.

We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself.

It comes out of our pockets.

So if you would like to help us to.

Mainly to get this podcast out to more people, because the bigger audience have.

Which is steadily growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do, the more positive effect we can have on the world.

So we've done that a couple of ways.

But we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee.

Very simple.

And I do that with podcasts that I support, and I find it's very satisfying.

So thank you for your help.

Thank you for your presence, and thank you for all you are and all you do.

We love.