Eduardo Sierra  Interviewer

Geri Portnoy

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

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

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

Eduardo: Yes, that would be great.

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

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

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

Eduardo: Kind of different than your thinking mind anticipated?

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

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

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

Eduardo: Ordinary and extraordinary all at the same time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think those were to two main shifts.

Eduardo: Do you feel like your process is done?

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

Eduardo: Sounds like it’s all about trust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: Is that changing the way you teach yoga?

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

Eduardo: Yoga means union, doesn’t it?

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

Eduardo: A transcendental approach?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: Bodily speaking as well?

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

Eduardo: Can you give a couple of examples?

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

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

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

Eduardo: Sounds pretty helpful.

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

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

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

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

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

Eduardo Sierra  Interviewer

Barbara Witney

July 24, 2009

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: Sounds like you were searching for something.

Barbara: Yeah, I was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: I hear you. What happened from there?

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: You began working with Ted?

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

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

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

Eduardo: Do you mean more like consciousness?

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: .  Were you ready for that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eduardo: How long has it been Barbara?

Barbara: A couple of months.

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

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

Eduardo: What role did the Waking Down teachers play?

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

Eduardo: Can you explain that a little bit?

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

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

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

Eduardo: Can you explain directive in this context?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eduardo Sierra  Interviewer

Juliet Amoroso

Eduardo: Hi Juliet, how are you?

Juliet: Hi Eduardo, I’m well.

Eduardo: Good.  I understand you recently had an awakening.  How would you describe it?

Juliet: Well, the event was a feeling of ‘I’m here.’  A sense of I’m fully here.

Eduardo: Was it a thing that slowly crept up on you, this sense, or was it something that was just dramatically, BOOM and there it was.

Juliet: I’m guessing that it was slowly creeping up for a while.  There was definitely a moment when I experienced it.

Eduardo: Was it unlike you to have ever felt that way before?

Juliet: Yes, that was definitely new for me.  It was a palpable moment and it was nice because there was an audience for it, which I like.

Eduardo: How do you mean?

Juliet: I was at the Transfiguration Retreat, and we were in a group of ten students, two teachers, and a mentor.  We were going around the room, and Ted Strauss asked me about my 2^nd birth, and I listed a number of things that demonstrated to me that I had not had not had my 2^nd birth.  The last thing I mentioned was that I didn’t want to say something that made me sound like I was further along than I am.  He said, “well that’s fine, it’s okay to say something that has you be less than you are.” That’s pretty much my MO – saying I’m not as farn along, and less than I am.  I felt busted and kind of freed and that was the moment that I felt fully here.

Eduardo: Wow.  Right in front of everybody and everything.

Juliet: Right in front of everybody, which I loved.

Eduardo: Was it apparent to folks?  Could they pretty much tell?

Juliet: I don’t know.  It was apparent to me.

Eduardo: So your sense was in the sense of feeling present?

Juliet: Yes.

Eduardo: In that moment what did that feel like?  How was that different from ever before?

Juliet: I felt connected to the earth, connected to my body, it felt like I inhabited my body for the first time.

Eduardo: Are there other differences from what’s been usual for you?

Juliet: The last couple of months I’ve been happy — which is much different than how I usually feel.  I do feel like there’s a foundation under me, that trustable universe in a big picture kind of way.

Eduardo: That must be a source of some relief?

Juliet: Yes, it’s a huge relief.

Eduardo: When you say happy, can you explain a little and I know that’s an obvious word, but in your particular case, how does that look?

Juliet: I feel like my whole life I’ve felt kind of dark and heavy.  I feel light and I also feel open to receive what’s available. Like, delightful things available.  I feel like this new boyfriend is a result of that – feeling open to receive what are actually wonderful parts of the universe – for us in the material world anyway.

Eduardo: In a way you seem to be saying that by being present, and being awake in the here & now, you’re both more grounded and more open to manifest into your life things you might wish.

Juliet: Yes.

Eduardo: That’s very cool.

Juliet: It is very cool.

Eduardo: Do you feel like at this point you’re done, or are you just beginning?

Juliet: I feel like actually both.  I don’t feel a compulsion to fix myself or to find an answer.  I feel settled into the answer and at the same time it definitely feels like a very wonderful starting place.  The world seems new and crisp and different.  It also definitely seems like a starting place for being with myself and being with all that is and being with other people.  It feels like a little bit of a fog has been lifted.

Eduardo: How do you see the effect of that fog lifting in terms of your work day, your relationships or anything like that?

Juliet: So far it seems less serious and less heavy and dark.  It’s more meaningful.

Eduardo: Has your daughter noticed anything?

Juliet: I don’t know.  I’ve talked to her on the phone a few times, she’s in Los Angeles.  I don’t know.

Eduardo: How about your close friends that you see more frequently?

Juliet: Waking Down people say they sort of notice, other people don’t know what I’m talking about, so no.

Eduardo: Speaking of Waking Down, what role do you see that it played in this transition?

Juliet: It played the whole role.

Eduardo: It played the whole role.

Juliet: Yeah, the whole role of giving me the idea of what an awakening even is, because I didn’t even know before…. and providing the container.  The Transfiguration Retreat is a very safe container.  And all the teacher and mentor conversations I’ve had, opening me up and guiding me.  It wasn’t possible without Waking Down for me.

Eduardo: I wonder it you could dig out an example of how that worked from your own personal experience.

Juliet: Especially the question that Ted asked in the Transfiguration Retreat meeting, something, just showing a light on a shadow aspect of my whole modus operandi.  His question woke up who I was my whole life and made it like, oh!  It seemed like it was not really working anymore.  I think without the safety of the Transformation Retreat container, that question would have gone unnoticed.  It wouldn’t have had the impact that it did.

Eduardo: So, several circumstances were converging there at that moment.

Juliet: Right, the transmission and the safety.  It had me more open and vulnerable, and clearer than I am ordinarily.

Eduardo: Seems like that clarity lets you look at your foggy self or shadowy self with a new perspective it seems like.

Juliet: Yes.

Eduardo: You used the word transmission, can you explain just a little of what you mean by transmission.

Juliet: My idea of transmission is a mystical, magical, palpable experience of oneness.  That comes from awakened teachers.  It’s a gift.

Eduardo: From the place you are now, what do you feel grateful about?

Juliet: Conversations with teacher and mentors.

Eduardo: What did they do for you – those conversations?

Juliet: They gave me a clear sense of myself.  They probed consciousness with me. That was something that I struggled with on my own.

Eduardo: So here you are now, perhaps the answer to this isn’t any different than before, but maybe so.  What are your passions today?  What excites you as you experience your life in this new way?.

Juliet: I think…  I’m not sure.  I think there’s way more delight being in a physical body than there was.  There’s more appreciation with my connections with people.  My connections with people feel deeper and more delightful.

Eduardo: You find that surprising or is that what you expected?

Juliet: It was all surprising.  I had no idea what to expect.

Eduardo: In relation to your work, what do you notice?

Juliet: It’s actually made me a better worker.  I’m more able to focus on what I’m doing.

Eduardo: Would you mind elaborating a little on that?

Juliet: In my work, I’m a bookkeeper.  Before I kind of had a harder time attending to one task.  I feel more able to sit still.  Also, I’ve stopped drinking alcohol, which feels really great.  That’s a big upgrade for me, physically and more mental clarity and more ease in the world.

What I had was an embodied awakening and it made me rest from seeking to find more answers.

Eduardo: Please elaborate on that.

Juliet: I feel like my whole life I’ve been a big inquirer, like, wanting to know, wanting to get to the bottom of what it means to be human.  I feel like I’m taking a rest from that.  It’s not driving me.  I’m still interested.  I feel, for now anyway, like a spectator, like an observer, but all the while being a human being watching it with a little bit more distance than I had, more distance and more closeness, more tenderness towards myself and other people.  Not so tangled up and upset about watching many of the things that we do, many of which don’t work.

Eduardo: What attracted you to Waking Down in Mutuality?

Juliet: The thing that attracted me was a friend I had, that I had done a number of these other things with over the years, who had a 2^nd birth awakening and was widely soft and vulnerable, like measurably, obviously, clearly, very different.  That attracted me.

Eduardo: It was in seeing people themselves who were going through a process of awakening that was a turn-on, then.

Juliet: Yes.  The softness and gentleness of the teachers and the approach, it seemed to have a very deep and powerful way of transforming me and others around me.  I felt like other things that I did also were transformative.  The other things that I did were invasive, so I would have to take a long time to integrate.  With Waking Down it’s all, kind of, real time, it just sort of happens.  Integration comes with the transformation because of the seeing and the gentleness.

Eduardo: This is fascinating, Juliet.

Juliet: Right.  That’s another difference for me.  I don’t feel like I’ve been given instructions to do things that I can’t do.  If I’m told to do something, no matter how great it is and I can’t do it then it really doesn’t make much of a difference. Waking Down is, in my sense, more of an invitation, and a really sweet invitation to me, where I am. It comes closer and deeper there.

Eduardo: I like how you’re languaging this.  I’m curious what you’ve seen in Waking Down that is so helpful in awakening people?

Juliet: First of all the transmission of the teachers, and also their training to listen to who you are, and where you are, and be with you there.  It’s not like I felt like I was getting away with anything, like, just to sit around and sort of wallow in some stupid place where I am, but more that where I am is honored and appreciated.  Honored and appreciated where I am and the teachers also have some gift to take me where I am to the next deeper place.

Eduardo: So it’s being held; that is, you’re being held as a student in this work with certain tenderness, and certain carefulness, and a respect to your uniqueness as an individual.  It seems like some of that’s what you’re saying.

Juliet: Exactly.

Eduardo: What do you see as your role here in the greater Waking Down community? Perhaps it’s the same, perhaps it’s something new emerging for you?

Juliet: I think it’s the same.  Actually, wait a minute – I do have an impulse to create a community in Portland where I am more than I did before.  I feel like before I actually had made efforts to make a community here and I feel like the way I was doing it was too harsh or something.  It had to be done my way, or none at all.  I feel like I have more ability to have it be more open, have it be what it wants to be and that I have more acceptance for that.  It can actually include other people instead of just me.

Eduardo: That’s really interesting to hear Juliet.  Oftentimes when I’m talking to people about awakening – especially in their own personal experience that it seems to have come as part of a package deal that includes this impulse, not only to share it, but also to share in a community where that is the common ground.  In the Buddhist terms they go Buddha, Dharma and then Sangha, which is one of the three jewels.  I noticed that there seems to be a built in impulse in awakening to share it and to join with others to celebrate it and live it.  It seems like that’s what you’re saying there with your last comment.

Juliet: Yes, I would agree.

Eduardo: Thank you very much Juliet, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today and and answering these questions.

Juliet: I feel like you asked all the right questions.

Presenter: Sandra Glickman
Senior Waking Down Teacher

“Intimate Inquiry” talk and exploration, from 2009 Transfiguration Retreat in Excelsior Springs, MO.

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Presenter: Sandra Glickman
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“Toward Deepening & Awakening” talk / exploration, from 2008 Transfiguration Retreat in Excelsior Springs, MO.

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Presenter: Sandra Glickman
Senior Waking Down Teacher

“Embodiment” talk and exploration, from 2008 Transfiguration Retreat in Excelsior Springs, MO.

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Shanti Spierenburg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bill Trout

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

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

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

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