Eduardo Sierra  Interviewer

Barbara Witney

July 24, 2009

Eduardo: Hi Barbara, how did you learn about Waking Down?

Barbara: I went to a conference a few years ago at John F. Kennedy University called Non-Dual Wisdom and Psychotherapy.  Saniel Bonder was one of the presenters.  I met him and he did a transmission with each of us in the room that were attending his presentation.   Linda was there as well.  I got some information on them and ordered a bunch of books and started reading them. As I was reading the book “Waking Down”, there was a part where Saniel was talking about students tithing, and I threw the book across the room.  I didn’t touch the stuff anymore for about maybe a year and then I got an email in January from Saniel.  I felt like I was looking for a different spiritual teacher than the teachers who I was attending satsang with at the time. Something about what they were teaching was really feeling incomplete for me, and insufficient, and just kind of dead. About that time, I got the e-mail from Saniel and Linda—which eventually led me to have a couple of phone sessions with Saniel and it just really fit for me.

Eduardo: What was motivating you even buy that book in the first place before you threw it across the room?

Barbara: I guess when Saniel did his presentation, I was curious more about his teaching and what he was offering, and what his particular kind of focus was.  I don’t now how else to describe it.  I was wondering what his realization was.  What I generally do when something really starts to catch my interest, I’ll get books on it and start to read and see if this is a good way for me to go, or is there something here.

Eduardo: Sounds like you were searching for something.

Barbara: Yeah, I was.

Eduardo: Did you have any sense of what it was?

Barbara: Some of it was from the retreats and teachings I’d been to with a teacher who asserts to be a non-dual teacher though the emphasis is still on the absolute.

Eduardo: A little much in that direction, and not much in bringing consciousness down to your toes.

Barbara: Right, exactly. So in the end, because I still had the idea that what I was supposed to stay anchored in, for lack of a better word, is the absolute; and I hadn’t succeeded at that yet.  I had this idea that maybe Saniel’s work would help me do that.  At the time, again, I didn’t have a solid enough grasp about what Saniel’s teaching was.  I didn’t really get what he meant by Waking Down in Mutuality.

Eduardo: So after those two calls, what changed? What aroused your interest again?

Barbara: There were some things, like, when Saniel talked about healing the spirit-matter split, because I had said, well my sense or experience was that I could tune into consciousness outside of me, but not in me.  In terms of like, I could experience consciousness or I could just experience being completely the absolute in meditation, kind of like all matter would fall away.  I would even lose awareness of my body.  I would just be that absolute, all I was that absolute unlimited spaciousness presence.  I could often sense just in the middle of the day, or in the middle of doing something, I could experience consciousnesses around me, like the silently present presence, this alive presence all around me, but I couldn’t feel inside of me.  It was out of me, but not in me, so I could feel that split.  There was something, somehow, that this absolute thing wasn’t complete.  It wasn’t right, it was just resting in the absolute and there were just these questions that started coming up for me. I ran some of that stuff by Saniel, as well as trying to get a hold of this whole thing about manifesting and this new age thinking, the law of attraction. Saniel’s responses to me were just real supportive,  “I like the way you’re thinking about that.” Or he says, “You know, you make some really good discernments and discriminations.” Things like that, so there was this sense of support with sort of my own assessment or things that I was coming to.  I just wanted to talk to somebody about some of this down to earth stuff.

Barbara: I didn’t feel like I was getting that with any of the spiritual teachers, and everything that they did was kind of impersonal.  They’re in a group, a large group of people and you’re sitting there and you’re asking questions directly, and there’s not really much one-on-one teaching, and any question was always just asked back, “who’s the asker?  Look into the asker.” I could just ask these questions to Saniel and he’d answer. He didn’t go into this BS – who’s the asker, you know, look into the experience-er, from whom are those questions arising?  You know, and I was getting sick of that.

Eduardo: I hear you. What happened from there?

Barbara: What I did was I went up and had a sitting with Saniel, an in-person sitting, where he did the transmission stuff, which I thought was pretty cool.  I had then the beginning of a sense of some of what was already available to me.  There were times when I could experience the connectedness with everything.  Connectedness like with Saniel and me, and that even though I could see that he was different there was still the sense of connectedness at the same time, this oneness.  I had that in the session with him.  Then I came back and did a sitting and I even did a couple of sessions with Linda, in-person sessions.  Then when I came to a session, it was around the time of Saniel’s birthday, so I guess that was the end of April?  Anyway, there were a bunch of the others. Van had been at some of the sittings and he was talking about how you don’t have to be perfect to wake down.  You don’t have to have every one of your issues worked out.  Then I was at Saniel’s birthday celebration—Ted and Hilary were there, as well as Van, Michael Grossman, and Jen (other Waking Down Teachers).

So these teachers were talking about “when all this emotion comes up and you’re in the dark places, then you believe it means you’ve done something wrong.”  And I go, that’s exactly it, because, again, this thing about everything is always just favoring the absolute, so then when all this human stuff would come up again, I would think that because of all the stuff that I’ve been taught or read, that I was failing still.  Then when they were saying, well, wait a minute, you don’t have to have everything worked through and it isn’t necessary, and all that.  I don’t know; it was just a feeling sense that this was the place for me to be.

I went to a sitting with Deborah Boyar and it was just this feeling kind of like craving.  Every time we would do the sittings my heart would just pound like it was going to come out of my chest, you know.  It just felt right.  I don’t know how else to – it was more of a feeling sense to rightness to it.

In the sittings and when we would do the gazing with the teachers and then we would also do the mutual gazing where everybody in the room was gazing with each other and all that stuff and my heart would just be going.  All that was going on and then I just had this feeling that I just had to do more.  I felt like I really needed to immerse myself and do something pretty intense.  Then I had learned about the waking down retreat and I was going back and forth and back and forth on it and finally read some of Ted’s essays and said, yeah, I’m doing it.  This seems like this is the thing that I need to do.  This is the thing that I want to do, this feels like the right thing to do.

Eduardo: You began working with Ted?

Barbara: Well, Ted was my teacher at the Transfiguration Retreat (TR), and so I think it was even our first session.  He was the teacher in the afternoon and so he was like my main teacher as far as a person I spent the most time with in those small groups with about three or four other people.  Plus, Sylvia Woods, from Seattle, she was a mentor in our group.  Anyway, so Ted started sharing some personal stuff, and started asking me, “what’s your relationship with consciousness,” or something like that, and I just said, well, it’s always here where I can tap into that pretty easily.  It just feels like it’s outside of me. He suggested that I fall into it.  He said, “fall into it.” I went, really? I thought I had to just wait for it to come to me or something like that.  He said, “no, fall into it,” so I did.  He asked me what it was like, and I can’t remember my discussion, but he suggested that I say to myself, “this is me”. So I did and then I just started giggling and laughing and feeling all this joy, and exuberance and stuff.  I just played with that.  Then what started coming, “this is me, too”.  It was like this is me, and also this humanness is me.  In our next session, I believe it was, we did some more with that, about me feeling it more and more in my body, and I described this kind of continuum. that I could experience from my real human form, that my sense of me was this continuum.  Then, I believe it was Tuesday night, during the TR, Ted was giving an evening talk for anybody who wanted to come, and I was just at the talk listening and stuff.  Suddenly it was like, suddenly I was awake.

Eduardo: Well, how could you tell?  What was different?

Barbara: Everything was like – first of all, there was almost like this sense of waking up.  I don’t even know how to say it.  Almost like what people do when they’re waking up from being asleep.  There was this sudden, like, shift.  I could feel this, like, I was awake in my toes, I was awake in my legs, I was awake in my hands, I was awake everywhere.  There was no more separation.  The feeling, I called it, I fell into me.  Me being more like my humanity.

Eduardo: Do you mean more like consciousness?

Barbara: Yeah; in that sense, that’s the way I described it; I fell into me.  It was literally, I don’t know how to describe it, but there was no separation.  I was just looking around at everything and noticing everything.

Eduardo: Was it noticeable to the folks in the circle there as you experiencing that?

Barbara: No, probably not.  I was very quiet about it, too.  I wasn’t saying anything, I was just in awe and curious and kind of like, what is this, and oh my God! I’m trying to put language to it.  Then I was, throughout the night, even after I went to bed, I would like keep waking up and experiencing myself.

Then all day Wednesday, because it was a day off, I just didn’t want to go anywhere, I jut wanted to just be.  Just walk and sit outside and be in the breeze and everything was, you know, my experienced ranged from what I could notice was my humanness, to my sense of everything arising within me, to me actually either being no boundaries between me and the tree and the lake and the birds.

Eduardo: .  Were you ready for that?

Barbara: Well, I had had some experiences like that before.  What was different was that there was, I don’t know how to describe it because I could…  Often in nature I could sense that there was no separation between me and everything in nature.  It was an outward separation.  I could sense it outwardly.  I could sense it inwardly if that makes any sense, there was still, like, this sense of a boundary.  This time there was no boundary.

I didn’t feel freaked out by it at all.  I didn’t feel scared.  It was like, just with-it, you know, just being with what – almost like just being with one recognition or realization after another, after another, after another.  It was more sensory first, in a sense and then I would put words to it, if that makes any sense.

Eduardo: The whole thing that you’re speaking to about non-separation really seems to sum it up for me as you’re speaking. about just being in awe at everything and feeling no separation, no compulsion to speak out about it or identify yourself in it, just experiencing it and relishing the experience of it.

Barbara: Yeah; so then I just kept doing that.  That night I joined Ted and Linda and Saniel and one of the other students and we went out to dinner and watched the American Idol finale.  I had a beer and all that kind of stuff and the question that kept coming up, sort of like, am I still here, where am I?  Then every time I asked the question then I would sense who I was, and who I was, wasn’t that old sense of who I was. 

Eduardo: So you were making a sort of an ongoing inquiry as this was happening and continuing to consider, what is it?

Barbara: Yeah, because I had some other kinds of openings before, like I remember this period, I don’t know, it was a few years back, where I felt like Barbara fell away.  There was no Barbara, there was just presence and I was moving through life as that.  There was this incredible intimacy with everything, but then it’s like, all my other stuff, all my other human stuff came back again.  Of course, the contrast was dramatic.  It was kind of like, okay, is that what this is again?  I had to keep checking because it was like, is this just a state or is this different than a state?

Eduardo: Did you come to a conclusion on that question?

Barbara: I don’t believe it’s a state because I still sense that even though my experience day to day is not as dramatic as that time was.  I have this ongoing sense of wellbeing all the time now.

Eduardo: How long has it been Barbara?

Barbara: A couple of months.

Eduardo: You’re looking back on it now from here.  What noticeable differences do you discern, aside from this introspection or this self inquiry that you were engaged with?  What were you seeing that was different, what did you feel was different?

Barbara: What I feel is different is I feel really comfortable in my own skin, so I have this ease of wellbeing.  I still have emotional stuff, you know, like, I’m really aware and I’m noticing lots and lots and lots of fear.  I’m feeling lots of fear along with this wonderful sense of wellbeing.  I don’t feel compelled to get rid of the fear like I used to.  Ted said just so that I feel more into it, you know, feel it more, really feel it in my body and stay with that more, but I don’t have this compulsion to get rid of it or try to figure it out or anything about where is it coming from, so that’s very different.  I would say I lost an interest, other than the Waking Down stuff with spiritual inquiry per se.  I’m not interested in doing that anymore.

Eduardo: What role did the Waking Down teachers play?

Barbara: I definitely feel that the transmission part was really important.

Eduardo: Can you explain that a little bit?

Barbara: Just that spending their time doing the gazing and transmission of being and I just feel like that was an instrumental piece.  It being very personal and yet I use the word impersonal at the same time.  Maybe that’s not the word I mean, maybe I mean transpersonal, that’s a better word for it.  In that sense of being to being experience I feel like was very important.  I think it still is.  I love that stuff.  The other part, again, I feel is just this being around the Waking Down teachers, first of all and seeing how down-to-earth everybody is.  People are really alive embodied, people are really embodied and I could sense that.  People aren’t dissociated.  There isn’t all this holier-than-thou, airy-fairy, spacey quality that is so prevalent in so many of the non-dual teachers.

Eduardo: Favoring the transcendental over the worldly and the body and all that?

Barbara: Yeah, yeah, exactly, then just experiencing people just really being disconnected.  Whereas the Waking Down people feel very connected to me, so that was a piece of it.  Also, just these levels of equality that people communicate.  Even though they’re teachers and they’re superior in the teaching that they have, and its really special, there still wasn’t this kind of like, superiority thing about who we are that they communicated, so that was really important.  I feel like the TR was really instrumental in Ted’s being directive. I feel like was really helpful.

Eduardo: Can you explain directive in this context?

Barbara: Directive like fall into consciousness, claim it, say this is me.  I had these ideas that somehow I was supposed to just sit there and it would happen or it wouldn’t and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.  While that’s true, it’s also not true.  I can’t declare this is when it will be, but I could certainly be more active.  Again, I had come from these non-dual teachers who were favoring the transcendental, so everything would always be, well, eventually what will happen is the ego will relax and you’ll get who you really are.  Somehow that will just happen to you, how it’s all a mystery, but that it would happen.

Eduardo: Then you were just noting a minute ago that you weren’t good with the sitting and waiting sort-of approach, that there was a place to be played in your active or yang side. Could you elaborate a little on that, Barbara?  I’m fascinated with those two areas, the yin and they yang as sort of parts of our being, ya know?

Barbara: I don’t know how much I can elaborate on it.  All I know is that Ted was really emphasizing, or his mode was, to me, that it had a yang quality to it.  He was being directive in a sense; do this, try this and calling me to be yang.  I loved it.  I don’t know how to elaborate, but yeah, he was it and was calling me to be it, and I didn’t know that was possible.  For me it was really important because I think I had been doing the yin for years.  Sitting and waiting just trying to be and let everything be as it is.  Of course and feeling like I was failing, but the idea that I could actually engage actively beyond the actual meditating.  Be active of like just having this experience again of falling into consciousness and claiming it as me.  I was going, I can do that…?  Almost as if that was sacrilegious or something.  I was like, what, little ol’ me?  That’s okay?  Like he gave me permission. Ted’s style seems to have that.  His way of teaching really does emphasize the yang, for me.  They have a theme, like, trust in being, or something like that will be the theme of their retreat.  I like that because there’s some direction as opposed to floating around or something and being carried by a current without any guide.  I appreciate his guidance.

Eduardo: Saniel said,  ”dare to grasp the means to your own realization”.

Barbara: I even said it at the TR when I spoke, they had everybody speak at the very beginning and introduce ourselves, I said I’m here to wake up and if that happens, so be it.  I even declared it then.  I remember even saying it one time before going to one of Deborah’s sittings, I just said I want to wake up, I want this now.  I was stamping my feet and everything, in the privacy of my home.  Of course Saniel said you can probably do that out on a park bench on Pacific and nobody would even notice.  People are always shouting and talking to the sky and stuff there, or to someone.

And there’s just a sense in me that I’m just beginning. It’s a sense that I feel in my body. I feel around my heart that I’m just beginning something here. This is not the end; it’s the beginning of something else, something different. And there’s this real curiousity, like I wonder what’s going to evolve here. I wonder what’s going to unfold. I wonder what new I’m going to learn. I wonder more like what this whole deepening is going to be. It’s all unknown to me. I think I probably have some ideas about it just from little pieces that I’ve picked up from other people.

Eduardo: Thank you so much Barbara, I appreciate your time today. Delightful to be with you.

Krishna Gauci - Waking Down Senior Teacher

Devotion has traditionally been related to dualistic teachings.

The reason for this is that “the other” is required. Devotion is always between two, you and the beloved. The non-dual teachers are quite clear that you ARE the beloved and there is no separation, so no need for devotion.

That said, even among non-dual teachers there have been great devotees. Poonja-ji used to say that it was his preference to be born again for the sake of devotion, yet he was simultaneously convinced that it was impossible to be born again, because he knew himself as that which was never born to begin with. So there is some paradox there.

To be in Devotion and be awakened to the non-dual is sometimes called “Parabhakti”, translated as “Beyond Devotion” or even “Devotion to the Beyond”. Among those who are not dualistic, there is a paradox in Devotion because you must allow yourself to be identified with the limited, even if you know that you are beyond it as well. That is the only way.

So I can say a little from my own experience.

First we must awaken to Consciousness. That’s the first step. Often people ask, ” What is it that awakens to Consciousness?” The spiritually correct answer is, “Consciousness awakens to Consciousness itself”. Regardless of the truth of it, past a certain point, I don’t find that to be a particularly helpful answer. If you want to go the next step, you might consider that consciousness has no need to awaken to itself, it’s already self-aware! What awakens to Consciousness is always the body/mind. That is a key to embodiment.

Here’s a three-step recipe of self-enquiry:

You can take as long as you need to do it, years even… but don’t skip the order:

1) When ready ask, “What if I am that which is aware of all that arises? “

Recognize yourself as pure consciousness, inseparable from the infinite unmanifest absolute.

In other words identify as consciousness that is beyond the body/mind and all manifest existence, yet contains them.

Notice all that arises is arising in and as that consciousness.

Steep until ready.

2) When ready ask, “What if I am that which continues to arise?”

Recognize yourself as that which arises as the limited body/mind, inseparable from the vast matrix of all manifest existence.

In other words identify as the body/mind, that which is both in consciousness and yet a form of it.

Notice the experience of recognizing pure consciousness has always been experienced and recognized by the limited body/mind and no one else.

Simmer until ready.

3) When ready ask, “What if I am both that which is aware of all that arises and that which continues to arise? And what if I favor neither identity but embrace them as if they were both true?”

Recognize yourself as both pure consciousness, inseparable from the infinite unmanifest absolute, as well as that which arises as the limited body/mind, inseparable from the vast matrix of all manifest existence.

In other words identify as consciousness that is beyond the body/mind and all manifest existence, yet contains them.

And yet identify also as the body/mind and all manifest existence, that which is both in consciousness and yet are forms of it.

Notice all that arises is arising in and as that consciousness, but also notice that the experience of recognizing pure consciousness has always been experienced and recognized by the limited body/mind and no one else.

This is a contradiction beyond logic that can be known when ready. It is the paradox that we are. The effect of this recognition is to live in an affected sensitivity founded in a space which is always unaffected. This new identification is more than recognizing the manifest life as a form of Consciousness; it is also simultaneously recognizing that the experience of realizing Consciousness is a form of the manifest life. It is not simply reducing life to a sub-category of consciousness and not reducing consciousness to a sub- category of life. It is the embracing of both views being true, both sequentially and simultaneously.

The result is to be dropped between the source and it’s manifestation. The “gap” between Consciousness and phenomena is our fullest place of identification, here we are: stretched to encompass all of our experience. Only in this gap can we be both, and honestly include all of what we know as ourselves, without dismissing anything. This gap is paradox itself. It is the place of meeting of both Consciousness and It’s Power, both God and Goddess, both Shiva and Shakti. That meeting place is the place of Divine Sensitive Desire. The WDM teachings refer to it as “the Core Wound”. It is our essential sensitivity. It is of the nature of a rub, a yearning, a friction, desire. Here we are literally the Peace-Filled Desire of the infinite. It is most certainly not simply peace for it’s own sake, neither is it simply movement for it’s own sake.

The less conscious it is, it functions as the source of all our petty desires. The more conscious it is, it is the yearning in manifest form for that which is beyond, it is never satiated, and always enough. You can also say it is always satiated but never enough. It is the thrill and suffering of the universe.

It is the meeting of Duality and Non-duality.

It is the Heart of Devotion.

It is the yearning in the awakened soul (that knows that she is God), to meet and merge with God and the disappointment of such a soul in the face of every limit.

It is the Goddess Devi questioning Siva, as if she didn’t know.

It is Ram crying for Sita.

It is the sacred heart of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin.

It is the incarnation of Krishna and the Crucifixion of Christ.

It is the spontaneous Bodhisattva desire to embrace every limit for the sake of every limited being, while knowing that in the absolute truth there are no limits and limited beings. And although there is no time, it is to carry that desire forever.

It is not an idea or ideal, it is a fire.

Bring to a boil.

© 2005 Krishna Gauci, Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality
www.wakingdown.org/KrishnaGauci/
www.krishnasatsang.com

Jean Marchand - Waking Down Teacher

It was like waking up from sleep or recovering from amnesia. I could not have imagined ever getting something as abstract as what all the ancient and current philosophers describe as Enlightenment, Self Realization or Being in the Now, so easily. I was ecstatic. However, I was also afraid that I might lose this precious self-realization. It was blazing in its presence, yet delicate and tender. I did not want to ever lose it again. After a few months I became confident in the presence of I Am and lost the fear that I may lose this awareness. It, the awareness, was ever present as the observer to my every moment.

However, there was still something missing. This is where the Advaitans and I part company. They would say that there is nothing missing in this realization. I agree there is nothing missing because it includes everything. However, even in this realization of I AM the self, I still had (have) to deal with the mundane everyday problems of day-to- day life and relating to others. My buttons were and are still being pushed and I was (am) still triggered by others and events over which I have no control. I had a strong desire to withdraw and abide in the silence of the self, but who was going to look after my family and responsibilities? I still had feelings and desires that parts of me did not want to deny even though I Am Consciousness. This created a very real and uncomfortable dilemma for the human part of me. I was living in a paradox of being simultaneously infinite yet finite. It felt like something wasn’t right, and I didn’t know what it was or what to do about it. I felt frustrated and could not understand why after such a huge awakening I still had uncomfortable feelings which were difficult to ignore. I felt split.

Luckily for me, a friend whom I had led through the same advaitic process which I had learned to do, told me about Saniel Bonder and the Waking Down web site. Upon visiting the site on Feb. 23, 1999, I immediately felt that this teaching might provide the missing piece to my problem. I ordered Saniel’s book, Waking Down, and immediately entered into contact with one of Saniel’s teachers, Ted Strauss. Ted helped me to start feeling into what Saniel calls the Core Wound. This is the wound which every body on the planet carries, and I would venture to guess is the major cause of most problems that humans perpetrate on each other and the planet. Feeling into the Core Wound was very challenging, uncomfortable and frightening. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, shortly after starting to work with Ted on the phone, and I was sure I was going to die. I started hyperventilating and felt the starkness of Being here in a body. It was terrifying.

Two weeks after entering into contact with Saniel and Ted, I landed in San Francisco on March 12, 1999, to attend a Waking Down Weekend, a three-day intensive workshop. Just being with Saniel and the other teachers on Friday evening was very potent, but little did I know how potent. The next day as I gazed with Pascal, one of the teachers, I fell into a place that brought up an abundance of tears and sorrow. I didn’t know what was going on, but I could sure feel my existential pain.

That afternoon when we broke up into small groups we each took turns feeling into what was going on inside and sharing with the group. As I felt into my pain, it was as if a dam of sorrow broke wide open and engulfed my entire being. Ted asked me, “Do you want to be here?” As I felt into the question, in the midst of overwhelming sorrow I realized that part of me did not want to be here in a human body because it was just too painful and limiting. Ted asked me again, “Do you want to be here?” I again felt into the question and this time I surrendered into the excruciating pain of being here in a body. I fell into the Core Wound. It was unbelievable. There I was, infinite, feeling trapped in a limited, finite body. I felt as if Iwas being crucified. I have never, ever felt such an intense and devastating pain. Yet the bizarre paradox was that interspersed throughout the pain was a bittersweet Joy, the Bliss of Consciousness. My heart was blown wide open. The Love I felt for the others in the room was unlimited. I looked into each of their eyes and felt their pain. I felt their pain of being here in a body. As I looked at them waves of sobbing overcame me. Their pain was my pain. There was no feeling of separation. I stayed in that tender vulnerable place in the heart for the rest of the weekend and several days after. As a matter of fact, I have never left that place of vulnerability in the heart. I am just more selective about who I am vulnerable with. Now I am more discriminative about being wide open in Love with everyone.

Two days later on March 17, I awoke in the middle of the night to realize that Being had landed here in my body. The feeling of being separate from my body and the world was gone. I now had permission to show up here on this planet as Being in a body, not separate from the body. What a relief. I had entered what Saniel calls my Second Birth. It was okay to be here. It was okay to feel the wound of being here now in all of its limitations. The Core Wound had become the Conscious Wound. What a “Great Relief,” as Saniel calls it. I no longer want to escape to a cave in the Himalayas. Occasionally withdrawing into the silence of Being suffices. I am deeply grateful for the profound silence which always resides in my heart, my body and my mind. Life is more relaxed and enjoyable now than it’s ever been. The moments of being vulnerable and feeling my own pain and another’s pain are there more than ever, but I’m not trying to avoid it. Now my mission is to help my fellow humans to awaken to who they truly are, like I did, thus answering Excerpts from the Second Birth the question once and for all, “Qui es tu (Who are you)?” And by the way I did get the concept. “God is Everywhere.”

~ Jean Marchand (excepted from the book, Dancing in the Fire: Stories of Awakening within the Heart of Community by Bob Valine)

Krishna Gauci - Waking Down Senior Teacher

PAPAJI
After hearing the teachings of HWL Poonja (also known as Papaji) in 1992, I spent five years traveling back and forth to India to be with him. The kindness and personal attention that he extended to me was beyond intimate. This amazing being effortlessly blessed me in a way that is still with me. I carry him in my heart even now. One could say that he IS my heart. Through his grace I realized my nature as unchanging awareness and discovered the source of peace within. I came to know myself not as a body or a personality but as pure Consciousness. My living relationship with him gave my life profound meaning. Out of great love and respect, I happily visited him as often as possible, drinking in his powerful presence while receiving his darshan. Papaji gave freely of himself and he delivered the goods as promised, and for this I will always be thankful.

And yet after his passing it began to dawn on me that without his physical presence, the written teachings and techniques left me feeling empty of meaning. It wasn’t that they were not effective–they certainly put me in the formless reality. But I began to wonder about the rest of me. What about living my daily life? Was there a purpose to my existence in form? Incorporating Eastern culture into my world was helpful, but I didn’t have a sense of how to live my truth. What I received from Papaji was my Self as Consciousness Itself. Other than that, I was more or less on my own. It was clear to me that while ancient Dharma could put me in touch with my Buddha-nature, it didn’t necessarily help me (a 21st Century Westerner), to get a grasp of how to live an authentic life in modern America. It wasn’t designed to do that.

SANIEL
So how to live an Awakened Life? After realizing my nature as freedom from definitions and limits, I was not about to follow rules or ideals that came from the conditioned minds of other people. I wanted to be plugged into my own unique, individual life’s guidance.

When I first began to check into the teachings of Waking Down in Mutuality, I was intrigued, but to be perfectly honest, upon my first meeting with Saniel Bonder I was not impressed. I had read his book, and while I did not disagree with much of what he taught, it did not seem to be anything that I had not heard before. I found one aspect of what he was saying particularly annoying: Saniel seemed to be implying that most if not all forms of teaching in the more ancient schools led to a realization that was not altogether “embodied.” In fact his claim to having a unique teaching seemed rather grandiose to me.

So upon attending one of his sittings in 1998 (there were about six people present), I mentioned to him that I felt there were many Indian spiritual schools (like the schools of Tantra) that taught embodied awakening exactly as he did, and it was simply that there were cultural factors and language that made for the appearance of difference. He answered me, explaining that while it was true that culture played a part, it didn’t account for all the differences in the embodied realization that he and his friends were living. I was not satisfied with his reply.

It’s pretty likely that would have been our last meeting, except for one thing: after the sitting he invited me to lunch with his students. He asked me to sit next to him and we had a very friendly, rather down to earth meal together in which he was totally available to me, not simply as a “teacher,” but as a fellow traveler and human being. In the conversations we had it was plain he was actually interested in my life and background and listened to my story attentively. I found him to be sincere and very interesting.

MY FIRST WAKING DOWN WEEKEND (1998)
Within months I found myself (in spite of my doubts) attending one of the Waking Down Weekend intensives. Two things happened there that opened me up to the possibilities in this teaching that I hadn’t glimpsed before.

To begin with this was not like any weekend I’d done. From my previous spiritual background, I was used to satsangs, retreats and intensives where there was one teacher and usually anywhere from 30 to 80 participants. In fact in some gatherings there could even be as many as 500 in attendance. At the Waking Down Weekend there were six or seven participants and four teachers including Saniel. Also, the teachers with him were not his assistants, but full teachers in their own right. Saniel taught the beginning session on Friday and the last session on Sunday, and the other teachers taught the rest of the time.

At the Saturday morning session there were three teachers in the room: Ted Strauss and Hillary Davis (a married couple) and a third woman teacher. They invited any questions or comments. It was difficult, but I felt that I had to be totally candid, so I said something like, “I’m here as open-minded as possible, but I have to be honest with you that there are some things that I don’t agree with here. In particular, Saniel seems to imply that this form of realization has not happened until now and that this is something unique in the sacred traditions. I feel that this form of Awakening (as I read it in Saniel’s books) has most likely already happened plenty of times in other schools in India and Asia and perhaps in other places we don’t know of.” I waited for the reply. I was thanked by the teachers for being so honest and taking the risk to speak my truth. I was then told that I was doing everyone present a service by speaking into the room feelings that others may have, but didn’t feel safe enough to say themselves.

Then Ted said, “I understand your point and I can see why you’d feel that way, but I agree with Saniel and I don’t think that this particular form of realization has appeared anywhere else that I know of.” This was pretty much what I expected to hear, though I was impressed that he was so gracious. What his wife Hillary said next however was quite a surprise, “Actually, I agree with you, Krishna. I don’t agree with Ted and Saniel on this one.” She didn’t seem to be joking. I was amazed. Then what the third teacher said put a smile on my lips, “Saniel teaches that?”

Here I was with three different teachers with their own very different comments on what I said. The strangest thing was that there was no interest in “getting it straight” or having the right answer and it all felt just fine. No one had a problem with any of it. There was room for disagreement. “Wow, “ I thought, “This IS different!”

The second thing that caught my attention was seeing Hillary Davis work with one of the participants. Hillary, like me, has a background in Advaita Vedanta with Papaji. One of the central understandings of many in that school is that attachment to a person’s personal story (how they see themselves, how they think of themselves and their past) is an obstacle to clear seeing and should not be taken too seriously. What I saw as Hillary listened to one person’s story of suffering was subtle and difficult to convey: I could clearly see and feel that Hillary was seeing this person as Consciousness itself, free of all limiting definitions of mind, and at the same time Hillary was taking the person’s story 100% seriously and seemed to be believing everything this person conveyed about their life experience. It was obvious that the person was being deeply seen as a person complete with limitations, but not held to them, because they were also seen as being free of them.

The actual seeing of this is really inexplicable, but when I saw it I immediately was reminded of a story about The Buddha. Someone asked him about the most important part of his Dharma: “Is it Emptiness? Is it no-self? Is it impermanence?” “No,” he answered,” It is compassion. And anywhere that you find a teaching on compassion, go there.” As I watched Hillary and other exchanges that weekend, I thought, “This is compassion. I need to learn this.”

by Krishna Chris Gauci (excepted from the book, Dancing in the Fire: Stories of Awakening within the Heart of Community by Bob Valine)