Character and Consciousness
Owning Who You Are

By Fax Gilbert

I found it somewhat ironic that in the winter of 1999 I was preparing to deliver school programs on Character Education. My previous classmates and teachers, all the way through the university level, would have been more than amused that I was in a position to guide young minds and hearts in the areas of responsibility, respect and honesty in order to strengthen their character.

I do school programs for a living and, at the time, all of my offerings were focused on  the performing arts through programs such Mime, Masks and Magic, as well as State History Plays where I bring in costumes and coach kids to perform scenes from their state’s history at the end of the day while I narrate the action.

Several principals independently came to me about ten years ago to see if I could use my performance skills to put together a program on character to enhance their own initiatives in that area.

The huge government funded “Just Say No to Drugs” school programs were just winding down because kids just weren’t saying no or even maybe.  Specially trained police officers would come to the schools equipped with joints, pills and drug paraphernalia in order to scare the kids. It worked fine with the younger primary grades, but the older kids just used it as a training session on what to look for when scouting for the best high.

So schools needed to take things to a deeper level–character education (how can you say no without a strong character). Which is where I came in. They needed somebody to deliver their message on developing strong character in a way that kids would hear. So it had to be entertaining as well as informational.  Kind of a live forty-five minute participatory infomercial.

So after presenting a couple thousand of these character programs across the Midwest during the last decade, while at the same time having some consciousness recognitions of my own, I began to see similarities and distinctions between developing character and embodying consciousness.

Everybody has a different sense of what the words “character” and “consciousness” mean. Unlike the words “sunrise” or “video-recorder,” they’re very slippery and not easily boxed into a meaning because character is subjective and consciousness is subjectivity itself.

To me, character is the disposition to be present to whatever feelings or impulses arise, both uncomfortable as well as comfortable. This presence is not just presence as witness (consciousness) but an embodied open-hearted presence that has the potential to engage all of our being. In other words, consciousness is what registers or recognizes what’s there and character is the impulse to respond.

If a friend says something that makes you uncomfortable, consciousness is what allows for the perception, character is what you do with it.

Most of us have the disposition to ignore or actively dismiss discomforting feelings and situations in the hope that they’ll take care of themselves. Shifting into a recognition of yourself as consciousness, which is by nature free and uninvolved, can even reinforce the tendency to back away from the messiness of relationship with ourselves, others and the world

Mohandas K. Gandhi said that one of the causes of violence in the world is “knowledge without character.” This is especially true for spiritual knowledge. Many of us on a spiritual path have encountered teachers with vast “spiritual” attainment, but whose behavior was often self-serving, irresponsible, disrespectful and even dishonest.

Followers of these teachers would then enable the teacher by glorifying their actions with some cosmic signification. “ Swami wasn’t having sex with her, he was just sleeping with her to help her evolution.” or, “It’s a mystery why His Holiness does what he does.  He’s just totally connected to natural law and the divine plan so it must be right,” or, “Guruji wants more money to test our devotion and worthiness before revealing even deeper spiritual knowledge.”

Somehow the responsibility for owning who we are as vulnerable, passionate, limited, creative, human beings is being abdicated in the quest for spiritual recognition and identity. Ironically, it is only through being responsible to all of who we are as human beings that divine consciousness can can incarnate fully into, and as, our hearts.

Character is the disposition that connects our consciousness to our heart. Character is the embodied consciousness that surrenders over and over again to the pain and poignancy of living from the heart of our being. Character is what takes responsibility for and respects who we are as both consciousness and matter, and character is that which trusts in the mystery of being.

This is not how I present character in schools (God help me), although, expressed more simply, the character message there is basically the same: lean into and not away from whatever it is that’s making us uncomfortable.  Most of the fears, inhibitions, prejudices, inadequacies, and self-judgments we had growing up are still there, still waiting to be seen, still squandering our energy in maintaining these avoidances and still denying us full access to the present.

When teaching in schools, I don’t just focus on the outward expressions and definitions of character–honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring , citizenship, but also on inner markers as well.  Character is more personally revealing when we discover what and why we avoid doing, speaking, feeling or being than it is when merely conforming to some external definitions and moral or ethical guidelines.

Strengthening character means becoming more sensitive to what our body is already telling us in any given moment, what it is telling us about ourselves and what it is telling us about others in relation to ourselves. One way that helps kids (and adults) understand our body’s inner language is to imagine that beside our heart is a spinning star. That every star has points on it and that whenever something needs our attention the spinning star touches our heart and we feel a little pinch, a funny feeling.

Maybe this pinch was caused because we hurt somebody, or noticed that somebody needed help, or because we were misunderstood.  Whatever the cause we have a choice. We can ignore the pinch or we can feel it and try to resolve the disequilibrium that’s there inside. There may be good reasons for not acting–safety and trust issues, timing, lack of clarity and so on. However if we ignore the signal just out of habit or fear, then eventually, those points on the star will start to wear down and we’ll find ourselves living at a distance from our feelings and our heart and our humanity.

Character, the disposition to acknowledge that spinning star, can only be deepened in relationship, ideally in relationship with those of similar purpose. When there is a recognition in the mind or resolution in the heart, unconscious holding is relaxed, space is created and consciousness is embodied.  The universal consciousness that I know is more vulnerable than an infant and closer than our breath. It requires safety and nurturance and an invitation to come forward and live in our hearts.  Character is that invitation.

June Konopka - Waking Down Teacher

We have a personal mind that is possible because of the consciousness that underlies it. As we quiet the personal mind can open, with intention, to become Universal Mind supported by Universal Consciousness. Our consciousness lies embedded within Universal Consciousness.

The fact that we have a personal consciousness allows us to know ourselves as Universal Consciousness, and eventually as all of Its manifestations. No extraordinary efforts are needed. It is who we are.

I spoke the above to a student recently who was struggling to grasp who she was beyond her ordinary body/mind/personality, and was exasperated that she would ever be able to realize her True Nature. She listened attentively, then immediately dismissed my words by saying she understood the concepts, but they didn’t change anything inside her. As she immediately started to move on to some other aspect of her story and life problems, I stopped her, feeling that she hadn’t listen with her Whole Being. Her mind wanted to get on with the job of problem-solving and fixing that something inside her that kept her from obtaining her Realization.

I sensed she had many layers of herself available for listening, after decades of spiritual unfolding, yet she was somehow not remembering to utilize them. I asked her if she listened with all of herself, or just the surface analytical mind. She noticed that the latter was the case, and that this is a habit of hers. I asked her to slow down and listen again, with as much of herself present as was possible. With this kind of listening, she immediately began to sense her deeper truth. She subsequently set aside time regularly to quietly be present with herself while gently inquiring into her Reality. Without expectation, she learned to let the answer arise from her own Being.

It takes more than our everyday mind to inquire into the true nature of Reality. If the surface mind is all that is available for inquiry, not much new will be realized. Only the present moment holds the Truth of Reality, and the surface mind will favor the past stories and the future possibilities. The deepest part of our Being, at home in the present, is that part of us that can know Reality.

© June Konopka 2009

Ted Strauss - Senior Waking Down Teacher

Well, no and yes. It’s not a downer in the sense that it’s depressing or that’s it’s all about darkness. But it is about coming down from an exclusive identification with mind and into the total ground of Being.

Picture an African Savannah with a large tree in the middle. Imagine yourself being chased by some wild animal and climbing up into the tree for safety. Now picture how scary it would be to ever risk coming down from there. In this analogy, the ground is Totality — a dangerous place where imminent death is just as real as everlasting life. If you remain exclusively focused on your ideas of enlightenment, happiness, or perfect safety, you’ll never come down to the ground of true wholeness, where life is always a double-edged sword. Mind can provide temporary shelter, but it was never meant to be our exclusive residence. In fact, I’m hoping you may have noticed that living exclusively from mind is the real danger.

Many of us live in an unconscious disposition of eternal hopefulness. We hope to find a state of enlightenment that will vanquish our fears and render our petty human problems insignificant in the face of a great Light that outshines the darkness. Or perhaps we hope for a realization that will make us feel safe and happy. I’m not suggesting there’s nothing cosmic to realize, only that what there is to realize isn’t what we were expecting.

For centuries, spiritual schools, practices, and traditions have mistaken spiritual awakening with heightened (read: improved) states of consciousness. Problem is, consciousness is not a state; it’s a pre-existing condition. Therefore it can’t be heightened, developed, achieved, expanded, or attained. Realizing consciousness sometimes (but not always) propels the realizer into a temporary state of happiness or expansion, but that necessarily wears off because there’s always the other side of the coin. Even the coin of Freedom has Bondage on the tails side. Even enlightenment can’t change the fact that Being is both Absolute and Relative.

You can realize consciousness directly and claim it as part of your whole self, along with your body and mind. But, contrary to extremely popular opinion, recognizing and owning your own awareness is not going to make you permanently happy or solve all your problems. What it will do is relieve you of the stress, expense, and whole-life depletion that goes with the apparently endless search to realize consciousness. Realizing consciousness will then provide you with the safety to allow yourself to wake down into the uncomfortable truth of your divinely human reality.

Perhaps you’re wondering what I could mean by “the uncomfortable truth of your divinely human reality”. If it’s divine or spiritual, what could be so uncomfortable? The answer is that nothing is just “divine” or 100% “spiritual”; Being is One, and so everything is everything. Everything that exists is both spiritual and material, perfect and imperfect, happy and sad, Absolute and Relative, permanent and impermanent. Including, of course, You.

At the core of your Being, you are both free and in jail. You are the universe, and you’re just this flawed and mortal human being. You are both “higher self” and “lower self”. You cannot resolve this apparent paradox because it’s who you are. It only appears as a paradox and it only appears to need resolving because it’s the developmental stage you’ve been in, because you haven’t known how to relax into totality, and because you don’t like how it feels to be you. Perhaps you always assumed that being alive (and especially being enlightened) should feel good. Or at least better than this.

The search for “better than this” is the essence of the spiritual quest. It’s what has driven humanity since the beginning, and it’s what has driven you. I’m not suggesting that there’s nothing better than this, but I am suggesting that if there’s ever to be something better, it can only come through realizing this; the feeling of being you.

Waking Down is for people who are sick and tired of striving to be better or more spiritual, but can’t help yearning to awaken. It’s for people who have begun to realize that maybe it’s not just about waking up. The down in Waking Down means that real awakening must include realizing transcendence and imminence. If you want to realize wholeness, you must be prepared to allow your own wholeness, including the parts of yourself you don’t like. You’re not going to find cosmic wholeness if you won’t allow yourself to embrace the truth of all your parts.

Realizing wholeness was supposed to feel enlightening (and it does), but I’m here to say that it’s not at all what you thought it was going to feel like. In fact, it’s so different from what you were expecting that you’ve probably been assuming your experience is proof of your lack of enlightenment. You kept throwing your own experience away by comparing it with all the hopes, dreams, and ideals you’ve been clinging to in your tree of mind.

Here’s a secret: wholeness feels the way you feel you right now. That’s right, I’m suggesting that the feeling of being you right now is the feeling of living the ultimate paradox of Being. Perhaps you feel sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes trapped and sometimes free. It’s easy to feel the good parts. but what about feeling confused, disconnected, incomplete, banished, anxious, bad, wrong, tense, bewildered, or utterly disillusioned? Such feelings don’t match our ideas of feeling “enlightened”, but until you learn to recognize and fully embrace them at the core, you’ll be perplexed. How could your intuition of the Truth and Freedom of the Infinite resolve itself with the darkness and limits of this Earthly life?

You see, that’s the secret. There’s no need for resolution. You just wanted to resolve that feeling of paradox so you could feel better, free yourself of inner conflict, or so you could feel right with yourself and the universe. But you don’t have to resolve the apparent dilemma to feel right or at home. You can feel at home with life anyway.

Waking Down is a support group for people who are ready to come down into life, with all its pains and glories. It’s a place to learn how to relax into the truth of being You. If that sounds like a downer, Waking Down may not be for you. But if that sounds good, you may have just found what you’ve been looking for your whole life: You.

©2008 Ted Strauss

by Krishna Gauci

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Often people wonder about or ask questions that are a variation of this basic theme:

“How can I trust that this is really the highest form of enlightenment? What if I’m barking up the wrong tree here? What if the experience that you offer is not it? Sometimes I’m incredibly frustrated with the mistakes I’ve made spiritually. I’ve wasted my time following paths that did not leave me with the restful satisfied life that was promised. I feel foolish because I’ve been deceived in the past, how can I be sure that I won’t be disappointed again?”

Do you ever wonder about this yourself?

It’s a good question.

There are three related issues here: The notion of “full enlightenment”, the limits of what a teacher or teachings can give you and most importantly the ultimate nature of disappointment itself. Because of all of the ideas and assumptions we have around all this I will be repeating myself a lot here, saying the same thing from a number of different angles to flush everything out.

The way I see it, any form of awakening is just a beginning, and “full awakening” is an ever-receding horizon. This awakened life and every human life is filled with disappointment, but we still walk on. Through embrace of this situation, an embrace that cannot be forced or willed; surrender happens, despite us. Deep Trust and the unraveling of resistance happens through our disappointments. All that I actually have is a Deep Trust In Being and that’s all that I’m pointing to.

By doing your own Self-inquiry and examining the difference between that which changes and that which does not, one can discover oneself as Consciousness which is free of all concepts including notions of failure or success. Looking and finding your non-locatable existence (or is it locatable non-existence?) is the essential core and foundation of awakening. This can be an ongoing experiential exploration producing ever-deepening confidence in your freedom as Consciousness. We are all already free as the infinite, and totally at rest as That. This is my nature as it is yours, even if you do not have full trust that this is so.

On the other hand as the finite body/mind/soul personality (regardless of how transient and unreal that ultimately is) I appear as a limited being, who is deepening trust by both embracing and surrendering as that limited reality. Trust and surrender happen through my efforts to make life better, which bring about either failure or success, both of which eventually uncover the sense that “this is not enough”. The kind of surrendering that I’m speaking of here is not the result of attaining something, but of losing illusions about life through actually living it with a willingness to be at the effect of it’s limits.

Usually when folks hear me speak about Deep Trust they think in terms of letting go rather than holding on, surrendering rather than resisting, trusting rather than doubting, no-effort rather than effort. There’s a subtle but important difference here. I’m talking about a sort of “tantric” trust, one that includes its opposite. “Deep Trust” trusts the entire process of both surrendering and resisting, both trusting and doubting, both letting go and embracing. To my friends who speak the language of “letting go” I would say this: after you’ve let go of whatever you can let go of, you will probably notice that you still have something in your hands. If you feel you don’t have any desire at all then I suggest that you look more closely. Whatever that is, embrace it and live it.

I’m not suggesting that pursuing your desire will not ultimately end in something less than satisfaction, of course it will, but who said that you would escape this most human of situations? Awakening and deepening trust happens in the midst of the human situation for those of us who have hopes and fears. If you can let go of hope and fear in all of your life, by all means let go of all hope and fear. But if you find that you still hope for something and fear something else, even after all your efforts of “letting go,” just embrace it and go with it rather than being in denial about it. Live it out; it’s yours to live.

Trust continues to be developed through the disappointments that arise from both failure and success, and an often-difficult honesty with ourselves. This frees energy and attention that was stuck trying to avoid experience and releases it into a profound feeling of deep connection to life and a simple unconditioned awareness of it. This connectedness is often experienced as a current running through existence that can be a source of nurturance and well-being, but it can also be felt as a fire and it doesn’t necessarily make life any easier.

So yes, it can be a disappointment. That’s all I can “promise” and I really can’t even promise that. I certainly can’t say that this is not a “wrong tree” for you, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything here for you. You may be ready for more honesty than you thought you were.

Being “Really Enlightened”

“How can I trust that this is really the highest form of enlightenment?”

I remember the first of my teachers with whom I experienced Transmission. It was about twenty-five years ago; I was living in New York City and just getting by, living hand to mouth driving a taxi at night.

My teacher at the time was someone who studied with several teachers from both eastern and western traditions, but his appearance and manner were anything but the typical spiritual stereotype. He was a tall stocky white guy with a Jewish background who spoke with a refined but obvious Brooklyn accent. And while he went to an Ivy League school he still had a New York attitude and understood working class sensibilities. Fritz Perls himself had trained him in Gestalt Therapy; he had lived in India for five years and had been on the faculty at a well-known Tibetan meditation center in Berkley.

I came to him mostly to work on “my psychological stuff”, but I was also attracted to working with him because of his spiritual background as well. While he required me to meditate and read a couple of books, during our weekly sessions we hardly ever spoke about consciousness. Mostly we talked about daily life, my mother, and my anger.

During what was the second or third session something strange happened. While sitting there talking about my day at work I noticed that I could quite literally see him more clearly than anything else. It was like the pixels that made up his physical body were more densely packed and more clearly defined. I shifted how I was sitting and moved my head slowly from side to side, blinking my eyes to clear away this visual distortion. It continued unabated. Not only that but it got worse and I began to see something else. On hot summer days sometimes you can see “waves” that radiate off of the streets, a kind of “mirage” and now I was seeing them radiating from his body. “This is weird” I said out loud, “well, I’m a weird guy” he said calmly, “let’s get back to your work day”. At this point the room seemed filled and I began to feel something, “I’m seeing energy coming off of you” I told him. He said, “Energy is just a thing, an object; like the couch or the chair, just get back to the conversation about work”.

The whole thing was absurd; this was the first time that I experienced such a thing without any intent or trying on my part, and apparently no trying on his either. No drugs, no meditating, no chanting, no breathing exercises, no nothing. I was having a totally mundane conversation with him. As I tried in vain to ignore what was happening and talk about getting stiffed by another taxi fare, I noticed that I was changing. My breathing slowed down, my voice became deeper and more deliberate and I felt a warm sense of well-being. While I could feel everything, I was somehow watching myself unaffected. I was seeing myself in exactly the same way I was seeing everything and (I later noticed) everyone else, through an “objective”, quiet, equal seeing; an equal vision. This was no therapy session and it was more than I had dreamed possible. I had read about such things, but this was the first time I had ever experienced them myself in my own body, right here in New York, with a Brooklyn Jew no less.

I couldn’t help myself, I blurted out ” Are you enlightened?”

While the exact language eludes me, the heart of his answer has never left me.

He said something like this:

“Listen to you: ‘Am I enlightened?’ How would you know?

If I believe that I’m enlightened even if I’m actually not, I could say, ‘I am enlightened’, and you wouldn’t know if I was or wasn’t.

If I truly am enlightened and for some reason I think it’s important for you to think that I’m not enlightened then I could say to you ‘No, I’m not enlightened’ and you wouldn’t know.

And If I am enlightened and I say to you ‘Yes, I am enlightened’ then you still wouldn’t know just because I say so.

So why go there? Pay attention to your own process, that’s all that you can know about. All that you can possibly know about is your own enlightenment. Even if I were the Buddha himself, if you are not getting anything from being here with me then this is not where you should be. On the other hand, if you are receiving something for yourself, if you have some benefit from being here then that is all that is important and this is where you should be. ”

We’ve long ago gone our own ways, I’ve studied with many other teachers and now I also teach, but I’ll always remember those words.

I like to tell this story often, I repeat this because it’s very important; it’s a kind of key.

You are The Guru

Don’t overlook the obvious. You cannot give over responsibility for yourself to anyone else. Make good use of your teachers and respect the guidance that you allow yourself to make use of. Also remember that no one can relieve you of your responsibility for your life so be careful of those who imply that they can.

Today we live in a world in which we are exposed to many traditions of spiritual awakening. There are obviously many examples in world history of great spiritual realizations. The understanding of enlightenment is different in different schools and traditions. Even when someone is a realizer in his or her school there is no guarantee that that particular form of enlightenment is THE form of enlightenment. You know: “The Super-duper bestest of the best, Highest of the high, really truly enlightenest enlightened twelfth stage supreme state of the really truly truest awakening”.

I remember when I lived in New York that there used to be something written on most of the boxes of pizza-to-go: “You’ve tried the rest, now try the best”. Of course everyone says and may very well believe that their brand is the best. Just saying it doesn’t mean it’s true, and how would anyone check such a claim?

Can you be at peace with the possibility that you don’t have the means to validate what the highest form of enlightenment is? That it may be more important to be yourself than to be the Buddha?

Coming to terms with our past without sugar coating it ultimately means trusting Life while still being honest about how hard and confusing it can be.

Again: “Sometimes I’m incredibly frustrated with the mistakes I’ve made spiritually. I’ve wasted my time following paths that did not leave me with the restful satisfied life that was promised. I feel foolish because I’ve been deceived in the past, how can I be sure that I won’t be disappointed again?”

Making use of the guidance we receive and respecting it does not mean we always agree with everything that we’ve learned. Even when we find the need to leave a teacher or school, I feel it’s in our best interest to honor that we were led there to learn what we did. Being clear about how we differ with something we previously were involved in is not the same as dishonoring it. It’s important to honor our own past and our own inner source of guidance. Regretting how we’ve lived our lives is easy enough to do, but it’s helpful to consider that we were only always doing the best we could with what we knew at the time.

That said; let me be clear here, it’s true that sometimes we can find ourselves rightfully angry. It’s certainly helpful to be honest about wrongs that were done to others and ourselves in the name of spirituality. There are things in life that are not as they should be, to not admit this is to lie to ourselves and candy coat some real suffering. We and others may have experienced pain in the face of exaggerated claims made and promises not kept. And yet, if nothing else our bitter experiences lead us to listen more deeply to our own needs and intuition.

It is often just this honesty about what is painful, disappointing and terrible that makes life worth living in the midst of it’s suffering. The honesty about how false it all is is its truth. When we look at the world and say, “Where is life’s heart? How can life be so cruel?” THAT is life’s heart, it is Life’s Heart that is expressing this pain and outrage through your body and you are that Heart. So speak it loudly and clearly and allow yourself to be sobered by what you know.

Not just with spiritual teachers but throughout all of life there are grave disappointments and let downs. I’d like to suggest that at the same time that this discontent has been happening, events themselves have always been conspiring to point us to that which is trustable underneath everything that isn’t.

So this is the paradox that I’m always having to come to terms with: I find myself trusting life through and in the midst of circumstances that are un-trustable.

Life is the Goddess of Creativity through Limits

“What if I’m barking up the wrong tree here?”

How it looks to me:

Life can be a disappointment, but it’s just you and Her, and it seems that She only offers sub-standard imperfect trees, one after the other. For me the question is not: “Is this the right tree?” but rather: “Is this tree you find yourself with now yours to bark up right now?” Of course it’s natural that as soon as we discover that it’s the wrong tree we run to the next apparently better one… even as we begin to have the sneaking suspicion that they’re all not-quite-right. So although we move on to next “better” tree we know that it will not be enough. Do we then stop barking? Well, yes and no.

We no longer bark thinking we’ve found the big “IT”. But you know, dogs…they just love to bark, it’s just in their nature to bark. Dogs just can’t help but want the prize that they imagine must be hiding up in that tree, they can smell it…almost taste it.

This tree is honest in a way that many others are not, and that makes all the difference in the world. This tree has a sign on it that reads, “This tree and all others are a disappointment, so you can relax as you bark, because ‘IT’ isn’t here either”. Relaxing as you bark, you find YOURSELF, not “IT”. But even then you find that it’s your nature to bark. Life is by nature not perfectible, it will never be “right” except for a moment, and then it changes. Knowing this does not take away the urge in life (or us) towards perfection. This is the nature of evolution.

Whether we want a better car or we have a burning fire for deeper surrender to The Source of existence, life in form is always about going beyond… It’s never enough. When you find that everything lines up perfectly, you can be sure of one thing… it won’t last.

All of life is the continuous result of this untrustworthy process, isn’t that reason enough to trust it? The truth seems to be that we only trust life when we have no other option. I don’t find that I have a choice here; I end up trusting life more than I trust my ability to track if life is trustworthy.

It seems to me that Life is a living Goddess. Like any living being she shows up in ways that I often don’t anticipate, but no matter what choice I make, no matter what road I take, she is always my only partner.

Of course, it must be said (even if this late in the essay) that while fulfilling any particular desire is ultimately not satisfying, who can deny the amazing beauty in all of this? The awe inspiring unfolding evolution of nature not to mention all the achievements of humanity that have arisen through desire and our futile attempts at lasting satisfaction is an astonishing fountain of creativity. Life uses unfulfillable yearning to create the whole thing!

Just suppose the government funded a huge project to invent a time machine. Suppose that it failed in that endeavor, but along the way discovered the cure for cancer and invented thousands of new forms of technology. Who would call that a failure? Only those who wanted a time machine and were focused on that desire being fulfilled. Everyone else would be in gratitude for the accidental side benefits.

Every desire leads to the next thing to do, even if it ends up being “the wrong tree” in terms of our original intent. The benefit of pursuing our desire and getting disappointed is not the life we wanted (but did not get) but rather it’s this life that has actually unfolded. As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Appreciating and even loving this life for the fireworks display it is, for the vulnerable flower it actually is (despite what we wished it would be); is devotion to Her (as She is).

Disappointment: the door to What Is

So by all means if you think you see a better tree, go for it! This path is not one that demands exclusivity. There is really no need to limit yourself, bark wherever you are moved to.

Expecting anyone to be able to tell you that you are not barking up the wrong tree is only trying to avoid the facts and makes you susceptible to exploitation. Of course you’re barking up the wrong tree! That’s all we ever do, it’s all we can do. The limited nature of manifest existence is made up entirely of wrong trees. As Suzuki Roshi once said: “Life is one mistake after another”. The biggest mistake is to think otherwise.

Our Infinite nature as Freedom, Consciousness, Buddha nature, Atman or the Self is free of all this. We are free of fulfillment and nonfulfillment, pleasure and pain, loss and gain. When attention or awareness is unconditioned by thought and simply dissolves into The Context of what is, our sense of separateness is gone and we are equally distributed everywhere. This knowing of our freedom can remain even when the sense of separateness returns and the thinking mind is back telling us “what is what”. The more we return to bath in the waters of unconditioned awareness where nothing is a success and nothing is a problem the more we become aware of ourselves where none of this is an issue.

At the same time, even by hearing such a statement we (in our sense of limitation) may find that we will not be able to help but make this freedom a goal, and the barking begins. Pursuing that goal may seem to improve our lives, as we get “closer and closer” to being “completely at peace”…or not.

Whenever we do refine our lives it is in the relative finite realm of human limitation that all improvements are made (spiritual or otherwise), and the sense of progress will be followed by another sense of limits.

As the Infinite no improvement is ever necessary.

In the realm of change and improvement nothing lasts. Every improvement is made on shifting sand. The limited will never reach the unlimited so it will always end in “not quite good enough”. Disappointment wears away hope and fear and leaves us simply here. Being simply here without hope or fear, we once again find we are always free.

Disappointment is not a wall but a door.

The more that we pursue our desires and dreams the more we feel the way “it’s not enough,” even if we fulfill our dreams. The more we become disenchanted with our plans the more we relax into what “just is”, even as we’re cooking up the next plan. The more we relax into what “just is” the more our nature as unconditioned freedom seeps through our life and we find ourselves simply Being, even in the midst of doing.

We can’t rush this; it takes it’s own time and it’s pace can be trusted. Besides, we have no choice.

We cannot “make a decision” to “not do doing” unless we’re willing to do “not doing”. If we decide to “not seek improvement” and think we are better off for it, then we would do well to notice that we are once again doing something (doing “not doing” and making an effort at not making effort) to improve our situation. Nothing wrong in doing this but there is a new danger of slipping back into failure/success mode. Now it’s failure/success at “not-doing”. So we could get stuck yet again failing at doing “not doing”….

The so-called alternative that I’m suggesting here is to simply see the dilemma and live it. We cannot help but to do what we feel will improve our situation, even though we know that ultimately it will fail to satisfy us altogether. This recognition relieves us of the burden of having to find (or pretend to find) fulfillment in life or to get things perfectly right according to some notion of perfection. Ironically, it frees us to just live.

We notice how we pursue our sense of what is most auspicious and pay attention to how we feel, and notice our expectations and how they are met and how they are not.

And something happens…

We embrace the activity of our human nature where there is failure and success.

And something else also happens…

We find ourselves falling into the silence of being where there is no idea of failure or success.

In other words…

We relax into the whole enchilada and it unfolds through us and as us in a way that is beyond us.

And that’s it.

This “Way”

I am not suggesting that this is the true path.

I am also not suggesting that it isn’t the true Path.

I’m suggesting that for many of us it is our truth.

For many of us this is the only thing we find we can do.

We have given up on finding the right tree and have come to feel that there are only wrong trees. Actually it’s not that they are wrong trees (or right trees), it’s just that they are always a disappointment if we expect fulfillment from the outcome. Every endeavor to improve our situation never quite meets the mark. This is the nature of things and there’s nothing wrong in all this, including the feeling that there is.

We don’t give up living; we don’t stop the effort to improve our lives in whatever form we feel is most useful. We find that we have no choice but to bark, because that’s what dogs (and people) do. We may know that we will never reach perfection and full satisfaction with any of our efforts, but we continue our activity as long as we still have any hope (or fear) related to what we are doing. If we find that life itself has exhausted our hope and fear around what we were doing, we find we no longer have energy to pursue that desire, so we don’t. Can you call that an attainment or “letting go”? Well, yes and no. It’s not the kind that you necessarily claim as a point of pride, unless you want to…

We get better and better at a hopeless task. We come to a brokenhearted humility and a Deep Trust in being through barking up so-called wrong trees, and that makes this the right tree for those who are drawn to it.

Making efforts to improve your life takes on a very different quality as you realize that nothing in life is enough, whether it is a “worldly effort” or “spiritual effort” that you use, even the effort of “giving up the effort” will not be enough.

For many people, realizing that all paths or non-paths lead to this is both a great disappointment and a great relief.

It’s not that we’ve been doing it wrong; this is just the nature of existence.

To the degree that this teaching is a path of attainment, it will disappoint.

To the degree that this teaching is a way to sober-up out of dreams, both worldly and spiritual, it is simply an honest pointing to our condition and situation and a way through.

There is paradox here that is very hard to put to language. Underlying all of this is a deep acceptance of the entire process of your own unfolding, including all of your non-acceptance.

It is deep trust in Life itself, including all of your mistrust and doubt.

Another angle at this is an understanding of three things:

1) That none of your effort at a better life can give you freedom, so it will not be enough.

2) That trust in Being (as life is) is freedom now.

And (here’s the paradox)…

3) Trust in Being includes trusting that your effort to improve yourself will play it’s part in the unfolding of Being, so don’t cut yourself in half by denying your desire to make your life be better or your awakening deeper.

Maybe another way saying this is the there is no salvation through works, salvation only comes through faith, but faith without works is dead….

There it is

So no, as a teacher I will not and I cannot guarantee anything about this. I just share my experience, that’s all.

Even when we are awake to our unlimited nature, which is absolute completeness, we are also simultaneously awake to our limited nature and that human limitation longs to be fully lived out as well.

Whether we live a life of spiritual desire or worldly desire there is nothing wrong with the innate preference to make things better. Making things better is the intelligent, healthy and natural thing that body/minds do.

Certainly it is sane and healthy to pursue better relationships, a healthier body, a more secure financial situation and a more authentic integrated experience of being in the world. There’s nothing wrong in this.

Certainly refinement of the ability to “let go”, “accept’, “be detached”, “be present”, “drop the mind”, “be vigilant” or “be aware” are sane and healthy habits to cultivate. Yet they are also forms of effort; the desire to change things and make them better, even though they are more subtle “spiritual” things. There’s nothing wrong in this.

When there is effort there is the potential to attain or fail, everything is temporary and every attainment will be lost. There is nothing wrong in this.

Even “letting go of attainment” is in this category; it is an effort to improve things by not improving things. The path of “no path” is a path and “not seeking” can become a form of “seeking” that is sneaking into the back door. Rather than kidding ourselves and creating complications in the mind it is better to just understand all this.

This life of limits is never enough, it can always be better and our heart yearns to change it and bring us closer to freedom, peace and contentment. As we look to change our conditions and make them “just right” we are looking in the dimension of change where things will never be enough. In our nature as conditioned beings we cannot help but make these efforts, which can bring us closer, but never close enough. There is nothing wrong in this.

Freedom, peace and contentment are not the result of efforts; they are simply the truth of our nature as unconditioned awareness that is present despite (and in the midst of) our efforts.

Is this really a dilemma?

How sobering

What a paradox

What a relief

There it is…

Disappointed?

© 2009 Krishna Gauci, Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/KrishnaGauci/
www.krishnasatsang.com

by Krishna Gauci

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This was originally a letter written to some folks involved in the Waking Down in Mutuality Process, but could be useful to anyone wondering about the role of techniques and methods in the process of an organic spiritual unfolding:

What exactly is “Skill In Means” or “Skillful Means” about? I think it’s important to know that the ideal of Skill In Means (in the context of how it originally arose in Mahayana Buddhism) is not essentially about learning techniques or methods to help others, but is rather something very different. It is about the innate capacity of someone with an Awakening Consciousness (Bodhichitta) to GENERATE whatever very specific and different ways of expression and teaching are needed for every specific student. That is something very different than learning techniques and methods that can be applied to all students. It is actually the opposite of having methods transform students; it is having students transform methods.

Skill in Means is not any of the techniques themselves, nor is it all of the techniques taken together. It is acting from The Heart Of Compassion where the teaching is a response to a student’s needs, rather than acting from a pre-existing therapeutic, psychological or spiritual structure that is being used to diagnose and treat them.

It is an organic aspect of Bodhichitta (Awakening Consciousness) that is the integrating factor among all the grab bag of techniques and ways of teaching, rather than simply a name for the grab bag itself. Skill in Means is not a product of the thinking, planning, preparing, discursive and constructing mind, rather it is teaching as a response to the other, dependent on the other, not on techniques of a psychological or spiritual school of thought.

I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with learning and including techniques and methods from various sources.

Nor am I advocating that we exile all systems of therapeutic (or spiritual) diagnosis. But I am suggesting that we recognize that while they may be helpful in specific cases, they are not the thing in itself and they come with their own conceptual baggage.

Waking Down in itself is not a therapeutic paradigm even if and when we use techniques from therapeutic sources.

When this is not understood, there can be a danger of “laying the trip” of a therapeutic (or other) paradigm, and subtly pathologizing each other’s human patterns. I feel this is so even with the more humanistic, new age (or channeled) categorizations, thought systems and maps.

Skillful means, and good WDM teaching does not consist in getting training in as many therapeutic modalities and personality maps as possible and then diagnosing and curing students…. That’s therapy.

“The teaching gets pulled out of the teacher by the hunger of the student” is the real essence of WDM teaching (and real skillful means). What this amounts to is an interdependent relationship in non-separateness giving birth to unique teaching in accordance with the unique situation. Another way to say this is that the Divine (The Divine Other that includes self and other) does the teaching, in non-separation through us.

One of the things that struck me with Saniel Bonder’s early teaching work was not that he had a tool kit of techniques, but rather that he was in relationship with everyone. The teaching that happened with people was generated in his experience of self and other realization as the Goddess… and his promise to awaken Her one soul at a time.

There is in this an arduous and deep trust in ourselves (and Life) that is needed to be able to access that kind of connection. And this is the real import, (which is often unrecognized and unseen by students) in the process and training that goes into becoming a WDM teacher. That is the deepest ability that is passed on and taught to teachers. There is a good argument to be made that it takes more to do that than to become skillful at a number of techniques or therapeutic modalities.

Confidence in our connection to the Divine, a deep trust in the transmission, and an ability to hear the other in non-separateness is the essence of this work…and it can’t exactly be taught as techniques or methods can. It’s leaning into the source from which dharma is generated.

It seems to me that learning to lean into this is harder to quantify, more mysterious and not cut and dry. It means establishing, developing and relying on a more intuitive sense of Onlyness, however we personally experience that, and continually deepening it.

Remember how untamed and inconvenient this work is. It is Living Spirit.

While I welcome the desire to include methods and techniques into the work to help others (I have been doing this in my own way), This teaching is not techniques or systems but rather it is Living Being/Spirit/Transmission and (in That) Living Relationships.

My sense is that it is only this connection to the living Transmission that can become the organic (rather than constructed) integration of all these methods, modalities and techniques. This Transmission of the Goddess does not pathologize through diagnosis, and This Transmission has seen fit to awaken very imperfect messy human beings and does so quite perfectly.

As we include methods from outside This Transmission let us remember that the transmission of this Goddess awoke us in our messiness when techniques and respectable psychology (and traditions) did not. She did not turn us away in our imperfections, She awoke us in them and She is wild and messy Herself.

And while we bring the masculine into this work if we saddle her with an overly tame civilized male she will either die of boredom or will eat him for lunch. The only husband who can meet Her is Shiva… a wild, messy and smelly dude himself!

© 2007 Krishna Gauci, Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/KrishnaGauci/
www.krishnasatsang.com

by Sandra Glickman

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“Why didn’t you just go ahead and bust the guy?” asked my trusted friend Junelle. We were all sitting at a birthday party-ten of us, friends and intimates of many years now. My birthday friend was commenting how both I and a companion had each in turn been candid and respectful with him regarding a sensitive relationship change occurring amongst the three of us. I had wanted to blurt out that the only two people there not being candid were this guy and myself. My being was itching to be honest and set things straight between us. But something held me back!

I bit my tongue, held my breath and the moment passed. Then I began to feel bad about myself, cowardly. Why was I still “protecting” this guy? (Junelle’s question); and after the many ways in which I have felt wounded by his neglect and absence of honesty? The therapist in me continued to label myself “passive” and “co-dependent.” I finally muttered something to Junelle about the uselessness of confronting the guy and how things spoken to him seemed as if to disappear into a black hole.

Though I had justified myself, I still felt uneasy. Why can’t I, supposedly living now as the Embodied Self, just be this One? A few hours later in the middle of the night, my reliable discriminating mind awoke me with the answer: TRUST, the necessary foundation of EMBODIED Consciousness. My body has come to know more keenly than my thinking mind where I can and cannot trust another! On many an occasion I have been perfectly capable of free expression, confrontation, even raw blurting out of unpleasantries. But in that moment, my throat held back, throttled itself against those words flying out, relegated my words to internal echoes and reverberations, and sent them up to the convoluted channels of my ever-so-greedy mind patterns, where they came to be used against my poor dear vulnerable self. My body knew what my mind, habituated to “self-improvement” and striving, hadn’t yet got: the profound need for Trust. My body consciousness wouldn’t allow myself to be wounded again in a perceived hopeless project. Therefore I was required to feel instead the limits in my relationship with this person whom I love and deeply value.

At first I felt the Core Wound of pain and confusion. This then turned into the simple Wound of loving in a limited relationship. I found and find that I have no choice but to grieve and finally accept that here is a person who can only meet me so far. Because of this I can only grow so far with him. He doesn’t trust-at least not me, not now. So I must choke off my free expression, relinquish an opportunity to know myself more honestly, forego whatever I could learn or experience by exposing myself more deeply and vulnerably, and forego a deeper level of love and intimacy which could come out of a more mutually trusting relationship. My heart breaks over and over with similar incidents in many of the relationships in my life. It is excruciating in the ones I have come to love the most.

So do you see the beauty and glory for me of finding a group of Beloveds who are capable of Trust? Who have come to perceive the value of Conscious Embodiment? Who are willing to risk with me whatever it takes to bring forth themselves in Consciousness and honesty? Who have become capable of staying in the room and going through the hard places, hearing hard feedback, giving me themselves in all their freedom, in all their rawness?

Trust is the great gift which makes all this possible, which has made and continues to make possible the finding of all the parts of myself, with which I so long to connect. These parts I now know, can only arise in relationship and can only be fully claimed in mutual trust. This work cannot be done on one’s own. In the relationship I described above, I have had to struggle alone, because my Beloved does not go there with me. I can only bow to the mystery of why this is.

Still, what a gift to find I can no longer give myself out to everyone, even a dearly loved one. Though my mind might, my body will not participate in such a horrible punishment-to speak, shout, even whisper into a black hole where nothing returns to be resolved, or it returns “sideways.” Such a debilitating depletion of self! Yet I confess I had to override myself more than a number of times to get this lesson. My body’s inherent knowledge, as the Consciousness, now ferrets out who is and who is not available for mutual trust.

Trust. How could I have found myself as Consciousness, more and more Embodied, if this sweet nectar was not available here, first with Saniel and then with so many of You? I am profoundly grateful to Saniel for his capacity to trust me and tolerate all the dark and even glorious aspects of me, and for his capacity for first finding trust of himself. His teaching of mutual Love-Trust is truly the foundation of this realization process.

Through trust, we find we can eventually BE ourselves, all of ourselves, from low to high, simple to complex, in every dimension. We find we can survive and even transform into delicious divine food our darkest parts. Through trust we express and celebrate and magnify our Divine and human natures. Trust is big, vast. It is equivalent to Consciousness, to Love, to God. That is what it is. Nothing less. That is what I find.

Sandra Glickman, Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/SandraGlickman

by Saniel Bonder

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The idea of waking up is a part of many spiritual teachings. It is associated with the endeavor to get spiritual, conscious, awake, enlightened, free, or somehow escape the perceived prison of the phenomenal world of body, emotion, and mind as you experience it. There are innumerable methods to achieve such changes. In general, waking down, as we live and offer it, is different in that you “fall” into your fundamental transcendent nature and your bodily, human personhood simultaneously. Instead of trying to get out of life, you realize more and more that you are infinite transcendental Being concretizing, crystallizing, and incarnating as a divinely human person. The phrase waking down signals that this is very different from trying to rise out of this world and all your karmas here into some other state or dimension. In this process, you directly realize and bring the infinite divine reality to life.

And, if you bring that infinite or unconditioned quality of Being to life in real, authentic ways, you wind up becoming deeply receptive to others, and profoundly communicative about this, especially with others who are doing the same themselves. This is what we call mutuality. Because life is not just about the self, or even the great Self. Here’s a huge part of the mystery: many of us are under the impression that upon getting fundamentally enlightened in that non-finite Self or Truth, we will then somehow be free of all the impositions and challenges of relating to others. After all, they would just be part of our real Self, right? But it’s not that way. In the relative plane, otherness leaps forward to claim its dues from anyone who is deeply, authentically bringing the infinite identity to life. And it requires you to relate to others as a relative self who does not know them in any perfect sense, not just as a big infinite Self who is supposedly free of such mundane obligations. Mutuality, especially with people who are living at the same evolutionary depth you are, becomes a huge commitment and undertaking.

Thus, we speak of waking down in mutuality as a singular, multi-faceted process, path, and life-work.

Saniel Bonder, Founding Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/SanielBonder/
www.sanielandlinda.com

by Saniel Bonder &
CC Leigh

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Because Waking Down in Mutuality typically appeals to people who have outgrown the usefulness of traditions, teachings, and teachers that prescribe formulaic practices for students to superimpose on themselves, we generally avoid that sort of approach. Instead, our teachers work with students to develop custom-tailored programs that address each student’s needs uniquely.

That said, there nevertheless are some practices we suggest that are designed to ensure your reception of a transmission that does three things: (1) helps you Wake Down as naturally as sunshine opening a flower, (2) reveals Mutuality as your most heart-full, intelligent choice for stimulating the how to live with others, and (3) propels you to dare, grope, stumble, persevere, discern, love, err, triumph, and trust your way into continually finding and speaking your truth and living out your utterly unique, divinely human destiny.

In contrast to the extensive lists of practices one encounters in much spiritual work, Waking Down in Mutuality presents only two that we ask you to make your foundation. On that basis, often with the helpful recommendations of one or more Waking Down in Mutuality teachers, you will creatively evolve or adapt to all kinds of practices that feel most appropriate for you at any given time. These are the two primary disciplines of our specific work:

1. Practice whole-being “listening” inside and out. Listen to your heart deeply. Give yourself time and space as often as you can, hopefully daily, to feel into the impulses and desires that move you, the responses, reactions, and patterns of your heart, mind, and soul, the feelings in your body, the deeper currents of your being. And, in your attention to our Waking Down in Mutuality teachings, take real time to expose yourself to the available books, tapes, and other publications, the many communications on our website, writings by the other teachers, and all personal communications you may have with any of us who are well established in the work. Give yourself the opportunity to use any frustrations that may arise as advantages, allies, and signs that you are making progress in encountering what you will eventually realize is a whole new sensibility and view of reality. When learning something quite new, confusion is the first stage of comprehension.

2. Tank up on our transmission. Don’t assume you already have it intact in your being. Don’t assume it’s floating around for everyone to breathe at all times. Make it a point, especially at the beginning, of finding every way possible to receive as much of this particular radiant Being-essence as you can. Explore all three of the tracks we describe below. Find out how much spiritual infusion you can receive just through our books and tapes. Attend our sittings, workshops, and seminars whenever you can. Make sure especially to cultivate direct, personal contact, optimally face to face but at least by phone and email, with one or more authorized teachers of Waking Down in Mutuality and with other advanced practitioners as well, particularly authorized mentors.

Compared to intricate, sophisticated exercises you might have learned in other sciences of transformation, these two disciplines may appear rudimentary. Please don’t be fooled. To make a computer analogy, they provide the essential elements Being requires of us to upgrade to a new kind of “operating system” for living. Then, on the basis of that new whole-being worldview, we can creatively develop or adapt our own “software applications” of many distinctive, ever-changing disciplines personally tailored to our individual situations. That’s what Waking Down in Mutuality involves for serious explorers.

Saniel Bonder, Founding Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/SanielBonder/
www.sanielandlinda.com

CC Leigh, Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/CCLeigh

by Krishna Gauci

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Question:

What is the best way for further development after the second birth and what do you say about using other more traditional spiritual maps as well?

Reply:

You asked: “What do you say about using other more traditional spiritual maps as well?”

Above all, Dare to trust your own Total Being.

Waking Down in Mutuality honors traditional Dharma maps even as it challenges the notion that we in the west can use them without taking into account our own unique twenty-first century post modern individuality. It suggests that the kind of human beings we are now are so different from those addressed by those maps that to confine ourselves to their vision is to leave entire aspects of ourselves unaddressed. Understanding this we can make great use of ancient dharma while remaining true to all of what and who we are.

None of the limitations of these maps need define us. As far as that goes, none of our own limits act as any sort of definition of what this school is or can become. We are at a unique juncture in history in which we have before us all the spiritual teachings of the world. I would suggest that we can use them all without harm only if we are careful to acknowledge all of who we are as individuals, divine and human.

You also asked: “What is the best way for further development after the second birth”

Your own mission will make itself know to you as you follow the impulses of Being. It’s important to recognize that your life is waiting to be discovered and that you have unique gifts to bring forth. In many ways Waking Down in Mutuality is NOT a school in the usual sense because it is ultimately you who shapes the direction of your explorations in the 2nd life.

This is very exciting as you alone bring to this process your experience and truth. There is a very real and living energy of mutual transformation in the process our being together in this deep honesty. There is an alchemical magic in mutuality. We end up functioning as channels of continuous revelation, transmission and Divine communion with one another. In these specially dedicated friendships the spirit of guidance can make itself felt to each of us personally. Invoking the inner guru through relationship with each other, rather than a single teacher, we are both the gift and the giver. There is the invitation to all by Saniel and the community to “change us and be changed by us”. I have found this to be delightfully true when I only half believed it, but I could only grasp the extent of it’s potential by taking risks and being willing to share who I was in my fragile human nature. The challenge of doing this in heart to heart meetings continues to be incredibly potent for me.

YOU are the Waking Down in Mutuality process and THIS conversation is part of the curriculum of this school. Saniel’s explorations may be a starting point, but you must both make and discover your own way. The key is that when you are honest you add to the richness of others as well as yourself. Mutuality gives you existential sounding boards, not just for the ideas of your mind, but for all of you. It gives us the space to witness ourselves share our ideas and feelings in a context bigger than our own experience and have them reflected back to us from multiple perspectives. Sometimes it isn’t comfortable or easy, but it is through daring to be yourself that you take your place in and as part of life. Taking the risk of not being understood or appreciated by sharing both how you agree with and differ from others is the way into fuller incarnation and the environment of mutuality is the container that makes it safe.

This is what comes next as much as anything else. It is the very individual and unique adventure of coming forth and incarnating in mutuality.

© 2004 Krishna Gauci, Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/KrishnaGauci/
www.krishnasatsang.com