Holding Space; open up, fear less, love more

About Holding Space; open up, fear less, love more

Unscripted talks on healing how you see — recorded live, edited down to listen to. Tiger Singleton (Tigmonk) explores spirituality, non-duality, radical self-honesty, and the sacredness of life as a whole, without teaching from inside any one tradition. No guru, no dogma — just what looks beautiful and true about being human, one talk at a time. Open up. Fear less. Love more. tigmonk.substack.com (https://tigmonk.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Tiger Singleton (Tigmonk)

Category

religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 Dec 2021

Latest episode

7 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

136 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Sept 2026

   Letting Go of Control: From Arrogance to Humility

   In this session, I explored the difference between humility and arrogance — not as behaviors to perform, but as two fundamentally different ways of meeting Life. This video was taken from a live broadcast. See all recordings and join me live at Tigmonk.com/Community (http://tigmonk.com/Community). We looked at why humility follows naturally from seeing what is true, while arrogance grows from pretending to know, control, and take credit for what Life is doing. Here in Substack, we will write it out and explore it in a bit more depth. A quick note: this write-up is an AI-assisted — a best attempt at capturing the ideas and voice of the session in written form with AI trained on Tiger’s voice. Naturally, expect errors. Humility Is Not Something You Perform (00:00) We often approach spiritual virtues as things we need to manufacture. We ask how to be more loving, compassionate, patient, or humble — as if we can force ourselves into becoming a better person. But genuine virtue is not a performance. It flows naturally when we stop opposing what is true. “These are not things that you do. These are things that happen naturally as you see and align yourself with what is simply true.” Humility is honesty without the performance. * It acknowledges what is known and what is not known. * It removes the facade of pretending. * It does not require someone to look, sound, or act humble. * It emerges naturally through surrendering to the truth of Life. Arrogance moves in the opposite direction. It positions the separate self as the one who knows, controls, and makes Life happen. Taking Credit for What Life Is Doing (02:28) The more honestly I look at my work, the less credit I can take for it. The words come through me. Creativity moves through the artist. Even the breath that makes every other action possible is given. “If you can’t take credit for the breath that allows you to be, how then can you take credit for anything that comes after that?” Getting out of the way is not an accomplishment the separate self can claim. * The artist does not personally manufacture creativity. * The tree cannot take independent credit for producing an apple. * No person creates themselves separately from Life. * Spiritual expression is not proof that someone pressed the correct spiritual buttons. Arrogance says, “I did this. I created this. I made this happen.” Humility sees the whole universe involved in every apparent individual creation. The Illusion of Control (06:00) Sometimes it looks like we have control. Then five minutes later, something changes and that control disappears. This does not mean control was lost. It means the appearance of control was mistaken for something real. “If you have control now, but you don’t have control in five minutes from now, then you don’t really have control.” The fear of losing control begins with believing we had it. * A temporary result creates the appearance of personal control. * We cling to that appearance because it gives us security. * When Life changes, we assume something has gone wrong. * We blame ourselves for failing to maintain something we never possessed. Humility does not require becoming helpless or passive. It simply stops pretending that a separate self stands outside of Life and dominates what happens next. Judgment Proclaims Knowledge We Do Not Have (08:55) A tree’s fruit is not separate from the environment that produced it. Healthy soil, water, weather, neglect, and countless unseen conditions all contribute to what appears on its branches. Human beings are no different. Yet we look at someone’s behavior and judge them as though we can see the entire picture. “Because to judge proclaims you know something that you don’t really know.” Judgment is the claim that a limited perspective sees the whole. * Blame isolates the person from the conditions that shaped the behavior. * Condemnation pretends to know what someone fundamentally deserves. * Hatred toward another must first be carried within the person expressing it. * The same false certainty turns inward as guilt and self-condemnation. The invitation is not to stop judging because judgment is morally wrong. The invitation is to see its futility and recognize how completely it opposes reality. The Freedom of Not Knowing (11:00) Humility requires being at peace with the unknown. That is difficult because certainty appears to offer safety, even when the certainty is manufactured. An honest life admits the limits of its perspective. There is no lie to manage and no false certainty to protect. “When you’re honest, it opens you up to the mystery of what comes next.” Not knowing is not a failure. It is the truth of being human. * Words can point toward truth without containing it. * A perspective can be sincere without being ultimately correct. * Life can be lived as art rather than as a test of personal worth. * Painful consequences can be received as information instead of condemnation. Touching fire creates a burn. The burn is feedback. It does not proclaim that the person is fundamentally wrong or unworthy. Life is constantly giving us this kind of information. Arrogance turns the information into identity, guilt, and blame. Humility receives it and learns. Getting Out of the Way (20:30) Spiritual practice brings us back to what is here before the stories, judgments, and claims of separation. It invites us to stop hiding from Life and stop pushing away what already is. “To drop all the stories of separation, to drop all the pretending. And to truly be what is.” Humility gives Life back to Life. The world celebrates people who take credit because it reinforces the fantasy that the separate self can eventually become powerful enough to control everything. We place people on pedestals and secretly desire the same imagined dominance for ourselves. But there is no separate person standing outside the whole. * Life makes the tree possible. * Life is the lightning that strikes it. * Life is the person learning through both love and fear. * Life is the intelligence holding together what the mind cannot fully see. This is not something the entire world needs to understand. “It’s for the one who’s willing to see. And the one who’s willing to see, for them the world is transformed.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tigmonk.substack.com/subscribe (https://tigmonk.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   16 Aug 2026

   Overcome The Shame & Fear of Being Wrong

   In this session, I explored the great surrender — getting out of your own way — through one specific doorway: our fear of being wrong. * This video was taken from a live broadcast. * To see full recordings, or to join me live, visit Tigmonk.com/Community (http://Tigmonk.com/Community). * To explore working with me 1 on 1, start here: Tigmonk.com/consult (http://Tigmonk.com/consult). A quick note: this write-up is AI-assisted — a best attempt at capturing the ideas and voice of the session in written form with AI trained on Tiger’s voice. Naturally, expect errors. Here’s the overview — the core moves of the session, distilled so you get real value even if you don’t watch. The Great Surrender Is Not A Weekend Project (00:23) The overarching theme is the great surrender — getting out of your own way. It’s a lifelong journey, not a weekend project. Over time, it turns into something less like effort and more like devotion. “It’s a recognition of something deeply profound... and it becomes a life of devotion.” One of the clearest doorways into that surrender: our intrinsic fear of being wrong. Certainty, And The Terror Of Being Wrong (01:43) Being wrong, at its simplest, is just discovering you didn’t know something you thought you knew — and that’s perfectly fine. But before that ease sets in, there’s the classic terror of being wrong. As a young man, certainty about his own assumptions felt solid; looking back, it wasn’t. “That perspective is such an amazingly small slice of the full picture — and that small slice is really a story about the slice. So it’s not even a slice.” Spirituality, at its core, shows how the mind’s content can’t actually touch reality. Judgment, Blame, And Withheld Love (05:11) We act as arbitrators of who is or isn’t deserving of love, deciding someone is “less than” the moment they don’t match our image. But that withholding is a felt sense inside us — not something we’re actually doing to someone else. “It looks like I’m withholding love from somebody else, but as I do that, I’m the one that feels the withholding of love.” * We blame the other person for the pain — “it’s their fault” — rather than owning the judgment. * For Tiger, blame is “utterly irrelevant.” What’s happening inside is a response to how we see, not to what’s outside. Trying To Be God (11:47) Insisting “it is how I say it is” is trying to be God instead of letting God be God. Whenever we project a judgment and call it truth, we’re deciding someone else isn’t sovereign — that their experience is whatever we decide it to be. “You are how I see you, therefore you are not sovereign... that totally gets in the way of the divinity that’s already there.” This shows up most intimately with the people closest to us — Tiger points to his relationship with his wife as the clearest mirror: what he experiences with her is simply how he sees her. Emotional Pain As An Alarm (16:20) Emotional pain isn’t a threat to defend against — it’s an alarm that you’re not seeing clearly. We’re as afraid of our own pain as we are of being wrong, so we throw both outward, blaming others instead of asking why we actually feel this way. “The only way such things heal is through an understanding of them... we must look at them.” The pain doesn’t need to be fixed or avoided — it needs to be understood. The Practical Doorway: Healing The Fear Of Being Wrong (20:09) Get radically honest about what you actually know about someone — the real list is much shorter than you think. From there, a few doorways open up. * Notice that emotions respond to how you see, not to what’s actually happening. * See that the judgment feeling is created by you, not by the other person. * Recognize that the fear of being wrong is really a fear of what it means about you. “Being wrong itself isn’t what you’re afraid of — you are afraid of the interpretation you have of what it means about you.” The problem was never being wrong. It’s how we relate to being wrong. A Life Of Devotion, Not A Destination (34:21) Getting out of your own way is alignment with the truth of life — fighting reality is a fight you’ll never win. There’s no final destination here, and no arriving; just an ever-evolving coming home to the truth of what you are. “There’s no final destination. There is no ‘getting there.’ There’s just an ever-evolving coming home to the truth of what you are.” The pain along the way isn’t a problem to eliminate — it’s a teacher. That’s the shape of it. The full depth is in the video above. * To see full recordings, or to join me live, visit Tigmonk.com/Community (http://Tigmonk.com/Community). * To explore working with me 1 on 1, start here: Tigmonk.com/consult (http://Tigmonk.com/consult). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tigmonk.substack.com/subscribe (https://tigmonk.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   9 Aug 2026

   Meeting the Unknown Without Turning It Into a Problem

   The unknown is not the problem. This talk is for listeners who notice how fear turns uncertainty into stories, control, and emotional tension. Tiger explores the difference between what is actually known and what the mind imagines. The value is a clearer relationship with uncertainty, fear, and the human habit of pretending to know. * 00:00 — Opening frame: fear distorts perception, and this space is for slowing down enough to see what is actually going on beneath emotional pain. * 03:30 — The difference between what is actually known and what the mind pretends to know. Plans, interpretations, and assumptions can feel certain, but they are not the same as truth. * 08:03 — Fear of the unknown and the false security of pretending to know. Life has always been unknown, and much of the need to know is an attempt to control what cannot be controlled. * 12:16 — The unknown as a field of possibility. Fear fills it with scary stories, while peace with the unknown allows more loving possibilities to appear naturally. * 15:02 — Fear itself is not wrong. The suffering compounds when I fear my fear, resist my humanity, or treat another person’s emotional state as a problem. * 19:00 — Inner disturbance as an invitation to return to truth. The shift is from trying to get what I want to asking what is actually true. * 21:43 — Truth can push against the boundaries of fear. The mind creates fearful images and then mistakes them for reality, but the world in the mind is not the world that is. * 24:58 — Closing reflection: different languages can point toward the same truth. The deeper work is helping people see for themselves, in language they can actually hear. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tigmonk.substack.com/subscribe (https://tigmonk.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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Guest appearances

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