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

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.

by Sandra Glickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June Konopka - Waking Down Teacher

Throughout my life I’ve had a recurring dream of driving a car downhill with brakes that barely work. I mean I have to press really hard on the foot petal and use all my physical strength, focus and will power to keep from losing control. Somehow I always manage to avert the unknown terrifying event that would surely take place if I didn’t do all this efforting. I am always alone in this dream. After waking up I would feel drained and uncomfortable the next day.

Less frequent, but also recurring, is a dream of floating down a peaceful river. Here, I am quite blissful, enjoying the scenery and the bodily sensations of the moving water. I let the water carry me, doing nothing, trusting the water completely. I liked this dream and felt good the next day, wishing life could always be like that. I tended to dismiss that occasional vague anxiousness in the dream that crept in when I sensed the ocean downstream, and wondered what might happen when the river eventually opened into the ocean and the water became deep and powerful, without shores. These two dreams alternated in my psyche throughout the first 50 years of my life.

Dreamtime was a lot more out of control and less frequently blissful about the time I met Saniel (Bonder) and Linda (Groves-Bonder) and was introduced to the Waking Down in Mutuality work. Two and a half years later, I awoke to myself as the unbounded spaciousness that penetrates and interconnects All That Is. I also knew ever so subtly that this penetration included this human life I was living. I wasn’t sure what that meant completely at the time, but knew my deeper psyche had resisted it as long as it possibly could.

Another dream merging the two previous ones tells about this resistance. I am driving my car to a very important event, but I get lost. I don’t know which road to take so I pick up a passenger that is going to the same event and who says he knows the way. As you may have imagined, soon we are going down a hill and the brakes start to go out. This is an old theme, but for the first time I can actually see what awaits me at the bottom of the hill. It is a river that has flooded up over the road and has become a raging swift current. This feels like certain death and I try with all my humanly power to make those brakes work and turn that car around. The passenger in the backseat, however, is unconcerned and encourages me to keep going, letting me know this is the way to get to where I want to go and that we will be fine. He also calls me by a new name, which I recognize as the name of my deep Soul essence. This is startling and distracts me for a moment, but I return to the struggle of avoiding the river and soon wake up.

My life was just like this dream right before my awakening. I was presented with many out-of-my-control circumstances. I started getting the intuition that I didn’t have enough attention and energy to power the brakes enough to stay in control. In fact, it was even hopeless to try anymore. There was no way to fix this situation. And, as in the dream, others were with me assuring my more wounded vulnerable parts that I would be safe and find the risk well worth the ride. These same others were calling me forth and reflecting divine aspects of myself back to me. Much of my attention went to exploring these new parts of myself, and less effort went into fearing and avoiding the river of the awakened embodying life. Pretty soon, unlike in the dream, I slipped into the river, realizing it after the fact.

By awakening in the river of embodied life, any resistance to the penetration of All That Is into my life is futile. I have given up the primary struggle to stay in control. I have now been in the sometimes raging/sometimes blissful river for almost three years and wouldn’t want it any other way. To maneuver here I absolutely need several things. I need the deep knowingness of who I am as an unbounded spacious awareness. This awareness surrounds me and catches me like a net when I go deep under the water too long.

I need my unique humanly form, power and will, accepted by me and grounded in the stillness of its own Being. My imperfect human form is the one that makes this journey down the river and into the arms of the great unknown ocean of the Beloved. It is precious. Without it there is no journey.

I need the holding, encouragement, and skills of others who are traversing these same waters. They help me when I feel the trip is too turbulent, or I don’t see a boulder in myself that I’m about to crash against.

I need my divine Soul, which I intuit through my heart. It keeps calling me home to the Beloved Ocean, while simultaneously showing me what currents of activity are mine to express along the way. Without my expressions and activities, how else can I become all that I am before the arrival home? My unique self is unfolding as I travel down the river. This particular union has never happened before, and somehow it’s important to be all that I am meant to be by the time it completes!

I see a few people on the shore. If you are there, I hope to enjoy your company soon on this sacred trip.

~ June Konopka (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)