Cielle Backstrom - Waking Down Teacher

As I worked with these teachers both in person and by phone for six months, Consciousness continued to drop more and more into my body, and my experiences seemed to match what Saniel described as a Second Birth Awakening, the birth of awakening to a new level of self awareness where Pure Consciousness or Witness Consciousness is body-centered. I asked for a Second Birth interview to check the progress of my deepening into this realization.

After talking for a few minutes, Sandra Glickman, the teacher that was interviewing me, asked, “Who are you?”

I thought for a moment in silence. “I am dual, both limitless and limited.”

“Tell me more,” she prodded.

To describe my unlimited nature was easy. I had been aware of it for many years. “I am unbounded, eternal, omnipresent. At the base of my existence is fundamental non-separateness, fundamental wellness, seamlessness. There is an “is-ness” or in “am-ness” that I am always identified with. It transcends, stands apart from all relative change and yet is the basis of all creation. I am that non-separate basis of all relative existence, all fields of change. I am That.”

“Tell me about your limited nature,” she commanded

That answer also seemed easy. My hands patted my thighs, “My limited nature is my body, my ego, my mind, intellect, emotions and feelings.” Something whispered inside that there was more to my limited nature. I wasn’t sure what that more was. I paused to see what would arise. My gaze was fixed on hers. I sank deep into her eyes. Words formed around a thought in a whisper. The thought was pure blasphemy, yet True. This Truth had to be spoken, and yet it seemed so unbelievable that I could only speak in a whisper.

“When speaking of my limited nature,” I paused, tears welling in my eyes, choking back the words. Then I dared to speak the Truth so new and tender, “I am also you.”

“Say that again,” she insisted.

“I am also you.”

The tears flowed now. My body shook with this recognition. The denial that had separated me from that Truth was like a thin pane of glass. I had dared to crack it.

Kali, the very thing I had feared the most in her, sprang into action. Sandra’s words became like hammers (or maybe they were skulls) to shatter that pane of glass, already weakened, “That is the Second Birth! That is the Second Birth!” She showed no mercy. I was sobbing, hyperventilating, transfixed by her gaze. She continued to wield her hammers, “Nothing else you have spoken of up until this time is the Second Birth. This Is!”

As the shards of the glass that had separated me from this reality fell around me, I exploded like a supernova. Suddenly I found my limited nature simultaneously centered in all things. I was all things. It was awesome, unbelievable, yet True. Namaste took on a new meaning. My eternal nature bows to itself as found in you (who?). I continued to shake, cry and hyperventilate. I grounded myself in her gaze.

“Yes, yes,” her voice softened, “this is who you are.”

I started to relax into this expanded state. I had often heard the expression “holding the space” for someone going through a “process.” I needed someone as big and powerful as she to hold the space I was now experiencing while I integrated this new level of Reality. After a short time, I realized that my unmanifest, limitless ground of Being could hold this new realization for and with me.

I felt the exhaustion of both having just given birth and having just been born. I realized that the Second Birth was more than just an embodied feeling-witness consciousness. It was a true and awesome knowing that I was not just the unmanifest basis of all creation, but also that I was centered in all manifest creation, all things simultaneously. Non-separateness was experienced on the level of the unmanifest, but also on the level of manifest creation.

—Cielle Backstrom (excepted from the book, Dancing in the Fire: Stories of Awakening within the Heart of Community by Bob Valine)

Shanti Spierenburg

Of course something happened that triggered my final breakdown. As part of the Waking Down Weekend everybody got to choose three teachers that they wanted to work with. One of those would then be leading your small personal group. I didn’t get any of the teachers I had written down. I was a little disappointed, but being a “good student” I didn’t complain.

The next day after the morning meditation someone said that everybody got at least one of the choices on their list. I felt very shook up and told CC (Leigh) that I didn’t get anybody on my list. She then said, “But, Shanti, the other teachers really wanted you in their group!” That word “wanted” just broke me down totally. I had never felt wanted. I never felt wanted, ever. I sank into the feeling that I shouldn’t be alive. I had no right to live. I was a big mistake. I cried for hours. I couldn’t stop. I had tried so hard all my life to be a good girl, a good disciple, to gain the right to be alive. I was exhausted.

In my small group with Ben Hursh and Tony Konopka I went even deeper into that feeling while totally being held by everybody in the group. I then ended up being reborn symbolically and welcomed with love and excitement. By the end of the day I felt totally empty. Nothing to say, nothing to do, just be there. I guess I had landed in my version of what Saniel calls “the Core Wound.” For me it’s the pain of not being accepted or wanted in this world and the sense of being very unimportant and disposable—unseen.

The next morning we did this really long gazing meditation. Afterwards I closed my eyes. At a certain point I started to expand and expand. Everything and everybody became me and was in me. The sounds of the airplane. People coughing, crying. The sounds of birds. It was all me. There was no division . No separateness. I sensed this fluid Beingness that was me and everything else. One Being.

After I opened my eyes things looked different, brighter. As if a veil had lifted. I had this kind of expansiveness before in Hawaii where I became the clouds and the thunder while sitting on the beach, but it didn’t last more than a week and never had this physical component to it.

The next few months I was in this state that I only had heard about: my mind quiet, an incredibly deep relaxation and feeling of sensuality in the body. Everything was so bright and direct, and I was feeling very raw because of it. Also, there was bliss and peace, the perfection of everything. I felt that the birds flying over, the trees I walked under, everything was a part of my body. The frantic urge to seek was gone. Just being here was it. There was a pressure on top of my head as if a valve had opened up. And sometimes the psychedelic experience of sitting and hearing others talk and experiencing that I was everyone talking. Also, I so wished I could just be in nature. I would have loved to be able to go to Hawaii and sit at Excerpts from the Second Birth the beach. Sitting there, nothing else. Instead I had to go to work, and on my days off I had a two-year-old. Anyway, it was a great honeymoon. I was lucky it lasted so long.

Saniel (Bonder) does talk in his book about the Wakedown Shakedown, the process where you start to integrate the shadows, the dissociated parts of yourself that you split off because they are too painful to handle. The first year after my Second Birth was a big change. Initially I would feel very raw. Many times, very painfully, I was extremely sensitive to people’s emotions, their reactions or non-reactions. The world seemed so much brighter and more intense. My buffer was gone. For the first time I felt here, very sensually in my body in a new way. I was actually in my body… and enjoying it immensely. Soooo sensual. I felt authentic, real. But by all means not perfect.

I had a period where synchronicity was happening. It was like living in never-ending magic. Objects would appear that I really wanted, like a Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story for my son when it wasn’t made anymore. On the other hand, I would get triggered by a seemingly harmless event that would throw me deep into my inner dungeon. Very dark, very hopeless, definitely an inner hell that would sometimes last for a few weeks. Then suddenly I would wake up in the morning and it was gone. Afterward, I would feel more integrated and here and connected. One time I had a symbolic past-life dream that left me waking up in total horror. It was all about being abused , raped, victimized, killed as a woman. It stayed with me for a long time. Also, I went through a period where I would ooze negativity, powerlessness, jealousy and resentment. I felt it coming out of my pores and in my breath. It lasted for months until, for now, it is gone.

Since my last episode of Wakedown Shakedown I feel again a deepening sense that I am being held at all times. I had some very deep plunges in my first two years of Wakedown Shakedown, and I know I am not done. What is strengthening me is the feeling of being truly seated in Me. My gut has opened up, and I feel an inner power that is coming in, that wants to manifest itself. I am struggling to find a way to express this new life in a different way, like finding a different work where I can express more of the new me.

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