Love is the power podcast

Welcome back, Love Is The Power listeners! This week’s episode is a lively and profound group inquiry beginning with questioning the thoughts, “It’s serious,” and, “What I do matters.” From there, the line of inquiry brings to consciousness the need to be special, and Tom points out that eventually…the body dies. So with that awareness, he asks, what becomes important now? If your answer falls somewhere in the zone of “I just want to enjoy life now,” you’re going to love this episode. If your mind went somewhere else, feel free to bring it to this inquiry and experience the joy and power of the present moment.

This week we're bringing you another old favourite episode from the vault (November 2021!) as the Love Is The Power retreat last week meant no new recordings. Enjoy! We'll see you next week with a brand new episode. Have you ever considered that desire, lack, and fear might go together? For example, you believe something’s missing from your life (like a romantic relationship) and then you desire to fill that gap. Or, you desire to be with a partner and simultaneously fear rejection. Many of us have bought into the idea that the formula for bringing something into our experience is to identify lack and to desire what is evidently missing. But if lack and fear bookend desire, wouldn’t you rather choose a more effortless and natural way to live? Rather than playing the desire, fear, and lack game, what if you let people and relationships come and go as they may? Who would you be in this moment if you were completely free of desire?

Hey Love Is The Power friends! This week we're coming to you with an old favourite episode from all the way back in 2020: The cost of careful living. When we know who and what we are is good, we want to see our blind spots. We stop living carefully and live more honestly. Which pretty much guarantees that someone will be offended. To the mind, the path of unconditional peace can look like silence or being a "doormat." But is it? Luckily, there is only one way to find out. Join in this inquiry with a situation from your own life, or just enjoy the shares from participants.

This week’s episode explores an experience that’s probably familiar to a lot of people who practice self-inquiry or another spiritual practice. On any kind of ‘spiritual’ path, it’s easy to experience a lack – a desire for what you might call ‘enlightenment.’ We can hear about and understand the idea of oneness, that in reality nothing is separate, and want to know that for ourselves… sometimes to the point of causing a lot of stress in our day-to-day experience. What would it be like to drop that desire for a moment? Or to drop the idea that since we’ve done The Work so much, we should be okay with everything by now. If you can relate to any of these experiences of self-beratement in the name of ‘enlightenment,’ this episode is for you!

This week’s meditative contemplation begins with an invitation to notice what comes up internally in response to Byron Katie’s statement that just when you think it can’t get any better, it has to – it’s the law. You might notice the mind brings up every opposition possible. It seems so backwards, doesn’t it? On planet Earth we’re accustomed to thinking, “Well, it can always get worse,” and trying to prevent whatever that is. But could Katie be right? What if it really is the nature of the Universe that it can just get better and better, and as Tom puts it in this episode, when we struggle it’s because we’re attached to struggling? Sometimes when we question these long-held beliefs, a vague sense of lacking the authority to create our own reality through our powerful minds can surface. That’s why The Work is so powerful – you get to ask you what is true. Enjoy this beautiful flow of conversation and insight on living self-inquiry, led by Tom Compton as he begins another joyful lap around the sun.

This week’s episode is an inquiry into our concepts of time and space. We can be very devoted to our belief in time and space, to the point that we begin to see ourselves as dependent on it. The body may be subject to the rules of time and space, but is the body you? Or are you the awareness that the experience of the body is located in? That pure awareness, as Tom puts it, is the location for everything. An analogy for that pure awareness that we are is light; light has no texture, no substance. Objects can come into the light to be reflected and therefore experienced. We can often get caught up in identifying with the object being reflected in the light, but who we really are is the pure light – the pure awareness that has room for everything.

One beautiful aspect of working in a group setting like the Love Is The Power meditation calls is that one person’s brave and vulnerable share can create a whole ripple effect of profound awareness for everyone. That’s exactly what happens in this week’s episode when one inquirer’s childhood comes up to the surface and exposes the universal experience of wanting to be wanted. Whether by a parent, sibling, lover, boss, teacher, or anyone else the mind can come up with, that desire to be wanted is one that most of us can really struggle with. We all know that one specific way we imagine being wanted–how it would look and feel. In this episode Tom asks: Could you want yourself in exactly that way? If that feels hard to imagine, the invitation is to listen to this episode and follow along. Even if it feels easy to picture, this episode is rich with deep awareness for anyone wanting to step into a lighter experience of themselves.

This week’s episode is a deep dive into the world of body odour–actually, better said: it’s a deep dive into the world of doubting our goodness. You may be asking yourself, What does that have to do with B.O.? Well, have you ever sat next to someone with what you might have experienced as an unpleasant smell? Some people in the Love Is The Power inquiry group have, and many experienced the awkwardness of either telling the person and having them be hurt or offended, or suffering silently in fear of offending. And as the meditation gets deeper, what surfaces is the fear that who and what we are (as in humanity) is not truly good, and how it can make us so afraid of ‘causing’ someone else’s hurt. So, the question remains: what do you do if you’re experiencing someone’s behaviour (or odour) unpleasant? Follow along with the group inquiry to find out for yourself.

When we find ourselves in a process of self-inquiry, the way that our perspective shifts is truly miraculous. We see things differently. The people in our lives, the situations we’re in, the resources we have, and most of all, ourselves. In this experience of seeing life differently, one of the fears that the mind will often bring up is the fear of going ‘crazy’ or losing our minds. (It’s actually quite a literal fear: the ego-mind is afraid to not exist, thus the terrifying images of what it must look like to “lose” it.) This week’s group inquiry centers on this fear while also looking at the sidebar fear of being proclaimed “unacceptable.” Who would we be without even these stories? As Katie says, there is nothing so dark that we cannot put it on paper, question it, and set ourselves free.

In this week’s episode, Tom begins with an invitation to notice what comes up internally with the sentence, “I’m ready to be honest about my yeses and nos.” As in, I’m ready to notice what my genuine responses are and live them. Often when we hold onto giving a dishonest yes, it comes from the idea that by doing that, we’re making ourselves show up as kind, caring people. But what does it actually create when we really look? Does it help us show up in a genuinely kind way? Or does it create a breeding ground for resentment and miscommunication? What might it be like to live from a place of real integrity? And could it be that an experience of real integrity could come from self-inquiry? Join in and follow along to find out!

This week’s inquiry is on the thought, “I should be different.” As Tom puts it, none of us, as children, receive unconditional love, and right away we make that mean something about ourselves. Thus begins the steady march of this belief in our minds. “I should be different…” But rarely do we slow down to question a thought like this and notice what it truly gives us. We think it gives us the change we’re looking for – the showing up differently. But how do you actually react? What really happens when you believe this thought? It could be that it’s nothing more than an obstruction of vision, causing us to miss the amazing experience of being human. Find out for yourself by joining in with your own work – and your own ‘I should…”

Happy New Year to all the Love Is The Power listeners! We’re kicking off 2026 with an episode for anyone who’s ever looked at someone else and had the thought, “They have something I don’t have.” For those who walk the path of being some kind of seeker, it can be especially enticing to believe this thought in relation to someone who appears to ‘have’ enlightenment. Katie herself says she doesn’t know anything about enlightenment – she just knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop the mind with this belief, which is why this week’s line of inquiry is so profound. Welcome back – let’s do The Work.

In the world of the thought, “They could have done better,” we are not left with much compassion or ability to show up the way we’d (probably) like to in any given situation. That’s one of things participants noticed in this week’s inquiry facilitated by Tom, beginning with noticing someone who brings up a sense of unlovingness within. It doesn’t matter if we’re believing that the person in question who could have done better is someone else, a whole group of people, or ourselves. The result is the same. Stress. This week’s episode ends with an invitation from Tom into a turnaround for this thought: Just as an experiment, feel the opposite position – that no one, including myself, could ever have done better than we did. Listen to this week’s inquiry and join in to explore the world of this belief as well as experience your presence without it. 

What happens, how do you react when you believe the thought, “I know what is and isn’t possible in life"? What kind of life do you find yourself reading with this thought? What kind of Universe is it? Friendly or malicious? In this group meditation, participants question this belief among others and discover some profound things – including an ever-present fear of a ‘cosmic bitch slap.’ If you can relate, this week’s episode of Love Is The Power is for you.

On a podcast about self-inquiry, meditation, awakening and inner freedom, you don’t necessarily expect an episode about dogs – but here we are. This week, our furry friends are our teachers as one participant shares his frustrating situation: his city is threatening to crack down on unleashed dogs, but he wants his dog to be able to run. This work is rewarding on its own, but the cherry on top of the inquiry cake is that another participant whose own dog was once attacked by an unleashed dog is on the group meditation call as well, and the conversation brings up trauma for her. Join in this atmosphere of easygoing, good-humoured healing that The Work can so easily create – especially if you identify as someone with trauma – and question with us: Is it true that you need to hold onto trauma?

In last week’s episode, we looked at the tendency to hold things as problems. This week we’re adding to the exploration the tendency to believe “I have to do something with my life” and “There’s a destination I have to get to.” Some key questions in this episode are:Is it true in this moment that there’s a destination to get to? Or that we have to ‘do something’ with our lives or hold things as problems?What kind of experience of life do we give ourselves by believing those thoughts? What might an experience of life look like beyond these beliefs? Happy inquiring!

This week the Love Is The Power inquiry group looks at the habit of holding things (situations, people, the state of the world) as a problem. It’s such an insidious habit, it tends to fly under the radar for most of us until we check in. But when we consciously look at a situation that we’d like to be different, it’s easy to see the belief, “I have to hold this as a problem." We might think that if we hold it as a problem we’ll fix it better or faster, and if we don’t then the situation won’t change at all. But what does this thought actually create in our lives? Does it help us show up the way we’d like to? Or does it give us a harvest of fear?

This week, as Tom puts it, the trigger for self-realization could be a bathroom! In a playfully profound inquiry on money, the group questions the thought, “There is a right and wrong amount of money to have, and a right and wrong way to spend it.” One person’s share acts as a through-thread in the inquiry, pondering whether or not it’s wrong to want and pay for a bathroom renovation. It sure feels wrong when this is the thought running our financial lives. But, as Tom will often ask, is the feeling proof? Is the sense of wrongness surrounding the spending of money really proof that it is inherently wrong somehow? We noticed we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that we’ve seen a lot of people act like it’s true since we arrived on this planet. But what if they all learned to believe this story, just the same as we did? What would that mean about the nature of money? What if it’s nothing like we imagine it is?

Last week’s episode looked at the experience of innocence, and the belief that we, ourselves, are not that pure innocence. In this part two episode, we look at the fear that comes up when we aren’t believing that about ourselves or others. The fear of being a doormat. “Oh, if I just see everyone as innocent, I’ll just let them walk all over me.” Seems accurate enough, right? This position, though, gives us the role of constant self-preservation. When we’re afraid of being steamrolled, we have to approach life in a controlling, angry manner. Or as Tom puts it, we become the Jerk Police. We can’t just ask someone not to do something because that’s what we’d prefer, we have to make them wrong. We have to manipulate our perceived attackers – the jerks – with guilt or shame or anger. But what would life be like if we weren’t constantly giving ourselves this role? Pick a situation in your own life where someone is being a total jerk, and find out for yourself.

Notice a time when you’ve experienced innocence. (Tip: dogs, cats, babies and little kids are a good touchstone for this kind of experience.) What did it bring up within you? In this group inquiry, participants become aware of a sense of openness, levity, and joy, as well as a sense of wanting to protect and care for that innocence. And then Tom asks this question: Is it true that you are not that innocent? Can you absolutely know you are not innocent in that exact way? What is your experience of the world when you believe this of yourself and the rest of humanity? After joining in this inquiry, you might notice the next time you have that experience (whether it’s one of guilt, blame, self-condemnation, or any withholding of love) it’s easier to just say, “Oops, I did it again. I believed I’m not that innocent.”