Eduardo Sierra  Interviewer

Peggy Tobin

Eduardo: Hello, I’m talking with Peggy Tobin about her experiences in life and in Waking Down in Mutuality. Peggy, how are you doing this evening?

Peggy: I’m good! I’m glad to talk to you.

Eduardo: I really want to thank you for taking the time and being with me on this interview today, I really appreciate it.

Peggy: My pleasure.

Eduardo: Could tell us about your background, Peggy, where you grew up, your education, cultural background, anything along that line, briefly.

Peggy: Sure, so I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, FL. I was one of five children and I went to Catholic school through high school and went to Loyola University in New Orleans for three years. I had this very Irish-Catholic background. We had nuns and priests from Ireland come over to our parish. I don’t know why, I don’t know how they found us, we got them straight out of Ireland and they were kind of mean.

Eduardo: A little rough around the edges, huh?

Peggy: Mean and strict. And my mother was a true believer, so one of the impacts of my life has been having a very heavy Catholic imprint early. My mother was very into it and she started us early praying and being “good” children.

Eduardo: I’m familiar with Catholic upbringing.

Peggy: Yes, it’s something to be in recovery from.

Eduardo: How have you handled that? Have you completed your Catholic 12 step program?

Peggy: You know, I think I have! I think it’s taken me all of my adult life. When I was at Loyola I had a wonderful teacher who taught Chinese and Japanese history, world history and Zen. He was really interesting. It was in a world history class where we were learning the myths of other cultures that I got outside of my Catholic culture. The Chinese have a myth that their king was a god and born of a virgin and there was a bird somehow involved also, like the Holy Spirit. Just learning that about the other cultures was really the first time I could get outside of my own culture and say, “oh, well I see that’s a myth so what about all the stuff I was taught? That’s a myth too”.

Eduardo: It starts to unravel?

Peggy: It starts to unravel, but then some of the deep stuff, the deep things took a while.

Eduardo: What’s been your experience of faith in terms of that Catholic upbringing?

Peggy: Well, when I got to Seattle to go to the University of Washington that was the first time I was really in a non- Catholic environment. And what I noticed about the people who were not raised Catholic, they recognized me as Catholic somehow. They would ask me “Are you Catholic?” and I didn’t know if I had it stamped on my forehead or something. I didn’t question the existence of God, I questioned the interpretation of what that meant, and the beliefs I still had about that. The fact that I knew people who hadn’t studied any kind of religion, had no religious background, was very foreign to me. It was very foreign that they did not appreciate some sort of sacredness about life.

Eduardo: Moving through that, moving out of the nest, realizing there are other paths, and other cultures in the world; how was that transition for you?

Peggy: Well in retrospect, I can see how challenging it was in a particular way – I did feel lost. But I don’t know that I would’ve used that word then. Some of what I’ve read recently in the Integral literature has been helpful in this regard. They will talk about it in terms of development. It’s like you get to a level of (cognitive) development and then suddenly you have to abandon your spiritual path because it’s not rational. They (the Church) offer you nothing else. They’re only offering you “Well you have to believe this because this is what the church says.” And then you don’t have any other options; there was no where else to go. Now, I didn’t think all of that at the time. I just knew that this was the 70’s, and before that there was the whole civil rights and women’s rights movements, and I was done being told by men in robes how I should behave and what I should do and how I should think.

Eduardo: Patriarchy no longer had a sway over you?

Peggy: Right. I was in rebellion against that and left and never looked back. But it still lived in me – in terms of a spiritual longing or knowing, or something that resonated. But I didn’t have a different way; it took me years and years and years to find a different way to express or interpret that.

Eduardo:Peggy, would you share some of your spiritual journey prior to finding Waking Down?

Peggy: Well, let’s see, I had done a lot of meditation off and on through the 80’s and that was the only sort of spiritual path that I explored. I did a lot of psychological work too. But for a spiritual path I was only exploring simple meditation because I didn’t want any “extra” spirituality around it. The Tibetans had too many bells and whistles and I thought they were like the Catholics of the East. And I didn’t want to take on somebody else’s belief system. So I did simple Vipassana meditation off and on for many years. As we got towards the late 90’s, and we were heading towards the millennium, I was actually pretty unhappy with my life. And I realized I really wanted to focus on a spiritual path. I had sort of dabbled but I hadn’t focused on anything in particular, and so I found something called the Diamond Approach. I started that work in 1999 and did that for six years and it was wonderful. I got a lot out of that. I started to have these experiences of Being. You begin to oscillate into them. You work with an individual teacher and in large and small group sessions. The method is very slow and involves a lot of self-inquiry. They give you questions to ask. It’s not just “Who am I?” They give you a teaching about a topic and then they have you do monologues and ask each other questions where you have 15 minutes to just explore what your own experience with whatever the topic is.

Eduardo: Ahh, I see.

Peggy: And after being in that for the six years, I felt done. Something was missing for me, and at the time I would’ve languaged it as community. That’s what I thought, but really we were this group – we were a group of about 30 to 35 people, and all of the work we did was individual. It was all internal work on ourselves. So you’d be in a group, a triad of three people and you’d take turns asking each other questions but there was nothing inter-relational about it.

There’d be a deep presence when the group was together, but there was no group really outside of that work. And I did get to know some of the people, and I’m still friends with some of the people I met there, and I feel like I have really deep friendships with them. But there was something about it that stopped. It’s like I wanted more. Plus there was a very hierarchical structure and our particular teacher had some limitations that were difficult to deal with.

And so I was mostly feeling like I wanted something more in terms of relationship. I couldn’t really articulate what I was looking for but I was really feeling that need. I had read a book – I think it was about the same time I found the Diamond Approach. It was an interview book, “Dialogues With Emerging Spiritual Teachers”, and Saniel was one of them. In fact, his interview was the longest one. Byron Katie was in there, Eckhart Tolle was in there, and I really liked what Saniel said. It was a lot about his journey and his whole thing about treating people as equals – not as equals exactly, but with respect and mutuality. Teachers listening to what the students have to say, and not just saying ,“well, that’s just your stuff and you go deal with it”, that kind of thing.

But at the time I first read the book it was clear that he was in California and I was in Seattle, and so that didn’t seem like an option to me. But in 2005 when I started looking again, I found Krishna Gauci online. He was doing a one day event in Portland. And I asked if this was appropriate for someone who had never been to anything; he said yes, so I went. And the thing that was – well there were many things that surprised me about that day – but what I remember so clearly, how he was so welcoming to each individual. The Waking Down teachers really want to hear who you are, where you’re from, and what’s going on with you. And there were about 11 or 12 of us there, and some people were down, some people were fine, some people were really good. There was a variety of people and I was really struck by how genuinely welcoming he was to each person.

Eduardo: Sounds like this felt authentic and real to you.

Peggy: Totally. And in those days when I had to speak in public, I would just cry and shake – my whole body would shake. And when it got to me, I was really happy to be there, but I was also really kind of shocked by how welcoming he was. That was a very new experience for me. And then he said some other things during that day that were very surprising for me, and that just kind of drew me in. And it just was very clear that I wanted more of this. And I could feel the transmission.
ould ask her all the time if she was sure this was OK. Like, am I too much for you? Because that was a big deal. I think my energy was too much for my mother. She thought I was hyperactive and just couldn’t be around me. She needed me to be away from her. And Hillary would always say that she loved this work, and she loved working with me, and she loved working with all of her students. And there was no “drained” factor. And now that I’m a mentor, I understand. I don’t think I totally believed her at the time.

Eduardo: Beautiful… Can you speak about the shift you went through?

Peggy: Well in my experience, the language I would use was that I did feel myself unwinding and unraveling. So physically I was starting to relax, and mentally I was starting to relax. And I started to not be able to push myself to do things, (like meditating) that I had just been doing out of discipline. It also felt like I could feel shifts in my brain. I would have used the language “it felt like things were falling out of my brain, out of my head”. It was like seeing belief structures and getting that, “Oh, that’s not real. That’s a structure. Those are beliefs.” And it would just dissolve and I was sort of dumbfounded. And then my brain was quiet. And that happened a lot. Seeing through a lot of beliefs. Mostly about who I was and who I thought I was.

Eduardo: Can you say more about this transition you were going through?

Peggy: Oh, yes, it was a very interesting transition. I took a year off from work, and in that year I had a lot of shake-down – there was a lot of emotional processing and letting go of more stuff. When I went back to work I think I was more in my body, more relaxed, and I definitely had a confidence in being that I didn’t have before.

Eduardo: Was it noticeable? Did folks notice and comment?

Peggy: Yes, but of course they thought it was because I had been off for a year. Everybody noticed. Truly. So when I went back to work, because I was in the same department- my job wasn’t the same but I was in the same department- it was so much easier to see the way that I stressed myself out. And so all of the pressure that I put on myself to perform at work – I could notice how I was doing it to myself.

So I came back to work and I got back into my habits kind of quickly because my conditioning was sitting there waiting for me. So slowly- I’d say within the first six months- I got more and more space between my habitual responses and being able to just hold them – to just feel.

For instance there would be things I would have to do as a project manager that I didn’t like doing. And I would react. And I would sort of feel myself whining and complaining in the same way I used to whine about things I didn’t like at work before I took time off. And then suddenly I would recognize this as a habit. And I’d think “What is so terrible about this thing that you have to do? You’re going to go sit in a meeting with people you don’t particularly like, and you’re going to get some work out of it, and you’re going to go back to your desk and you’re going to do it, and there’s nothing horrible that was going to have to be done.” And I did that, and I started to see more and more clearly where my reactivity was and how unnecessary it was, really, because it didn’t change anything.

And as I noticed it and let myself feel it, it would just dissolve away. Over time I noticed myself being happier at work, flowing more, and being more at ease. That was a really big change.

The other thing I noticed was that since I was so much more comfortable with myself I would just say things that popped into my head, and people paid attention. So I wasn’t as held back. A lot of the fear I’d feel about speaking in public diminished slowly over the months. And I would just watch that change. Also, when speaking to my new boss – or other authority figures – I would just watch myself say the truth and not feel intimidated. We have a culture of “nice” here in the northwest, and we have it where I work. People will be nice to each other in meetings, and then they go away and complain after the fact. We had a new boss who was inviting direct feedback, so I just decided to give it to her. I wasn’t “not nice”, but I was really direct. And she heard me. So I noticed that I had this way of giving people really direct feedback that they could hear.

Eduardo: Sounds like you were pretty clear, huh?.

Peggy: Exactly. I didn’t have any reactivity around it. It was just “Well this is what I see.” Another example – one of my new bosses – her job is to say no when people ask to do certain kinds of research where I work. And she wasn’t saying no! So, because I had worked in this department for so long, I knew what she should be doing more than she did, really. So I just found a way to say “You really just have to say ‘no’. You’re not good at this and you have to learn.” And she heard me. But I never would have done that before, or if I had done it I would have had a lot of edginess around it, so she wouldn’t have heard it.

Eduardo: It would have put them off and they wouldn’t have heard the message.

Peggy: Right. So my whole edginess, my crankiness, my sort of habitual conditioning around authority has changed. I’m more willing to say what’s on my mind. When things come up I can try to just feel them. And then see what I want to do or say. I have a choice.

Eduardo: You wouldn’t really have the chance to make that observation if you weren’t in a situation like at work where certain buttons get pushed.

Peggy: Exactly. Exactly. So it’s really quite different. Also, I used to feel like I was in a particular style or way of being while I was at work, and when I came home I was somebody else. I felt very split in that way. And that’s completely changed.

Eduardo: So you feel more whole?

Peggy: Exactly. I felt that was a lot of what happened in my second birth. I felt it the first day with Krishna. I had a feeling of integration.

Eduardo: You were able to be more happy, then? Is that one of the fruits of being present and observing as you were working?

Peggy: Yes. Definitely. And it’s because I can be more present so I worry less about the next meeting I have to do. Also, there’s something about not living in my mind so much as well. I’m using my mind to do things that I need to do but I’m not spinning in my mind about personal stuff, or worried about what that person is going to do or say, or what they think of me, or how this should be, or that should be, that kind of thing. So being in the moment is way less stressful.

Eduardo: What can you relate in terms of the changes in your personal life?

Peggy: I’ve noticed that I’m friendlier and I don’t hate people anymore.

Eduardo: Well that’s a notable difference, I’d say.

Peggy: It’s a big difference. And again, a lot of it is about being present in the moment. Now, instead of being in the elevator totally absorbed in my mind, I’ll be there feeling and looking at who else is in the elevator with me and striking up a conversation. I feel more open. I’m more resting in Being and much more open. Resting in the openness, rather than my contracted self. I sort of spontaneously behave differently. That’s a big change, because not only was I shy, I sort of didn’t realize I was very contracted. It really was through Waking Down and the second birth and all the Shake-Down took me through, that my life changed. I eventually came to see how much resistance was running my life. I think resistance was my method to survive my childhood – to resist everything that was coming in at me. And then I was hating everything and everybody too. It was my strategy to keep people away from me. Life just seemed too painful.

Eduardo: Sounds like it was pretty hard just to be in the world.

Peggy: Totally. It felt like I didn’t want to be here, alive, on the Earth. Somehow it felt like it wasn’t my choice. That’s what I would say in my mind. That piece slowly unwound energetically. Self-hatred was really wound up tight in me.

One of the things that Sandra talked about, at one of the retreats I was at, was how you can have a second birth in your mind, and then in your heart, and in your belly- not in that order – but it has to happen in all of those centers.

Eduardo: But not necessarily all at once?

Peggy: Exactly. And it feels to me like my mind got it first. And that the belly and the heart are sort of following. I feel it much more now in my body in terms of feeling the wholeness, in terms of feeling the openness.

Eduardo: Perhaps this is what “consciousness descending into the body”, relates to.

Peggy: Yeah. It does. It feels like the whole Being.

Eduardo: Well Peggy, this has been good. We’re getting toward the end of our time, and I wonder before we end if there is anything else that you want to mention?

Peggy: Let me think. There is something. One of the things that I very much appreciate about Waking Down is the whole welcoming aspect of it – the mothering, the welcoming of all parts of yourself. One of the reasons I was drawn to Hillary was that I could tell she wasn’t afraid of my feelings. I was afraid of my feelings and I was all backed up in myself. But she wasn’t and I got that about her.

Eduardo: That helped you to move through there, eh?

Peggy: Exactly. The way the teachers work, allows – well it allowed me to go to the deepest pain that I was carrying and feel it and notice that I didn’t die by feeling it. And then it would come up and go away, and come up and go away, so that it finally, on the deepest level kind of resolved. But the welcoming, the holding, the mothering, the deep, deep holding seems very unique to this path. And I really think it contributes to a very fast unwinding. The Diamond Approach does that but it does it in a much slower way. The depth of the holding isn’t the same. It’s a different kind of holding, and so you don’t unwind in the same way. They don’t have people unraveling in that way.

Eduardo: Thank you, Peggy. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this with me now. I’ve got a hunch we’ve got some pearls in there.

Peggy: Yeah. Well thank you, Edwardo, this was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Eduardo Sierra  Interviewer

Geri Portnoy

Eduardo: Hello Geri. I understand that you recently experienced an awakening at a Waking Down retreat. Can you share something about that?

Geri: Yes, I had my Second Birth in May at the Transfiguration Retreat (TR).  Just prior to that, I shifted from a place of talking about my awakening as if it were something that was outside of myself, to actually claiming and feeling that I Am Awakening — it’s already happening, it’s flowing through me, it’s the process that I Am – as opposed to thinking about it as something outside myself that I’m trying to attain.

Do you want specifics of what happened at the TR that led me to my Second Birth ?

Eduardo: Yes, that would be great.

Geri: Being at the TR I dropped down below the level of my thinking mind and more  into the felt experience of my body and what was going on with me on a moment to moment basis.  Then I went to a morning offering with Deborah on Somatic Experiencing.  She had us do a practice and when we finished that she said, “how do you feel?” When I finished that little practice I felt like I had dropped into myself — I felt like I had really landed in my shoes.  Before that moment I always felt like I was standing above myself, or behind myself, or outside myself.  Then that moment when she said “how do you feel now,” I felt like for the first time in my life I was here.  I was right behind my eyes and I was looking at the world and feeling my feet against the earth in a way  I never had before.  I never realized that I was feeling this sense of separation from myself, or not fully in my body until that moment.

Shortly after that she had us walk around on the earth and feel the support of the earth beneath us and I actually felt completely connected to the big earth, as if I were being held by the earth in a big field of consciousness, which I was.  When I then encountered another person, I felt this discomfort come up.  I felt the discomfort in a brand new way because I felt it in the context of this bigger energy that I was, this bigger field that included the holding of the earth, so I was really able to experience that feeling more deeply, the feeling of discomfort.  I think it was a discomfort of we had to partner up with somebody, so it was the moment of feeling at ease walking by myself and now I’m walking with someone else and we’re going to interact.  I was just able to feel my discomfort and be with it in a unique and new way.  Just get completely intimate with that feeling without anything to separate or push it away and not feel it.  I felt like I had this whole new freedom in a way to experience myself and life.  That was a HUGE shift.

Later that same day I went into small group with Ted and Sylvia.  In the small group setting I had a traumatic emotional experience related to my first birth into this world being given up by my birth mother.  Somehow that thing got really triggered for me and I was feeling all the emotions around that.  Sylvia was holding me and supporting me while I was moving through the intense emotion and really feeling it more deeply than I’ve ever been able to feel it before.  I’ve always felt like I’ve had to keep myself separate somehow from those difficult emotions and they would overwhelm me if I got too involved in them.  Actually, there was just a great freedom in just fully feeling.  It was like that whole living of the deep emotion and deep pain of that kind of separation at birth.

Eduardo: Kind of different than your thinking mind anticipated?

Geri: Yeah, right, thinking mind would guide me away from it to feel better, but it was a paradox lean right into it and I feel it deeply, ultimately, really feel better.

As I finished this deep experience, I open my eyes and I looked into Sylvia’s eyes and Sylvia is awake and I can just see this awakeness in her eyes.  I could feel it in myself and in her and in the other people in the group.  It somehow metaphorically felt like a second birth , like a…  I’m not sure exactly when that shift happened, but part of it happened right then as I opened my eyes and saw Sylvia’s eyes and saw people in the group.  It was just this resonance with this whole new level of being; of my own being in resonance with their being.  Ted said to me the same thing that he had been saying to me all week, which was, “if this was all there were to life would this be enough?” All week I had been feeling into life and answering him, NO! Awakening has got to be more than this.  This could not possibly be all of it.

After that moment, and after that deep emotional experience and then opening my eyes into this recognition of the presence of Being.  I just felt myself differently.  I felt myself right in the mix of life.  Like, right in the group, not separate from the group, it was an immediacy.  I was right there with life, not up in the bleachers watching life.  Feeling life deeply and living life deeply and connecting to people deeply.  In that moment when I felt into Ted’s question “is this enough,” I recognized for the first time that this is enough. I just felt this great relief from all that striving to get somewhere else. “Yes, if this were all there were, this would be enough!” It was like that whatever it was that had been missing, –that felt sense that “there’s something more to life, and I’m seeking that,” — was just gone. I felt like enough; life felt like enough.  My experience did not feel spectacular, which was the paradoxical part of it.  It wasn’t phenomenal; it just felt kind of normal, normal AND immensely beautiful, rich, and intimate.

Eduardo: Ordinary and extraordinary all at the same time.

Geri: Nicely said, that’s exactly how it felt.

Eduardo: You referred to gazing into Sylvia’s eyes when you opened yours and the awakeness you saw there, could you describe that.?

Geri: Often when I look into other peoples eyes, there’s a distance.  Like, I’m seeing their eyes, but I’m not seeing the presence behind their eyes.  There’s a vacant look in their eyes, so I don’t feel met.  I don’t feel met on a fundamental deep level.  When I looked up and I looked into Sylvia’s eyes, there was radiance to her eyes.  In the yoga world we call it Tejase or Ojas, it’s like that radiant inner light that shines out through their eyes.  So, it was like her eyes almost sparkled, but beyond that, she was fully present; I felt completely utterly seen by her.  She was right there.  Being met in that way was so powerful.  Her eyes, on a visual level they were kind of sparkling and  on a felt level there was that deeper presence of her really being right there behind her eyes and fully aware of me and the whole moment.  That’s the same thing that I see in Ted’s eyes.  Then I looked over at Ted, who was the teacher of the group, and he had that same sparkle, that same, I completely see you. I completely felt seen by him, seen in that way of nonjudgmental, complete acceptance and embrace and presence.

Eduardo: What has changed in your life since then?.

Geri: First thing that I noticed that was different was the sense of immediacy that I felt with life.  Like, getting back to what I said earlier about how I used to feel more like I was standing at a safe distance behind myself, kind of behind myself in the bleachers of life, looking down on the playing field of life.  But, all of the sudden coming back from the TR, I not only felt myself full and present within my body, right behind my eyes, but I also felt my world as if I were immersed in the center of everything.  I felt everything very deeply.  Sometimes it felt overwhelming.  It felt like there was an intimacy, a connectedness with people, even people that I didn’t really know and even people that I didn’t really like.  It wasn’t my mind creating the intimacy; it was more of a felt sense of underlying connection on that level of essence.  Sometimes that felt overwhelming for me, so sometimes I would contract away from that experience.

The second thing I felt that shifted was my ability to feel.  Since my experience at the TR,  I felt connected to this bigger presence, this bigger sense of being okay and held in this bigger field which allowed me to completely feel my feelings, even the uncomfortable ones.  They didn’t feel as threatening.  It didn’t feel as if that was all I was.  I was experiencing the intensity of my feelings, AND there was also this bigger presence, this place in me that’s okay.  I felt an okayness AND I was feeling my emotions more powerful and fully than I ever had in my life.  That was such a gift.  I felt like I am really alive now, I’m really living life; I’m not just escaping life.  I can have that sense of peace right in the mix of dancing in the fire of life.

I think those were to two main shifts.

Eduardo: Do you feel like your process is done?

Geri: Well, the first feeling of, Whew!  I’m done – lasted about two days.  But then I recognized that all my teachers and friends are telling me it’s a continuous journey, and that’s what I’m feeling now.  My teacher, Rod, continues to tell me I’m like a toddler now that’s learning to negotiate this new realm, this new way of being.  That’s kind of what it feels like.   I guess another shift that’s happened since my awakening is the shift of feeling life living me.  Like, there’s this force, this Being force that’s surging through me that’s guiding me, that’s calling me forward. It’s very different than just my ego telling me what to do. It’s qualitatively different—it’s much more mysterious.  So, I feel like I’m just learning how to let life live me, let this Being force guide me and tune to it and welcome it and move with life in that way.

Eduardo: Sounds like it’s all about trust.

Geri: I guess that’s the threshold I’m at right now.  There’s this bit of hesitation about trusting and following Being.  I’ve been habituated to follow my logical rational mind.  The more I relax into allowing Being to lead, the more magnificent the journey becomes.  I pulsate, I definitely oscillate back and forth between trust and a bit of distrust or hesitation, but more and more leaning towards that trust that you’re talking about.

Eduardo: What’s it like to experience oscillating between trust and distrust?  It sounds kind of confusing. Have you had much of that?

Geri: I have, Yes, on both sides.  Before my awakening I had an event with Ted and Hillary, I had what felt like an oscillation into my Second Birth , so I had an oscillation into a place of feeling deeply connected to everyone and everything.  Then as I returned back to my everyday life I oscillated back.  That oscillation back lasted several months, like five months, until the TR.  At the TR, I went through another oscillation into my awakening.  This time I’ve had some oscillations since then, but always if I check in then I can still find that connection to the unwavering dimension of my self.  Sometimes it’s so faint that it’s not in my immediate awareness, so I can feel completely, in moment, consumed by my stuff and questioning whether I’m awake.  How can I be feeling so much of the messiness of life and be awake?

Someone asked me, I think it was Rod Taylor – if I could trade my awakening in, would I?  I had to really think about it. It was like a part of me definitely wanted to trade it in.  It was intense.  Now, as I’m further down the road, there’s no way.  If I could go back, I wouldn’t go back.  It’s such a great gift.

Eduardo: What are your passions today, what gets you excited in this place you find yourself now?

Geri: To tell you the truth what really excites me lately is sharing this kind of work and this potential for awakening with other people.  I teach yoga right now, and I am feeling like there is a way to supplement my yoga teachings with opportunities for people to dive deeper into the journey of awakening.  I guess that’s really what I am most passionate about right now.  I’m kind of unfolding into this new era of my own awakening and starting to integrate even the subtle, or not so subtle, philosophical differences between what truly leads to awakening and what is often taught, especially in the world of yoga, as practices.  For instance – if we feel upset; when I used to feel upset I would do more meditation, or do more yoga, or do a mantra, but do something to get away from that because something was fundamentally wrong with me.  I feel like it’s such a great gift to have the waking down philosophy that there’s nothing to be fixed or changed or transcended when we’re having uncomfortable feelings.  Instead, the yoga is to unite with the feelings — to feel them and then they dissolve back into the ocean of consciousness.  This whole journey of awakening is really what I am most passionate about right now.

Eduardo: Is that changing the way you teach yoga?

Geri: As I’m going through oscillations and I’m feeling myself more deeply, it’s almost as of I’m coming to know parts of myself that had been more pushed back.  A couple weeks ago I was feeling this fiery passion coming forward, about being able to see people’s alignments more clearly, and actually kind of forcefully—in a subtly invasive way—correcting people in their practice.  Usually I had been very reserved and peaceful and calm and kind of subdued, so it was like learning to negotiate the new fire that’s coming through me without creating harm for other people, and learning to have more of a refined expression of what it is that I want to communicate.  That would have been what felt negative at the time.  Then recently I felt a deepening into myself, more of a settling into a deeper part of myself where I am able to express and speak more authentically, and more from that direct personal experience.  On this level I’m able to connect more deeply with students.  They can really feel the authenticity of what I’m saying, and that I’m not just speaking words from a book or something that I’ve read, it’s actually what I’ve lived.  I think that’s really having a powerful effect.  The good side of it is being able to meet people and communicate with people more deeply.

Eduardo: Yoga means union, doesn’t it?

Geri: Right, yoga traditionally means union or connection, but historically it’s been a connection to the transcendent, so historically yoga was used more by the ascetics to escape the world and dwell in that united place with the divine.

Eduardo: A transcendental approach?

Geri: Exactly, and so there is a new stream of the evolution of yoga which is a Tantric path.  It’s starting to embrace this notion that when we connect to the divine we can connect to the divine that’s here on this earth, that’s here in everything and everyone.  So, I feel like yoga is giving voice to that from a Tantric perspective, but I don’t know that Hatha yoga itself is enough to lead people into a true union, a true awakening.

Eduardo: Please explain what you mean by Tantra, in this case.

Geri: Well, the idea of Tantra, being to stretch or extend the notion of what is sacred.  Historically there’s been a split between what’s sacred and what’s not sacred.  In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, abstinence was recommended and sex is not sacred.  Often in our culture money or business has been perceived as not sacred, and the holy or the sacred is somewhere out in this refined realm of purity, of Being.  Tantra extends the limits of what is sacred, and from a Tantric perspective, there’s nothing that is not a expression of the divine, so everything in that sense is sacred.  The old Tantrikas around the 8^th century practiced in graveyards because even in graveyards the sacred dwells and they would eat meat, because meat was forbidden in the more Orthodox practices, but there was this notion that the sacred dwells everywhere so the sacred must dwell in meat as well as other types of forbidden cuisine.  So really Tantra is misrepresented as sacred sexuality, which is just a part of it.  It’s really the inclusion of all parts of ourselves, and all parts of the world as manifestation of the one supreme sacred energy.

Eduardo: Beautiful.  Is there anything more you’d like to say about that?

Geri: There actually is integration for me in the Hatha Yoga and Tantra.  Most recently there are a couple of streams of Hatha Yoga, I think Rod Stryker is brining forth a stream of Hatha Yoga that is Tantric based, philosophically Tantric based and so is John Friend and Anusara Yoga, which is the style of Yoga I teach.  Even before my awakening I taught a Tantra based style of Hatha Yoga.  I think it’s very helpful.  I think the Hatha Yoga practice took me in the direction of specifically the ability to embrace paradox, to embrace two opposite things happening in the same pose, say, heaviness and lightness.  And how my mind would want it to always just be light and never be heavy, but to actually be able to feel heavy and light—feel the bigger embrace of both into a larger whole.  That element of the Hatha Yoga practice seemed to facilitate awakening for me.

Eduardo: Thanks, Geri.  How do you see your awakening as different from what you thought it would be?

Geri: Most of the stories that I read about awakening were awakening into the bliss and the light and freedom.  I had this idea that awakening meant more of a transcendent awakening – awakening just to peace and bliss and light and happiness.  This awakening, not unique to myself, but unique from the other myths of awakening that I read about, this unique awaking, my awakening, was awakening to all parts of myself.

Eduardo: Bodily speaking as well?

Geri: Actually that was part of the journey.  That was part of the journey where Hatha Yoga was helpful . I was actually becoming sensitive and aware of the parts of myself that were not included in the Yoga poses, something simple like inner thighs not being engaged.  So, yes, it was partly physical.  It started there with that discerning awareness to notice what’s engaged and what’s not engaged and what part of myself might not accept coming forward.  What part of myself am I overly using?  Then what I was referring to more profoundly on an inner level, was an awakening to all parts of myself.  Like, the part of myself that wasn’t always happy, peaceful and blissful, but the part of me that felt down or depressed or angry or sad or frustrated, or moody.  I had always seen myself as this very stable, centered, peaceful yogini, and throughout my awakening I became this more wild, Shakti filled woman with ups and downs and feelings. Feeling this way and feeling that way.

Eduardo: Can you give a couple of examples?

Geri: I guess a simple example would be feeling angry. For instance, historically I used to push the anger away and just dwell on that place of peace and centeredness and on the journey of my awakening. Now I recognize that I have this capacity to get angry.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to go hit people, or act out my anger, but I definitely feel that this a core essential part of my being.  There’s a messiness to that. My rational mind preferred that I was never angry, to just be more yogic.  Really this awakening has been an awakening to my whole being.  So it’s an awakening to all these parts of self and that there is a richness in this whole being textured self, as opposed to just living in a sliver, a tiny fragment of myself.  I also noticed that I am awakening to – I used to be very shy, quiet, and now I feel like my voice is coming forth.  I have more passion and more desire to speak my truth, to live my truth. So yeah it’s a very unique awakening because I am awakening as ME.  Somehow, I thought I was going to awaken as a Mother Theresa.

Eduardo: I have one last question. I’m wondering, as you look back from here, about your path and the teachers you’ve had, that led you to where you are now?

Geri: This is something that I’ve just been contemplating the last week.  Really seeing how it’s like a thread of awakening, or maybe many threads of awakening, this tapestry of awakening that’s been woven throughout my life, so yeah, I would say the teaching lineage that lead me into this; there was a martial arts background that originally got me intrigued and on the spiritual path.  There was a gentleman by the name of Master Francis, and then there was the Yoga path that I took directly after that.  Specifically there are too many teachers to mention, but Tim Miller and John Friend have been two of my main teachers.  John Friend is the one who started mentioning awakening.  As soon as he started saying we’re on this journey to awakening something in the cells of my body just started to light up. ” I am on this journey of awakening”.  I started including that intention at the end of my Yoga practice:  ”may I awaken, may I help all beings awaken”.  Then I met Greg Aurand, who I had a relationship with for a while, who brought me to Saniel and Linda. It was through Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder that I came into the work of Waking Down in Mutuality; and they were my first teachers.  I hold the greatest love and respect for them and how they guided me through my first few years in Waking Down.  Then I’ve has many teachers since then.  Greg was a teacher in the beginning and has continued to be a very powerful teacher in my awakening.  From Saniel and Linda, then I started working with Ted Strauss and Rod Taylor.  Rod Taylor has been my teacher for the past two years or so.  He and Ted were integral in my awakening, as well as teachers that I see less frequently, but have still had a powerful impact, Deborah Boyer from that Somatic Experiencing episode at the Transfiguration Retreat.  I’ve worked with Sandra Glickman periodically; she’s been kind of a wise sage guiding me.  I think all the teachers -  because I interacted with them –  I felt their transmission at the TR.  Mentors like Sylvia, who was there to hold me while I was experiencing the trauma of being abandoned at birth – just so many teachers, all the teachers really.  Whenever I would go up and talk to a teacher they were always available, always supportive.  One of the things that really helped me too were the books, specifically Saniel Bonder’s books, like White Hot Yoga of the Heart.  Hearing other people describe their journey of awakening, it helped to remind me as I was moving along, that there’s nothing wrong. That this is how the process is, that it’s a hero’s journey, that it involves the dark night of the soul. That just helped give context to what I was going through.  Ted helped as well with his web site, it has a lot of writings, and I continue to read them.

Eduardo: Sounds pretty helpful.

Geri: Yes, the essays, they’re so helpful.  Just the other day I was having a big conflict, and he has this essay all about conflict, how both sides of conflict are Being.  His conclusion is that nothing’s wrong.  It feels uncomfortable but they’re both aspects of Being.  Somehow it was just helpful; it gave me a little bit of relief, a little bit of comfort, a little bit of perspective.  Your monthly newsletters, Mutuality Matters, with all the poetry and the art, and the beautiful pictures—those were helpful, as well.  I remember looking forward to opening that.  There’s just a resonance that was created by reading what spoke to this emerging, awakening, part of myself.

Eduardo: It’s been said that the transmission of awakened Being is resonantly clear and obvious and strong when you’re sitting at the foot of the teacher, so to speak, and you’re sharing company physically together, but it can be transmitted in other ways; through recordings, through video tapes, and even through books, the printed word.  That has become more clear to me as over time. That wasn’t so much of a question as it was a comment that you inspired by what you were talking about.

Geri: I like that idea of transmission. That’s such an important part of this work, and it’s what allows the transformation to happen, as opposed to really doing or making the awakening happen.  A big part of it was just placing myself in that field of transmission, and through all those means that you mentioned.

Eduardo: This has been delightful talking to you today, Geri.

Geri: It’s been my pleasure Eduardo.  Thank you so much.

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)

Bill Trout

It was an unusual weekend by any standard, but the most significant event for me came at the very end of the workshop during one of the meditations. I looked at Sandra Glickman, one of the workshop leaders, and she became the living embodiment of the Hindu goddess, Kali. I’m not talking about the traditional iconographic representation of fangs, blood, necklace of skulls, etc. But she was absolutely the most fearsome, terrifying thing I’d ever seen. I knew I was looking at the face of my own death, the person/being that would surely kill me. Remember that spiritual work at this point still rested largely on the “Kill Bill” theory. One’s ego had to be relentlessly assaulted until it either crumbled and/or dropped away. Now, here was that death looking me in the face. I’d never had an experience like it. I decided that anything or anyone who could produce that was worth my attention. I went up to her before I left and asked if she would mind working with me. Sandra graciously agreed. We’ve been working together ever since, something for which I am profoundly grateful. I also found that she was not that frightening, really.

February 3, 2002, fell on a Sunday–eighteen months, two Human Sun Seminars, one Waking Down Weekend and a Transfiguration Retreat after that first workshop. I was not having a particularly good day. I had gotten up relatively early, fixed breakfast for my family, followed that up with the dishes (I think) and by around 11:30 or so was collecting clothes for doing the laundry. Feeling somewhat abused and taken for granted, I plopped down on the edge of my bed and looked disconsolately down the stairs (the bedroom is located in what was the attic of the house and it looks rather like a loft—the stairs are clearly visible).

All at once, it was as if the tide ran out and left me, like a shell or piece of driftwood, just sitting on the sand. I was just there, utterly and completely there with no pretense, no personality, nothing. I couldn’t have provided a social persona if you had offered me real money. Gurdjieff had said that man was a plurality, with many different personalities trying for dominance at any one given time. I’d had no trouble with that; I’d had zillions of different voices in my head telling me what to do for almost as long as I could remember. Suddenly, there on the bed, everyone shut up. There was just one person there, me. I still had thoughts, but they were just part of the scenery, like a car radio out in the street that was turned up loud enough for me to faintly hear. They were no more or less important than anything else. And the whole experience of myself as there was so unbelievably ordinary. I was literally the dust on the floor. Aldous Huxley in Doors of Perception quotes William James (I think) as saying that God is the hedgerow at the bottom of the garden. I related totally. Things just were. I just was. There was no distinction to be made between the two. I remember thinking, “Well, at least I’ll have something interesting to talk to Sandra about.” And I picked myself up off of the bed and went to do the laundry.

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