Self Meditated

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

What Is Love? A Non-Dual View of Relationships

What is love, really? Is it an emotion, an attachment, a need to be needed — or is there something much deeper at the heart of it?

In this episode, we explore love through the lens of Advaita Vedanta and non-dual philosophy, looking beyond romantic relationships to the relationship between love, consciousness and the nature of who we are.

Why do we look to other people to make us feel whole? What's the difference between love and attachment? Can we love someone without possessing them, accept them without approving of everything they do, or set boundaries without hatred?

Drawing on the wisdom of the Upanishads, we explore the relationship between Brahman, Ātman and Īśvara, and how Bhakti Yoga (the path of devotion) and Karma Yoga (the yoga of action) offer practical ways to bring love into everyday life.

We also consider what it means to understand love not simply as something we feel or receive, but as a way of seeing, relating and participating in the world.

Perhaps love isn't about finding someone to complete us. Perhaps it's about recognising something that was never missing in the first place.

A deeper exploration of love, attachment, self-knowledge, consciousness and what it means to live with greater compassion, clarity and connection.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

What can the recognition of death teach us about living?

In this conversation, Gianni and I explore death and impermanence through a Vedanta perspective. The inevitability of the body's death can initially seem confronting, but bringing this reality into awareness can also give life greater value, meaning and intimacy.

When we recognise that our experiences, relationships and even our bodies are temporary, the present moment becomes more precious. Impermanence can encourage a kind of loving presence—a deeper appreciation and engagement with the life that is actually happening now.

But Vedanta takes the enquiry further. Beneath the question of how do we deal with death? is a more fundamental question:

Who actually dies?

If the body is changing throughout our entire life, and eventually dies, what is it that we call "I"? What is the relationship between the changing body and the awareness in which that change is known?

Rather than offering simple answers, this episode uses death as an invitation to investigate identity, impermanence and the nature of our experience—and perhaps to discover that contemplating death can be one of the ways we learn how to live.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Why do we struggle to sustain the practices we know are good for us?

In this episode, we explore one of Patañjali's most important teachings: abhyāsa and vairāgya — consistent practice and non-attachment.

Patañjali presents these two principles as the means by which the fluctuations of the mind can be brought to stillness. But their relevance extends far beyond meditation. They offer a remarkably practical framework for developing habits, changing behaviour and approaching any meaningful long-term practice.

We explore what Patañjali actually means by abhyāsa, including his emphasis on practising over a long period of time, without interruption, and with satkāra — sincere, wholehearted care. We then turn to vairāgya and examine why genuine non-attachment isn't apathy or suppression, but a gradual freedom from the compulsive grasping that keeps the mind unsettled.

Along the way, we connect Patañjali's teaching with the Bhagavad Gītā, Karma Yoga, Buddhist practice and Advaita Vedānta, including the deeper distinction between practiced non-attachment and the spontaneous freedom that can arise through Self-knowledge.

At the centre of the episode is a simple metaphor: the gardener.

Abhyāsa is the watering. Vairāgya is stepping back.

We tend to the practice consistently, while releasing our demand that the fruits appear according to our preferred timeline.

A conversation about meditation, discipline, patience, neuroplasticity, yoga philosophy and the surprisingly profound art of simply continuing.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Have you ever just known something without being able to explain how you knew it? A person walks into a room and you immediately sense something is off. You have a feeling about a decision before you've consciously worked it out. An answer suddenly appears when you've stopped trying to find it. We call this intuition.

But what actually is it?

And perhaps even more importantly:

How do we know whether something is intuition — or simply fear, desire, conditioning, projection or a thought we've made up?

In this episode, Nicky explores intuition through the philosophical frameworks of Yoga, Sāṃkhya, Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism, while keeping the question grounded in ordinary human experience.

We look at:

-What we actually mean by "intuition"

-The Latin origins of the word intuition

-Buddhi and its relationship to discernment and intuitive knowing

-Why intuition isn't necessarily the same thing as a strong feeling

-How fear, desire and projection can masquerade as intuition

-The distinction between noticing and interpreting

-Viveka, or discriminative discernment

-How meditation and prāṇāyāma may refine our capacity to perceive

-Why ethical living and reducing internal contradiction matter

-Patañjali's fascinating concept of prātibha

-The relationship between prātibha and the extraordinary forms of knowledge described in the Yoga Sūtras

-Why Patañjali also warns that siddhis can become obstacles to samādhi

-How Advaita Vedānta reframes intuition as something occurring within the mind rather than something produced by Ātman

And ultimately, the deeper question: who is aware of intuition itself?

One of the key ideas in the episode is that intuition may not need to be created so much as uncovered.

The quieter and clearer the mind becomes, the less we may interfere with what we're actually perceiving. But that doesn't mean blindly trusting every feeling. A mature relationship with intuition requires practice, discrimination and humility.

A simple practice from the episode:

Notice → Pause → Discriminate → Verify

Notice what arises. Pause before creating a story around it. Discriminate between what you actually know and what you're adding.

Then, where possible, let reality test your perception. Perhaps intuition isn't primarily about knowing the future. Perhaps it is about becoming sufficiently present to recognise what is happening now.

References:

Patañjali — Yoga Sūtras

3.33 — prātibhād vā sarvam

Often translated in terms of intuitive or spontaneous knowledge: "or, through prātibha, all [knowledge]."

3.37 — te samādhāv upasargā vyutthāne siddhayaḥ

The extraordinary capacities associated with this process are described as obstacles to samādhi, while functioning as powers in the ordinary outward state.

On the word "intuition"

From Latin intueri — "to look at, consider" — with intuition originally carrying senses of direct or immediate cognition and spiritual perception.

Further exploration:

Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, especially the Samādhi Pāda, Sādhana Pāda and Vibhūti Pāda, alongside the commentarial traditions of Vyāsa and later Yoga commentators.

For Advaita Vedānta, useful concepts to explore alongside this episode are buddhi, antaḥkaraṇa, vṛtti, viveka, sākṣin and Ātman.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

What is time?

We all experience it, organise our lives around it, and watch it pass, but what exactly is it? In this episode, I explore the strange and surprisingly slippery nature of time through the lens of philosophy, yoga and modern physics.

Beginning with a simple film-reel analogy, we look at Jiddu Krishnamurti’s provocative statement that “time is thought”, and the distinction between chronological time and the psychological time created by memory, anticipation and our constant sense of becoming.

From there, we explore Advaita Vedanta and māyā, the timeless nature of awareness, Brahman and Ātman, before moving into Kashmir Śaivism, Buddhism, the ancient Greeks, Augustine and the fascinating implications of Einstein’s relativity, the block universe and entropy.

But this isn't simply an intellectual investigation. The real question is: what does any of this have to do with how we actually live?

What happens when we stop measuring this moment against the imagined next one? What if the sense that we are constantly behind, becoming, fixing or searching is itself something constructed by thought?

Perhaps the clock can keep ticking while something much more fundamental in us remains completely still.

A philosophical exploration of time, consciousness, thought, awareness and the possibility that what we fundamentally are has never actually been moving through time at all.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

• The Ending of Time — J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm (their extended dialogues on this exact subject)
• Freedom from the Known — J. Krishnamurti (the clearest short introduction to his teaching)
• Confessions, Book XI — Augustine of Hippo (his meditation on the nature of time)
• The Order of Time — Carlo Rovelli (accessible, poetic, rigorous contemporary physics)
• The End of Time — Julian Barbour (the more radical physics position — time as fundamentally non-existent)
• The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11 — trans. Barbara Stoler Miller or Georg Feuerstein (Krishna's cosmic form and "I am time")
• The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle (an accessible, contemporary voice covering closely related ground)
• Swami Sarvapriyananda — YouTube, Vedanta Society of New York (for the Vedantic treatment of kala and maya)

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In this conversation with my friend and fellow yoga teacher Gianni, we explore one of the biggest - and perhaps most impossible - questions: God.

Rather than trying to arrive at a fixed definition, we approach the subject personally and openly, sharing our own experiences, questions and perspectives. We explore how different Vedic traditions, particularly Advaita Vedanta, approach the idea of God, Īśvara, consciousness and the nature of reality and what these ideas might actually mean in the context of everyday life.

There’s no attempt here to convince anyone of a particular belief. If anything, the conversation explores why something so fundamental may be impossible to define, while still being something we can point towards, contemplate and perhaps experience for ourselves.

A philosophical, personal and at times wonderfully open-ended conversation about God, reality, consciousness, and what it means to live with these questions rather than necessarily having all the answers.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The Kalās — Why the Arts Are Vital

What if creativity isn't something separate from spiritual practice, but one of the ways we become more fully human?

In this episode of the Self Meditated Podcast, we explore the kalās — the traditional sixty-four arts of classical India — and what this fascinating list reveals about the relationship between creativity, culture, embodiment and spiritual development.

From singing, dancing, painting and poetry to cooking, flower arranging, architecture, language, memory, logic and play, the kalās encompassed far more than what we would traditionally call “art”. They represented a broad curriculum for cultivating attention, sensitivity, skill, discernment and human expression.

We explore why these practices were valued within the Indian tradition, how Tantra, Bhakti, Yoga and Vedanta approached the arts differently, and why the traditional list ultimately culminates in līlā — refined play — and ātma-vidyā, knowledge of the Self.

The episode also considers what we may be losing in an age of constant consumption and increasingly powerful generative technology. If the value of creativity isn't simply in the thing we make, but in what the act of making does to us, what happens when we outsource the making entirely?

Perhaps the ancient understanding of the kalās offers a useful reminder: the practice was never just about producing something beautiful. It was about refining the person who creates it.

This is a conversation about art, spirituality, technology, embodiment, human connection and why making something — even badly — might be far more important than we realise.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

• Kamasutra — Vatsyayana (the most famous source for the traditional list of 64 kalas)
• Natyashastra — attributed to Bharata Muni (foundational text on dance, drama, and aesthetics)
• Tantra Illuminated — Christopher Wallis (for context on Abhinavagupta and rasa theory)
• The Aesthetic Experience According to Abhinavagupta — Raniero Gnoli

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

What does it actually mean to live according to your dharma?

In this episode of the Self Meditated Podcast, we explore one of the most important and often misunderstood concepts in the Indian philosophical tradition. Dharma is frequently reduced to “purpose” or “life path”, but its meaning is far richer: from ṛta, the cosmic order underlying existence, through universal ethics and social responsibility, to the deeply personal idea of svadharma — our own particular way of participating in that order.

We explore the different dimensions of dharma, including Sanātana Dharma, Sādhāraṇa Dharma, Viśeṣa Dharma, Varṇāśrama Dharma and Svadharma, before turning to the Bhagavad Gītā and Krishna's teaching that it is better to live one's own dharma imperfectly than to perfectly live another's.

The episode also looks at dharma through the lenses of Patañjali's Yoga, Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta, and explores how ethics, karma yoga and self-knowledge intersect. Most importantly, we bring the idea back into everyday life: how do we recognise when we're living in alignment, and how might we begin to distinguish our genuine nature from conditioning, expectation and social pressure?

Perhaps dharma isn't a destination to discover, but a continual process of tuning ourselves to what life is asking of us.

As the episode explores: the signal is already playing. The work is to tune in.

KEY TEXTS REFERENCED

* Bhagavad Gita 3.35 — the svadharma verse

* Bhagavad Gita 3.19 — "You have the right to perform your actions but not to the fruits"

* Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 2.30-2.32 — the Yamas and Niyamas

* Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta — the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path

* Rigveda — the concept of rita as cosmic order

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

* The Bhagavad Gita — trans. Barbara Stoler Miller or Georg Feuerstein

* The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali — Edwin Bryant translation

* Dharma — Swami Dayananda Saraswati (the most precise traditional treatment)

* The Seat of the Soul — Gary Zukav (accessible Western treatment of karma and dharma)

* Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl (on purpose and meaning as moral orientation)

* What the Buddha Taught — Walpola Rahula

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

What Is Consciousness?

There is something more familiar to you than your own face — something present in absolutely every experience you've ever had — and you've probably never once looked directly at it.

This is the most accessible episode in the entire series, built specifically for anyone who's never considered this question before, including listeners who think consciousness is either a complicated neuroscience term or a vague spiritual idea. No prior knowledge assumed. Every term explained as it arrives.

Using simple, everyday examples — a phone, a torch in a dark room, a cinema screen — this episode walks through what consciousness actually is, why it's not the same thing as the mind, why it can never be found as an object no matter how carefully you search for it, and what deep sleep reveals about awareness being present even when the mind has gone completely quiet. It also takes on the most common objection directly: if nothing is experienced outside of awareness, does that mean a tree in an empty forest doesn't exist? And it closes with a simple, direct instruction you can actually try, right there, in the moment of listening.

Simple on the surface. Genuinely profound underneath. Start here if this is all new to you.

In this episode:

• The most basic, undeniable fact of your existence, demonstrated step by step
• Why consciousness is not the same thing as the mind
• The torch analogy — why consciousness illuminates everything but is never itself seen as an object
• What deep sleep reveals about awareness existing prior to the mind
• The tree-in-the-forest objection, addressed honestly
• The cinema screen — the central image of the whole episode
• Consciousness as existence itself: Sat-Chit-Ananda in completely plain language
• The mind as consciousness, localised — explained through a simple sunlight analogy
• A direct, guided moment to investigate this for yourself, live

References and further reading:

• Swami Sarvapriyananda — YouTube, Vedanta Society of New York (the specific video referenced in this episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n6NvDpcwLM
• The Nature of Consciousness — Rupert Spira
• Being Aware of Being Aware — Rupert Spira
• I Am That — Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Who Am I? — Ramana Maharshi

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Nicky and Gianni sit down and talk about Patanjali's 5 afflictions of the mind: the ways in which the mind deludes itself away from realising its true identity. This is a fascinating conversation that delves in the many ways we can work psychologically with ourselves to increase a self-knowledge and how to interact with the world with more ease, peace and love.