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.

Eduardo: At the time were you conscious of it as a transmission?

Peggy: I would have just felt it as energy. And I could feel the vibration of something very different in this room and how it was affecting me. So, I mean, he talked about it as transmission so I assumed that’s what it was. Maybe that’s not what it was.

Eduardo: How much time went by between that first meeting and when you awakened?

Peggy: I went to the first meeting with Krishna in September 2005. And then a 4-day event in Portland in December 2005. That’s where I met Hillary. and June, Ron, and Krishna were also teaching there. I was in Hillary’s group that weekend, and I just felt completely drawn to her from the beginning, because she sits there and looks at you with such immense compassion. I had my second birth in February of 2006.

Eduardo: Right.

Peggy: I had realized through a lot of the psychological work that I’d done, that I had significant mother issues; mother recognition/abandonment issues. So when I met Hillary I was very drawn to her. We were in a small group, and as she worked with each person – she’d say to them, “Well, what do you want? This is your time, what do you need?”. And then she’s ask, “Well, do you need anything physical? Do you want to be held? Do you want a blanket? Do you want me to rub your feet?”. And then I watched that first day in our small group, and I was like “oh… she means it.” You know? But nobody was taking her up on this.

So when it came to my turn, I was like “yes.” I do. I want you to hold me, thank you. I’ll take that. And I think it’s mostly because I had worked in a Hakomi training where they did do a lot of physical touch with permission. They would hold people or do different kinds of experiments with people. And based on that year and a half training I had seen how important that can be. So I asked Hillary to hold me and she did and I cried and cried and cried and cried. Probably for the first six months every time I worked with her I just kind of laid in her lap and sobbed. It felt very primal and very early pre-verbal childhood stuff – letting go of whatever.

Eduardo: Sounds like there was some big healing going on,

Peggy: Totally. And then it was done. It was kind of amazing.

Eduardo: That almost sounds like a fever broke or something.

Peggy: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Eduardo: You know, in some Eastern spiritual traditions they refer to a path of devotion – devotion for example to your guru. Can you speak to any of that in your own personal experience?

Peggy: I wouldn’t use the word devotion. I’m one of those westerners that doesn’t relate to that. I mean, I would like to know how to do that, but I don’t really know. I guess I’m too wary of authority to let myself be devoted to somebody.

Eduardo: But it sounds like there was a lot of heart between you two.

Peggy: Totally. Completely. She handled it so beautifully. So clearly. There was so much love. And I felt – you know, it’s kind of like what Saniel says: Come in and drink from us. Just drink in the transmission. That’s what I felt like I was doing. So I was taking her in. it’s not like I was feeling devoted back to her. It was like I needed her and she was giving to me, and I was taking it in. I would 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.

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 Saniel Bonder & CC Leigh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Saniel Bonder

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My friends and I are often asked, “How does this work work?” Let me try to offer an explanation of the Waking Down process that speaks to you, whoever you may be.

Who does this work work for?

That’s really the first question. There are no special attributes that guarantee an individual’s readiness for this kind of awakening and transformative work. At least, none that stand out as credentials of experience or necessary styles of living or behaving. People who would identify themselves as “spiritual seekers” are not necessarily more prepared to Wake Down than other individuals. And people who have already achieved some kind of ultimate fulfillment of their search appear, most often, to be less prepared to Wake Down than others-if not because they are less qualified, then because they are less inclined.

Our process appears not to work very well for, and even not to speak very well to, anyone who is already enthusiastically pursuing one or another enterprise in their lives, whether spiritual or secular.

Who, then, does it work for? Who does it speak to? Those who are “Hungry.” Those who have tried much and, even if they succeeded, still feel somehow empty at the core. Those who have aspired with all their hearts and are beginning to despair. And those who have aspired and despaired so often and so conclusively that they are beginning to suspect nothing will ever really satisfy their primal Hunger for … for whatever; they may not even know what they yearn for.

Many people can identify themselves in such a description. You know who you are, or at least you suspect it. You may be doing practically any kind of work for a living, or none at all. You may be involved, or not, in any kind of intimate relationship. You may be male or female, young or old, with an extensive history of spiritual quest behind you, or little, or a lot, or none at all.

First Principle : Transmission

If you are Hungry, then … eat! Our process proceeds on the basis of direct imparting of the awakened condition from one individual to another. In the venerable traditions of spiritual and conscious awakening, the core of authentic work has almost invariably involved a living transmission of such a kind. What is transmitted is an energy or intelligence that simultaneously nurtures and challenges the receiver.

We call what we thus radiate and communicate, simply, “Being-force.” The primary way we communicate it is through direct personal meetings with people. But it comes through in all kinds of ways. You will find a variety of available books and other writings, as well as audiotapes, videos, photographs, and so on on this website, all of which naturally broadcast this awakening intensity to all. Happily, for everyone, there are now many teacher-transmitters of this work who, each in their own manner, are serving others in our Waking Down Community. Those aspirants who are open to any degree are affected by our transmission of Being-force in a variety of ways. Most fundamentally, they find a new energy, a new hope, a liveliness stirring at the core of their being. They notice that something is shifting in them, something perhaps quite indefinable, but also clearly having an impact on almost every aspect of their lives.

If you have had experiences of spiritual transmission with other teachers or schools, you’ll have to determine for yourself what differences there may be between those influences and what you receive here. But, whether you have experienced such things or not, reception of this transmission is the key that opens the lock on your own process of Waking Down in this work.

Second principle: Waking

The key to any authentic and profound path of awakening is the investigation and realization of Consciousness itself. This is certainly true in our school too. The conscious principle at the root and core of our very existence must be permitted to become self-aware and then made the basis of all life and action. This occurs through the exercise of discriminative intelligence, which, as one participant described it, is something like “whole-being common sense.”

As you continue to do the simple things that enhance your receptivity to Being-transmission, you will begin to notice, at some point, an increasingly self-sustaining intuition of your conscious nature. “Consciousness” is a word many seekers use today. But the actual, direct, untrammeled, and really effective investigation of consciousness is rare. We feel that we have developed a way to facilitate this in our work that really makes the desired results accessible for serious aspirants. You will hear a great deal of conversation about consciousness in our gatherings-and a great deal of conversation about the cultivation of discriminative intelligence as the extension, we might say, of consciousness into all the stresses and choices involved in daily living.

Third principle: Down

Along with the awakening of consciousness, this work naturally stimulates a kind of landing in your own ordinary, human personhood. That’s why we call it “Waking Down.” You literally gravitate into being yourself as you are. “Self-acceptance” does not do justice to this ongoing passage. I prefer the term “greenlighting”-you wind up getting so much permission from others here that you begin to give a green light to all of who you are as a person-the dark, difficult, shadow fears, self-negations, and reactivity, along with all your virtues, strengths, and brightness.

As it turns out, however, much of the catalytic magic of our work comes through our encounters with those dark, difficult zones in ourselves and others. The whole ambience of our meetings, workshops, and the very relationships we establish with one another, allows each serious participant to relax more and more deeply into these primitive places of wounding, betrayal, fear, and distress. By becoming conscious in these places, we liberate energy and attention for an increasingly integrated and awakened daily life.

Fourth principle: Mutuality

What really greases the wheels of the total Waking Down process is that we don’t try to accomplish these great passages in isolation. Learning to be vulnerable and communicative with others while we and they are going through these changes proves, in our work, to deliver a continual alchemical charge, and at the same time a calming balance, to the often tumultuous transitions we find ourselves enduring. Mutuality in the context of this path is being as true as you can to your own true and total Self while cooperating with others who are doing the same. Sounds simple and straightforward enough-but between and among men and women who are awakening and emerging as more and more profoundly integrated and consciously divine beings, such mutuality is a huge, and hugely empowering, undertaking.

One of the keys to this practice here is that no one is off the hook. Every teacher, including, even especially, myself, is on the line to stay accountable, accessible, and communicative in mutuality. How this actually works out in practice is sobering, humbling, and yet, again, empowering beyond everyone’s expectations.

Fifth principle: White Heat

Where does all this lead? We are a growing community of people who are finding ways to stay connected and be mutually supportive in the midst of ordinary life needs and activities. Over time, because this path of Mutual Waking Down does work so well for so many people, we anticipate a thriving community and that even a great international culture of awakened and free men and women will appear. The arts and sciences developed by such people will, we feel, contribute to a planetary renaissance on Earth.

But the ultimate goal or end of all this is not some paradise on Earth. Not to say that human and all life can’t be enormously improved upon-they certainly can, and they should! And divinely human awakeness liberates the genius of Being in every body to contribute immensely to just such improvements in human culture and life in general. I am just indicating that the wedding of Consciousness and Matter that our work provokes does not merely stimulate evolutionary shifts in human beings. It prompts such shifts, we sense, in all of life, and even all cosmic phenomena. The consummation, we might say, of this wedding produces a super-intensification in us that I call “the White Heat.” What I mean by this is an absolutely ecstatic intuition of the ultimate transformation of all existing beings and things. Once this kind of rapture begins to appear, body by body, we sense that even as we live our ordinary daily lives, we become something like evolutionary cooks for the whole cosmos, up and down, inside and out, physical and spiritual.

Who knows? That’s how it appears to a number of us. We are in no position to know if this is so. If it’s true, it means we are in for a very long haul here. That’s why I say that this path of Waking Down in Mutuality liberates you into life, not merely out of it. You then become an awakened servant of the ultimate liberation of everyone and everything, not merely your personal self.

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

“… particularly some of the women in our Waking Down work seem to have such a developed capacity to transmit from the heart, and I might say that could be the heart chakra warmed up by the field of embodied awakened condition. It has consciousness, the heart-opened love that comes from the mother energy, the mother earth, the Goddess. And for some people their particular (human) design may be that they have a well-identified heart center, emotional center that could be easily nourished by this heart-awakened consciousness. Whereas for others of us, that might no be the case, it may not be that our heart center is the one that is so identified, but maybe more the openness of consciousness showing in the field of manifestation, consciousness showing through that. So the individual flavor from one teacher to the other will be a combination of this awakened condition warming up dimensions of their subtle being that have been integrating and unfolding.”

Rod Taylor – Waking Down in Mutuality Teacher – www.wakingdown.org/RodTaylor/ from an interview with Eduardo Sierra.