David Brooks: Perception Is an Act of Creation
Sounds True: Insights at the Edge
Tami Simon
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Tami Simon speaks with celebrated New York Times columnist David Brooks about his transformative journey from cerebral detachment to emotional awakening. They explore how a mystical subway experience forever altered his vision, the difference between diminishers and illuminators, and why perceiving souls—not just molecules—is essential to truly knowing another person.
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Sounds True Podcast Network. |
| 0:07.1 | Not only is the universe not cold and lifeless or meaningless, |
| 0:12.0 | but it's moral that there is a moral order to the universe that holds us all. |
| 0:16.1 | All human beings, as far as I know, long for belonging. |
| 0:20.0 | They long for respect. They long for belonging. They long for respect. |
| 0:21.7 | They long for pleasure. |
| 0:23.3 | They long for meaning. |
| 0:25.0 | And these are the yearnings of the soul. |
| 0:27.2 | And they are woven into our nature because they are present in the universe. |
| 0:33.7 | Welcome, friends. |
| 0:35.1 | In this episode of Insights at the Edge, I'm so pleased to say that David Brooks is our guest. |
| 0:41.9 | David Brooks is a well-known Canadian-born American author and commentator. |
| 0:47.6 | He's been writing an op-ed column for the New York Times since 2003 and is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and appears regularly on the |
| 0:58.6 | PBS News Hour. He's the author of several bestselling books, including The Road to Character, |
| 1:06.0 | the Second Mountain, and most recently how to know a person, the art of seeing others deeply and being seen. |
| 1:15.6 | Friends, stay with us. |
| 1:23.1 | David, welcome. |
| 1:25.1 | Pleasure to be with you. |
| 1:26.3 | I'm sitting down with how to know a person, and I will share honestly that I had never |
| 1:31.8 | sat down with one of your books before. And the first thing that happened for me is I was |
| 1:38.4 | just stunned by how enjoyable it was to read how to know a person. So that was the first observation I had. |
| 1:46.8 | Then the second observation, which is where I want to start our conversation, is I felt this sense |
... |
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