Emotional Balance and
Enlightenment
Interest in how enlightenment and emotional balance are related is coming from my personal process, but it is also coming from hearing about what has happened with Gangaji and Eli this past winter, and the similar things that have happened with so many others before them. It seems like the non-dual awakening that allows us to be able to speak from a source of wisdom and perspective beyond the separate self, while being a wonderful gift to us and our world, is not at all safe from being usurped by the agendas of our human nature when it is still busy with bringing our attention to whatever there is in us that still needs to be seen through. As much as we can know ourselves to be other than the separate, personal human beings who are born and who die, still we are intimately connected to this separate personal human being (our "me") while we are alive. Even if we call it illusory, it is still there and cannot really be skipped over in a grand leap of transmutation. The depth of that intimate connection with our own humanness seems to define our ability to connect with our world and all of the things and beings in it. To connect deeply and intimately with our own humaness needs a willingness to be with all of who we are, including core painful feelings, and to not allow our mental strategies, by being successful in their agendas, to distance us from life. We all have so many ways that we run away from the core discomfort embedded in our humanness. By core discomfort I'm referring to the feeling of not-being-allright that causes us to begin building coping and survival strategies in the first place. In the beginning, when we were really young this discomfort wasn't something we had any perspective on of course. The feelings seemed to constitute who we were and led to feeling flawed in some fundamental way. In our total vulerability, we experienced the pain as who we were, and have been running from it ever since. I am speaking for myself here, of course, but in approaching this place in myself, it feels as if this is an approach that we all make in our own way, as soon as we can recognize the maneuvering and strategizing that we do, and know it as something other than who we truly are. The summative process involved in writing my current book alongside seeing the troubles being had by teachers who have obviously generously tasted the treasure of non-dual awakening, is making it obvious that on its own, non-dual awakening is not an end in itself. We knew that already in a way, but this seeing is an explicit invitation back into the fullness of our humanness if we dare. Otherwise awakening remains open to being twisted by our human woundedness which (unless perhaps some of us have emerged from childhood unwounded) naturally surfaces needing be included into the wholeness we have discovered as being who we are. Through awakening, there is now an ability to see whatever might have previously been thought of as negative thought patterns and emotions in relative equanimity. These are not bothersome illusions, these are essential pieces of ourselves that are being raised up to the light and will not be easily dismissed by mind holding some correct understanding about what is going on or what is real. In myself, at the root of all the strategizing and manipulating that has constituted the separate mind-made self, there seems to be a pure pre-verbal wound from the initial disconnect of becoming an alone and separate being in a relatively hostile world. Then add to that the lack of perspective and resources in infancy and there is naturally an inadequacy in being able to meet the challenges being presented by the world. This root is where all the antics of the separate self have sprung from and have developed because of. There is something different about what is required here, by this deep root of our separate human-ness now asking to be brought back into wholeness. This dark and painful root pain is not a mental structure of any kind. This seems to pre-date mental structure entirely. There is a core disconnect here that seems to limit the ability of the non-dual awakening to fully embody itself in the human as a full expression of the whole of what it truly is. It feels as if when the pre-verbal break with life that occurred in babyhood still remains unhealed, and if left that way, that it could well keep re-generating brand new separate-self strategies as fast as we can clear them. We could find ourselves hiding in our ideas about non-duality or our own enlightened status, rather than being a natural offering of the fully alive and embodied awakeness to the world as an expression of Love. This feels to be the work of our time, as we see so many of our spiritual teachers falling into human level folly and doing damage in the process. The good news is that these teachers, the same as with all of us, are using their own particular personalities and circumstances to open up to new and otherwise hidden parts of who they are, and engage with the opportunity to clear out the interferences to living more fully the awakening that has been given. For all of us, daring to stop our habitual Self-abandonment and let the awakened Self have the open space in us to live, will naturally reveal in its own timing all of what still needs to be seen through within our humanness. Life naturally brings to the surface what is in need of attention. To be willing to bring into our everyday lives and everyday selves the light of our awakeness, and stay open as we meet and include our own dark places is a work worthy of the divinity that we Truly Are.
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Awakeness Mentoring
Special Group Session
starting in April
A small group session of Awakeness Mentoring will begin in mid April and will be limited to the first eight people who reserve a place. The mentoring will still be one-on-one, but the group will be available to its members for additional support and companionship along the way. The very simple method of mentoring, which is a particular way of being together over the telephone, is based on the understanding that there is nothing hierarchical about the awakening process, that there is really nothing that I as mentor have to give to you as mentee. It is based on the importance of simply setting aside space within which to be awake together. Aloneness in our spiritual path is of great importance all along the way, and yet there are also times in our journey when we come to the point where being companions in the space of Awakeness can be very helpful. Just to be held by another as an awake person, and to be able to bring into that space of awakeness whatever you have that is not feeling awake yet, and have it be held in that context, can be an amazing and uplifting experience. You are now able to check this mentoring out in a risk free way by arranging with Alice for a free initial session, to see if the energy is right and if it is what you are looking for. The first ever group session now starting in mid April. What that means is just that a group of up to eight people start doing one-on-one mentoring with Alice at approximately the same time for a ten week period. They will have each other as well as Alice for support during that time and they are naturally free to continue supporting each other after the ten week period is over. There will also be an additional blog page just for that group, and the option of group phone calls if there is interest. If you think you might like to join this small group, Alice will be arranging the initial free sessions on April 9th, 10th and 11th. Let her know right away if you would like her to reserve you a space in this group session. I have felt for a while that the work that I used to do for financial support was no longer an appropriate way for me to expend such a large amount of my time, and so inviting people to this mentoring is my way of opening up to what might be a more appropriate expression for me. It feels a little odd to charge money for the service, since sitting in our mutual awakeness is such a delight to me, but if I do not charge money for it, I will have to spend my time doing something else instead. So it is offered on a per session basis, and in packages of 5 and 10 sessions together, and by your response I will know if I am on the right track with this direction for my life energies. Click here for more information on Awakeness Mentoring and the group session Thank you so much for being a part of this global online family. May we facilitate in each other awakened lives embodying the fullness of who we are and all of what we have to give in our world.
Namaste,
Alice
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