A peacock once sat outside an upstairs window at Sounds True, peering in the glass, causing all the employees first to wonder where it came from and then begin to question the spiritual significance of the bird’s appearance, asking what it might mean for us as a company. More than superstition, many of us have learned from the number-one authority on understanding and connecting with animal spirits. It is with great sadness that we now mourn the passing of author Ted Andrews, internationally recognized author, teacher, mystic, and master storyteller in the shamanic tradition.  He died on Saturday, October 24, 2009, due to complications from cancer.

In 2007, Sounds True published a 3-CD audio workshop by Ted Andrews, Animal-Speak: Understanding Animal Messengers, Totems, and Signs, filled with teaching stories collected from Andrews’ three decades of presenting this material to students across the globe. Listen to his voice on a sound clip here:  http://bit.ly/2T3OEw

“Ted was truly a mystic who understood the heart of all faiths.” said Anthony Dalessandro, Sounds True national account manager.

Andrews was the author of over 35 books, including the best-selling classics Animal-Speak (Llewellyn, 1993) and Animal Wise (Dragonhawk, 1999). A highly acclaimed speaker and teacher, he conducted sold-out seminars throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Michael Moore’s newest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story – which opens in theaters nationwide today – spotlights what Moore calls “the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans.” Jeff Klein, author of Working for Good: Making a Difference While Making a Living, offers a  contrasting, more hopeful perspective with his latest op-ed (written for the December 2009 issue of ICOSA Magazine – which the editors kindly allowed Jeff to preview on his blog).

Capitalism: A Love Story – The Missing Chapter
by Jeff Klein

True to form, in his new documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, director Michael Moore amplifies the lies, abuses, and manipulations underlying the recent and ongoing financial crisis. In some ways appropriately, Moore points accusing fingers at Wall Street titans and their well-placed allies in government. We can recognize and perhaps celebrate the role of connection and collaboration in facilitating the bail out of the finance, auto, and other related industries.

But there is a chapter missing from Michael Moore’s story, which reveals a very different conclusion and inspires optimism and engagement, rather than pessimism and despair. This new chapter in the story of Capitalism reflects a distinctly different kind of connection and collaboration. Read the rest of Jeff’s blog here….

Go to the Press Kit for Working for Good: Making a Difference While Making a Living

Anyone can fall prey to spiritually transmitted diseases. When our spiritual immune system is weak, which is inevitable in a culture in which spiritual discernment is not taught, we are likely to be infected with one or more of these at any given time.

In her new book, Eyes Wide Open Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (Sounds True, October 2009), Mariana Caplan supports us in recognizing these “diseases” and cultivating the acute judgment and discrimination that will help us to live a spiritual life with intelligence, clarity, and authenticity.

Here are the 10 most common spiritually transmitted diseases (Read a free chapter of Eyes Wide Open to learn more.):

1. Fast-Food Spirituality
2. Faux Spirituality
3. Confused Motivations
4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences
5. The Spiritualized Ego
6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers
7. Spiritual Pride
8. Group Mind
9. The Chosen-People Complex
10. Survival of Ego Based on the Illusion of Separation+ The Deadly Virus: “I Have Arrived”

Spiritual dis-ease is not “bad”; it is simply a broken thread in the greater fabric of our deeper possibilities and potentials. The greatest protection we have against contracting spiritually transmitted disease is the capacity for spiritual discernment, known in Sanskrit as viveka khyātir, or “the crown of wisdom.”

“Once we decide to take responsibility for our own attitude—for its continued development, maintenance, and growth,” says author Mariana Caplan, “We have begun a process of internal work.”

Developing a healthy mental posture is both the prerequisite for developing discernment on the spiritual path and a fruition of our labors. It cannot be overstated how essential the cultivation of attitude is to having a successful journey on the spiritual path.

To change our attitude deeply enough that it will last a lifetime is not an easy—or quick—task, but what is more worth doing? According to yogic philosophy, our attitude must be assiduously cultivated.

Twelve attitudes can strengthen our discernment and help us travel the spiritual path with greater clarity and less confusion:

1. Sincerity of Intention
2. Compassion
3. Vulnerability and Openness
4. Patience
5. Equanimity
6. Responsiveness
7. Passion
8. Relaxation
9. Contentment
10. A Sense of Humor
11. Wonder and Openness to Magic
12. Humility

Not everyone is capable of cultivating and expressing all twelve of these attitudes. Even the great teachers are human and prone to moments of faithlessness and even desperation. However, much as the overall health of the body is a result of attending to and nourishing its various components, our overall attitude improves as we attend to certain aspects of our mental posture. It is the sincerity of our attention combined with intelligent and discerning efforts that is responsible for an overall healthy posture of the mind.

When we finally admit that there are things about ourselves we cannot see, there arises a possibility to begin to take responsibility for our lives and, in so doing, to open ourselves to more understanding, more heartbreak, more challenge, more expansion, and a greater ability to serve humanity in progressively deeper ways. Although we may have felt we were looking inward in years past—and we were to the degree that we were capable at the time—we turn more deeply inward than we ever have before. We let go of our previous knowledge and allow ourselves to be rebuilt into something greater.

About the Author

Mariana Caplan, PhD, received degrees in cultural anthropology, counseling psychology, and contemporary spirituality. However, she attributes the majority of her education and inspiration to years of research and practice in the world’s great mystical traditions, and to living in villages in India, Central and South America, and Europe. She is a counselor, professor of yogic and transpersonal psychologies, and the author of seven books in the fields of psychology and spirituality, including Halfway Up the Mountain and To Touch is to Live (Hohm, 2002).  Earlier this year Mariana wrote and produced a play in San Francisco called Zen Boyfriends: What is the Sound of One Heart Breaking.  Mariana resides in the San Francisco Bay area and teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

More Resources

• Buy Eyes Wide Open at Sounds True.com
• Go to the online press kit for Eyes Wide Open:  http://bit.ly/C0hzB
• Visit Mariana’s website: www.realspirituality.com

A note from Sounds True Founder and Publisher, Tami Simon:
 
Dear Friend of Sounds True,

As stimulating as a recording or a book can be, there is nothing quite like learning in person from a spiritual teacher. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have as many opportunities as we would like for such direct contact.

Given this situation, it has long been a dream of mine to allow Sounds True listeners to have a live, interactive experience with their favorite authors—asking questions and communicating directly with both teachers and other participants—at a reasonable cost and without having to travel a long way. I am therefore thrilled to announce that Sounds True is launching our first four programs in an online format, with many more to come in 2010.

Here are brief descriptions, but please visit our website for much more about these courses:

• Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the bestselling author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, will offer a series launching on October 14, 2009 of six online events on Mother Night: Myths, Stories, and Teachings for Learning to See in the Dark.

• Beginning on October 6, 2009 pioneering psychiatrist in the field of neurobiology Dr. Dan Siegel will team up with meditation teacher Jack Kornfield to offer an online course for healing professionals on Mindfulness and the Brain. Please note that continuing education credits are also available for this online course for therapists, social workers, and other healing professionals.

• As we all know, it is one thing to talk about committing to a daily spiritual practice and another thing to actually follow through on that inspiration. To support people who are interested in developing a spiritual discipline, in January of 2010, Sounds True will launch two new in-depth online training programs—Centering Prayer with Trappist monk Father Thomas Keating, and Insight Meditation with the cofounders of the Insight Meditation Society, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg.

In recent days, I have heard more and more people talk about how beneficial it is to work in close community with like-minded allies, exchanging ideas and insights in order to thrive during the challenging times in which we live. With these new online events and courses, Sounds True is bringing our authors and listeners together for just such exchanges.

We hope you will join us

Tami Simon
Founder and Publisher, Sounds True

P.S. Check back often for future course offerings at soundstrue.com/courses

New Anthology DeMystifies Kundalini Energy
to Support and Catalyze Readers’ Awakening Experiences

“Kundalini” is a term you’ve likely heard for years – and perhaps even an experience you’ve consciously attempted to cultivate. But what does it really mean? For the first time, here is a comprehensive exploration featuring premier voices from the fields of kundalini yoga, integral psychology, spirituality, and neuroscience—as well as everyday practitioners who have experienced kundalini directly. This new anthology is Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening (Sounds True, September 2009). Visit the online press kit: http://bit.ly/9k2Ka.

“Here is the book I wish I’d had twenty-five years ago,” writes Sounds True founder and publisher Tami Simon, in the book’s introduction. “Gathered into one volume, Kundalini Rising comprises twenty-four essays on different aspects of the kundalini experience, including what transpersonal psychologists have to say about kundalini; understanding the yogic brain from a scientific perspective; the relationship between near-death experiences and kundalini awakening; understanding the relationship between kundalini energy and sexual energy; yogic exercises to catalyze the kundalini process; the role that kundalini awakening plays in the unfolding of our highest human potential; and more.”  Read Tami’s full introduction to Kundalini Rising.

Kundalini spiritual awakenings are a growing topic of online conversation, as well as scientific research by organizations such as the Kundalini Research Network and the Kundalini Research Institute. This anthology includes personal accounts and findings from those who have experienced kundalini, and those who are researching its effects on health.

Kundalini expert Bonnie Greenwell writes, “Kundalini energy, or the life force, may expand gently and quietly in some people, or move steadily, like an overflowing river bouncing up the chakras in others, bringing shifts in consciousness along with physical and psychic eruptions. But in a few people it explodes like a geyser, and they feel like they are blowing apart.”

As another contributor, Stuart Perrin, writes,  “Enlightenment is not just a matter of releasing dormant kundalini energy, because, when kundalini awakens, it could easily tip sanity’s balance…Enlightenment is a matter of building a chakra system capable of handling kundalini—a chakra system developed gradually over a long period of time—and an inner life that has a strong foundation and a quiet mind, an inner life that makes it possible for us to live every moment with an open heart. ”

Kundalini yoga is one of the fastest-growing yoga disciplines. It is a physical and meditative discipline within the tradition of yoga, associated with the subdivision of hatha yoga.

“We are moving into the Aquarian Age and nearing the awakening of a new era marked by the year 2012,” writes Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa in her chapter, Let Your Presence Work Through the Power of  Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. “An evolutionary leap is happening in much of humanity. I have been exploring this form of yoga for many years, and I have never before seen students changing, evolving, and having such profound experiences as I have of late. In all confidence, I can safely say that this evolution will pick up speed over the next few years.”

A companion product also being released by Sounds True is Kundalini Meditation Music, a compilation album with seven uniquely focused chants, mantras, and gong tones selected for their beneficial effect on relationships, prosperity, health, and more. Infused with the pure energy and bliss of artists steeped in the Kundalini tradition, this album weaves heartfelt vocals with ancient and modern instrumentation to create a vibrational bridge that connects your deepest dreams and aspirations to reality.  It includes a booklet with full lyrics and practice instructions.  Featured musicians include Snatam Kaur, Harijiwan Khalso, Guruganesha Sing, Joseph Michael Levy (Gurunam), and others.  Listen to a sound clip…