Tami is the founder of multimedia platform Sounds True and the educational program The Inner MBA. Tami has grown Sounds True into North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings, operating on Integral principles.

thumbnail_Tami-Simon.jpg

Tami-Simon.jpg

Tami Simon

<h4>
 TAMI SIMON
 is the founder of multimedia platform, Sounds True, and the educational
 program, The Inner MBA. Tami has grown Sounds True into North
 America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings, and one of
 the world’s first organizations to operate along genuinely integral
 principles, with the emphasis on “multiple bottom lines” of purpose,
 profit, people, and planet.
</h4>

<h4
 id="h-in-part-3-of-this-interview-with-emilie-mogensen-of-the-heartfulness-institute-tami-speaks-about-bringing-transformation-through-business-somatic-spirituality-and-emotional-intelligence">
 In part 3 of this interview with
 EMILIE MOGENSEN
 of the Heartfulness Institute, Tami speaks about bringing transformation
 through business, somatic spirituality, and emotional
 intelligence.
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: Is business the place to change the world?



 TS: I don’t
 really buy into that. I know a lot of business people who say this, and you
 could make a case, because entrepreneurs are intensely innovative and have
 great potential when it comes to solving problems. Take, for example,
 climate change. We certainly can’t wait for the political bodies to solve
 anything, so the business sphere had better come up with some really
 creative solutions. I’m behind the case.



 But I deeply believe that whoever you are, wherever you are, in education, a
 police officer, or a medical person, that is your place for change.
 I happen to be a business person. I spend my days with teams to create new
 products with educational and transformational value.



 I want to transform the world. If each one of us took it upon ourselves to
 say, “This is where I walk, let me transform that, ”that’s powerful. The
 path of conscious evolution is about committing to our path.



 Q: I am inspired by your approach to somatic spirituality,
 “checking in
 with your body.” I come from a spiritual community and have practiced
 meditation for 27 years. God bless that. I have also experienced a lot of
 “spiritual bypassing,” both in myself and others. Sometimes the
 integration with the body is lacking. It’s new to me to dive so deep into
 this embodied spirituality, as we do in your program. Let me also link it
 to what you said about tricking each other’s shadow sides at work, and
 feelings being the language of the body, according to Dr. Joe Dispenza.
 Can you put some words on somatic spirituality?



 TS: First,
 thank you for asking. This is something really important to me. When people
 are first interested in a spiritual path they read a lot of books, and they
 have a lot of ideas, and that’s okay. But it’s not the depths that happen in
 our somatic experience. What I mean by “soma” is what you can sense and
 feel, not only in your physical body but also in your energy body, which
 surrounds your physical body.



 It’s the space around the heart where you feel in people what is actually
 going on. You can feel people who have a beautiful and open heart from 50
 feet away. They are so bright and vibrant and you just wanna hug them.



 Our belly is another energy center, and when the belly is open, that’s when
 you feel someone is really grounded. There’s something about that person
 that is like a mountain – a constancy. I love hiring people who have a very
 open belly center. It feels like they have a tap root into the Earth.



 We also have a head center. That is a big open space, which is unbelievably
 brilliant. That’s where ideas come that are not just a re-thread of
 something else you have read. You may read something in a spiritual book and
 it will take you somewhere, but when your physical sense of openness in the
 head center is there, then you’re getting downloads, streams of intuition,
 and light, and possibility, and you don’t even know where they come from.



 We do our spiritual practices with the awareness of our body and our subtle
 body, and we start tuning into them. The inner teacher opens up and becomes
 available. We no longer need to rely on books and teachings because we have
 an awake intelligent force within us. Grounded, openhearted, and original.
 We operate from an original place.



 A better phrase for “spiritual bypass” is “conceptual bypass,” because we’re
 invested in concepts rather than present-moment direct experience.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 class="text-center">
 We do our spiritual practices with the awareness of
 our body and
 our subtle body, and we start tuning into them. The inner
 teacher opens up and becomes available. We no longer need to rely on
 books and teachings because we have an awake intelligent force
 within us. Grounded, openhearted, and original. We operate
 from an original place.
</h4>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<img decoding="async" width="600" height="708" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/what_is_your_path_of_change2_9da793c079.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T13:23:22.212Z" />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: Please talk about your favorite quote from Herman
 Hesse.



 TS: It’s a
 quote that meant a lot to me in my young life. It’s from his book,
 Demian: “I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which
 came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?” In the 70s and 80s,
 being attracted to people of the same gender was something you kept to
 yourself. So, when I was a teenager, the promptings of my true heart weren’t
 welcome and didn’t fit into the rational. My family elevated the rational
 and was not as interested in intuition and emotions. That made me feel like
 an outsider. I have siblings, but I always felt outside, like I didn’t fit
 in.



 I didn’t fit into any of the conventional career paths. It was very
 difficult to live according to the promptings of my true heart. I’m wired in
 such a way that if I’m not true to this soul force inside then I can’t do
 it. Either I have to follow through and do the really difficult things or I
 will hang myself. As I won’t hang myself, I have to do the difficult things.
 It’s that intense for me.



 Q: Google defines “emotional intelligence” as “To be able
 to hold space
 for your own and other people’s emotions.” Your team at Sounds True is
 about 150 employees, so how do you practice emotional intelligence at team
 meetings when difficult and emotional situations occur?



 TS: We can all
 be skillful about our emotions, both in our intimate and professional lives.
 We can’t just puke all over people when we feel intense emotions, so we have
 to become processed enough to talk about our emotions and not
 necessarily from the emotion.



 We are holding a bigger space and the emotion is arising in it and holds
 information. It has intelligence, it’s a messenger, and it’s important. And
 if we can talk about it skillfully, without much charge, our emotional
 intelligence can bring awareness of the person we are speaking with. It’s
 really important to model ourselves with the people in the environment, and
 to translate as needed, to be well received, so that people can take in the
 intelligence of what we’re saying.



 For example, when you’re really angry about something, it’s almost always
 better not to say a lot. I have learned this lesson the hard way, like many
 people. It’s better to say, “I’m feeling really angry right now. I would
 like some time to sit with this, and I will get back to you when I feel more
 processed around it.” Then, when I’m more processed, I can say, “This anger
 arose because… It’s clear where I need to draw a boundary. I want to share
 with you what this boundary is, why it’s important to me, and what I am
 requesting for everyone here on the team.”


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<img decoding="async" width="600" height="708" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/what_is_your_path_of_change3_3f2b25c944.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T13:24:47.623Z" />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 class="text-center">
 It’s really important to model ourselves with the
 people in the
 environment, and to translate as needed, to be well received,
 so that people can take in the intelligence of what we’re
 saying.
</h4>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: What do you feel if I say “nothingness”? How can people
 in a world
 full of “something-ness” be interested in nothingness?



 TS: What I like
 about the word “nothingness” is that it can’t be pinned down. It can’t be
 created as a solid anything. I like the pure openness, like an explosion of
 pure potential and possibility. As soon as you have a reference to a
 “something,” it’s limited. “Nothing” feels unlimited. I can see that it
 might feel depressing or blank to some people, but I experience it as a
 burst of light when you say it.



 Q: Thank you from the heart, Tami. It was an honor and a
 dream come true
 to talk with you. Thank you so very much for your extraordinary work of
 disseminating spiritual wisdom into the modern world.



 TS: Thank you.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 class="text-center">Illustrations by LITTLEWHALE</h4>

<hr />

What is your path of change?

<h4>
 TAMI SIMON is
 the founder of multimedia platform, Sounds True, and the educational program
 The Inner MBA. Tami has grown Sounds True into North America’s
 leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings, and one of the world’s
 very first organizations to operate along genuinely integral principles,
 with the emphasis on “multiple bottom lines” of purpose, profit, people, and
 planet.
 
</h4>

<h4>
 In part 2 of an interview with
 EMILIE MOGENSEN, she speaks about the competitive
 instinct, celebrating the successes of
 others through the practice of sympathetic joy, and what it means to be
 human.
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: You talked about your competitive side in another
 interview. It
 resonated with me in terms of entrepreneurship, as we are often rather
 competitive people by nature. When you are a spiritual seeker and you are
 running a rather big business in the USA, having to look out for competing
 companies I assume, is there a conflict here?



 TS: Well, I want
 to be 100% truthful with you, Emilie. I think this is a growing edge for me. I
 am not there yet. I’m in the middle of working this whole thing out myself.
 One thing I know is that there is a healthy and an unhealthy side to
 competitiveness in me. The healthy side pushes me to constantly innovate, to
 go for extreme excellence, to always be inventing, and always a step ahead.
 So, it’s a creative force and that’s good. I think the negative side is when I
 compare myself with other people. There is something about that which isn’t
 true, and it isn’t helpful. Everyone has a right to express their best.



 The Inner MBA program at Sounds True is a nine-month immersive
 training program. Lately, we added Spencer Sherman to our faculty, who teaches
 the inner mastery of money. It’s about bringing dharmic meditative
 principles together with the world of money.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <img decoding="async" width="250" height="250" alt=""
 class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/The_Inner_MBA_2_03db584bea.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T08:19:31.096Z"/>

 

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 I learned from him a practice rooted in Buddhism, which you can apply in
 business and as a competitive person. I noticed a huge transformation through
 this practice. It’s “sympathetic joy,” which is one of the heavenly abodes.
 You practice sympathetic joy when other people have terrific successes. When
 your business competitors have huge successes, a lot more money to work with,
 or they get a huge account; or when someone writes a New York Times Bestseller
 while you’re still working on your book; practice actually feeling their joy
 as if it were your own. You can take this even further and imagine their
 success becoming bigger! Imagine their face on the cover of a huge magazine,
 and so on.



 It always felt wrong when I was feeling the negative competitive side of
 myself. I was a spiritual practitioner but not wishing others well. It always
 felt fishy somehow, not coherent. I have a strong competitive side to my
 nature, so I wasn’t feeling very aligned within.



 When I started the sympathetic joy practice, I felt much freer. I was like,
 “OMG! That’s the antidote for me.” When I do it, I feel freer and more
 creative. I’m in my own creative flow, and also not operating at a low
 vibrational level of not wishing well for other people, which is against
 everything I stand for and believe.



 Q: I am a student at The Inner MBA. It’s a fantastic
 program. How
 did this co-creation between four organizations (Sounds True, Wisdom 2.0,
 LinkedIn, and Mindful NYU) come into the world?



 TS: I started
 seeing more and more businesses saying, “If we can get our employees to
 practice Mindfulness meditation, they will be less emotionally reactive, they
 will potentially have more innovative ideas, they will feel a sense of
 well-being at work, etc. This is wonderful.”


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <img decoding="async" width="450" height="473" alt=""
 class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/The_Inner_MBA_3_f44ff397ca.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T08:21:18.562Z" />
<hr />


<h4 class="text-center">
 I thought we needed a community, a program to help
 people
 become aware of this inner voice, speak to it, and have the
 courage to re-create the world of business, so it’s not a
 separate world from the values of their inner world.
</h4>


<hr />
 


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 As you start getting in touch with the inner realm, which we can call the
 soul’s voice, you get into a soul-liberating process. You might just do a
 simple breath practice, but before you know it, in the depth of your being,
 voices you haven’t heard for so long start speaking to you. When that happens,
 you need your worklife to be congruent with the values, the callings, and the
 creativity of your inner life. A lack of congruence makes you crazy until you
 address it.



 That’s why I thought we needed a community, a program to help people become
 aware of this inner voice, speak to it, and have the courage to re-create the
 world of business, so it’s not a separate world from the values of their inner
 world.



 One of the instructors of The Inner MBA is a woman named Lisa Lahey,
 who is a professor from Harvard. She says, “One of the things you need for
 success is a high level of challenge and a high level of support. You need
 people to talk to, affirmations, community.” So, we tried to create a program
 having both challenge and support.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <img decoding="async" width="315" height="500" alt=""
 class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/The_Inner_MBA_4_c02edd91a2.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T08:22:35.322Z" />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: I heard you talk about the “dominant culture” in another
 interview and
 it made me think about the massive shift we are in as a collective. I hope
 we all know what the dominant culture has done to our planet and to humans.
 How do you see and experience this evolutionary paradigm shift?



 TS: I think it’s
 a great turning point. Another word for dominant culture could be
 “conventional culture.” I think a lot of us buy into convention for good
 reasons. We want to be accepted, we want other people to like us, we want to
 survive and fit in. We don’t want to be “weirdos”, so we try to be successful
 in conventional terms. The conventional framework is so crushing, and we see
 the results in our society in so many forms, including environmental
 destruction. We see the output of that conventional worldview, and at some
 level, it’s not truly working for any of us. We may not have reasonable air
 quality in the future, so it’s not working unless you have a bubble with an
 oxygen tank inside to walk around in.



 There is an evolutionary pressure that we’re a part of. Some of us might be on
 the early adopter side of it, and some of us might be coming a little later,
 but we’re all getting there. We have to get there!



 This is a strong thing to say, but we’re one being. We are all life-breathing
 together, so we are all feeling this evolutionary impulse moving through us. I
 think one of the early discoveries we have on the spiritual path is that we’re
 a part of an interdependent web. It doesn’t take much meditation, or being
 silent for very long, and tuning into the space around you, to feel connected
 with people, with the whole world — the sun, the sky, and the earth. It
 doesn’t take a lot of meditation to sense that inner connection. It’s not a
 miraculous discovery that only a few great mystics have.



 This subtle sensing is available to all of us. We can feel an other person at
 the other side of the world, right when they are sending us an email. We have
 the capacity to be so tuned in to the interconnected web we are a part of. And
 when we get it inside ourselves, we don’t want to work in conventional
 structures that ignore that.



 To say it’s okay for me to gain when other people don’t have anything, that
 they are not part of this web, that they are separate and diﬀerent, and my
 gain can happen at their expense – you can’t work that way after having the
 experience that all life is breathing together. At least I can’t. To me that
 would be a type of cognitive dissonance that doesn’t feel sane. We have to
 reinvent our businesses and organizations in a way that is reflective of that
 deep inner bodily knowing of our interdependence. And we can do it!



 It’s honoring all the stakeholders – our customers, our investors, our
 employees. I would go so far as to say honoring the future. We hear about 7
 Generations, and we take it even further at Sounds True when I say honoring
 all the stakeholders – the ideas themselves! We honor the great wisdom
 traditions and their teachings as living beings.\


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <img decoding="async" width="250" height="233" alt=""
 class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/The_Inner_MBA_5_0c9de927ea.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T08:26:06.772Z" />




<hr />

<h4 class="text-center">
 The universe is always creating and expressing and
 growing in love, growing
 in expansion. And it’s going to come through you with the next, the
 next, and the next – the next way to bring more love to more
 people.
</h4>


<hr />
 


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: Beautiful! So, in terms of business and entrepreneurship,
 we should
 honor everything as stakeholders, not only the traditional shareholders who
 put financial capital into the business. What do you feel if I say spiritual
 capital?



 TS: Well, it’s
 our own inner unlimited strength, capacity, love, our soul’s voice. It’s who
 we are in our essence. Our Buddha nature, if you will, is the greatest set of
 capacities any of us possess. In fact, we don’t possess it; it’s something we
 are. And when we know that’s what we are, we have an unlimited amount of
 resiliency.



 People talk about being resilient, but when you know in your soul who and what
 you are, you also know that you’re going to be given the next set of
 instructions you need. Of course! The universe is always creating and
 expressing and growing in love, growing in expansion. And it’s going to come
 through you with the next, the next, and the next – the next way to bring more
 love to more people. And you can rest in that and know that.



 Q: I love your interview with Michael Singer about living in a
 state of
 surrender. So, is that what we must bring into our businesses?



 TS: I hear in
 your question the idea of separating who we are in our personal space (someone
 who surrenders) and then being someone different when we are in the business
 world. When we are in the meditation retreat, we are one way, but in business,
 we will pick up these old conventional ways, the old mindset, because that’s
 business. I completely dispute that framework – this whole idea of two worlds.
 No, there is one world. It’s everywhere we are, this soul resource.
 Why would we make ourselves small and selfish at work – overly mental and
 strategic? Why would we do this when we have available to us this powerful
 creative soul force that is always expressing through us. Why not tap into
 that all the time?


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

To be continued.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 class="text-center" id="h-interview-by-emilie-mogensen">
 Interview by EMILIE MOGENSEN
</h4>

<hr />

The Inner MBA

<h4>
 TAMI SIMON is the founder of the multimedia
 platform, Sounds True, and the educational program, The Inner MBA. Tami has grown Sounds True
 into North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings, and one of the world’s first
 organizations to operate along genuinely integral principles, with the emphasis on “multiple bottom
 lines” of purpose, profit, people, and planet. 
</h4>



<h4>
 Here she speaks with EMILIE MOGENSEN about
 the origins of Sounds True, and her own journey of disseminating spiritual wisdom.
</h4>



<hr class="vertical-space1">



Q: I am a big fan of Tami and I have been listening to her
 soothing voice for hours and hours, in her extraordinary podcasts and interviews with various thought
 leaders and spiritual teachers from around the world. This is because Tami is the founder of Sounds
 True, one of the largest multimedia platforms in the field of consciousness. Tami is also the founder of
 the educational program, The Inner MBA, a collaboration between Sounds True, LinkedIn, Wisdom
 2.0, and Mindful NYU. A normal MBA is a Master’s in Business Administration, whereas The Inner
 MBA is about how to run a business from the inside out, in a conscious way.



I am truly grateful to have this opportunity to speak to Tami.
 As an entrepreneur and a student at The Inner MBA, it means a lot for my own personal journey.
 I start our conversation with a little co-creation. Inspired by the yogic wisdom traditions, I invite
 Tami to do a sankalpa. It’s a way of sending out an intention, a prayerful suggestion for how
 we want this meeting to unfold. Tami is all in! With our eyes closed, we hold space for the words and
 the energy, as I guide the sankalpa:




 We are creating a free and open environment, where we speak
 our inner truth and hold space for
 curiosity, unity, and connection. May
 this conversation benefit all of humanity and Mother Earth.




Welcome Tami and thank you for doing this. I would like to start
 with your very impressive journey as an entrepreneur, from the age of 21.



TS: First, let me thank you for starting us on that note
 of curiosity, openness, unity, service, and contribution.



Going back in time, I had left Swarthmore College and traditional academic studies. Although I had a great passion to
 learn, the kinds of things I was interested in learning about weren’t taught in a traditional academic setting,
 even in the religion department.



I was interested in direct knowing, and things like what happens when we die. Is there something truly deathless in
 us? I simply had to know the answer and I didn’t want to learn from the written words of others, as it’s
 something we all have to discover in our own experience.



So, I traveled for a year in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, and fell in love with the practice of meditation. In some
 way, I then devoted myself to introduce this and other contemplative practices to as many people as possible.
 Practices that are the roots to our own inner knowing and source connection. That was my devotion, but I didn’t
 know how to do it.



When I came back to the USA, my parents wanted me to get an academic degree; they said it would be my ticket to
 everything for the rest of my life.



Q: Do you come from an academic family?



TS: It was a reformed Jewish family that placed a great
 deal of emphasis on education. So, there I was, not inspired to get a traditional degree, but deeply inspired by
 the practice of meditation, lost as a 21-year-old. And at that point in my life, I started saying a prayer:
 “God, I am willing to do your work. Please show me what it is.”



Q: That touches my heart.



TS: I was willing without being willful or imposing my
 own agenda on how my life was going to unfold. But I was also not just like a puddle on the ground. I was
 willing, and God was going to show me my work and how it would happen. I said that prayer over and over.



Interestingly, we began this conversation saying a sankalpa, which is like a prayer of a certain kind,
 clarifying a positive statement.



At 21 I had given up my job in a Chinese restaurant, which I felt was meaningless, and my parents said they would not
 support me financially if I didn’t get a degree.



Q: Were you cool with this?



TS: Yes, I was cool with it, but they were not! I went on
 saying my prayer and waiting to see how my life would unfold.



At one stage, I wrote in my diary that I had failed and needed to get a regular job. That was the last entry in the
 diary before I got a call that my father had passed away from a fatal heart attack. It didn’t come as a
 surprise, as he had had a couple of heart attacks beforehand.



This was back in 1984, and I inherited 50,000 USD, which today would be the equivalent of a little more than 200,000
 USD. At the time, I was volunteering at the local radio station, interviewing spiritual teachers. One of the
 people I was interviewing had a Yin Yang symbol on his door with a dollar sign through the center of it. The
 words over it were “Transformational economy.”



Q: That was pretty progressive back in the 80s, right?




TS: Yes, he was an unusual man, and he also worked with
 crystals. I wanted to understand how he did that, if crystals were like living entities that he was programming
 in some way. I had no idea, I just wanted to talk to the wizard about crystals!



One time, when we were preparing for an interview we were going to do together, I told him I had inherited some money
 and asked him what I should do with it. I felt he was a good person to ask because he had the Yin Yang symbol
 with the dollar sign on it. He answered, “Why don’t you put it into yourself?”



I felt it was a good idea, except that I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself. He told me to come back after
 three days, and when I walked out of his oﬃce a very odd thing happened. I felt like I was walking a little bit
 above the ground, like my feet were not touching the ground, and it was very weird. Then I heard a voice in my
 head, “Disseminate spiritual wisdom.”



<hr class="vertical-space1">



<div class="block-image">
 <figure><img decoding="async" width="400" alt="" class="has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Sounds_true2_c1ea55366e.jpg">
 </figure>
</div>



<hr class="vertical-space1">



Q: So, you were hearing this while you were basically having an
 out of body experience?



TS: I don’t know if I was out of my body, but I didn’t
 feel like my feet were walking on the ground. It felt like I was walking on air.



Q: This is very profound. I need to repeat this: Disseminate
 spiritual wisdom. Was this your own voice, Tami?



TS: To this day, I don’t know. If I were to guess, I
 think there are diﬀerent kinds of intelligences that are always surrounding us – presences that have diﬀerent
 functions and interact in diﬀerent ways. As I had put this prayer out to the universe, conditions were all
 aligning for some kind of messenger intelligence to answer my question. I had sent out this prayer, I wanted to
 do God’s work, and I had inherited a certain amount of money. Here was a response: Disseminate spiritual wisdom.




So, then I started thinking about how I could do this. There was audio, video, and book. Audio seemed good, as I
 already had a radio show at the community radio station, and people liked the show.



I probably had the smallest cottage business in the history of the world associated with the radio show that I
 hosted. Each week, a handful of people asked for copies of cassette recordings of the interviews I was doing
 with spiritual teachers. So, I was making copies at home with my little cassette dubbing deck, where it took the
 time of the interview to copy. I sold the interviews on cassettes for ten dollars each.



I was starting to disseminate spiritual wisdom through audio. I was on my way!



Q: Wow, I love this, on cassettes! These spiritual teachers you
 were interviewing at that time, are they people we know now?



TS: Yes, they were people teaching in the mid 80s, like
 Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, Marion Woodman, and Clarissa Pinkola Estés.



Q: Those are impressive names! Were you a natural born
 interviewer, as I feel you are? Your voice is extremely capturing to listen to, which makes me think of
 one of my favorite spiritual books called Voice Real. It really resonates with me, this thing
 about voice and sound, and you also called your company Sounds True. Can you speak a little bit about
 this, please?



TS: There is a lot in your question. I think we are
 instruments as humans. Our body is the instrument and the voice is the expression of that instrument. It’s music
 that we are making. The more finely-tuned we are in our body, the more coherent we are, the more the energy
 centers in the body are open and aligned, the more beautiful the sound will be. And it doesn’t have to be a low
 resonance. Some of the most beautiful voices I know are very high and a diﬀerent kind of intuitive expression of
 the instrument. I have an openness in the grounded part of my being, an open belly and legs down into the Earth.
 The voice is an expression of our human instrument.



Now, in terms of being a natural interviewer, it’s interesting that from an early age I had a love for radio. In
 fifth grade, aged ten, I was a part of a special educational program. With a friend of mine, we built a radio
 out of cardboard and got inside to broadcast from inside that radio. Then, in high school I was on the
 basketball team. I had a natural competitive side and loved the competitive part of basketball. But I really
 looked up to the older members of the team and would often interview them on the bus after the game. I pretended
 that I had a microphone and asked them all sorts of questions. So, I think this was all in me.



Often I think about the world more in questions than in answers. Every time an answer comes, I have another question
 about that answer! It’s a drive in me, and I think all of that is native.



Now, to the last part of your question, about the name Sounds True. From an early age I could somehow tell when
 people were full of sh*t, and it always bothered me. People would come on a news station on TV, for instance,
 and I would say, “Don’t trust that person!” I could tell when people were fake or phony, somehow, putting up a
 mask and pretending something. I didn’t like it, and I would feel that the person should not be an authority.




On the other hand, when I was around adults who were coherent within themselves, and said things that were true, I
 could rely on them and it felt that the air in the room was clear. I loved the sound of people who sounded true.




So, this was an expression of something really important to me. If I was to learn from somebody, if they were to be
 an authority figure or a teacher, they had better sound true.



<hr class="vertical-space1">



<div class="block-image">
 <figure><img decoding="async" width="400" alt="" class="has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Sounds_true3_b2d750757b.jpg">
 </figure>
</div>



<hr class="vertical-space1">



Q: Was it a conscious decision, when you founded Sounds True as
 a 21-year-old, that the name of the company would express this value, or was it more intuitive?




TS: Well, first I had another name, and thank goodness it
 was never publicly promoted. [laughter]



Q: Will you share this initial name?



TS: “Crystal Sound.” I was interviewing this gentleman
 about crystals, as I mentioned, and I was a 21-year-old hippie girl who loved crystals. There was a purity to
 them; I felt they encoded information, and I wanted each cassette that we published to be as pure and as
 long-lasting and valuable for our customers as a crystal. When I went to register the name, there was a mobile
 DJ unit in Boulder called Crystal Sound, so I couldn’t use that name for the company. It was back to the drawing
 board. At one stage, I was writing a letter to a teacher of Buddhism with whom I had studied at college. As I
 was explaining to him what I wanted to do, and why I wanted to do it, the name “Sounds True” came out, and I was
 like, “That’s it!”



To be continued.



<hr class="vertical-space1">



<hr>



<h4 class="has-text-align-center">Interview by EMILIE MOGENSEN</h4>



<hr>