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.

Presenter: Krishna Gauci
Waking Down Teacher

Understanding Onlyness – Part 1

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Pointing Out Consciousness - Part 2

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Ted Strauss - Senior Waking Down Teacher

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

©2008 Ted Strauss

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)

Presenter: Sandra Glickman
Senior Waking Down Teacher

“Intimate Inquiry” talk and exploration, from 2009 Transfiguration Retreat

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Date: 2009
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Date: 2009
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Date: 2009
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Presenter: Sandra Glickman
Senior Waking Down Teacher

“Embodiment” talk and exploration, from 2008 Transfiguration Retreat

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Date: 2008
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Section 2 of 3
Date: 2008
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Date: 2008
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Presenter: Sandra Glickman
Senior Waking Down Teacher

“Toward Deepening & Awakening” talk / exploration, from 2008 Transfiguration Retreat

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Date: 2008
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by Krishna Gauci

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

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

Do you ever wonder about this yourself?

It’s a good question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being “Really Enlightened”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said something like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are The Guru

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is the Goddess of Creativity through Limits

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

How it looks to me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disappointment: the door to What Is

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

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

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

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

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

As the Infinite no improvement is ever necessary.

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

Disappointment is not a wall but a door.

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

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

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

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

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

And something happens…

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

And something else also happens…

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

In other words…

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

And that’s it.

This “Way”

I am not suggesting that this is the true path.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another angle at this is an understanding of three things:

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

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

And (here’s the paradox)…

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

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

There it is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this really a dilemma?

How sobering

What a paradox

What a relief

There it is…

Disappointed?

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

by Krishna Gauci

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Sandra Glickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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