Sounds true

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.

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

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.”

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.

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.

Interview by EMILIE MOGENSEN