True Space with Ron PurserTrue Space with Ron Purser
Kind Mind
exploring mind space
1:03:40•8 Nov 2026
Ron Purser on Mindfulness, the Inner Manager and Making Room for Real Change
Episode Overview
- Mindfulness programmes can become corporate tools that soothe stress without addressing harmful working conditions or social structures.
- Traditional mindfulness was part of a holistic ethical path, not a stand-alone technique to make individuals more productive.
- The “inner manager” is useful, but when it dominates, meditation and life turn into constant self-monitoring and performance evaluation.
- Seeing mind as spacious awareness rather than a cramped control room opens room for spontaneity, responsiveness and less self-absorption.
- Recovery and mental health benefit from allowing difficult feelings rather than endlessly trying to fix, optimise or numb them.
“The problem is when that way of knowing becomes sovereign and it’s the only way to run your life, then we are losing out on a lot of other possibilities for freedom and for spaciousness.”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction to self-improvement as much as to substances? Kind Mind brings Ron Purser into conversation with host Michael Todd Fink for a wide-ranging chat on mindfulness, stress, and a fresh way of relating to awareness itself. Ron, author of *McMindfulness* and *Mindspace*, talks about how mindfulness became a corporate tool, stripped of its ethical roots and turned into a “palliative” for overworked employees rather than a way to question unhealthy systems.
He and Todd compare this to medication that soothes symptoms without getting anywhere near the deeper causes of suffering. From there, the focus shifts to Ron’s new work on “spacious awareness” and the idea of the **inner manager**.
As he puts it, the problem isn’t that we have an inner manager; it’s when that part “becomes sovereign and it’s the only way to run your life.” That same controlling mindset can quietly hijack meditation, turning practice into yet another performance review. Drawing on Tibetan traditions and Tarthang Tulku’s “time, space, knowledge” vision, Ron explains how awareness can be more like space: open, accommodating and not owned by the separate self.
Todd links this to clinical work with anxiety, addiction, and avoidance, pointing out how many coping strategies are attempts to “fill the void” rather than feel what hurts. They also touch on childhood spontaneity, Wu-Wei, music, bands, and even badminton as mirrors for ego dramas and letting go of control. The conversation keeps circling back to one gentle shift: moving from fixing and managing to allowing and participating.
If you’re curious about mindfulness, sobriety, or why self-improvement can sometimes make you feel worse, you’ll find plenty here to chew on. Could giving yourself a bit more inner space be the missing piece in your recovery or mental health journey?
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