Happy Science’s “Fourfold Path to Enlightenment”– Love, Wisdom, Self-Reflection and Progress — has come to the United States through a program of guided meditations, fellowship discussions and more, in New York City, and in centers based in Atlanta, Tampa, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

Based on the Buddhist principles of Enlightenment, Happy Science’s new model is designed for the unique challenges in our modern world, with the goal of helping to achieve greater world peace, one happier and more fulfilled person at a time. It seeks to unite people from all spiritual and religious backgrounds. Established in 1986 as a spiritual movement with 12 million followers in 75 countries, Happy Science only recently arrived on U.S. shores. Master Ryuho Okawa, an inspirational spiritual leader who often fills 50,000 seat auditoriums and has published countless best-selling books, founded the organization.

“Our intention is to help end wars, conflict and suffering, and replace them with greater joy, peace and prosperity,” says the U.S. Chief Ambassador and Head Minister Yuki Oikawa. “It may sound idealistic and simplistic; nonetheless, the fact is, never before in the course of history has there been such an opportunity to spread our important message, living as we do in this great information age. The message of course, is how we need to, and can, turn hate to love.” Yuki is charged with reaching U.S. audiences with this timeless but urgent message.

Book sales are increasing for The Laws of the Sun, The Golden Laws, The Essence of Buddha, The Laws of Eternity, The Laws of Happiness, and Master Okawa’s latest book, The Next Great Awakening: A Spiritual Renaissance.

One follower, Noke Nikhomvan, 38, a Healthcare IT consultant in Atlanta, says that guided meditations led by Yuki Oikawa “help us cope with the inherent stress in our lives, provide us with greater clarity on what is happening in the world at large, and allow us to open our minds and hearts to others.  The teachings, meditations, and the community connection help us reach solutions in our own lives that could benefit everyone.”

For more information on Happy Science, visit www.happyscience-usa.org.

Seven years ago I spent a week at a meditation center in the mountains of North Carolina. While walking around the center, I was drawn to a specific flyer announcing that enlightened teacher, Dave Oshana, would be coming to the area. The energy jumped off the flyer and I received this very strong intuitive feeling that I have to meet this guy. It proved more difficult than I thought.

The flyer was old and Dave had already returned home to London. I also had a hard time getting through because he receives a plethora of emails daily. After many attempts, I let him know that I was serious by writing in the subject line: “If you will see me, I’ll be there.” Dave responded and agreed to meet with me if I was willing to come to London.

After a long and expensive flight, my first thought when I met Dave was, “I’m a fool for traveling this far to meet someone simply because my intuition said to go. He’s just a regular guy like me, but with a cockney accent.” My second thought was, “Wow, I must be having severe jet lag because I can’t think of a single question of the thirty that I wanted to throw at an enlightened master.” After four hours, I was so thoroughly in the “no mind” state that I had simply nothing to say. As Dave left he suggested that I visit Hyde Park the next morning and connect with nature.

As I sat on the park bench the next morning, it occurred to me that the world had changed overnight: the color of the grass was so vibrant and alive. The quadraphonic sound of the dog walking on the crushed gravel was mesmerizing. The mother and child giggling on the next bench were as beautiful as anything I have ever seen. My heart was full and all I could feel was overwhelming gratitude.

Is this how enlightened people walk through this world? Is this how they “see” life? If so, then every moment is indeed a miracle. No wonder Eckhart Tolle sat content on a park bench for nearly two years.

According to spiritual folklore, certain Zen masters possessed a rare gift called “Transmission.” This gift would manifest itself when students would sit with the Zen teacher. While sitting with the teacher, the student would resonate at the enlightened frequency of the teacher and thereby “see” through enlightened eyes – and experience life accordingly.

Soon after his enlightenment in 2000, Dave was initially reluctant to claim that he had any extraordinary gifts. Some seekers, however, began reporting that they were having powerful experiences in his presence. As a result, Dave has generously been sharing his gift ever since.

READ: An Edge interview with Dave Oshana

There is a purpose and a timing to everything, like the phone call I received out of the blue from someone named Michael Foley. He told me about his experience being in the presence of a British man named Dave Oshana, who now lives in Finland. And he proceeded to tell me about how his life has changed, about how he saves up to fly to Finland for intensive workshops with this man, and about how fortunate the Twin Cities is to have this enlightened teacher come here at the end of this month.

Dave Oshana will present Enlightenment Transmission September 23 through October 6 in the Twin Cities.

So I did what you would have done. I read articles and listened to commentary from Dave Oshana’s website [www.enlightenment-now.com] and I met with Michael Foley to learn firsthand about his experiences. I then arranged for an interview. That is what I bring to you here, the words of a man who uses humor to assist us toward that which we seek.

Dave Oshana says that in the early morning hours of June 19, 2000, he was sleeping and then, at 5 a.m., his whole being changed. What occurred, he says, was spontaneous enlightenment.

What did you experience at 5 a.m. on June 19, 2000?
Enlightenment. It is still resonating through my being like a roaring tsunami wave of energy.

Before I opened my eyes I could see the room and all the particles inside my body. Each had its own source of illumination. There were no dark corners. I knew something was different but could not immediately identify it. It seemed normal and familiar, but at the same time hugely different from my previous life. I could see my life’s mission flash before my eyes.

I could not remember what it was like to have been “me” the night before.

What was different for you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually after this experience?
My lifelong search was completely over.

I couldn’t find problems in my mind. I experienced the space outside my mind: as I walked up a local road, the dramatic stories which normally would spring up and branch out like trees failed to appear. I was surrounded by tree stumps! I wandered through a grim part of London, the Valley of Death, and I feared no evil.

I could see how others were trapped in their mental illusions. I felt bliss all of the time even in dreams or during physical pain. I was overjoyed to wait in a long line. I could feel the energy streaming through my cells. These experiences are still ongoing and have been continuous since they started.

How did you know it was enlightenment?
I didn’t know what it was! I didn’t know what to say or think. I was incredibly amused by this. Then I blurted out, “I … I … I think I am enlightened.” That was a hilarious statement, because until then I had been provocatively challenging my spiritual peers with the statement, “Enlightenment does not exist!” I had not stopped seeking; I had simply stopped believing everything that I thought I heard. I had been assuming that all spiritual teachers were talking about the same thing. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure about that.

Back to the enlightenment: I instinctively knew that my incessant lifelong search was over. Whatever it was, and it seemed to be Enlightenment, it was good enough for me! My mind was flooded with random quotes about Enlightenment, which I had previously completely misunderstood and now I saw what they meant.

Now I knew that enlightenment did exist, I not only had to apologize to my spiritual peers but I had to offer it to them. Hah! Overnight, I went from being a doubting person to one who could accept the possibility of anything (after inspection, of course).

Why did the enlightenment experience happen to you?
I don’t know, but I am glad that it did! Why does your lover love you? You don’t know but you are mighty glad that she does – even humbled, perhaps?

After talking through it, sharing it and expanding it with others, it started to make sense. But I never needed it to make sense intellectually. It makes sense on an altogether different level.

All my life I didn’t want anything as much as enlightenment. I was willing to give up my life – but it still did not come – because I was not fully participating in life. I had to be IN the world but not of it.

I never felt that this life was being lived by me until now. Now I am alive!

Was it your cumulative practices over the years that enabled you to be receptive to such a transformation?
My answer today would be “yes,” but it used to be “no.” When I first got enlightened, I considered it an irrelevant question; a person did not need to copy me. The awakened state was available here and now; I could lead anyone into it. But typically it was temporary – even if it lasted for many months. Eventually a breakthrough came in my practices when I started to drop my awareness out of mind and go on fantastic journeys within my body.

There have been gurus and seekers for ages, but it seems only few people actually become enlightened. What type of preparation or personal responsibility makes the likelihood for enlightenment more possible?
The biggest ability required is the ability to encounter the unknown and go forward into it. It helps if you know, as did Thomas Anderson in The Matrix, that going backwards is not an option.

Responsibility includes the “ability to respond appropriately.” For the spiritual person, the best response to an initially confusing situation is to do nothing (where practical). When the mind avoids entanglement, then true guidance can take over. This is what Jesus and Buddha did before their enlightenment: extensively hanging out and doing nothing in the wilderness or sitting under the bodhi tree waiting for true inspiration to strike, so the story says.

When you are willing to encounter the unknown, then you have Zen mind. You could fall in love with the beauty of a single cherry blossom or face your death unflinchingly. Master that and you will have all the other necessary qualities. A healthy body and mind helps, too.

Getting it right requires discrimination, getting it wrong could burn several lifetimes (without burning karma). The guidance or presence of an enlightened person is strongly recommended; don’t practice this at home without supervision.

Full Enlightenment is full responsibility for everything. Forget yourself and everything is now yours to take care of. Remember yourself and you will lose absolutely everything, including your own mind.

Start by facing your fears.

If a seeker really wants Truth above all else, they will arrive eventually. If they secretly want something else, they need to discover what it is and then either complete it or drop it.

Be a skeptic; don’t get attached to any beliefs. Notice what it is to be a seeker.

Go outside your comfort zone five days a week.

Is enlightenment for everyone?
Enlightenment exists already, but it is not noticed. It is The Witness of your life. It’s yours already. Your life becomes enlightened when you notice it.

The identity has to get out of the way for enlightenment to permanently establish itself. It’s painful for a person to give up their identity. It does not even make sense.

The false identity (ego) resists enlightenment like the Israelite captives resisted freedom from slavery. Moses had to first take them through the wilderness (emptiness). They liked it for the first day; then they got bored.

The ego is like a rock holding down a sunflower. When the rock is removed the sunflower faces the sun. The sunflower is human awareness, the sun is consciousness.

An ego-free state is completely open to life.

Enlightenment is the natural state. It should be sought with the help of an enlightened guide to avoid getting lost. Christopher Columbus’ miscalculations meant that he discovered the potato and not yoga.

Must we be truly ready before we can slip into that experience, and is that why we don’t hear about people becoming enlightened very often?
People slip into awakening all the time but it often closes down because they cannot accept it. I am not only talking about in my group, I mean out there on the street, in the trailer park or the Beverly Hills mansion.

Awakening is not enlightenment but God’s tickle. Enlightenment is the climax, the point of no return. For some, the tickle is too much. I have met individuals who wondered if they were mad – until a spiritual teacher helped them make sense of their awakening experiences.

You can prepare yourself by becoming more flexible, by loosening your self-limiting beliefs about reality. The new wine will only find a permanent home in new skins, thus sayeth the Lord. Enlightenment transmission is the new wine.

What does it take for someone to be truly ready to become enlightened?
Face everything and avoid nothing. Be like the patron of the Twin Cities. I heard it was a guy called Paul. What a guy. He was definitely a courageous Trans-missionary.

What is it that you teach – how to open one’s self for enlightenment?
I teach how to prepare. Opening up too fast is like dragging a lifelong cave dweller out into the brightest equatorial sun. It would be irresponsible to open someone that fast.

The most important gift that I bring is energetic connection. You will discover your body’s energy field and the prime moving force in the Universe: The Transmission.

The Oshana Teaching raises awareness, energy and sense of purpose. It clears out stuck emotions and thoughts, facilitates change without unnecessary pain, promotes joy and simple living, connects you to an intelligent healing energy and familiarizes you with new states of awareness while remaining grounded. There’s much more. A seeker could install all of it into their energetic system in one download – if they were open. That would be convenient; talk is much slower!

A person has to absolutely accept “life is change” at a deep level for the awakening to become full-blown enlightenment. I had to face all of my fears, otherwise I would have failed. This was Krishna’s message to Arjuna at the start of the Bhagavad Gita.

Gradually, a person opens up to the transmission. When people come into contact with me they relax into this no-mind, acceptance and clear seeing. If later on they want to get to that space by themselves, they can practice the Energy-Work Method, which I teach as a preparation for enlightenment. Energy-Work is a moving meditation that takes a person’s awareness on an essential journey of self-discovery through the layers and dimensions of their being.

Please define transmission and how does this lead to enlightenment?
Transmission is consciousness. It does not belong to me, but clearly happens around me. A mother does not own or control “her” breast milk; it automatically flows when the baby needs feeding.

Transmission is like a mother who gently and intelligently wakes her child from a nightmare, offering the reassuring comfort of her bosom, making everything good as it truly is.

Transmission got me enlightened. It is always there – waiting to enlighten everyone.

Transmission is the intelligent dialogue of our souls planning a prison break. The prison is the seeker’s ego. It’s like that TV series, “Prison Break.” The transmission is like Michael Scofield saving his brother. He has to get into the jail, find his brother, scout out the exits, get all team members (parts) cooperating and having faith that the prison break is worth it and can be successful despite seemingly impossible odds, and that there is a better life on the other side. This was Thomas Anderson’s (Neo) dilemma before leaving the Matrix and Moses’ task with the Israelites.

Transmission is the resonance caused by my soul and your soul interacting and arranging your eventual freedom. Transmission is an intelligent insubstantial energy; its effects are felt in the body and energy field. Transmission is a word for something that happens when people are in contact with me. Transmission is consciousness come into the world of form.

Only the touch and voice of something familiar can awaken you. Transmission is the voice of your soul.

What is the experience and how long does it last?
The transmission works in an intelligent and efficient way. It does whatever is necessary. There are many reported experiences with clear similarities. The benefits of Transmission accrue over time.

I can list some effects of transmission:

• Visual field changes – They see lights of varying colors, forms, movement and intensity. Moving objects leave a trail. The world shimmers and seems less solid. Energy is seen moving from my body to a person who I am discussing with and we seem translucent. My form changes in size and shape. My face changes to other races. I disappear. During a live internet class a person might hear me say “Welcome…” at the start of the class and then “that’s all for this week” as the class ends an hour later. They go on a journey and cannot remember anything, and their normally frisky dogs are waiting quietly for them to return.
• Peace and ease – Release from chronic troubling thoughts, emotions and physical pains and illnesses.
• Happiness and joy – Laughter, amusement
• Borders and boundaries – Ability to recognize true friends, recognize games players, tricks and manipulations (not always immediately)
• Sensitivity to energy flows in own body and others
• Spontaneous detoxification of body – and dietary changes
• No-Mind or thought-free state

If the experience of receiving your transmission is temporary, as opposed to permanent, what is the value of this temporary experience for people?
Experience changes a person. No words are necessary. It develops faith and understanding. A spiritual teacher should be able to deliver something, as much as the seeker can receive. Some experiences are side-products of growth and repair.

It has to be temporary, because a person is only comfortable with gradual change. For this reason I generally recommend that a person encounters the transmission in gradually increasing dosages.

• First stage: To hear or read about the Teaching.
• Second stage: To attend an introduction event or a live online class.
• Third stage: To attend an Intensive event
• Fourth stage: And only much later, to attend a residential retreat.
• Fifth stage: To work with me on a project in real life, i.e., outside the classroom.

Personal guidance in the form of a One-to-One may be appropriate after an intensive, and sometimes an introduction.

What can we expect to experience at your events upcoming in Minnesota?
Bliss, happiness, love, deep relaxation, compassion, understanding, inclusiveness, inspiration, motivation, top of head opening, release, seeing lights, detox, insight, revelation.

How should participants prepare for the experience?
Realize that this is a rare and special event. Know what you really want and listen to or interact with me from that place. Ask your best question, one that will help you the most. You cannot prepare yourself for the changes that transmission will bring until you have experienced it. There’s preparation guidance on my website at http://enlightenment-now.com/enlightenment-intensives/preparation.html

Get enough sleep. Drink lots of water. Eat living organic foods. Stay away from strong electromagnetism. Shut off mobile phones, or even better leave them at home. Abstain from recreational drugs and alcohol for at least seven days. Consider carefully what you really want. Become more aware. Are your thoughts true? Figure out how you will determine if this is the real thing. Consider if realistically you will get such a plum opportunity ever again. Is what I have what you want? Do you want it now?

Enlightenment is being given away – that’s what it’s there for.

Has anyone become enlightened through your transmission?
They might have, but I won’t say until I know for sure. I have unimaginably high standards. I have seen substantial changes in people but nothing that I can, with absolute certainty, say is Enlightenment. I heard some seekers claimed Enlightenment after meeting me, but I am not claiming if it is so or not.

What effect has the enlightenment experience had on your life, personally?
I don’t know my old life anymore. I don’t know what it was like to have been me anymore. It’s like an old dream.

I now live for others – 24 hours a day.

I used to be a confused, private individual who thought he was a nobody and all the time planned how he could be a helpful somebody. I am now a public individual who actually helps others by some mysterious means and does not know what a somebody is.

I still get excited when I go to a spiritual event until I remember that I am giving the meeting. Then I get excited about the meeting and forget that I am giving it.

My diet, drinking, washing, sleeping and habits all changed – plus a few more which I can’t mention in a family magazine.

I am aware of the souls of others on Earth and beyond. I feel compelled to help others even if I temporarily take on their symptoms. Miracles now happen so frequently that they are normal, everyday events.

• PREVIEW: “Enlightenment: Living The Life You Were Born to Live” – Wednesday, Sept. 23, 7-9pm, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, 3675 Arboretum Drive, Chaska 55318, $10
• WEEKEND INTENSIVES: “The 5 Essential Elements of the Path to Enlightenment” – Part 1: Saturday & Sunday, Sept. 26 & 27, 10-4pm, $195 before Sept. 23, $220 afterward • Part 2: Saturday & Sunday, Oct. 3 & 4, 10-4pm, $195 before Sept. 23, $220 afterward
• PERSONAL SESSIONS: Tuesday-Thursday, Sept. 29 – Oct. 6 (other times available upon request), $85 per hour

For information or registration, call 612.210.7936 or email USA@daveoshana.com. Visit www.enlightenment-now.com.

READ: Michael Foley’s personal experience with Dave Oshana – The Reluctant Guru

“Enlightenment: Living The Life You Were Born To Live” will be presented in the Twin Cities in late September by Dave Oshana, who started sharing his uniquely effective approach to spirituality after being irrevocably transformed by the Enlightenment Transmission in June 2000. Since then, Oshana has internationally taught thousands of truth-seekers through published articles, email correspondences and live teaching events (including an audience of more than 600 people).

Oshana defines enlightenment as such: “Enlightenment is where you recover the awareness of your original self. After birth you progressively followed the whims and dictates of those around you in order to avoid punishment and receive rewards. Consequently, you forgot who you were. Enlightenment happens when the false identity (often called the ego) drops away thus allowing your true light to shine.”

A preview of the two-day Enlightenment Transmission Intensive will take place from 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, 3675 Arboretum Dr., Chaska, MN, during which time Oshana will share his accumulated wisdom about becoming enlightened, gained after nine years of teaching this spiritual path. Participants will: experience the Enlightenment Transmission; increase their awareness, energy level and sense of inner knowing; and get closer to perceiving reality and life’s purpose. The cost is $10.

The 12-hour weekend intensive – entitled “The 5 Essential Elements to the Path to Enlightenment” – will be September 26-27. The cost is $195 is paid before September 23, $220 afterward. The aim of the Intensive is to deliver a good basic overview of the Enlightenment Teaching, experience the hidden energetic tapestry of life, enter into deep meditation,  provide helpful lifestyle advice based on nature, harmony and the elements and go through the No-mind state.

Personal one-to-one meetings with Oshana are bookable September 22 through October 6, offering a chance to be with Oshana and clear the obstacles from your spiritual path.

For more information and to register, call 612.210.7936, email USA@daveoshana.com and visit www.enlightenment-now.com

“If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is ‘the quiet acceptance of what is.’” – Wayne Dyer

Enlightenment. Conscious Awakening. Just mention the words and the ears of the spiritual community perk up, only to hear nothing and then fall back asleep. We revere the enlightened gurus and read their books and aspire to be like them, and yet we lose interest when we assume we lack the lifetime of perfection required to get to that level of consciousness. We go to conferences and seminars and workshops to learn how to achieve the ultimate goal of any spiritually aware person, and then we find ourselves back where we started a few days later. So the question is, who is waking up? And how do they do it?

That’s exactly what Jonathan Krown and Johana Sand have been writing about for the past three months in this publication through their column, Radical Transformation. A couple who has been exploring consciousness since 1970, Jonathan and Johana have been on a journey of awakening that has led them to this moment, one in which they desire to assist others in learning the truth about conscious awakening. They’ve recently met Eric Putkonen, also of the Twin Cities, who for years has studied non-duality and awakening in the Direct Path traditions of Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism and Jnana Yoga. A podcaster, Eric has been presenting a program called “Our of Our Minds” for nearly two years on his website Awaken to Life [www.awaken2life.org], and he leads biweekly satsangs or spiritual gatherings in Minnetonka, MN.

Jonathan, Johana and Eric are teaming up this spring to present the First Twin Cities Conference on Awakening from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 30, at Old Arizona in Minneapolis to assist seekers in understanding what stands in the way of their awakening.

Eric Putkonen

Eric, on your web site it mentions that you discuss non-duality and awakening in the Direct Path traditions. Tell us about that.
Eric Putkonen: The Direct Path traditions is an overview of several traditions. A similar classification would be the perennial philosophy. It’s just a classification of teachings.

Direct Path is non-duality, as opposed to being somewhere or having something you’ve got to do, about needing to gather this stuff or needing to get to this point. It’s not about going anywhere. Just stop! Just be still and look. And that’s what Direct Path is. Direct Path is there is no path. You’re not allowed to take a path.

There are various traditions that are very much about self-inquiry. Many of them have no practices. Some of them have practices. The whole idea is experiencing a sudden realization by just looking or having someone point out what to look at and actually looking at it.

How does one define conscious awakening?
Jonathan Krown: There is a huge paradox inside of that question, because it is not what people think it is, and you are further from the truth the more you try to define it, because it takes you back into a linear way of explaining it. What I am aware of now is that almost everyone I encounter lives in their minds or in their heads. They think that their thoughts are real, and they are not tracking their thoughts and the effect of their emotions and their minds and their conditioning on their lives. They don’t question the thoughts in their minds, and those unquestioned thoughts become the status quo and the inertia and momentum of their lives.

You don’t need to live like that – a very mechanical, automatic way of life. You have an opportunity to truly live from a very, very, different place, a completely different place where your mind and your thoughts and your emotions are not bad, but they no longer drive what you do, because you see through them as learned, mechanical behavior. Once you see beyond that, it opens up a whole other universe. What I’m talking about is not an exercise, and it’s not meditation. It’s literally a radically different approach to seeing the world that comes to you, or arises within you, through your unwillingness to tolerate things as they have been, your unwillingness to tolerate the mechanical way of living, the illusion that you have previously been in.

Would you say that this process is a way of living from your authentic self?
Jonathan: Right. In the East they define self with a small “s” – the combination of the personality and what we call the ego mind. The Self with the large “S” is connected to the greater universe, and that is always there. But for most people, they have too much going on, too much interference, too many preconceptions and too much territory to allow that connection to be who they are all the time. You might call that authentic self. Authentic comes from the word “author.” We are the author of our own experience. But most of us interpret everything from the small self, from the habitual way of living, from the thoughts that we think are true but are not. We are continually creating our own experience from our authentic Self, but we are not allowing ourself to tune into it.

Or to be conscious of it.
Jonathan: Right.

Johana Sand

Johana Sand: I think it gets very tricky and challenging when we start talking about this because there is a tendency for the mind to create what it calls an authentic self, as well as the mind to create what it calls the inauthentic self. It can be a trap to believe that the challenge is to constantly attain something. So we think, “Now we’re going to live from our authentic self and we’re going to get there.”

The awakening process seems to appear as a real deconstruction of what we call our conceptual or thought reality. What I know is that you begin to see through the illusion of what we call our life, that it does not have a lot of substance, including our spiritual search. When we start to see that break down, there is a realization that any experience we have – perhaps it is our authentic self or an experience of expansion, or whatever – is part of that same dynamic so it begins to lose the grip on one.

You could say, “Well, does this make my life fantastic? Will I have all these good feelings as opposed to bad feelings?” I don’t think there’s any guarantee of that. I don’t think it changes the mechanics of life, because life is mechanical. One just operates within the heart beats. But one begins to see through it all. You see that you are lived rather than that you are in control of what you think is happening.

Eric: In a simple way, I would define awakening as realizing who and what you really are. Would I say that’s living the authentic self? It could be called as such, but to call it the authentic self immediately creates its own pitfall, because suddenly now you think that you need to get somewhere and become something else. Actually, we’re already that. We’re just misidentifying and interpreting what we perceive incorrectly. Awakening is more of a deconstruction or demolition of our thoughts and constructs and beliefs, and just trying to see what is as it is, without the mind interfering or commenting or altering or putting any of the typical blinders or colored glasses that we perceive the world through.

Jonathan and Johana, in your Radical Transformation column, you have commented on a number of myths that we have in the culture about awakening, principally that awakening is a process that we are all collectively doing at the same time right now, and also that there are a number of people who are awakening at this time. For decades, the New Agers have sought the path toward ascension.

Jonathan Krown

Jonathan: Everyone seems to be looking for a convenient something that is going to do it for them. There is something to grasp, there is something that is going to happen, or someone is going to emerge that is going to get them to a place that they are not already and, therefore, they have to just do one more thing, be it a technique or a teaching, or book that by grasping and by getting and by obtaining that will change them in some way, will resurrect them in some way, so that they become really what they already are, but are not allowing themselves, for whatever reason to experience.

What we are saying is that everyone thinks Ascension is a way, that it’s going to happen to everyone, but what I’m seeing is that it’s helpful to realize you’re creating all this. It’s all up to you, and it’s helpful to take responsibility for whatever happens to you rather than just think it’s just happening to everyone and you can sit back and continue on with your life. Secondly, ascension may be a convenient thought form, a convenient belief like a carrot on the stick that we have no idea about, that no one has any idea about.

Eric: All of what we are talking about is predominantly based on Eastern tradition, going back to the old yoga philosophies. The essential idea is that we are already perfect, we are already Brahman, we are already there, so, to a certain extent, we are already ascended. It’s the games the mind plays on us that convinces us that we are not. Through life we don’t accept what is, we resist, we grasp, we repel, we make these judgments, we create these life dramas, these life stories, we create all of our own suffering through our mind.

What we’re talking about is removing a lot of junk to see through to the truth, as opposed to a gaining something new for you to ascend.

Johana: I think there is nothing to do about that. There just is an appearance of evolution, an appearance of one maturing, getting better, evolving, transcending, ascending, whatever you want to call it. This is all a piece of what you call the dream that seems to have that momentum.

We know how that mechanism works. We all take supplements. We all think we’re going to get the better job. We’re all trying to better ourselves in some way, and I don’t think we’re going to stop that kind of mechanism. But I would suggest that the awakening process is a way to – instead of being on – that ever-evolving trajectory. You somehow wake up inside of it and you see it for what it is, and so then you find yourself. You find yourself part of that appearance of evolution, and at the same time you see the illusion of it.

That’s the paradoxical nature of all of this. Who you are can’t be experienced, because you are not an experience. It is seeing it for the dream that it is, and that we all have everything we need. We all have enough.

I don’t know if awakening is a process or a way. Talk to anybody who finds himself waking up in the illusion they will have a very different interpretation of how one wakes up. I don’t know if there is any agreed upon way to do it, and I think it’s a mystery. But at the same time, once you have the ability to see the suffering or the grasping of the mechanism, then it seems to subside.

So is the value of this whole process that you are bringing forth to let us know that this dream exists? In other words, there is no method, book, video, conference or expo to teach you how to awaken or to awaken you – and there may be as many different ways of awakening as there are individuals. What is the value in discussing this?
Eric: So why do we have this life of dream and why do we create all this stuff? There’s really no easy answer. It’s all going to come on a belief or some concept you have to create for it. In Hindu philosophy, they often say the basis of all existence is desire. We wanted to experience, and so we created this life dream, mutually, as a group, or as an absolute. We created this because this is what we wanted. We wanted to experience. Why do you go to movies? To be entertained. It could be a drama, it could be a horror, or it could be a comedy. We go to be entertained. Likewise, this is a game; it’s life, it’s a dream, it’s entertainment. We forget that.

There are many reasons to have a conference to talk about this. Some people go to satsangs or conferences or read these kinds of books because they are suffering deeply and they are looking for a way out. Others are just interested in awakening and enlightenment. That’s where I came from.

It’s about resonance, like a tuning fork. To a certain extent you are sitting with people who are also interested in this stuff. Some of them understand it, presumably. Any teacher on this topic is always trying to point at the self or through the illusion to tell you to look at it a different way. All we can really do is is point. We cannot really lead someone through the gateway. As Zen calls it, it’s a gateless gate. You just point. It’s there – look. And, so that’s what we do. The purpose of this is to get someone to look at something long enough to see through the appearance to understand what it really is.

Jonathan: First you become aware of your mind, without making it your enemy. You see that you have been living in an illusion, or basically a lie, and that you have created a story, both consciously and unconsciously. You create who you are and project that out to others – and then you pretty much spend all your energy defending that story and supporting that story.

You have a choice of continuing to live in an illusion or a lie that you know is not true, or seeing and living the truth and coming to a place of what is not known. You then have to deconstruct the story and deconstruct the programming, the conditioning and decisions that you made. When you do that, then you are just here, without having to defend anything or having to be anyone. Now you are no longer willing to live a lie or live in illusion anymore.

In the analogy of Plato’s cave, he talks about everyone living within a cave where they just see their shadows. Once you have gone out of the cave into the world, why would you want to go back again and just live in a world of shadows? It makes no sense.

Eric mentioned suffering. For most people, listening to the mind is very painful. For many people, it is hellish. You may not be aware to what extent you have been in prison or in hell, but if you are listening to your mind I can almost guarantee you you are living in a type of hell, or certainly a prison of your own thoughts, and it’s not very much fun. Within the prison, you could carve out a corner where you have some time to yourself and maybe have some nice furniture, but you are still in a cave seeing your shadow. You can have a consciousness focus group within Plato’s cave, but you are still in the cave.

What we are talking about is that you don’t have to do this anymore if you don’t want to. There are options that are very real. It’s an invitation to explore something else if you want to do that.

This type of invitation and opportunity has been given to people throughout millennia, right? I imagine back in the early days of Hinduism and Buddhism that people were talking about the same thing we’re talking about right now.
Eric: That’s sometimes called the perennial philosophy. It keeps coming back. (All laugh).

Johana: The challenge, though, is that even if you see through the illusion of being an individual, it doesn’t necessarily stop the momentum of that individual in wanting to survive. Everything has its own momentum in trying to keep alive and keep the construct growing. Even though one sees through this, you still have this momentum of looking at survival, whether it’s monetary survival, whether it’s surviving of the story, or whatever mechanism. You begin to even see the one who is perceiving that also as a construct, so it becomes this constant sense of trusting of the whole, because you cannot ever figure it out, nor can you control whatever is happening.

One starts to see that none of this is ever knowable. You can’t know very much at all, and that’s very hard, particularly for the Western mind. We all can attest to not know. So, what you experience is the overall sense of paradoxically pushing for your own so-called survival, making yourself better, and at the same time letting go.

Does awakening lead to happiness?
Eric: Even in the Bill of Rights, it’s called the pursuit of happiness. We think happiness needs to be pursued, that it’s something you get. But who and what we are is in Indian philosophy satchitananda – sat means “being,” chit means “consciousness” and ananda is “bliss.” That bliss is pretty much equivocal to happiness. What we are is happiness. We do not need to seek it out. To a certain extent, when you awaken and realize who and what you are, I guess you can call it happiness, but it is a deep contentment, peace, and general well-being. I guess that would be the easiest way to explain it. I would call it happiness. Others might not call it happiness. It depends on their definition.

It’s not to say that there is never any pain. There is forever that flux between pleasure and pain. So it’s not that everything is pleasant all the time. It’s not that kind of happiness.

Johana: I like the Leonard Cohen line where he says, “The wars, they will be fought again. The Holy Ghost is on the rise again.” You see the juxtaposition of the dynamics, the duality, which are those things, but not getting caught in one or the other.

Jonathan: Not identifying.

Johana: Yeah, you see that everything works as a whole.

Jonathan: People have the illusion that you awaken or you have an awakening experience or begin an awakening journey and then you never again have a fear or a worry or a concern. That may be true for maybe 1 out of every 1,000 people in the general population who have had this experience. The vast majority of people who have felt that they have truly awakened then have had to go back into themselves and re-look at ways in which their prior programming and decisions and conditioning has really surrendered their true nature to their mind. That can be an incredibly painful experience, which ultimately leads to a further embodiment of the initial awakening. But in the meantime you can feel you are going crazy or about to die. There’s a fellow on the West Coast named Adyashanti that we all are familiar with, and he says don’t even think that you’re just going to have an awakening experience and never go back into the mind. It happens – so rarely that you might as well not even consider it.

Johana: There’s a sense, though, of going with the flow of things. You find that you are playing a role, so you begin to see deeply into that role. It does not mean that you stop playing the role. Occasionally people sit in a cave and never move. But you begin to see the flow, and the sense of needing to be in control, making something happen or trying to fix or adjust diminishes greatly. What falls away is the analysis of our typical constructs of the mind of why are we doing this and who’s doing it and what’s the motive. It takes away a lot of the complexity of life.

Jonathan: Once you are solidly on this journey, even though you certainly may need to look deeply at your prior conditioning, you still have a trust of the greater universe and you are still aware that something has changed and you don’t see things in quite the same way.

So it is more of a journey than a single destination?
Jonathan: Yes, of course.

Eric: Awakening is sometimes called sudden and complete, and although that seems to hint a finality, it could also be considered a new beginning. This is when the fun really starts. There really never is an end. Nothing in the universe ends. It’s a transformation from one thing to another.

Who or what has influenced your path to awakening.
Johana: I can name usual suspects. There are some, probably teachers I read along the way for 30 or 40 years, including Byron Katie, Jed McKenna, and some folks who are waking up and are not known and have not publicly written anything to be catalyzed in awareness.

Jonathan: For me it was not so much the many teachers and wonderful books. The thing that catalyzed my own journey was an absolute recognition that I was no longer willing to live inside an illusion that I knew was not true. It was a case of just repeatedly and consciously deciding that I would rather die than continue to do that, and I think that created a momentum that shifted something inside of me. We truly are not aware that all this is up to us, that it is our creation. Everything we’re talking about is not an aphorism or an affirmation. It has nothing to do with that. It is a deep recognition of truth and continually asking what is truth, who am I, and a willingness to let go or deconstruct what we find is not true without any preconceptions.

And it becomes a choice.
Jonathan: It’s a choice – something that we feel compelled to do once we are willing to see what is really true without any preconceptions as to what that is.

Eric: For about 13 years, I devoured everything. There are too many authors to even mention. I had learned meditation toward the beginning. I did a lot of that. I realized my own beliefs and fears would be a hindrance so I did a lot of personal work dealing with those. I guess there was just a search for the truth, whatever that is. I just wanted to see what was as it is, and I was prepared to let go or tear down anything that wasn’t in accord, because in the end, reality wins. I figured what’s the point of fighting it (laughter)!

Sometimes I think some of the preparatory work might have helped, and other times I see it did not help at all. So, there’s really nothing I could say, “This did it.” But there was that search. I did read Krishnamurti. He helped quite a bit. He deals a lot with seeing through thought and getting behind it. But I also heard through other authors about living in the present, being still. I heard all these words many, many times and I actually thought I knew what they meant. And then about four years ago now I was sitting at home watching Eckhart Tolle’s “Flowering of Human Consciousness.” He presented inhabiting the body and being present in a different way, and that way worked for me. Things clicked. It made sense. I finally was able to be truly present as opposed to mentally thinking I was present. I guess you would call it more of being ripe and ready. Things just dropped. I was finally able to see through it, and I saw who I was.

In the end it does not matter how long it takes or how short it takes. I would say for anybody who is remotely interested in this stuff, you’re ready.
Johana: It’s almost that you are operating at such a different level of how things are that it is not comparable. While that evolutionary piece of our lives keeps functioning, and we find ourself “trying to improve things,” one still knows there is just an organic process here. It is a flowering of things and things will do what they do, and I think the awakening process is a similar thing.

Eric: Once you realize the game of life is a game, there is a certain underlying joy in it now. You can actually enjoy what’s going on, even the ups and downs. So when you recognize the game as the game, you can enjoy the lows as well as the highs, and because you realize it’s a game you don’t suddenly quit playing. You keep trying to improve your situation in the game just for the fun, because that’s the game rules.

Jonathan: I think what’s in common is that you are no longer invested into the outcome of whatever you may appear to be choosing.

Tell me about the Awakening Conference.
Jonathan: It truly is an invitation to anyone who wants to ask what is true and pursue that direction, and we’re here to support and encourage that journey, without preconditions. Anyone has the potential to awaken at any time. No one is ahead of anyone else. That is a joke. It’s something within you calling you to push further. This is not a theoretical conference. We are not going to discuss philosophy. We want it to be real for those who attend in terms of supporting their awakening.

Eric: It’s not lecture. It’s not a place to gather more information. It’s not a place to meditate and think and ponder and converse these theories.

It’s not a place for the mind.
Jonathan: It’s a place for the no mind.

Eric: It’s the path of direct experience. You have to feel it to get it. You actually have to get to that point. Some pointers work better than others. No doubt there will be a time where we’re going to have a session on inhabiting the body or being very present for a period of time, and getting people used to the idea of letting go of the past and future and paying attention to what’s going on now. Feeling it, and that alone changes how things work.

If you can be present, if you can inquire and really look to see who you are, you may see it immediately – or you may need nudges in other ways. But it’s not “I’ve heard that before, what’s next?” or “It’s little bit different theory than I’ve heard before. Maybe it’s more like this.” We don’t care. If that way works for you, great. It’s experiential; it’s not philosophy.

Jonathan: Two types of individuals may be interested in the conference. One group has been struggling with “working on themselves” for a long time and just can’t take this jump. They may want to awaken, but they don’t seem to be able to move. Many of those people, unfortunately, have convinced themselves that they have already woken up, but the proof is in the pudding in terms of how they live their lives. Those in the second group may be those who are aware that the way that they are living right now is not really fulfilling and is not really authentic. They know there is another way and want to explore that.

Eric: Buddhism is built on those who want to wake up and those who want to escape suffering. Any of these people would be interested in this conference. It is available to anybody who has studied this stuff before, has heard about “being in the present” and maybe is not sure if they are doing it right. Maybe people just want to meet other people in the community who have also been working with this stuff and go, “What’s your experience?”

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Eric: Networking is a part of it.

Jonathan: It’s support.

Eric: It’s more of a communal support. It’s just getting to know who else in the city is into this stuff and using each other’s experience to get around possible obstacles we may be having. For years I had been familiar with the Zen meditation of observing the breath. Observing the breath never worked for me, because it became a mental exercise, and the mental exercise will not get you anywhere. It took Eckhart’s teachings to go, “No, no, it’s feeling…try feeling the breath.” He only said that once. The rest of the time it was inhabiting the body. Then I started revisiting the old days of doing the Zen meditations and said, “Well, what if I felt it instead of just mentally just observed it?” And so I felt the breath going through the nose and going through the windpipe, and I felt the diaphragm move, and the meditation took a whole new aspect and cleared a lot of the things it never did before.

Are you encouraged by the fact that someone like Eckhart Tolle is becoming more well known throughout the population from all walks of life.
Eric: He’s gotten very big, very popular, very well known. He’s bringing in a lot of concepts within the spiritual community. So I like how big Eckhart is and has become, but he’s also limited about what he can talk about, because there are other subjects that he stays away from on purpose because they are controversial and it will be a nosedive to his popularity. There is the pitfall of being trapped in the body. You don’t have to just feel the body, you can feel beyond the body. There are many mystical experiences about sitting in the woods and being one with the woods. It is possible to feel beyond the body. Eckhart does not talk about that, and I think one of the main reasons why is because we’re Westerners there are a lot of skeptics. If he started talking about feeling beyond the body, there is a segment of the group that would walk away. So it’s great how big he is, but I think there’s limitations to being that big.

Jonathan: Not that he wants to remain popular, but I think he’s trying to support his audience.

Eric: He’s trying to support his audience and get a more generic useful message out there that is very much needed.

But, at some point perhaps he can take these people further, deeper, in time.
Eric: He may. I will be curious to see what he does.

Jonathan: Probably the greatest illusion that almost everyone has is that we’re separate. But if we are not separate, which you start to see as you awaken, then there is something deeper going on. Someone like Eckhart Tolle is part of something else that we are co-creating, and we can’t really see the plan or know the plan. We can just trust that it’s time. What we’re sensing is it may be time for more individuals in the Twin Cities to create an awakening experience for themselves and to start living not from their minds, but from their deepest essence for real.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

What is it like to work for an enlightened being? Few of us will become Realized Masters this time around, but some, like Sheela Rajdev, have the chance to work with one. Sheela works closely with one of this era’s gurus, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

Sadhguru’s talks and sathsangs routinely draw more than 300,000 people to his home in the Coimbatore district of India, and he has been called to share his wisdom at places like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. In addition to teaching, his foundation works on a number of humanitarian efforts like providing free health care in southern India (and now in Tennessee) and funding reforestation projects and village schools in India.

When I ask somebody about her work and what she likes to do with her free time and she answers, “I don’t really consider it like free time or work. I don’t go out looking for entertainment – I don’t have to – everything I do is entertaining,” my B.S. detector starts flashing red. I’ve heard that song and dance before and it has always let me down.

So I asked Sheela to explain herself.

“It’s so hard to explain…” she replied. “Maybe it’s that I don’t have to go through what everybody lives – the typical life that everyone’s going through. I don’t have to try everything to see that nothing will satisfy me. I found something that’s so satisfying and so fulfilling that I can’t even contain it. I don’t know…call it blissfulness or a certain sweetness. But every moment, if you can live like this or experience life like this, you cannot exchange that for anything in the world. You know? What I thought I am and who I thought I am is just completely transformed.”

And, as I spent more time talking with Sheela and the people who know her, I was amazed to discover she was for real. She had found her way to the oasis many people search in vain for their whole lives.

Sheela is one of only four teachers approved to transmit his Kriya to students here in the United States after undergoing years of training by Sadhguru. She returns to Minneapolis in May to teach an Isha Yoga program called Inner Engineering – the same program that altered her path from pre-med to Isha teacher many years ago.

Participants practice Sukha Kriya during an Isha Foundation event.

Why is the program you teach called Inner Engineering?
Inner Engineering means to create the inner situation the way we want it. It is not a teaching. It is not a philosophy or a belief system. It’s just a method of creating the right kind of inner climate. Isha Yoga is part of this.

Any engineering is to create the situation or atmosphere the way we want it. We’re really good at engineering our exterior the way we want it – at great cost to all other species and the Earth itself. External engineering has brought us a lot of comfort and convenience. We can say we are the most comfortable generation ever on this planet. At the same time can we claim to be the most peaceful generation? Most loving? Most happy? Anything like that? After all, with everything we do in our life we are only seeking to be happy. But that’s not happening simply because we don’t handle our body, mind, emotions and energies properly.

We’re not so great at engineering our interiority. This is simply because we haven’t paid any attention towards this. We always believe that if we fix the outside, the inside will be fixed. But it never happens. So inner engineering means to have the technology to make the interiority happen the way you want it. The Inner Engineering program teaches us how to do that.

When people hear Yoga, they think of contortions and postures, which is Hatha Yoga. Many of us haven’t heard of the type of Yoga that you teach through Inner Engineering – Isha Yoga. Why?
Hatha or Hata Yoga appeals more to the Western mind because it’s very physical and people can easily relate to that, but hata yoga itself is actually a very deep science. It’s not just bending your body.

You may have observed that for each mental state you go through, your body takes on a different posture. If you are happy, you sit one way. If you are unhappy, you sit another way. If you are angry, you sit another way. For different experiences you go through, your body takes on a certain posture. Conversely, assuming certain postures with your body, you can elevate the level of your consciousness. That is the science behind hata yoga. People generally misunderstand this and get too caught up in the few physical and health benefits that come along with it. All kinds of fancy teachings are going on in the name of hata yoga without much understanding of what it actually does.

Isha Yoga energizes the system, but it is also a meditative process. Your body, mind, emotions and energies are like four wheels of a car. Unless you align all four wheels, your ride will not be enjoyable. Isha Yoga is a perfect tool where you can take all the four aspects into your hands so that they go where you want them to go.

A lot of the self-proclaimed masters teaching self-awareness fall back on “just be here now” or “get out of your left-brain” explanations of their method. This leaves people frustrated because they can’t repeat the classroom experience in the real world. How is Isha different?
I’ve spent time in places like India, the U.K., Singapore, and I’ve met spiritual masters, but I’ve never met anyone with Sadhguru’s depth and understanding of life. He has developed a certain practice with this understanding as to how to create a person to be naturally joyful and peaceful. He’s been able to develop the step-by-step process into a method for the modern mind that can be incorporated into your daily life.

You don’t have to believe anything. That’s the beauty of it. That’s the whole science of pranayama or Kriya – notice that whatever kind of mental or emotional state you are in, your breath takes a certain pattern. If you just sit this way, breathe this way, do this, this, and this, then this will elevate your consciousness. Once you start experiencing the benefits, your perception will change and slowly your understanding will come along with it.

We teach Isha Yoga to villagers whose scope of experience and perception of the world are very limited. The steps are very clear and presented in such a way that anybody can understand it.

It seems too good to be true. Why does Isha Yoga work where other methods don’t?
We have understood this much in life – in the external world, unless you do the right thing, right things will not happen. Similarly unless you do the right things inside, right things will not happen. Simply doing something doesn’t lead to well being.

You have to cultivate yourself in such a way that it can happen. You can’t just go and do something – meditation, for instance. If you want to make a flower bloom, you have to have the right conditions.

There is a very old, very deep spiritual tradition in India. Yoga was approached so scientifically – not based on any belief. In India, just the way you sit, for example, was very deeply looked at in the culture and, you may not believe it now, but even that has an effect that can lead you toward your growth.

The whole process with Isha is to set those conditions, really. Flowering for each individual will be different depending on the way they are.

Can everybody be “naturally joyful and peaceful”?
Everybody is capable of achieving this. Being peaceful and happy is not the ultimate achievement in our life. It’s the fundamental requirement in life. If you are not even happy, you can’t even enjoy the dinner you eat or the time you spend with your child.

Every human being is capable of keeping himself peaceful and happy. If you lose peace of mind, you go to the doctor and he gives you a pill. When you put this pill into you, your system does become peaceful. The pill is nothing but a little bit of a chemical, isn’t it? So what you call as peace is one kind of chemistry. Your anger is another kind of chemistry. For every kind of human experience, there is a different chemical basis to it. So Inner Engineering creates the right kind of chemistry in you so that being peaceful and joyful is natural to you.

Why doesn’t it work for some people?
People that I thought would never be able to approach this in their life or never even be open enough to see it, they’ve turned around 180 degrees and become fully involved with the process. But, there are some who still firmly believe that they can fix their lives by fixing their external circumstances, or sometimes someone is not sincere enough to look within himself and experiment with the tools offered in the program.

Do people need to come to Isha with any skills or experiences to make it work?
In fact, it’s better if they don’t come in with all these kinds of background and baggage about what they think meditation is and what they think spirituality is and whatever. They tend to limit themselves from looking at themselves fresh. Being able to see the difference between yourself and your mind – very rarely do people come to class with that understanding.

Do you have a way to find out how many people are still doing Isha Yoga after some time passes?
Yes. In Southern California, we have four cities where we do the programs and, because I’m often here, I coordinate monthly meetings where students can get together, for free, and do our practice. Also, students can come to future programs as volunteers – they don’t have to pay – and they can go through the whole thing in a deeper way. Because of both of these things, I’m constantly in touch with past students here and a very, very large percentage of them are still doing the practice. The other teachers see similar results. Nobody’s going to come and check on a person, though.

We reach to provide the necessary experience and inspiration during the class so that they will continue. And that’s why so many people are continuing. It’s because they know what it’s doing for them.

Does anything upset you anymore?
If someone did something in such a way that I didn’t prefer or didn’t think was the right thing to do, maybe I would have acted in anger at some point, but now I’m not getting angry. There may be some reaction within me – it happens less and less, but I can actually feel a chemical reaction happening within me – there’s a certain inkling towards that reaction, but I’m able to control that. It’s not even control, because I’m so aware of it it’s like it doesn’t exist. It just dissolved at that moment. So, yes, anger largely doesn’t exist. I don’t even remember the last time I was angry.

It’s not like I’ve been controlling it, but I’m so free from it. This is very subtle…but whenever I do any activity or anything, even just moment to moment in my day, I’m so aware of what’s happening within me that if there’s even a little bit of reaction within me, I’ll look at it very consciously, and I can see how to go beyond it.

What was your first experience of Isha Yoga like?
The first time, I was pressured into going to an introductory talk and I left half-way through. A year later, I was bribed into going to the actual program. I started out the first day in the back row. By the last day, I was sitting in the front row and I remember feeling like I’d never felt so alive. I’d never had a problem being happy, I’d just never felt so alive. I walked outside and looked at the sky and the trees and something was brighter, crisper, more vibrant.

What happened after the class was over and you returned to the real world?
Something sweet just started happening inside of me and I wanted more of it. So, I kept doing the practice and it became more and more. I started to see there’s something you can invest in within yourself and experience, and that all these things you’ve been told all your life about experiencing life in a deeper way and what the religions and scriptures have been saying – there’s a reality to it. There’s actual reality to that.

The essence of Isha Yoga is not to make you feel peaceful for twenty minutes. That quality should be embedded in every aspect of your life. Otherwise, what’s the point, really?

Inner Engineering: Isha Foundation will present its “Inner Engineering” program May 6-12 at The Park Plaza Hotel, 1500 Park Place Blvd., Minneapolis. A free introductory talk will be from 7-8 p.m. Wednesday, May 6. The program will be presented May 6-12 – weekdays: 7-10 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-1 p.m.; and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information and registration, call 612.325.6350, email minneapolis@ishafoundation.org or visit www.IshaFoundation.org

Read Personal Experiences with “Inner Engineering”

Read Inner Well-being by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

I guess it was my time or, rather, God’s time. I was 29 years old. I had a good husband and I was a successful model and dancer. By conventional standards, I had an enviable life and yet I felt somehow empty. Something was haunting me.

Then, during a routine check-up, my doctor told me that my uterus had completely dissolved and I would never menstruate again. I would never have any children. I was devastated by the news and was telling a friend about it when she told me about an upcoming workshop designed to take participants to enlightenment, provided they were willing to apply themselves. I felt a surging force of desire, stronger than anything I had ever known. My simple response was “I must go.”

We both forgot about my uterus.

Getting myself to the workshop was surprisingly difficult. When I told Jeff, my husband, he said, “You can’t go.” He had never tried to prevent me from doing anything before, but this time he was not only adamant, but angry. I felt that I was fighting for my life. I told him I was going anyway. The next day I asked my boss if I could take Saturday off, but he refused. Like my husband, he was adamant. I told him I was sorry, but I must go. By the time I left for the weekend, I had no idea if I would have a job or a marriage when I returned on Monday. But I felt as if something greater was driving me and I had no control over it.

Sleeping bag in hand, I was dropped off at an old retreat lodge for monks outside the city. Everything was white and austere. No flowers. No color. There was one tiny closet for everyone’s clothes. Each small bedroom had eight hard bunk beds. It was an icy night in November and everything felt harsh, cold and naked. I just wanted to go home, but I also knew I had already crossed the line and there was no returning.

I was ushered downstairs to the workshop room with the other participants where we were welcomed with herbal tea and honey. All of our valuables were collected, packaged and stored away for safekeeping. We were not allowed to wear watches, jewelry, makeup or cologne. Nor were we allowed to drink coffee or eat anything other than the macrobiotic food provided.

We were told that during the workshop we would be paired off and face our partners for one-hour intervals in which we would take turns asking each other one question, “Tell me who you are.” We would have an uninterrupted period of time to answer and then we’d switch roles. After an hour, we’d change partners and continue. This would go on for 18 hours each day, apart from breaks for meals and to rest.

The first night we did a few exercises to prepare ourselves, to get to know one another and to learn the technique. At the end of the evening, we collapsed into our hard, cold bunks. Nobody slept. We were awakened at 5 a.m. It was horribly cold. I got up, stumbled to the bathroom and made my way to the workshop room where I sat across from a half-asleep stranger who said, “Tell me who you are.”

I was miserable. I am not a morning person and have a great aversion to talking to anyone without at least a cup of tea first, but then breakfast arrived. I had a chance to shower and returned to the routine. The sun slowly began to shine and I began to feel better. Even my partners became more interesting and alive as they too began to warm to the routine. Alternating every few minutes, we continued with, “Tell me who you are.”

I enjoyed baring my soul in this very safe environment, however, the facilitator warned us: “Stay focused on experiencing and communicating the absolute truth of who you really are.” Hours went by, lunch came and went, more cleaning, more exercises. The room began to take on a palpable quality of otherworldliness. It was surreal. Day turned to night and I was exhausted. My head began to ache, but I had to keep going. “Who am I? Who am I?” over and over again. “Who am I?” became my mantra.

By bedtime, I was so sick and exhausted I thought I would die. I fell into the bunk and slept a bit. At 5 a.m. the morning bell rang, announcing the beginning of day two. I couldn’t believe that we could be so tortured. To the bathroom and then down to the workshop room to sit in front of another partner with bad breath saying to me, “Tell me who you are.”

I was getting angry and the pain in my head was getting worse. I thought of running away, but there was no transportation back to the city. Breakfast passed, showering, more partner work, lunch. The pain and frustration were getting worse for all of us. Many had vomit bags next to them. The pain in my head was unbearable; I felt as though it was about to explode. Finally, at about 4 p.m., every cell in my body felt like it was being crushed. I couldn’t bear it anymore. My partner said, “Tell me who you are.”

I looked him straight in the eye and said with the most rage I had ever expressed in my life, “Who the hell do you think I am?” Then with great force, I screamed out, “I am me.” At that moment, I heard a huge cracking sound at the top of my head. Suddenly, I was free of all of my aches, pains and limitations. Perhaps this is how death feels.

I became a very large presence. The facilitator noticed and came rushing over, asking, “Who are you?” I replied, “I am me.” I couldn’t describe in words this all-pervasive experience of freedom and knowing, but the “me” I felt was not my body or personality. “I AM GOD!” I said. Then I pointed to myself and said, “This is God. I am!”

The facilitator laughed heartily. I began to laugh uncontrollably and fell off my chair. I rolled around on the floor in fits of ecstasy, laughing at all of the lifelong beliefs that I was just this body and its desires, hopes and dreams. I wanted to share my joy with some of my other partners, but they just sat there looking at me as if I were insane. They remained in the same great misery that I had just come out of. I realized in that moment that I was having a deep inner experience, not anything visible except for the light that some could see emanating from my body that divine day.

For the rest of that day and night, I was bathed in light and felt love toward everyone and everything. All the things that I had hated the day before were now luminous and beautiful. I spent three hours weeping as I looked at my hand and arm. I was awestruck at the miracle of the body that I lived in. I felt great reverence for the power that lay behind this magnificent creation, even though I now knew that I was that power. I was experiencing the divine union of my body and soul. Nothing has ever come close to the supreme joy of that state. Every person who sat before me was God. And by the end of the weekend, I knew that I would never be the same again.

When I arrived home, my husband was happy to see me and I still had a job on Monday, at least for a while. Each person I interacted with at work felt divine. Looking deeply into their eyes, I felt tremendous compassion for them as they shared their problems with me. I knew then that God knows everything about us and has infinite patience.

But the most unexpected and shocking change was that I began to menstruate after five years. My doctor was curious and concerned and ordered some tests. A few days later, he called and told me that my uterus was completely whole and perfectly healthy. I knew that a miracle had taken place.

Someone should have told me earlier that the journey toward enlightenment was so fascinating and full of love. I wouldn’t have waited so long looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, wallowing in the hopeless well of addiction by drinking my way out of pain. Six (Light) sober years later, I find the path growing brighter each day.

My pathway in sobriety is a little unconventional. I went to some AA meetings. I followed a Twelve Steps program. I wrapped myself around Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.”

I thought I knew God. I went to catechism classes as a girl. I watched The Ten Commandments faithfully every Easter. I prayed to God in the throes of addiction to stop the pain, thinking that He would. My prayers were never answered in addiction. Now they are answered without fail.

I found the right people who placed the right tools into my hands at the right time. My first jewel was Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. All I can remember was feeling that same longing to be loved that he yearned for so deeply. I cried to think that any love could be so great from a patient God that waited, however long it took, for His faithful to come to Him.

Before one can surrender one’s mind to the fullest understanding of God, Source, your Higher Power or whatever you choose to call that which you entrust your life to help you stay sober, it is vital to embrace Its existence and infinite desire to help you. I lovingly choose to call (this) force, God.

As beings of Light, which we all are, the worst thing we can do to our souls and our higher power is to cut off the energy from Source. This is exactly what is done under the influence of anything that controls your life. Alcohol, drugs, nicotine, obsessions – they all alter your energy flow away from Source until you lose that divine flow of love and light. They bandage problems. None of them solve problems. Addiction forces you to give away your true connection to strength and power to an alternative method of relief.

God can no longer hear you.

It’s as though you’ve taken the steering wheel from Source and handed control to an alternative, lesser source.

Sobriety becomes an understanding, embracing and re-establishing of your true relationship with Source. To begin you must allow knowledge to seep in that God wants to help you. And to do that you must understand God.

I read voraciously everything I could get my hands on from the world’s religions. The vast and varied messages these sacred texts gave all came to the same conclusion – that God is Love. The monumental task in sobriety is coming to the knowing that this Love will never fail you. It is far easier to ease the pain with a drink, a drug or a cigarette instead of turning the pain and stress over for God’s loving handling.

Look at young children. They’re happy, playful, creative, unencumbered and inherently trust that they are taken care of. They grow older and life circumstances slowly chip away at that innocence. By the time we’re adults, we’ve all but abandoned trusting our lives over to God, taking our lives into our own hands. The noise of life means God hears us less. Addiction prevents God from hearing us completely.

Stress doesn’t go away. Often I envision laying myself in God’s arms and asking He take care of me. I’m tired of the battle, and I turn it over to God. God never fails me. I only fail myself by losing my joy, my connection, and giving away my true power and Light when life’s obstacles are thrown at me. What is stress anyway?

I wrote in my last article (January 09 Edge Life) that stress is the universe’s loving way of gently nudging you back toward your connection to Source. Before, I would drink. Now I face the cause and try to enlighten myself to its source, and when I cannot, I turn it over to God.

Knowing and understanding the depth of Divine Love and Light is the most noise-proof way of keeping the connection to Source open and of calling God to help you with life’s burdens. And know that the Light is always, always on.

This is the second in a series of articles about the awakening journey. It describes both the common myths that stand in its way and real steps available for those brave souls who are truly interested in waking up now. The material is controversial in that it questions and challenges many of the assumptions most people hold dear and asks for each of us to instead examine what is really true.

As you look inside yourself, you already have the guidebook for your awakening there. You only need to access it. But to do so, you will need to put aside all ideas of who you think you are.

The guidebook is clear. Look no further than what is in front you. Hide from nothing. Welcome everything, however painful in the short term. It’s not easy. For real growth, real learning, often involves pain. It involves honesty. Yet what else do you have to do? After all, this is why you’re here, to find yourself again. And have compassion for yourself along the way.

In a real sense, you are searching for who you already are, yet you are looking in the wrong direction. You can’t see this because it’s so simple. And everyone is waiting for you. They have infinite time – you can take as long as you like. But why wait?

Everyone you meet is here to serve you, even though it might not seem so at first glance. Each person, each moment, is an opportunity to learn, to urge you awaken to yourself. Thus, welcome those who criticize you. Embrace those who doubt you. They are your real teachers. It’s best to call them by their proper names.

The awakening journey is not a straight path. It is a spiral, and you often won’t have a clear perception of where you are. It is easy to deceive yourself, however sincere you may be, for there are probably more misleading assumptions out there than truths about its nature. With this in mind, the following may be of help to you.

COMMON AWAKENING MYTHS

"To dare to even speak about radical transformation, let alone call other people to a higher level, is against unstated rules. And of course, one’s definitely going to be put in one’s place for doing something like that. But unless the possibility of genuine transformation is actually declared, unless one is willing to demonstrate it publicly and to call other people to the same, no one is even going to know that it’s possible. And then unknowingly, everybody’s going to be participating in the conspiracy of mediocrity." – Andrew Cohen in "The Conspiracy of Mediocrity," What is Enlightenment? (Fall-Winter, 2002)

Myth #1: I’m Already Awake or in the Process of Awakening

Many thousands of sincere people are engaged in the process of "getting better," in self-improvement and in becoming more self-aware. There is a large and growing metro area economy composed of dedicated spiritual practitioners, healing professionals, therapists, spiritual discussion groups, fairs and conferences, channels, publications, psychics, and New Age churches, usually with the unspoken assumption that all of this eventually leads to awakening. But does it? For if all of this was truly effective, wouldn’t we notice that there were more people who had actually woken up? Where are they?

Many people are feeling better, feeling freer and more able to cope with life, and that’s laudable. But are they waking up? Jed McKenna, Leonard Jacobson, Adyashanti, Ken Wilbur, Bernadette Roberts and many others have written extensively about this distinction. And books, such as Halfway up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment by Mariana Caplan, discuss it in great detail.

For contrary to popular opinion, "getting better" and "waking up" are often like apples and oranges. For example, Ken Wilbur, in "A Spirituality that Transforms" (Fall/Winter 1997, What is Enlightenment?), sharply contrasts one’s translation of the world, or the process of building ourselves up – with transformation or awakening, which involves the dissolution of the same individual identity that seeks to get better:

"With translation, the self is simply given a new way to think or feel about reality. The self is given a new belief – perhaps holistic instead of atomistic, perhaps forgiveness instead of blame, perhaps relational instead of analytic. The self then learns to translate its world and its being in the terms of this new belief or new language or new paradigm, and this new and enchanting translation acts, at least temporarily, to alleviate or diminish the terror inherent in the heart of the separate self…(I)n today’s America, this is…disturbing, because the vast majority of…spiritual adherents often claim to be representing the leading edge of spiritual transformation, the ‘new paradigm’ that will change the world, the ‘great transformation’ of which they are the vanguard. But more often than not…they do not offer effective means to utterly dismantle the self, but merely ways for the self to think differently….

"(For a)uthentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding infinity on the other side of death…. Transformative spirituality, authentic spirituality, is therefore revolutionary…. (I)t does not render the self content, it renders it undone….

"Let it start right here, right now, with us – with you and with me – and with our commitment to breathe into infinity until infinity alone is the only statement that the world will recognize. Let a radical realization shine from our faces, and roar from our hearts, and thunder from our brains – this simple fact, this obvious fact: that you, in the very immediateness of your present awareness, are in fact the entire world, in all its frost and fever, in all its glories and its grace, in all its triumphs and its tears. You do not see the sun, you are the sun; you do not hear the rain, you are the rain; you do not feel the earth, you are the earth. And in that simple, clear, unmistakable regard, translation has ceased in all domains, and you have transformed into the very Heart of the Kosmos itself – and there, right there, very simply, very quietly, it is all undone."

And consider the following from Jed McKenna:

"Self-realization isn’t about more, it’s about less…. (You) don’t wake up by perfecting your dream character, you wake up by breaking free of it. There’s no truth to the ego, so no degree of mastery over it results in anything true. Putting attention on the false self merely reinforces it.

"Spiritual awakening is about discovering what’s true. Anything that’s not about getting to the truth must be discarded. Truth isn’t about knowing things – you already know too much. It’s about un-knowing. It’s not about becoming true, it’s about un-becoming false so that all that’s left is truth. If you want to become a priest or a lama or a rabbi or a theologian, then there’s a lot to learn – tons and tons. But if you want to figure out what’s true, then it’s a whole different process and the last thing you need is more knowledge."

And this, from Adyashanti’s new book, The End Of Your World:

"Make no mistake about it – enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true….

"Our greatest contribution to humanity is our awakening. It is to literally leave the state of consciousness that the mass of humanity is in and discover the truth of our being, which is the truth of all beings. When we awaken at the level of the mind, we begin to think, ‘my goodness, the way i saw the world was a complete fabrication. Literally the stuff of dreams. It had no basis in reality whatsoever. The way i saw myself was also completely fabricated.’"

Leonard Jacobson states in "Time of Crisis," (10/8/2008, www.lightworkers.org): "Our whole world view has been carefully constructed to protect our story, our interpretation of reality." And he strongly advises us in Words From Silence: "To awaken, you must be willing to accept that you are not fully awake."

Thus, it might make sense to carefully examine why you might not want to awaken – your fears of rocking the status quo, fear of worsening, fear of what your family or others might think, lack of security and an unknown future, fear of the void, etc. Unless you begin with this and not some idealized version of it, there’s no place you can go.

In light of all of this, we would like to offer you an invitation. We sincerely invite you to open yourself to honest self-examination and to consciously give up whatever positions you may hold about whom you think you are and reality itself – and to welcome authentic truth wherever you find it, no matter how challenging this may appear.

This invitation is there for the asking. It is a path many others have taken for millennia in the interests of transforming our species. This path is not for the faint of heart. Yet, it is available to you at all times, if you only take the first step.

An excerpt from the HarperCollins book, from part one: Seeker

A horse!" the temple lad cried as he ran in panting for breath. "Quick, come and see."

"Why?" I asked without looking up. I was in the middle of writing, which I did every morning. My scribbles never reached anyone outside this dim, falling-down hut, but that’s of no matter.

"Because he’s huge. Hurry, or somebody might steal him."

"Before you do, you mean?"

The boy was so excited that he kept sloshing his bucket of hot water on the floor. He was permitted to barge into the hut to fill my bath just after dawn.

I frowned at him. "What about detachment?"

"What?" he asked.

"I thought the priest was teaching you not to get so excited."

"That was before the horse."

If you were born high in these mountains, a stray horse is an event. Where would this one be from? The Western empire probably, where huge black stallions are bred. The locals knew animals by the compass. Elephants come from the south, where the jungle begins, and camels from the eastern desert. In all my travels, I had seen only one of these gray monsters, who are like walking walls.

From the north, over the passes, came small, furry ponies, and these were very common – traders used ponies to reach the villages with their goods: hemp, silk, incense, salt, dried meat and flour. The bare necessities plus the silk to adorn a bride in joy or wrap a corpse in sorrow.

I set the ink-laden brush back on its stand and rubbed the black from my fingers. "You’d better put that bucket down before you drown us both," I said. "Then fetch my cloak."

Outside, a storm had swooped down off the high peaks overnight, batting at the stretched animal skins over my windows and leaving another foot of fresh snow. I emerged from the hut and looked around.

More than a horse is here, I thought.

The temple lad couldn’t stand to wait for me and rushed down the trail.

"Find the stranger," I shouted.

The boy whirled around. I was calling with the wind, and at these altitudes my voice could be heard at a long distance.

"What stranger?" the boy called back.

"The one who fell off the horse. Search for him. Search hard, and don’t dawdle."

The temple lad hesitated. He much preferred gawking at a fine huge horse, but finding a body in the snow had its own appeal. He nodded and turned the corner out of sight. The boulders on either side of the trail were large enough for a grown man to disappear into, much less a scrawny boy.

I proceeded slowly after him, but not because of age. I don’t know how old I am. The matter lost its interest long ago. But I can still move without creaking.

I had foreseen the mysterious stranger two days earlier, but not the overnight storm. The snow wouldn’t kill him, but the blast of frigid air that howled off the peaks most likely would. Nobody from the world below anticipates that kind of cold. I’ve helped the villagers rescue the stranded travelers who were fortunate. Only their noses and toes were blackened. They were numb at first after being dragged to shelter, but started screaming with pain as soon as the rescuers warmed them up.

Everyone in my valley has enormous respect for the high peaks and their dangers. But they also revere the mountains, which remind them of how close Heaven is. I don’t need the comfort of Heaven.

The villagers didn’t call on me for rescue work anymore. It disturbed them that an old ascetic who looked like a crooked teak carving could trek in his bare feet when theirs were bound in layers of goatskin and rags. Huddling on long winter nights, they discussed this, and they decided that I had made a pact with a demon. Since there were thousands of local demons, a few could be spared to look after my feet.

I walked down the trail until I heard a faint distant sound in the wind, more like a rodent squeak than a boy’s voice. But I understood its meaning. I veered left where the sound came from and hurried my steps. I had a personal interest in finding the stranger alive.

What I found when I came over the next ridge was a mound in the snow. The temple lad was staring at the mound, which didn’t move.

"I waited for you before kicking it," he said. His face held that mixture of dread and relish that comes over people when they think they’ve discovered a corpse.

"Listen to me. Don’t wish him dead. It doesn’t help," I warned.

Instead of kicking at the mound, the lad knelt and began to sweep it furiously with his hands. The stranger had managed to bury himself under a foot-thick layer of snow, but that wasn’t as surprising as something else. When I finally saw his outlined body, the man was crouched on his knees with clasped hands folded under his chin. The boy had never seen anyone in that posture before.

"Did he seize up like that?" he asked.

I didn’t reply. As I gazed at the body, it impressed me that someone could remain praying to the point of death. The position also told me that this was a Jew, because as you travel east, holy men sit cross-legged when they pray; they don’t kneel.

I told the boy to run down to the village for a sledge, and he obeyed without question. In truth the two of us could have carried the body out on our own. But I needed to be alone. As soon as the temple lad had disappeared, I brought my mouth close to the stranger’s ear, which was still bright pink although covered with frost.

"Stir yourself," I whispered. "I know who you are."

For a moment nothing happened. To all appearances the stranger remained frozen, but I didn’t embrace him to give him warmth from my own body. If this was the visitor I was expecting, it wasn’t necessary. But I granted one small concession. I called the stranger by name.

"Jesus, awaken."

Most souls will respond when you call their name. A few will come to you even from the shadow of death. The stranger stirred, faintly at first, just enough to shake a dusting of snowflakes from his frost-matted hair. It wasn’t a question of thawing out. Humans aren’t like carp, which can be seen suspended in the ice all winter, only to wriggle back to life when the lakes unfreeze in spring. The stranger had willed himself into total stillness and now willed himself out again. If I had let the boy witness it, he would have been convinced that I was performing black magic.

Jesus lifted his head and stared blankly. He wasn’t quite back in the world. I gradually came into focus.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"It doesn’t matter," I replied.

I tried to help him to his feet. Jesus resisted. "I came only to see one man. If you’re not him, leave me." He was sinewy and strong, even after such an arduous journey, and his resistance pushed me back on my heels.

Jesus didn’t ask about his horse. The tongue he spoke was coarse Greek, the kind used in the marketplace of the Western empire. He must have picked it up on his journeys. I knew some Greek, learned from traders when I was about the stranger’s age, 25 or so.

"Don’t be stubborn," I said. "I came and dug you out. Who else would bother with an ordinary mound of snow?"

Jesus remained wary. "How did you find out my name?"

"Your question answers itself," I said. "The right man would know your name without asking."

Now Jesus smiled, and together we forced his knees to unbend from the cold. He stood up shakily, then immediately fell against my shoulder.

"A moment," he said.

In that moment I took his measure. I stood half a head taller than the mountain villagers, and Jesus was that much taller than me. He wore his dark hair and beard cropped, not trimmed neatly but rough, as a traveler will do when there’s no time for niceties. His brown eyes seemed darker than usual against his pale skin. Pale, one should say, compared with being sun-baked at altitude, where everyone looks like a leather wineskin.

Jesus allowed me to half carry him up the mountain against my shoulder, which told me that he trusted me now. He didn’t ask my name again. A subtle thing, but I took it as a sign of foreknowledge. I prefer strict anonymity. If you want perfect solitude, don’t give out your name and never ask anyone else’s. The local villagers didn’t know my name even after years of proximity, and I forgot theirs as soon as I heard them, even the temple lad’s. Sometimes I called him "Cat," because the boy’s job was to catch the field rats attracted inside the temple by incense and oil.

After half a mile Jesus straightened up and walked on his own. A moment later he broke his silence. "I’ve heard of you by reputation. They say you know everything."

"No, they don’t. They say I’m a stumbling idiot or a demon worshiper. Tell the truth. You saw me in a vision."

Jesus looked surprised.

I said, "You don’t have to hide your knowledge from me." I gave Jesus a look. "Nothing in me is hidden. If you have eyes, you’ll see."

He nodded. The trust between us was now complete.

Soon we reached my wind battered hut. Once inside, I reached up into the rafters and brought down a packet wrapped in dirty linen rags.

"Tea," I said. "The real thing, not the dried barley stalks they boil up around here."

I put a pot of melted snow on the brazier to boil. It made a smoky heat, because for everyday purposes I burned dried dung for fuel. The floor of the hut was plastered with the same dung mixed with straw. Women came in every spring to put down a fresh layer.

Jesus squatted on the floor like a peasant and watched. If I really knew everything, I’d know whether Jesus had learned to sit that way among his people or on his long travels. After the pure air outside, my visitor’s eyes watered from the smoke. I pulled aside one of the dried skins covering the window to let in a breeze.

"One gets used to it," I said.

I had no plans to write down this visit, even though I’d had only a handful like it in twenty years. To look at him, there was nothing special about Jesus. The superstition of the ignorant must make giants and monsters out of those with special destinies. Reality is otherwise. Were the eyes of Jesus as deep as the ocean and as dark as eternity? No. To the initiated there was something in his gaze that words couldn’t express, but the same is true of a desperately poor village girl seeing her newborn baby for the first time and bursting with love. One soul is every soul; only we refuse to see it.

By the same logic, all words are the words of God. People refuse to see that too. Jesus spoke like everyone else. But not everyone else spoke like Jesus, which is a mystery.

That first hour the two of us drank our black tea, brewed properly and strong in the visitor’s honor, not weak the way I usually had it. My supply had to last all winter.

"I think I understand your problem," I said.

"You mean my reason for coming to find you?" asked Jesus.

"They’re the same thing, aren’t they? You found God, and it wasn’t enough. It never is. There’s no hunger worse than eternal hunger."

Jesus didn’t look surprised. The right man would talk like this, without asking preliminary questions. As for me, I’d seen my share of feverish young men who came up the mountain with their visions. They burned out and left very quickly, taking their visions in ashes with them.

"It’s one thing to find God," I said. "It’s another to become God. Isn’t that what you want?"

Jesus looked startled. Unlike the other feverish young men, he had found me not by his own will, but by being guided invisibly, held by the hand like a child.

"I wouldn’t put it that way," he said soberly.

"Why not? You can’t be worrying about blasphemy, not at this point." I laughed; it came out as a short, soft bark. "You’ve already had the word blasphemy thrown at you a hundred times. Don’t worry. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder. When I shut the door, even the local gods have to keep out."

"Not mine."

After that exchange we didn’t talk anymore, but sat silently as the teapot hissed on the brazier. Silence isn’t a blank. It’s the pregnant possibility of what is about to be born. Silence is the mystery I deal in. Silence and light. So I had no trouble recognizing the light that Jesus brought with him.

There was more, though. This one’s road had been laid out before he was born. He was still young and had only caught a glimpse of it. But another might be able to see your whole road without tears. That was the reason Jesus had been guided through the snowstorm, to weave our two visions together.

He fell asleep sitting there, overcome with exhaustion. The next morning he began to tell his story to me. As the words poured out, the cold and dark of the hut made the tale seem unreal. But that was to be expected. Jesus long ago suspected that he might be living in a dream.

I heard his tale and saw much more in my mind. Listen to the story and judge for yourself.

An excerpt from the book Codes of Light – The Power of Our Beliefs

In the past 35 years, the spirituality and self-help markets have increased at an alarming rate. As a spiritual teacher and medical intuitive, I have seen many clients strive to change their lives and witnessed only small changes. Why are there are so many healers, and yet the consciousness as a whole doesn’t seem to leap forward? Why is lack and poverty, unhappiness and depression still so much a part of daily lives? What is missing? Have we simply forgotten how to know the true Self and get to the absolute Truth and awaken?

For decades, so much information has been imparted with so many tools and so many lessons learned. Books tell us how to choose the correct words, do the right meditation and listen to the right music. So why aren’t things really shifting in life?

Many masters, including Buddha and Jesus, preached "Know the Self." By "Knowing the Self," Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha. In his search for enlightenment, he traveled for seven years only to learn that what he searched for lived right inside of him. The richness of his being vibrated deep at his inner core. He reached His awakened state of consciousness by understanding his own Self.

Why do we need so many reminders, endless encouragement and hours of meditation to "Know the Self?" What makes it so difficult? Striving for what? Do we even know? It’s time that we investigate what really dictates our life. We must look deep within at the belief patterns at our inner core self. This movement in consciousness is unavoidable.

So many people proclaim their spirituality and yet have no idea what makes them happy or sad. Do you actually know the inner workings of your own true Self? What creates happiness or sadness? Why do we co-create personal dramas and disasters to wake up? Why is anger so potent when values are questioned? Or fear so scary?

The true inner Self is not angry, jealous or afraid. It is not our wounded female or male or even our crying inner child. The true Self is inner joy and enthusiasm. It is our birthright – the innermost part of Self, which is free from limitation and completely abundant with unconditional Love.

The act of "being spiritual" means to love, honor and accept the "whole self" (body/mind), every nook and cranny. It means to take the necessary steps to responsibly nurture ourselves on every level and live fully in the physical body. Wounds run deep. It’s surprising how many "spiritual" people get defensive or angry when they are questioned. Many can’t distinguish if they are thinking or feeling energy, although they are wizards at "woo-woo" dialogues that would make anyone spin. There are so many tools to get you back to God that it gyrates me. Do you think Jesus sat in the garden of Gethsemane memorizing the color of the rays? Or Buddha sat under a Banyan tree with a pendulum deciding his next move? I don’t think so. They built inner relationships, stopped the mental chatter, calmed the emotions and remembered a distinct inner quality of Love. When we develop a healthy relationship with our own Self, the relationship we have with fear and illness changes. In the bigger picture, we know very little about the true Self.

I ask clients, "What would you like to do in life?" and silence prevails. Ask someone, "What brings joy and happiness into your life?" Do you know?

Recently, I asked a long-time client recovering from a divorce: "What brings you joy?"

His response: "My son. Whatever he likes, I like."

I asked him, "What would you like to do with your life now that you are single?"

He couldn’t answer me. He only knew himself as a businessman.

The first time I met Rodney he introduced himself by saying: "Hello, my name is Rodney. I’m a millionaire." Now his millions split, and so has his self-worth. How many of us identify with this? If not money, replace it with something very dear and important in life. Once we lose an external object like a spouse or career, we lose self-esteem and self-worth. Why?

This self-discovery journey (life) enlightens us. As we journey, we discover so many wonderful and not so wonderful parts. We uncover limitation in the form of fear, denial, resistance, anger, shame, doubts, and also positive characteristics of love, compassion, honesty, integrity, and so much more. All layered succinctly, negative or positive, makes us individuals and perfect reflections of God. We are beautifully designed into a sculptured mass of ingredients. As skilled architects, building house after house, life after life, we continue on the path of self-discovery. Revelations, along with judgments and fears, eventually fall away until a non-judgmental statement remains about the Self.

Buddhism is on the rise in America and around world because so many people are seeking just what Gautama Buddha and other Masters achieved: Enlightenment! Awakening! Ascension! Self-Realization! True Self! Choose the word that is best suited for you. They all mean the same thing. Buddha’s role, like Jesus and others, was as a living example of enlightenment – someone we would choose as a role model to awaken us. For at least 2,500 years, we are still trying to achieve what these masters have eloquently said: "Know the Self!"

Once the Buddha was asked, "Who are you? Are you a man? Are you a saint?"

His response, "I Am Awake!"

In a blink of an eye, my mainstream world was turned upside down forever.

An allergic reaction to an antibiotic left my world a place of desperation and despair. I was immersed in a world of chaos and confusion. Every aspect of my life had to be examined and redefined. This life-altering event took me to the very core of my inner world to experience the most amazing miracles and gifts of spirit from across the world. I was sent on the most amazing path of discovery of the mystical and magical. I traveled the road of suffering and was able to transform my spirit into the lotus of ascension.

I was raised in the Catholic faith, but I always knew there was more, that somehow a piece was missing. This crossroads in my life allowed me to expand my awareness and define what spirituality meant to me. I was deep within my illness and there was little hope for recovery. A friend approached me with a prayer card for St. Therese the Little Flower. It is said St. Therese answers your prayers in the form of roses. I began to use the prayer card each and every day, asking that my health be restored and the gift of roses would be sent to me.

One day I went to our pastor and told him of my journey and my belief in St. Therese. He expressed his relief that I had not used the word "miracle." Instead I used the phrase healing path. He then told me of his trip to Italy. It was the 100th anniversary of St. Therese. and a special Mass was being celebrated. He had no intentions to attend and didn’t even have tickets for the event.

I left that day feeling like I had not been heard. Upon his return from Italy, he came to me before Mass. I sat down and he explained this incredible experience he had in Italy.

To his unexpected surprise, he had found a ticket in his room for the day of the Mass. He then discovered it was for a seat in the fifth row from the altar. Tickets for this very special Mass were impossible to find. The most astounding part of this story was that at the end of this Mass, fresh rose petals were dropped from the ceiling, just over the first five rows. He then thought of my story and picked up a few petals to bring back to me.

This experience offered me a bridge to travel from mainstream religion to discovering the mystic within. My experience was like a spark of light. If I could experience this miracle in my life, what else could be accomplished?

I grew so hungry for answers outside my limited view and of other religious practices. I explored the I AM presence that is within each of us. My journey through this portal created a new world for me to explore and create.

I began to wonder, "How does our spirituality define us in a new world?" It is our path to be in joy and peace. It is a blend of ancient teachings and new thoughts and ideas. We can create a sense of spirituality based on our hearts and inner sanctuary. Being in spirit and finding the true connection to the oneness of our hearts is the first step. This then allows us to continue on the journey to remembering who we are.

I have discovered that the true essence lives within each one of us, and it is our greatest gift to find it within. It is our relationship with source that defines us. The inner temple of our own lives is where the greatest mystery lies. Spirituality is not held within one practice, for it is omnipresent in all that we do. As we move through this next stage of enlightenment, our spirituality can be the place we find refuge in the eye of the storm. As we watch the old world fall away, we can find comfort and peace in the knowing we will be safe. Together as sovereign beings of light, we can come together and create a new world and a new age of miracles.

What was the most sacred moment you have had in your life?
Isha: The
most poignant moment in my life destroyed the concept of the sacred for me. When
I became enlightened, I realized that everything is the same; that we are all
one, we’ve all always been one, and that the only thing that is real is
love. I realized that love is the essence of all being; it is the totality. There
is nothing special, and nothing that is not special; there is nothing sacred,
and nothing that is not. This experience of love is the most phenomenal thing:
in its presence, the illusion of fear is destroyed forever. We start to perceive
the perfection in everything. We perceive the perfection within the human experience,
and we realize that we create everything, in every moment. We discover that there
is no higher power, but that everything is god. We are all that, and the only
thing that exists is this moment.

Why are you optimistic about the future of humanity in this time of uncertainty and fear?
Isha: The duality of the human experience is an illusion. As consciousness rises and we come back to the union, we realize that we are all one. We realize that all the games of separation we play — all the judgments, ideas and belief systems, are illusory. The underlying love will always come to the surface, because the whole universe vibrates within that love. I do not need to feel optimistic, because the love is who we are; we can only not be who we are for limited periods of time.

What holistic practice is a part of your life to help you maintain health and wellness and to connect with your spiritual Self?
Isha: The Isha System. This simple, yet powerful, system is my recipe for unconditional love of self and a life without fear. It is for a planet where all beings vibrate in union. I will be teaching this system in my conference, and it is explained in its entirety within my new book, Why Walk When You Can Fly?

What single message do you want to share with us from your heart?
Isha: When we start taking responsibility for our own happiness, we begin to heal, leaving behind the immaturity of victimhood and embracing the experience of love-consciousness. We realize that the human experience is simply a choice in each moment. A choice for happiness or suffering, for truth or lies; for integrity or corruption. It is a choice for separation or union. When we start to choose for the love, we become the love. And within that vibration, we can extend unconditional love to all of creation.

Isha will present “WHY WALK WHEN YOU CAN FLY?” at 1:00-3:00 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, tickets $15 now, $17 at door — Isha is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and the creator of the Isha System, explained in its entirety in her new book, “Why Walk When You Can Fly,” to be released in November with New World Library. Its simple tools dramatically alter our perception, eliminating fear-based patterns and grounding our awareness in the experience of unconditional love. Originally from Australia, Isha inspires people from all walks of life, speaking in international forums, high security prisons, with senators, ex-guerrilla soldiers, bishops and actors. Visit www.isha.com

Last of a two-part series

Leonard Jacobson has been guiding people on the path of awakening for more than 20 years through three previous books [Words from Silence, Embracing the Present, and Bridging Heaven & Earth] and workshops in the U.S., Europe and his native Australia. In 2007, he brought to us the book Journey Into Now – Clear Guidance on the Path of Spiritual Awakening (Conscious Living Publications) in which he shares the details of his six remarkable awakenings, or peak experiences, and guides the reader out of the mind and into the present moment.

In the conclusion of this interview, Jacobson speaks with us about duality, the role of religion in the process of awakening, and about belief in God.

How would you describe the current state of human consciousness in terms of its level of awakening? Is it easier to awaken now than in the past? Are more people awakening?
LJ: Absolutely! I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, since my first awakening. In those early days of teaching, I would have to work with people for a year or so, for them to really open into Presence and Oneness, but now that process is rapidly accelerating. In just one day or a weekend, people can have a very deep and lasting experience of the awakened state. People are much more interested in being present today than they were 25 years ago.

The problem is that as more and more of us truly awaken in consciousness, it is met with a corresponding movement into unconsciousness. It’s as if the forces of consciousness and unconsciousness are battling it out within a dual realm. Of course when you awaken, you transcend duality and open into Oneness. In Oneness, there is no opposition. There is no resistance. There is no opposing force.  We just need enough of us to awaken individually to impact the collective level, and it will become easier and easier and easier. That’s really our only hope, and I’m fairly optimistic.

And yet, when you’re in the awakened state you still have some concern for the state of duality?
LJ: Even those who are fully awake are aware of time, are aware of what is happening in the world as a result of human unconsciousness. You can’t help but observe what is going on. That does not mean that you enter into judgment. It does not mean that you disconnect from Presence because of your concern for the state of the world. Ultimately, everything is accepted for what it is, and that includes human extinction if that is the destiny that we create for ourselves. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is a natural response of Presence to express the truth when encountering illusion, even in the face of great resistance. History is full of such examples, from Jesus to Gandhi to Martin Luther King. When you awaken, you are much more aware of the beauty of the natural world and you recognize your role as a caretaker. And so you do your best to act consciously upon the earth, and encourage others to act consciously, rather than unconsciously and destructively. Essentially, it is an empowered response from Presence. I’m doing what I can by writing books and teaching and sharing a way of awakening with those who a ready to respond. And as each of awakens, it impacts at the collective level.

So you must feel pretty satisfied that there are other people who are also speaking about the present moment now, like Eckhart Tolle. I have received some of that from my experiences in person with people like Thich Nhat Hanh, with the walking meditation, being present in the moment on the ground, on the earth.
LJ: Yes, there’s no question about it. Being present is the key to awakening, and that seems to be emerging as the current and prominent teaching. The present moment reveals the eternal now. The present moment reveals Oneness. The present moment opens us up to the living presence of God, and ultimately reveals Heaven on Earth. We just have to realize that being present is not a practice or a meditation. It is our natural state.

What role has religion played in the process of awakening?
LJ: More than anything, religion has distracted us from the truth. What I would say is, “Don’t be a Buddhist, be a Buddha. Don’t be a Christian, be a Christ.” And Buddha and Jesus would support those statements unconditionally. That was the whole point of their teaching. They were not seeking to create a religion. Their Presence gave rise to the possibility not of millions of  Buddhists and millions of Christians, but millions of Buddhas and millions of Christs. That is our true destiny, but it is impossible to know the true meaning of their words other than from within the awakened state of consciousness and then the meaning of their words is clear.

They put their messages out, but the people who were not awake misinterpreted what they were saying.
LJ: That’s absolutely true. It’s inevitable that that would occur, because you can’t know the truth of Christ or the truth of Buddha from within the mind. Jesus and Buddha were speaking from a dimension of truth transcendent of the mind, so the mind is always going to misunderstand and misinterpret. The ego is always going to misunderstand and misinterpret, and worse than that, the ego is going to misuse the truth toward it’s own ends.

Why do you write that belief in God is an obstacle to knowing God?
LJ: Because belief is a function of the mind and God is unknowable with the mind. To believe in God is to create God in man’s image and it doesn’t work. You can only know God through direct experience which arises out of the deepest levels of Presence. Did Jesus believe in God, or did he know God?  For those who don’t know God through direct experience, all that’s really available is belief in God and belief in God has nothing to do with knowing God. God is unknowable with the mind, and yet we can experience God directly by coming to where God is. For me, God is the silent presence at the very heart of all things present. God is real. God is here, now, but we are not. We are lost in the past and future world of thought. We are lost in concepts, including spiritual and religious concepts and beliefs.  If we want to experience the living presence of God, we will  have to come to where God is, which is here, now. Then we will begin to experience God as the silent Presence at the very heart of all things present. That’s what omnipresence really means! For believers it’s a comforting concept. For mystics who are awake in the truth of life, it’s a living reality.

And that’s where we experience true happiness.
LJ: True awakening is beyond happiness, because happiness is in duality with sadness. Of course, when you are present, happiness will arise. But it will pass.  Bliss will arise, but it will pass. If you identify with these feelings as they arise, you will take yourself into duality. You will invite unhappiness and despair into your life, because that is the nature of duality. All experience will pass but what remains constant is the one experiencing. True awakening is not about bliss or happiness. It is not about what you get out of it. It is just about being here, because when you are present, you are in the truth of life and you choose to be in the truth of life, rather than lost in a world of illusion.

So, the experience of knowing God through direct experience is ultimately where we’re moving toward through the process of awakening?
LJ: Yes, it’s our ultimate destiny. It’s every human’s ultimate destiny, but we’ve been dramatically sidetracked into the world of the mind, into the world of separation and illusion, where the ego reigns supreme. The ego is the custodian of the separation, and its role is to keep us imprisoned within the separation.

How does reincarnation work with the awakening process?
LJ: Well, it’s as if we’re reincarnating lifetime after lifetime until we get it right. The soul is on a journey from Oneness into separation, ultimately to return to Oneness. We are that part of the soul incarnating into this lifetime to advance the soul towards it’s ultimate destiny. In that sense, we are the champions of our own soul. We’re here to learn certain lessons that will advance the soul towards its immortality and restore the soul to Oneness. The are several key lessons that we are here to learn. What is the true nature of love? Because we’re all lost in a false notion of love. What is the true nature of power? Because we’re all painfully lost in false power. What is the true nature of acceptance? Because we are all lost in judgment. And what is the true nature of compassion? Because we have all disconnected from the pain of separation. These are fundamental lessons that will advance the soul towards redemption.

However, there is a master lesson that the soul itself is not aware of: Through the doorway of the present moment, Oneness is redeemed and the eternal is revealed. The soul believes that by perfecting itself over many lifetimes, it will eventually be restored to Oneness. It sees its destiny as somewhere in its future. And that is the soul’s mistake. I speak about it in my book, Journey into Now. There can be no deliverance in the future, because there is only now. The future that we believe in is an illusion. That is the master lesson that we can discover upon behalf of the soul. We cannot awaken in the future. We can only awaken now! And so we respond by becoming more and more present, until we are fundamentally established in Presence and the realization of Oneness. We have arisen in mastery of the mind and ego, so that we are no longer imprisoned within the past and future. And then, miraculously, we will come to realize that not only have we awakened in this lifetime, but through our awakening, we have delivered the soul into its own immortality.

Because then you’re not moving toward any future goal, you’re now.
LJ: That’s it. You’re here now. You relax, you settle, you enjoy, that’s it.

And we really haven’t had enough people do that to really share with everybody what lies beyond that.
LJ: That’s true. But there are a few who have awakened to a level where they can describe what life is like when we awaken. Most of humanity is lost in illusion. We’re so governed by the ego. We’re so caught in separation, through judgment. There are very powerful forces of resistance to awakening. That’s why we need a very, very, clear revealing of the way of awakening if we’re going to awaken at a collective level, and it has to be simple. It has to be clear. It has to be free of dogma and concept. It has to be free of the projection onto the guru.

The process of awakening, in one sense, seems as if it were something that would be simple to do. But, on the other hand, to truly come into awakening and to experience God directly, does that involve a lot of work in terms of, as you say, owning all the parts of who we are and moving through that whole process?
LJ: That’s a really good question. To be awake is as simple as being fully present in the moment of now. If you’re fully present with something that’s actually here in the moment with you, your mind will fall silent, thoughts will stop, and you’ll be awake in the truth of life. You’ll be fully here, now. And that is always instant and immediate. There’s no practice, there’s no delay, there’s no gap.

However, it is not so easy to remain present as we live our lives. It is not so easy to become fundamentally established in Presence and you are not truly awake until you’re fundamentally established in presence. The way of awakening that I teach involves two steps.

Step one involves learning the art of being present. Just bring yourself present with something that is here in the moment with you, and you will come out of the mind. Thoughts will stop. You will be a present and awakened being for as long as you remain present. Bring yourself present many times each day. Choose to be present whenever there is no need to be thinking. When you’re washing the dishes or having a shower, there is no need to be thinking. The more you choose to be present, rather than lost in the mind, the easier it will become.

Step two is essential for true awakening. It leads to mastery of the mind and ego. We have to go through a process of bringing consciousness to all the ways that we’re pulled out of presence. I’ve identified four aspects to step two. The first is the ego’s seduction and temptation. The ego is extremely skilled at pulling us out of the present moment into the past and future. We have to bring the ego’s subtle strategies of resistance to Presence to consciousness, and we have to come into right relationship with the ego.  The second is denial of who we’ve become. We are deeply addicted to judging and denying certain aspects of ourselves which we are ashamed of. We have to go through a process of owning, acknowledging and confessing who we have become, if we are to open into the truth of who we are and we have to do so without judgment. We have to own and acknowledge all those aspects of ourselves that we have been judging, or hiding. This will lead to a deep relaxation as we go beyond all judgment of ourselves and others. The third is repression of emotions. We have to allow onto conscious experience and expression all those emotions repressed within us from our past. Otherwise those repressed emotions will constantly be triggered and projected onto the present. In a sense, those repressed emotions keep us imprisoned in a painful past. The fourth is entanglement in others. We have to bring to consciousness all the ways we lose ourselves in others. I explain all of this in detail in Journey into Now.Are you working on any other projects right now.

Are you working on any other projects right now.
LJ: Well, I’m working on a number of projects. I’m working on a children’s book, In search of the Light, which will be out in 2010. I’ve also written a play which I performed in Los Angeles for six weeks called “Liberating Jesus,” which is now available as a DVD. I am also planning to release it as a book. There are several other books which I am planning but haven’t started yet.

Leonard Jacobson’s next book, Liberating Jesus, will be released in 2010. It is based on profound revelations about Jesus that Leonard had in his second awakening experience. He also will release a book for children, In Search of the Light. For more information on Leonard Jacobson and his work, please visit www.leonardjacobson.com

GO TO PART ONE OF THIS INTERVIEW

First of a two-part series

In this age of heightened security, global uncertainty and climatic change, many spiritual teachers and guides continue to lead the human race toward conscious evolution. Leonard Jacobson is one such awakened soul who urges us to temper the desire of the ego for power and control, and to “integrate awakened consciousness into everyday life, enhancing every aspect of life and relationships.”

Jacobson, 65, has been guiding people on the path of awakening for more than 20 years through three previous books [Words from Silence, Embracing the Present, and Bridging Heaven & Earth] and workshops in the U.S., Europe and his native Australia. In 2007, he brought to us the book Journey Into Now – Clear Guidance on the Path of Spiritual Awakening (Conscious Living Publication) in which he shares the details of his six remarkable awakenings, or peak experiences, and guides the reader out of the mind and into the present moment.

“Most of the conflict, abuse and injustice we experience is based upon the fact that the ego, with its self-serving attitude, and its need for power and control, has become too dominant in our lives,” Jacobson said. “For the most part, we are lost in a dangerous world of illusion, made real through the power of belief. Our beliefs separate us and lead to all kinds of cruelty and abuse in the name of our beliefs. The more rigid our beliefs, the more we are willing to wage war upon each other, and the more we will exploit each other and our environment.

“Quite frankly, we have become too technologically advanced to continue living unconsciously upon this planet. The only viable antidote is for millions of us to experience a spiritual awakening…an awakening out of separation and illusion into the Truth of our Oneness.”

The author and spiritual teacher, founder of The Conscious Living Foundation, spoke to us about the Journey Into Now from his home just outside of Santa Cruz in Northern California.

What’s the primary message of Journey into Now?
Leonard Jacobson: Well, it’s really a comprehensive guide to spiritual awakening,. When I speak of awakening, we have to ask what are we awakening from? And what are we awakening to? Essentially, we are awakening from the world of the human thinking mind. It is a world of the past and the future, a world of memory, idea, imagination, concept and belief. It is a world of never ending thought.  It is a world of separation and illusion, and for the most part, humanity is imprisoned within this limited level of consciousness.  When we awaken, we emerge from the past and future world of thought into the world of now. We open into the truth of life revealed through the present moment. We awaken from illusion into truth and from separation into Oneness.

From the perspective of most people on the planet, they would call “reality” the part of life that you say we’re awakening from.
LJ: Yes. They would say it’s reality – and that’s the problem. That’s where the world has gone astray. It is not until you awaken that you realize that it is all an illusion. You have to wake up from the dream to realize that you were lost in a dream. Let me sum up my entire teaching and the book in one sentence, which is this: In Truth, there is no life outside of this moment. How can we possibly live outside of this moment? It’s not possible, and yet we all miraculously manage to do so. How do we do that? We literally think ourselves into the past and future. We think ourselves out of the present moment, into a memory of the past or a fantasy of the future. We think our way out of the truth into our concepts, ideas and opinions, which have nothing to do with the truth. Then we become so absorbed into the world of the mind that we cannot find our way back to the present moment.

Some people, like yourself, have had peak experiences where you’re moved into that present moment. For other people, it has occurred more slowly over time. Why does it occur differently from person to person?
LJ: It has something to do with the soul’s journey and past lifetimes. What I would say is that those who have peak experiences and those who go through a process of gradual awakening all finish up in the same place, which is here, now. This is the whole point of the journey.  In fact, many people who have had those peak enlightenment experiences often get caught up in them and…

They think that they’re special?
LJ: That often happens. After the experience has subsided, the ego identifies with it and thinks that it’s enlightened. It is very difficult to awaken out of an enlightened ego or an ego which has become spiritualized. The truth is that a peak enlightenment experience is just like any other experience. It’s something that arises within your consciousness and it passes. The real question is, “Who is experiencing?” Experiences come. Experiences go. This includes the peak experience. But the one experiencing remains the same. To realize this is to realize your true and essential nature.

How do you compare the terms “enlightenment” and “awakening?”
LJ: I prefer the term “awakening.” We all go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. We know what it means to “wake up.” When we wake up in the morning, we are awakening from a world of sleep and dreams and unconsciousness. We then proceed through the day, believing that we are awake. What we don’t realize is that when we wake up in the morning we are not waking up fully. Just as in sleep, there is a dream stage, as we open our eyes and are in the process of waking up, there is also  a dream stage. To the extent that we are lost in thought, or caught in some past memory or future imagining, or identified with our concepts, ideas, opinions and beliefs, we are still dreaming! To awaken fully in consciousness is to complete the process of awakening past the dream state. It is to awaken out of the past and future, and out of thought so fully that your mind is silent. In the awakened state, you are fully here, with what is here and you are nowhere else. You are not partially here, and partially lost in some past memory or future imagining. You are fully here and awake in the truth of life.

Enlightenment is more complex. Ultimately, enlightenment is a concept and all concepts keep us in the mind. It is very easy for the ego to become involved in the quest for enlightenment, which is a very powerful obstacle to awakening. The quest for enlightenment tends to keep you in the future., where as true awakening is about being present, and you can only be present now.

I have a very simple view of enlightenment. Most of our thoughts, beliefs, and repressed feelings function with us at an unconscious level. So much is hidden and buried within the darkness of our unconscious minds. As a part of the awakening process, all these things must surface into consciousness. As Jesus said, “All that is hidden shall be revealed!” As these things surface, we are becoming enlightened, in the sense that more and more of that which was hidden and unconscious is being revealed into the light of consciousness. We are becoming present and conscious Beings, rather than absent and unconscious Non-Beings.

Are most people in various stages in the process of awakening?
LJ: We are all equally awake, in the sense that the fully awakened dimension of consciousness exists at the very center of each one of us. It always has and it always will. In truth, we are Eternal Beings. We exist in a state of Oneness. However, this awakened consciousness is only available to us when we are present. To varying degrees we have disconnected from our true nature as we became more absorbed into the past and future world of thought. Some of us are more grounded in Presence than others. Some of us are more lost in the mind than others. It is only in that sense that there are various stages in the process of awakening.

How does the experience that we have in our daily life, our relationships and our challenges and our problems and all that, relate to the process of awakening? Some would say that we are here in body to experience that and to learn from it.
LJ: Everything that occurs in our lives is designed to propel us towards our own awakening. It could be a difficult relationship. It could be emotional or physical pain or it could be a difficult experience like loss of a loved one. There really are no exceptions. Life is a mirror reflecting to you what is in need of healing, or important lessons that you need to learn as a part of your process of awakening. But you have to know how to look into the mirror. Once you realize this, then all problems and difficulties are transformed into opportunities for awakening.

Is it sometimes difficult to explain the process of awakening through words?
LJ: No one can really understand what awakening is with the mind. The awakened state is always beyond understanding. Jesus referred to it as “The peace that passeth understanding.” This does not mean that I can’t speak of the awakened state and share the awakened state of consciousness with others. If I am speaking from Presence and members of the audience are hearing from Presence, then we will all experience the awakened state and open into Oneness.

The problem arises when I am speaking from Presence and a member of the audience is trying to understand with the mind. That audience member will miss what is being conveyed. To know the awakened state, you must experience it yourself. My Presence and my words spoken from Presence facilitate that experience. But just because you have experienced the awakened state of Presence does not mean that you are awake. To be awake is to be fundamentally grounded and established in Presence. This involves arising in mastery of the mind and ego. To this extent, my words can also be useful in revealing a way of awakening that leads to Presence and Mastery.

Do you find that the process of awakening is like other things we do in life where we need to practice, where we need classes, where we need to read about it to move toward that space?
LJ: It’s a combination of all of those things you mentioned. Reading about it is helpful initially, of course. We need guidance. We need clarification of the way of awakening. Practice is good, to a point, but eventually practice has to be left behind. Visiting teachers is, of course, very useful, as long as you don’t project the awakened state onto the teacher. In other words, if you experience silence and Oneness in the presence of a teacher, it’s because silence and Oneness is arising within you. A true teacher will not allow that projection.

Do you use any practices to become present? Does it require any effort on your part??
LJ: No, not now. I might have many years ago, but now I am fully established in Presence. There comes a point where you no longer live from within the mind. Your home is the present moment. You think when it is appropriate and when you are done thinking, you naturally and spontaneously return to the present moment. Even when you are thinking, you don’t really disconnect from the present moment. Eventually,  the ego relaxes it hold over you. Its role is transformed as it learns to trust the flowering of Presence from within.

Most of us don’t really understand the ego, that it actually serves a good purpose in our lives.
LJ: The ego came into our lives as our friend and protector. It came in at a very young age to help us cope with the pain that arises from having to live in a world where no one is truly present. The painful feelings of separation are too much to bear at such a young age, and so the ego literally pops into our existence. It is the custodian of the separation. It’s first job as our protector is to repress all those feelings that are too difficult to deal with. Once it has accomplished that, it assumes control of our lives with the explicit purpose of managing and controlling our lives in away that will minimize or at least manage the pain of separation. It will do whatever it takes to help you feel loved, accepted and acknowledged, and avoid painful feelings like judgment, rejection, failure and isolation.

The problem is that all these ego survival strategies are based in the past. The repressed feelings are based in the past, and so the ego’s dominance in our lives keeps us in the past. This is a profound obstacle to awakening into the present. It is only when we awaken that we realize that the ego has us imprisoned in a painful past so that it can maintain its role as our protector. It is not until we awaken that we realize that the separation is based in the past, and that if we will just become present, the separation dissolves and we open into Oneness. For most people, however, the ego has them imprisoned in a painful past, or a hopeful future, and it has no intention of releasing them.

There are six billion people living on this earth, each of us living in our individual worlds of separation. We get along with those who share the same set of illusions and we declare war on those who have a different set of illusions, and we are very destructive in our unconsciousness.

That’s not very pleasant to think about if you look at it that way.
LJ: It’s not, but that’s what’s happening in our world. You see, the basic position of the ego as it develops within us is this: me, me, me; mine, mine, mine; I’m right, I’m right, I’m right; what’s in it for me; how can I use this; how do I take advantage. Now, if you have six million egos living in this way, what kind of world would we find ourselves living in? The answer is, the world as it is today. I’m not being negative or judgmental, but it really is time for us to awaken as a species. We’re the only species on the planet that is not awake.

We’re the only species that is not fully here. The monkey is here, the gorilla is here, the donkey, the tree, the mountain. They are all fully here. I have never met a tree or a donkey or a mosquito that is lost in thought. Everything is here in its Being-ness, except us. What happened to us? We got lost. Where did we get lost? We got lost in the past and future world of our mind, filled with our memories, our thoughts, our ideas, our concepts, our opinions, and our imaginings – none of which has any relationship to truth.

Do you think that humans at any time were here, awake?
LJ: Throughout history, there have always been a  small number of humans who have been awake. History has produced great teachers, like Buddha, Lao Tzu and Jesus.  In our time, we have had teachers like Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharshi. And yet very few of us have awakened. There has been too much resistance and not enough to motivate us to collectively awaken. Until now! Perhaps it is a question of timing. The need to awaken has never before been so urgent. Our survival is at stake.

Because the potential for destruction is so great?
LJ: Exactly. We have become so technologically advanced that we now have the ability to destroy ourselves and most of the species living on this planet. You can’t kill that many people with a sword. You can’t cut down that many trees with an axe. You couldn’t create so much pollution 200 years ago that it would become a threat to our survival. But with the advancement in technology, all that has changed. The advancement of technology is a function of the mind. The mind has created the problem, and we need to balance that with an awakening in consciousness, transcendent of the mind.

How would you describe the current state of human consciousness in terms of its level of awakening? Is it easier to awaken now than in the past? Are more people awakening?
LJ: Absolutely! I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, since my first awakening. In those early days of teaching, I would have to work with people for a year or so, for them to really open into Presence and Oneness, but now that process is rapidly accelerating. In just one day or a weekend, people can have a very deep and lasting experience of the awakened state. People are much more interested in being present today than they were 25 years ago. The problem is that as more and more of us truly awaken in consciousness, it is met with a corresponding movement into unconsciousness. It’s as if the forces of consciousness and unconsciousness are battling it out within a dual realm. Of course when you awaken, you transcend duality and open into Oneness. In Oneness, there is no opposition. There is no resistance. There is no opposing force.  We just need enough of us to awaken individually to impact at the collective level, and then it will become easier and easier and easier. That’s really our only hope, and I’m fairly optimistic.

Leonard Jacobson’s next book, Liberating Jesus, will be released in 2010. It is based on profound revelations about Jesus that Leonard had in his second awakening experience. He also will release a book for children, In Search of the Light. For more information on Leonard Jacobson and his work, please visit www.leonardjacobson.com

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