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Carole Griggs & Ted Strauss Interview
Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people have done over 415 of them by now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to watch previous ones, please go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, either a one time donation or monthly one in any amount, it’d be much appreciated. And there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. So my guests today are Carol Griggs and Ted Straus. Ted was on that gap many years ago, in the very beginning, during the first year, I think, along with his wife, Hilary Davis. And you can find that on that gap. Carol hasn’t been in that gap, yet, I met the two of them out at the science and non duality conference either last year or the year before. And they’ve got something very interesting that they’ve been working very hard on and developing. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. But first, I’d like them to introduce themselves a little bit more, I thought it would be more interesting if they just give a bit of an introduction, rather than me reading some written thing that they had sent me. So whoever wants to go first, go ahead and introduce yourselves.
Ted Strauss: I’d say Carol, because this is your first time.
Carol Griggs: Okay. My name is Carol Griggs. I am an executive leadership coach and work with coaches are where to work with clients to help people live their deepest potential from multiple domains of their being helping to awaken consciousness within them, as well as awaken their heart, emotional intelligence, and the body, their uniqueness or personal gifts in this world. And their mind cognitive intelligence, cognitive expansion, cognitive capacities. I’m a university professor for John F. Kennedy, teaching the evolution of consciousness and human development. And I’ve been running my own coaching practice for quite some time, and also have been working with my colleague here, Ted Strauss, for probably the last two and a half to three years. We met about three years ago, and realize that we have a deep commonality of helping people to awaken. And it is our deepest purpose on this planet to help facilitate that process. Very individually and collectively. And so part of the process for the two of us was to create a model that helps people realize where they are in this process, and help them locate where they are to accelerate their development and evolutionary process. So Ted and I met and we had this common idea to map the process because we both been working with clients for decades on this. And, and so we just started brainstorming and had iterations of different models. And we’ll be talking more about that today. I’ve what we’ve, both of our life’s work has come to this model as of now that we’ll be sharing with you today.
Rick Archer: Okay, how about you Ted?
Ted Strauss: Well, I’m somewhere when I was really young, and I started getting really interested in what the heck is going on here. What’s going on with life, what’s going on with people what’s going on with why some people seem to be more advanced in some ways than others. And I then started getting on to the idea of awakening consciousness when I was probably around 12 or 13, and started reading spiritual books, and started having awakenings just from reading books. And then I started having experiences that told me that I had a lot of work to do in this area. And I started realizing that, as far as I could tell, the biggest problem in the entire world is the lack of proper support for people to become awake and all of who they are. Because without that people become sort of disoriented, misaligned with themselves in the world, the universe we could say, and then sort of spin in circles. And so it became clear to me that the only way this was going to happen that I was going to fulfill what I’m here for, is to get as awake as I can be, and then help millions, if not billions of others, I had no idea how I was going to do that, of course, at the time I was part of the transcendental meditation movement, I was being a teacher in that. And Maharishi had his own world plan. You know, he, and he enacted that world plan, and he helped a lot of people to make a lot of progress, maybe and one of them. But my own world plan started to take form. And it really wasn’t until maybe a little after the year 2000. When I started realizing, after a series of awakenings, I started realizing that the only way for me to accomplish my goal of awakening millions or billions, is to do through so through the internet, through digital, some sort of digital means. So ever since then, I’ve been trying to get various kinds of software going and working on things. And after a while, it became like, abundantly clear that there wasn’t a good model, there was no good map that just explained what it was like, subjectively, even to go through this awakening process, not just awakening consciousness, but awakening your whole being. So you know, we’re very familiar with integral, of course, we’re very familiar actually, with a lot of the models out there. And in fact, the first half a year or a year, Carol and I were just researching models to understand what we wanted to do with ours. Long story short, I’ll just wrap this part up is, we realized we had to do something that was aligned with how we were seeing the process, from our experience of working with 1000s of students. So that’s what we did, we spent our time we spent the last couple of years doing that, taking it out, we took it to San, that’s where we saw you, we went to San twice, we went to other conferences, we went and met other thought leaders in the world of awakening and human development and in academia, because one of our goals was to make sure that we’re integrating with what we’re doing, we didn’t want this to be just spiritual, or just research or academic oriented, we wanted it to be something that would work for everybody. Because our goal is to really unite everybody who has anything to do with human development, be it students, or teachers or academics or researchers, and bring them all together under one model that describes what’s going on. So that we can actually create digital media that helps people through the process
Rick Archer: Great. Well, I really liked the idea of maps and models, for some reason, that’s always fascinated me, and all the more so since I’ve been doing this show, because it seems like definitions of awakening are all over the map. And, you know, someone says, oh, I had my awakening and someone says, I’ve had many awakenings. And others say, Oh, I’m totally enlightened, and others say others say, nobody is totally enlightened, everybody has a long way to go. And, you know, and obviously, there’s all the ancient traditions written in foreign languages that have their own maps and models, but I have a feeling that they haven’t even begun to be properly integrated with each other and incorporated into our culture. And, and, you know, basically, we’re kind of at the Lewis and Clark stage of understanding the topography of awakening. And, you know, compared to what we have now, where every square foot is, has been charted and mapped out in precise detail. Do you think that the in the realm of spirituality is such that it ever could actually be mapped out with such precision using that metaphor? Or do you think that there’s always going to be too much subjectivity mixed in and too many variables and, and so on, to ever really get a clear, scientific, comprehensive, systematic understanding of what human development is, and all of its stages? And facets?
Carol Griggs: Yeah. Great question. Thanks. Thank you for that question. Gregory question. I have a I have a PhD in professional coaching and human development. And so a lot of my time was spent studying different methodologies, different theories, different processes, and different maps and models that are currently out there. And so one of the things that Ted and I did was basically look at every single map and model, not every single one, but as many as we could find. And lay them kind of all on the table per se, and put them all together in a way. Okay, what are the common themes here, and what’s missing? And so from a from a meta perspective, and you take a step back, and you take a look at all these pieces, when you take a look at a map, you will start to see patterns, you’ll start to see similarities. When you zoom in and you get too greedy and too close. You know, there there it is a lot more gray. It’s fuzzy, not everybody’s processes. Exactly. Linear. I mean, it’s just not. But so from one perspective, from the further out perspective, there are definitely some patterns, especially in what we call the first six chapters. There are absolutely all Some patterns that we’ve seen over time in a bunch of researchers that are really in alignment are relatively in alignment. After chapter six, through chapter 16, on our model, that’s where there’s not a whole lot of research has been done a lot of theory, there’s a lot of ideas. But that’s where our work actually is a little bit cutting edge and new because there aren’t, there’s not much written about it, there’s, there’s a little bit talked about it. What happens after a consciousness awakening or a heart awakening, what happens after that, and that’s where our work is unique, and shows a meta perspective process of what that would look like for somebody post stabilized consciousness, heart awakening.
Ted Strauss: And I just want to add something that one of the questions you asked there, Rick was, yeah, it is fuzzy, are we ever gonna get to find a sort of a clear way to research and see what’s going on? And I think the answer is well, yeah, like any scientific endeavor, it’s a constant sequence of theorizing, testing the theories, changing the theory testing, and again, and part of the problem in this whole thing is that it, it’s really only been, you know, in any on any kind of a scale, it’s only been since around the mid 90s. Since people in general have been having awakenings beyond just consciousness awakening to itself, or just heart opening, you know, just something in our chapter seven on the model. It’s not like there had hasn’t been happening, it’s just like, we don’t know who they are, we don’t know how to find them. And we don’t even know how to relate using language to see what’s going on. So then there haven’t been enough subjects that could be identified to do the testing with to see what’s going on. So part of what’s going on here is that we now have an increasing base of students we’ve been working with for a long time, that can be tested. So as we move along here, the next one of the next steps we’re going to be going through is using our system and other scientific. Yeah. Other scientific ways of going about it, to figure out what’s going on with these people, not just subjectively, but eventually, objectively, for instance, and we have, you know, our, you know, we’ve adapted the four quadrants from Ken Wilber system, and we call them our four views, and we renamed them subjective, objective, relational and systemic. On the objective side, one of the things we hope to do, and we’ll talk about this in one of our, when we get to talking about our current and future projects, is test brainwaves. And just, you know, once we figure out where people are, subjectively, it’s check their brainwaves and see what’s going on. And let the deep learning system go in and figure out what the correlations are. As we figure out the correlations. We can then figure out well, what were they you what words were they using subjectively, and then we can start making these subjective objective correlations. So that’s going to take some time. But yeah, we’re getting there.
Rick Archer: I think it’ll Yeah, I mean, like you said, it’s a never ending. Investigation and science itself has been going on for several 100 years. And I’m sure there’s no end to what it will discover, even though at times people have pronounced that everything pretty much has been discovered. And
Ted Strauss: Can I say something I’m sure. You know, there’s some ways in which the spiritual culture at large, especially the spiritual culture, inherited from the East has tended to have teachers say things like, I promise this is the highest realization that’s possible. And Carolyn, I at least the two of us tend to get a little nauseous when we hear stuff like that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, me too. I’ve been I keep a little bucket next to my desk.
Ted Strauss: This is exactly why we put Chapter 16 On our model. Yeah, chapter 16. Basically, memorializes, the unknown on the model. It says, We’re never going to know what the edge is because there ain’t no edge. You know, I wrote a book at one time called your endless awakenings, because that’s what I felt about it. Yeah. So I just wanted to say that
Rick Archer: good. And incidentally, when you use the word chapter, it means like stage of development, it doesn’t mean yes, chop chapter in a book or something.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, we specifically wanted to use some new words, because otherwise people will assume we’re meaning the same thing that other people mean when they use those words like
Rick Archer: stage, right? Sure. Yeah. I just wanted to say that. I was recently sort of chatting back and forth with a NEO Advaita kind of guy who’s sort of in the Tony Parsons, Richard Sylvester School of thinking and, and he was going on about how there are no levels there is no progress. You know, there is no the world is just a story. And, you know, there’s only this now, and that kind of stuff. And I was just trying to say, and there is, you know, in the form of non dual communication, it’s absurd to talk that way. And I was kind of responding to say that there’s no such thing as nonverbal communication. If it’s two completely non dual than there is no, no people, no individuality is no communication. Once you have some in communication, then there’s this and that, me and you, and we’re going back and forth. And the whole relative universe comes in, and there are levels and qualities and stages and degrees of development, and so on. There’s a lot of people who not a lot, hopefully, but many who sort of, I think, kind of intellectualize themselves into this understanding of what non duality is, and mistake that for the actual living reality of it, living experience of it. Ted’s rolling his eyes, as if to say, Don’t I know it?
Ted Strauss: I have so much to say about this.
Rick Archer: I’ll let you do that. So I see it as kind of a pitfall that, that people do that. And it’s unfortunate, and it’s frustrating. But anyway, what do you have to say about that?
Ted Strauss: Yeah, yeah, there’s a huge difference between theoretical ideas about non duality and the living of it in actuality.
Rick Archer: Yeah
Ted Strauss: The living of it doesn’t mean the distinctions go away. And that’s what I think really trips people up. The living of non duality means that things are obviously simultaneously individual unique and non dual part of the whole spectrum of being at the same time. And the only reason there appears to be any paradox about that is because of the stage of development we’re at.
Rick Archer: Uh huh
Ted Strauss: So when you’re at a certain stage of development, you can only see the world the way you’re capable of seeing the world. That’s it,
Rick Archer: That’s probably true of every stage of development.
Ted Strauss: That’s true of every stage. And one of those stages is the stage chapter seven, where you awaken as consciousness. And if you have if you’re one of these people who have like a high contrast, major shift of identification from, let’s say, mind into consciousness, and suddenly, it seems like Oh, my God, this is the one true only reality. And this is what they must have meant about non duality. I think what we’re trying to do is put that in a larger context, it’s a true statement at chapter seven. But it’s not a true statement at chapter 13. Now, it’s a completely different perception of the world. So I think it’s really important for people to understand that, even though yes, in any moment, you can flip into some state or even a stabilized stage of realization of the infinite. It doesn’t mean that’s all there is. Nor does it mean that it’s even possible for that to be somehow split from the rest of the world. Because it’s not, it’s not split from the rest of the world. It’s part of the world. The whole thing is one thing being is one thing, it’s all about our perception of parts or of holes. And that’s really one way of describing the entire process. The process starts with, we can only see parts. And the more parts we see, the more we’re like, oh, wow, this is awesome. I think I’ve got all the pieces but no, and then more come in. And then you wake in consciousness. And then you realize, oh, my God, I actually have a body. I actually have a heart. Actually, I have a mind. And I actually get unique from other people, because
Rick Archer: And I actually have an I.
Ted Strauss: Exactly. I have a personal self here,
Rick Archer: That’s a big hang up, sometimes.
Ted Strauss: Boy, we can talk about that for an hour. The whole, you know, getting rid of the ego thing, which
Rick Archer: Yeah there is no means no sense of personal self. But hey, you just upset me with what you said.
Ted Strauss: Exactly. So yeah. When people feel like there is no personal self, it’s because they’re at that stage, where they’re so enamored with the impersonal self, and they’re still haven’t quite realized how to integrate those things.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Ted Strauss: And the process of integration is well known, even in ancient traditions, it’s just that it isn’t well articulated in the West, because people haven’t been able to figure out what all these different awakenings are about. And that’s why the model,
Carol Griggs: And yeah, and that’s where our model comes into play in terms of actually, you know, taking this awakening to consciousness is not just the whole, but but all these other parts and pieces and being able to show this in a meta perspective where people can really start to grok all these elements, rather than zoning in and getting stuck and call the stacks of just one part of my being and avoiding other parts. So trying to broaden out of partial illness and really deeper more into integration and wholeness.
Rick Archer: And I’ve noticed that the spiritual community at large has kind of begun to grok this over the over recent years, you know, whereas a decade ago, a lot of people might have just been sort of trying to hide out in the in the transcendent or the absolute or something. Everybody’s talking about integration and awakening and integration now and embodiment because they have had to, yeah, because because life doesn’t sort of leave you alone.
Carol Griggs: It doesn’t that’s a beautiful way to put it. You know, a lot of people have had consciousness awakenings, you know 10 years ago was all about just waiting to have a consciousness awakening consciousness waking up to itself. And now that there’s a, you know, a big chunk of people that have have experienced that it’s it’s okay, what happens after that, you know, what is that integration process like? And what does it mean to deeply embodied consciousness throughout the entire system. So that’s, you know, those those upper stages per se, after an original stabilize awakening is definitely more online for a lot of people right now. And people are, there’s a lot of curiosity around that, which is why our model kind of maps out that process a little bit clearer.
Ted Strauss: And I just want to add that, yeah, we’re right on the edge of this major shift from that kind of split way of looking at the human development process. And our course for the that we devote that we developed in have given already twice to the master’s program in consciousness and transformative Studies Department at JFK. As soon as we stepped sat down to start designing that course, it became immediately obvious what was going on, because they have a consciousness development thing, and a transformative personal development thing. But were we putting together the department is about bringing them together, but they didn’t have a course that truly brought them together. So our course brought it together. And we’re, the course shows students the history of human development understandings in the light of our model, because the model is great at categorizing stuff. The model is great at categorizing. For instance, if you go on our website at AI conscious dot global and go under about race,
Rick Archer: You’re gonna do a screenshare on at some point, during this conversation.
Ted Strauss: Oh, yeah, we could do that. Yeah, sure, we can do that
Rick Archer: It doesn’t have to be right now. But at some point, we should have you do that and kind of walk us through some of these
Ted Strauss: sure
Rick Archer: charts and things you’ve developed.
Ted Strauss: But basically, those charts are showing how researchers in the past how much they have attended to which of the five domains that we say are very primary in our model.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Ted Strauss: So I’m looking focused on consciousness, some of them focused on emotion, some of them focused on like Fowler on faith, or, you know, lavender on ego and stuff like that. So what we’re trying to do is specifically show people what it means to be integrated, that’s part of our major mission.
Carol Griggs: Because and one of the reasons that we are so focused on integration is integration is what helps expedite one’s growth and development, their process, what happens, what the pattern that both had, and I’ve seen over and over again, is, when there’s a when there’s a huge gap between one’s consciousness, awakening and their development in consciousness, and say, one’s heart, emotional intelligence, or what we call the emotions domain. And if there’s a really big gap and development, it causes a lot of, it caused a lot of a lot of issues in terms of I mean, ethics, morals, if you hang out more on one than the other, it’s kind of what we call the rubber band effect. And it kind of pulls back development in other areas, because you always get pulled back into your lowest common denominator, which is why we love to emphasize, you know, finding where you are in this model. So you can start to see where where the gaps are in one’s development. Are you over emphasizing in body? Are you over emphasizing unconsciousness, and neglecting uniqueness or neglecting emotional intelligence? You know, what is that gap? And that is one of the primary pieces of importance when it comes to integrations, because it will slow one’s process, when there is when there is a larger gap.
Ted Strauss: And I just want to add to that, that, more recently, as I’ve been contemplating this, it’s really hitting hitting me the staggering impact of that very statement, the statement that do that going about your awakening process in an integrated way. It seems to accelerate your process in a huge manner, like immensely, but that it just seems that way, because we don’t realize it yet. But up until this point, we haven’t had very good understandings of what’s going on because of the lack of a clear model. So it’s almost as if, you know, you’re you’re in a huge city you’ve never been in before you don’t have your GPS, you don’t have a physical map. And you’re expected to get to the other side of the town of town in an hour. It’s like, what? So suddenly, if you just like look at your map and say, Oh, I just drive over there and you get there in 20 minutes, right? That’s what it’s like. In other words, people have been wandering around, sort of in circles for lifetimes, lifetimes. Suddenly they look at the map and they go, Oh, I see where I am. And then they start awakening right away. Like within months. They have major awakening experiences. And this is one of the great things we want to emphasize. It’s like when you get where you are, and you get where you’re going, and you can see how to get there. It’s not a problem. So anyway,
Carol Griggs: yeah, so I
Rick Archer: just want to
Carol Griggs: go ahead,
Rick Archer: I just want to comment on the rubberband point. You know, I’ve often thought about this over the years, and Ted, as an old TM teacher will remember, you know, marshy talking about there’s this tight correlation between the growth of Samadhi and the growth of all the other values that Patanjali outlined, and so on that you can, you know, your your level of consciousness will be sort of directly linked to your behavior and your ethical qualities and all that other stuff. And it just didn’t seem to work out that way over the years for most people. And it’s like, you know, if you, so I almost wondered, well, is, is the correlation tight? Or is it like a big stretchy rubber band with a tendency for development in one area pull the other so long, but it can really stretch a lot before it does. And, you know, it’s like, if you take a table, like example, you pull one leg of the table, all the other legs are going to come along, but what if one of the other leg legs is like, anchored down? You know, you’re not going to be able to move the table very well?
Carol Griggs: Right, right,
Rick Archer: Yeah
Carol Griggs: right.
Ted Strauss: Exactly and that, but can I just quickly say Maharishi used to say, go for the highest? First there was this idea that if you awoke your con… If you awakened in consciousness, everything else would just sort of come along like that stool you were talking about.
Rick Archer: Yeah, just water, the root of the tree and all the leaves will flourish. Simple
Ted Strauss: The answer is not really.
Carol Griggs: Yeah, it’s not really. And I would say, and, you know, when consciousness is awakened to itself as itself, the capacity to, to dip into other areas, like maybe some shadow areas, there’s a larger space that can hold it. So there is an advantage, if you will, to
Ted Strauss: Yes,
Carol Griggs: a giving, like concerted attention to consciousness awakening. So that container can be a lot larger, less confining. More capacities come online to deal with what’s actually here on the personal side of things. So that is one of the pieces I would have to add.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, so you get all kinds of extra credit for awakening of consciousness. But it’s not enough by itself. That’s all we’re saying.
Carol Griggs: Yeah, your container is bigger, it can hold a lot more. It can hold a lot…
Ted Strauss: You can you can deal with the stuff that’s coming up because it doesn’t threaten your sense of self.
Carol Griggs: Exactly
Ted Strauss: If your sense of self is imperishable.
Carol Griggs: Exactly
Rick Archer: Yeah, well put, I mean, I often use the example of trying to dissolve some mud in a glass of water or throwing it into a big ocean or lake or something.
Carol Griggs: There you go.
Rick Archer: It’s like bigger capacity, it dissolves the mud much more easily.
Carol Griggs: Absolutely.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Ted Strauss: Right.
Carol Griggs: Yeah.
Rick Archer: Okay. So…
Ted Strauss: yeah, let me let me
Rick Archer: Yeah go ahead.
Ted Strauss: There’s one other point I wanted to get in here. And that is that the idea of awakening consciousness, again, really came from the east, along but the idea of awakening, let’s say, the heart, east and west idea of awakening, let’s say the body or sexual awakenings, or other forms of awakenings that might include wow, I totally get exactly who I am and what I’m here to be and do. That’s a kind of an awakening in the uniqueness department. The thing is that one can, based on your particular uniqueness based on your personal design based on what’s your you know, how you’re designed to realize what’s going on here. People can realize the infinite in different kinds of ways, it’s not all the same, as really important to say that, and that’s one of the things that we’ve clearly made a decision. Discrimination about when we were designing our guided self assessment test, which we’ll talk more about, but the test basically does not assume that you’re realizing the infinite on the level of consciousness only, you could realize it in your emotional life, you could realize it in your body, you could realize it on all these different domains.
Carol Griggs: Yeah.
Ted Strauss: So I just wanted to say that awakening isn’t just apparently in consciousness.
Rick Archer: So realizing the infinite in your, in your emotional life or in your body, how would that feel? How would that be experienced?
Carol Griggs: You know, it’s, it’s consciousness is kind of the classic one, you know. And there’s a heart awakening and a gut awakening, and they actually feel very different. It’s kind of like a diamond. And they’re, they’re all awakenings in vast spaciousness in some capacity, but just a different different facet of the diamond. So, a harder and emotional awakening is often like this, in lovingness, with everything in it in an intimacy with all things, which is very different than then a consciousness awakening, and different than then a god awakening. So there are different kinds of awakenings, which we actually emphasize on our model, that it’s not just oh, I’ve had an awakening and that’s it. That there are actually you can have a significant shift in each of the five domains. which we’ll get into in a minute, which is consciousness, uniqueness, motion, mind and body, each one of those have a distinct type or flavor of awakening that takes place.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, people, for instance, awakening in the body, it’s kind of kind of more of a Zen awakening in the hara, or something like that, you know, where this huge, empty space, just emptiness opens up. And that’s experientially quite different from like a head based consciousness awakening, and all are equally value valid. They’re just different. And people also use different words to describe them. Which is another part of the whole confounding issue about understanding the crossovers between all these different schools.
Rick Archer: So I don’t know if you can answer this question. But I can see clearly how people on various stages of the path would be having all kinds of different flavors and types of experiences. But let’s say you got some of the biggies in a room together, you know, Jesus, and Buddha and Ramana, Maharshi. And all these characters, you think, and if you could somehow step inside their perspective, each of them, you think that then finally, at the pinnacle of human development, if that’s where they were at, everything would sort of be the same kind of experience, because we’re talking about attunement to reality itself ultimate reality, as opposed to some subjective flavor of it, or do you think that even then, given the different nervous systems and backgrounds and cultures and so on, there would be quite different qualities to their subjective experiences,
Ted Strauss: there will be different qualities, there’s no doubt that there will be qualities, however, there are common markers. And by the way, let’s remember, there is no Pinnacle there just just as far as we can see. And as far as we can see, right now, at the top of our model, there’s this whole structure, you know, we’ve got our major three structures, dual, unified, singular. So the awakening of consciousness in sort of classical terms falls under the dual category, because usually people awaken to consciousness separately, or in its own realm, and haven’t integrated enough to fully landed in the whole thing that’s here,
Carol Griggs: and that kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier of consciousness is just it’s everything is consciousness, you know, the Advaita. Like, it’s just this, it’s nothing else. That is kind of the classic, it’s it’s dual. It’s just this and it’s not, it’s not the relative, it’s not that,
Rick Archer: although
Ted Strauss: Which is why we don’t call it non duality,
Carol Griggs: yeah,
Rick Archer: Right but in a more mature state than even the relative is also seen as that. So there really is only one thing.
Ted Strauss: Absolutely. And that’s what’s that’s one of the markers in common when you cross into a singular phase, the subject object perspective that characterized our entire lives up to that point, even our awakened life in the unified phase or our awakened life, since wakening consciousness, there’s still this fundamental I and thou, you know, me and others, that we don’t even really know what that is, until we’re out of it. There’s no way to know what that is until you’re out of it. But when you get beyond that point, you can look back and say, Oh, my gosh, that was even in my, you know, years worth of deeply awakened place. There was still that thing going on. And after that went away, there’s just yeah, there’s, it’s not exactly no self, because this thing is still here. It’s both self and no self without any boundary whatsoever, or any, any conceivable way to be in that illusion of separation.
Rick Archer: Okay. So you have a whole system you’ve developed and whole body of knowledge. And we want to convey to people as best we can in the time we have during this interview, what that whole thing is about, and towards the end, we can talk about, well, how can you actually take advantage of this and you know, get involved and benefit from what you from your work? So what would be the best, most coherent way of just laying the whole picture out for us all these chapters and anything else you want to say? And naturally, I’ll be throwing in questions, and we’ll bounce back and forth. But yeah, if you’d like to proceed,
Ted Strauss: yeah, well, let me share my screen and show you the model. Okay. So when you go to our website, and you go to model, you’ll see model, intro and interactive model. So if you hit your interactive model, it takes you
Rick Archer: And your website, obviously, one can see there is AI conscious dot global,
Ted Strauss: right. So this is the first view of it. And the reason it’s so small at this view is because this is the only way it’s just shaped that way, it’s the only way you could see the whole thing.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Ted Strauss: But over here, we can zoom in. And you can click and hold and then drag it so the up down sideways, whatever so that you can see all these different headers. So let’s just quickly go through the headers at the top as we mentioned before, there are these three major phases, dual, unified and singular. And what this refers to is for fundamentally different ways of relating to self, others and world. That’s one way to say it. In fact, we could just look at these headers right now, dual says life and self are experienced as partial, fractured, confining and disconnected. You know, we put all those words in there because people use different kinds of words. But one way or another is there’s this fundamental sense that there’s more. And I’m not seeing the whole picture. And I’m not getting all parts of myself.
Carol Griggs: And this is where 90 some odd percent of the world resides is in this dual phase. And actually, probably between stages three, and four, or chapters three and four in our system, the majority of at least North America is within chapters three or four. Those that are probably listening to this podcast or this YouTube are likely a little bit further along if you’re find yourself interested in this, but just in general, that’s kind of the statistics.
Ted Strauss: And by the way, those statistics come from research done by spiral dynamics, right?
Carol Griggs: Spiral dynamics and other other resources as well.
Ted Strauss: Okay, so then we’ve got the unified stage. So in order to get to unified, which is basically a fundamental realization of the unity of all things, but it’s not the full embodied living of that realization, it’s just the recognition of it on a kind of, like, on the on the most deep level, you cross this boundary, where suddenly it’s like, oh, those parts of myself that I was previously rejecting, or not fully embracing in myself, they’re all part of me anyway, why bother rejecting them, and then as you go through that you land in this place where you realize everything is one. But then as you said earlier wreck which I love, the universe, doesn’t
Rick Archer: life doesn’t leave you alone,
Ted Strauss: life doesn’t leave you alone. So the way I would say that is being keeps poking you in the places where you need to grow.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Ted Strauss: So being will keep poking you. And what will happen is, yeah, you realize this here and embodied unity, but you still got to that force is an immense transformation. And that transformation is one that basically aligns your realization, with your whole being reality, your actions, your belief systems, everything about you and how you were previously program has to become, has to be updated, according to the realization of unity. It’s like all the ways we dealt with people as separate entities and everything, for instance, like, they’re not separate entities, they’re parts of ourselves, just like everything is part of our so anyway, I can refer
Carol Griggs: you just to go back a slight bit to if you look at chapter seven, that’s the kind of the classic consciousness waking up to itself. And so when a lot of people talk about awakening, they’re typically talking about chapter seven. And there’s more Yeah, unconscious. And that’s a stabilized awakening, which is different than having a state people can have state experiences when they go on retreat. But then when they come back, 10 days later, it’s like, got it lost it got it last but not quite there. Chapter Seven is really a stabilized awakening experience, which then moves into chapter eight, which is an oscillation which is that God at loss it Oh, everything is holding complete, and everything is consciousness to Oh, my God, I’m just this, this confined small self. And there’s that back and forth until they
Rick Archer: Wait a minute. Why would have stabilized awakening be come before an oscillating stage?
Ted Strauss: Because when you’re you can be stabilized in realization, for instance, of the infinite. But that doesn’t mean that your sense of self is all there. Your sense of self is what’s oscillating, and it’s oscillating between your some people would say, the divine or imperishable or infinite self, and your personal self, that’s the kind of oscillations that go on.
Rick Archer: But if you stabilized as the infinite, I mean, aren’t, isn’t.
Carol Griggs: You’ve stabilized that but it’s partial, is the chapter nine is really coming back for the whole, you know, Chapter Nine is consciousness really lands in the system in a way where it’s the absolute and relative are all it’s simultaneous. It’s all right here, all those parts and pieces, and it’s not an or anymore, which is
Ted Strauss: right, so
Carol Griggs: It’s not untill chapter nine, that we actually have it in the unified phase. Because in seven and eight, there’s still a back and forth, dual movement from one to the other.
Ted Strauss: And I just want to add that some people, you know, occasionally somebody will land so heavily in the consciousness domain, and be so fully identified with that, that from their perspective, the rest of this development looks like sort of adding the rest of the domains gradually back in and into the same fold and into eventually the realized unity of all those things.
Rick Archer: I think that brings up a good point, which is that I suspect that you know, not everyone is going to sort of move through these stages in a predictable linear fashion. but that there’s going to be all sorts of rhino variations according to the individual makeup.
Carol Griggs: Yeah, there’s I mean, there’s kind of there can be an oscillation back and forth. But when you step way back from the meta perspective, you will see a continuous thread that does appear a little more linear. You won’t go from a stabilized chapter three to a stabilized chapter six to a stabilized chapter four, it won’t, it won’t look like that. You might have state
Rick Archer: So you’ll have of tastes of things, yes, they won’t be.
Carol Griggs: Right,
Rick Archer: The stabilized ones are pretty much gonna go in order.
Carol Griggs: Exactly. So your center of gravity, so if your center of gravity is in, say, chapter five, you may have a state in chapter nine. But you’ll come right back to chapter five or whatever. And under high amounts of stress, you may find yourself experiencing states of say chapter two, but there is typically a center of gravity, which is your, your, your daily place of operation.
Ted Strauss: Also, excuse me, I want to add that one of the things that can that can confound the appearance of the even meta perspective of, you know, general linearity is the way that people are uniquely designed. So for instance, if somebody is uniquely designed to be like the world’s most amazing guru about consciousness, they will appear to they may appear to have that before others generally do. And that’s just because that’s who they are. Some people might be specifically designed to be like, an incredible embodiment of love. And so when when they look back at the model, they might say, Yeah, I got these emotional pieces first. Now, and that’s why we’ve got all these domains over here that you can, like, follow one of these domains all the way across and watch the evolution of our relationship with our emotions.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, you had somebody like Mother Teresa, who was this great,
Ted Strauss: Yeah right
Rick Archer: Compassionate saint, and you can just see it in her face. But she really kind of bemoaned her lack of actual mystical insight. And she was plagued by doubts and all kinds of stuff. Yeah,
Ted Strauss: Exactly. That kind of stuff. So they know people are going to their strengths will show up and show them leading in their development in general.
Rick Archer: Okay.
Ted Strauss: So then we go from, you know, after the unified, we go into this transforming stage, which is, you know, it’s easy to mistake this for, excuse me, it’s easy to mistake this for all kinds of things that can happen prior to this. But what we mean by this transforming chapter in our model, is, see how do we put it core duality based conditioning surfaces for healing, which is kind of how I described it. In other words, we’re programmed to operate in a world of apparent separateness. But that comes up for healing and everything about how we operate comes up for a complete healing and delight of the realized unity of Being.
Rick Archer: Okay, now, let me just ask a question to a lab to have you elaborate on that. So are you saying that once a certain level of realization has taken place unity you call it that a lot of buried stuff isn’t going to be able to hide anymore? It’s going to,
Carol Griggs: Absolutely. Exactly.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s going to have to bubble up and be processed.
Carol Griggs: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, I like to call it the flashlight effect. You know, it’s like as consciousness comes deeply down into the body, it’s like a flashlight, down through every nook and cranny. And any stuck duality, if you will, or any stuck, anything is going to it’s going to have a flashlight shone on it to come up and be loved and accepted in this unified space. And so there is a cleaning out, if you will.
Rick Archer: Waking down used to call that the wake down shake down.
Ted Strauss: Exactly.
Carol Griggs: Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Ted Strauss: Exactly. And I just want to point out that no, people aren’t going to have to go through that. They’re just going to be constantly prompted. And if they ignore the prompts, they’ll just
Rick Archer: They’ll be prompted more.
Carol Griggs: It just hurts. It will be uncomfortable,
Ted Strauss: right?
Rick Archer: Yeah, they’ll just get more and more uncomfortable until they’re poked on to the next level. Yeah.
Ted Strauss: And the next level is, after you’ve gone through enough transformation, let’s say at least 80%, approximately, it’s as if you’ve been hacking your way through a jungle for like your whole life. And suddenly, you’re in a clearing. And it’s like, wow, I mean, not to spend my whole life, healing myself, or getting all my parts integrated, or, you know, doing more spiritual work. And this is the place where actually people who have been identified as spiritual seekers, for their whole lives, often have a hard time letting go. Like there’s so identified as a seeker who’s always got to be doing all these things. So once you get up to this place that starts to slowly evaporate, you get to this place where it’s like, Oh, I’m just who I am. I have to be a spiritual person, just a person. Everybody’s spiritual, because it’s part of the universe. So and this is clearly by the way shown on ancient maps and models like the Zen ox herding pictures, where you get to a certain place where it doesn’t matter, you just go back to market, you do your thing.
Rick Archer: Yeah. What would you say about somebody like me who went through years and years of just yearning, craving, Enlightenment, or bust, you know, kind of feeling, and then somehow rather, that just dropped off. And I, you know, everything’s flowing along smoothly, but I still am completely enthusiastic about this stuff. And it’s all I really want to think about and focus on. It’s more, it’s turned from a desperate quest into kind of a kind of an adventure and an exploration kind of thing?
Ted Strauss: Exactly. So you know, that generally sounds like up in here, where it’s like, okay, you’re doing your thing. It’s like, you know, the universe is figuring out who you are. Now, instead of everything you’re trying to be, yeah, just figure out who you are. And eventually, universe says, Okay, go do it, you’re forced to go do it. And that’s where you are, right.
Carol Griggs: And that’s the beautiful thing about the transforming stage is that it any any, any energetic poles to go do and be something other than what you really are, is once that’s cleared up, then you really get to this individually, place what we call fundamentally untangled and liberated into being what you are here to be in a very much more clean, succinct, not many hiccups and pushes and poles to yank you out of out of out of alignment or where you’re headed.
Ted Strauss: And it’s something that I think everybody wants, everybody feels this pull, to, like, who am I? What am I here to do or be? I hear it all the time. And everybody’s got to find their own way into that. And sometimes people will find their way into the private, you know, into at least pieces of that prior to major consciousness awakenings, you know, in the consciousness consciousness domain, some people just like they’re born. And when they’re too they figure out who they are, and they go do it. Not quite, but you know, I’ve seen people like that help us kind of like that. But that doesn’t, that still doesn’t mean they’re living their full potential, it still doesn’t mean they’re living in a unified stabilized unified phase, or anything beyond that, it just means they figured out that domain, and they’re brilliant at that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, in fact, you might, people might wonder what all these horizontal rows are. And then vertical cells beneath each column, I presume, I presume that refers to sort of different major aspects of development such as emotional and yeah, but there you go. This emotions, Mind Body, and then and then you say something about each of those four things, or unconsciousness, each of those five things at each of these chapters are,
Ted Strauss: in fact, this is all very vertically aligned, if you read across in survival, everything about what survival is about applies to everything, etc. The themes apply vertically,
Rick Archer: right?
Carol Griggs: And it allows for say, somebody to be in chapter six consciousness, but Chapter Two uniqueness, Chapter Four emotion, it allows for people,
Rick Archer: I see, so it doesn’t just march across,
Carol Griggs: oh, no,
Rick Archer: it could be all mixed up underneath.
Carol Griggs: No, since like, if you’ve spent 20 years, you know, out on the mountain top and it’s, you know, focusing on a conscious awakening emotions may be in chapter two. No, and that’s, that’s where the discrepancies can be seen on this model, can help people start to integrate a little more whole?
Rick Archer: Yeah, it kind of helps to explain the behavior of some famous gurus.
Ted Strauss: Yes, thank you for saying that.
Carol Griggs: Yeah. That’s true.
Ted Strauss: That way. We didn’t have to say that.
Rick Archer: Well, people are one people wonder that it’s a real head scratcher. disillusions people, it confuses people
Ted Strauss: exactly.
Rick Archer: They wonder how can this guy be so awesome, and yet be doing this?
Carol Griggs: This would
Ted Strauss: exactly
Carol Griggs: why this would be why. So
Ted Strauss: In fact, that’s, that’s one of our major motivations for creating this model the way we did, we want to show them exactly. You know, when you when you take the Guided Self Assessment, it basically asks a long series of questions that help you understand where you are in the model. And the result of that will often show that people are not very integrated. In fact, one of the results of the this is a little messy, I don’t have a nice version of it handy, but I think I could get to it pretty quickly. We’ll show you the results screen that you get after taking the Guided Self Assessment. And you’ll see what it looks like when we actually have these different domains of development. Not very well integrated,
Carol Griggs: and why you’re looking for that you know that so the Guided Self Assessment is about it takes about 15 minutes and within 15 minutes it will show you results. So this will be an example of results of you know where you are in consciousness where you are in uniqueness, emotions mind and body. So in this example, this individual is kind of in their center of gravity for consciousness is in chapter seven, that uniqueness is in for emotions and emotional intelligence is in three, mind is a nine and body is in three. So it gives them a real understanding of where they are in the in the bigger perspective. And then we provide a series of resources to help them evolve from where they are to that next field, if you will, so for say emotions, if they’re in chapter three emotions, if they go onto the Treasury page, which are models interactive, you can click on Chapter Three emotions. And there’ll be a whole series of treasury of resources, we audios, videos, practices specific for that domain at that level of development, because, you know, one of the myths is that, sure, here’s a, here’s a meditation practice, and it’s going to help everybody. But really, it there are practices that are more appropriate for certain people at certain levels of development than in others, and for certain aspects of one being. So there may be certain practices and more body oriented, some that are more emotion oriented. And if you’re, you know, if you’re, if you lean more towards consciousness, you know, there may be some practices that are you’re on aware of to help with the emotion to help evolve that. So the treasury of resources really gives you a plethora of information and practices and practical tools and forums and things like that to access different things to help in that developmental region.
Ted Strauss: Let me
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Ted Strauss: I just want to point out that at the bottom of the results, we’ve got these three metrics here that result from the test. First one is integration percent. And I by the way, this one is not an actual result. And the numbers may not actually work. But it was just sort of my idea of how I represent where I was about 20 years ago. And you’ll see this integration number, basically, if all of these domains even if they were down in chapter three, but if they were all at exactly the same place, you’d get 100% integration. So that’s what that means center of gravity means we’re taking an average between the scores of all the five domains that tells you on average, where your development is. And then there’s potential realized and the potential realized basically takes all of these scores, adds them up, and compares them with what would have what you would have gotten if you had been like in 15, on all domains. And so, you know, you could have, you know, you could have some serious progress in one or more domains. But then your potential realized could still be low, because you’re just so focusing in one area.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, you could have like an Einstein who’s making it all the way across the board on the mind.
Carol Griggs: And we see that actually work, we see that a lot in the West, you know that the mind does tend to be the overdeveloped element and consciousness is typically pretty low unless you’ve been in meditation practices. And emotional intelligence tends to be, you know, pretty low as well. So there are there are common themes that we’re seeing in the West versus the east. And you know, so yeah, that the model or the GSA, the guided self assessment helps people realize where they are in particular, and where they could probably use a little more support.
Ted Strauss: In fact, I don’t know if this is a good time, Rick, but I could demonstrate what the Treasury resources look like.
Rick Archer: Sure, why not?
Ted Strauss: Okay, so let’s say you’ve taken the GSA, you’ve got your scores.
Rick Archer: GSA means
Ted Strauss: Guided Self Assessment,
Rick Archer: guided self assessment,
Ted Strauss: and you see you got your results. And now you want to say like, what do I do with that? Now what? Well, the answer is you go to the model, and let’s say you need some help in consciousness. So we’ll say, let’s say you’re in chapter six, consciousness, see, click on that. And up will spring, hopefully, if it’s all working, right. The Yeah, the resource page. So basically, here it says, are we’re in chapter six, we’re in consciousness. And these are the resources that are available. And each of these resources, this is just here for demo right now, we don’t have them all installed yet. But basically, there’ll be series of slides. And you can basically click on the right or click on the left, and just go through hundreds of these things, maybe in some of these to get like, here’s just the description and views, what this will be about. And here we talk about the needs and the challenges that are happening at that place, just for that domain at that stage. There’s quotes and examples and cartoons and images and videos and stuff down here and quote some examples. So that when you read these things, and you start to understand where they are in the model, it starts changing your perspective. Suddenly, you can hear that quote, or hear that or see that example and understand the meaning in a bigger context.
Carol Griggs: And just to give you an idea to if you’re in using this example, if you’re in chapter six consciousness, typically you can look at chapter five and the description and say, Okay, I I remember being there and you could really land and Okay, two years ago I can I remember that. And you could potentially look at chapter seven and say, Okay, I can I can taste that. And I can sometimes lean into that, but I’m not quite there yet. So there’s often that feeling of okay, yep, this is this is where I am, especially after reading the descriptions and views, the challenges, and all the practices and one here,
Rick Archer: okay, and everything that Ted is showing us here. Now, this is something that becomes apparent once you sign up for this? right, which was, you can take the guided self assessment by itself. But after that, if you sign up for the Treasury resources, it’s called the just the I conscious treasury, you’ll get access to these like 400 slideshows. Okay. So what we’re seeing right now then is at a particular stage that you wanted to show us, Gina Lake and Adyashanti. And Byron Katie and Jeff foster might be good teachers to look
Ted Strauss: exactly,
Carol Griggs: Yeah exactly. So there are examples of people that tend to focus specifically in that domain, or they have a lot of their teachings are focused in that domain, or that chapter of development. There are some teachers that really focus on the earlier stages Summon, unified and embodiment and others on singular. And so we were actually starting to dump in some of these teachers, that people can find their retreats, their books, their audios, and videos that are supporting their process where they are in their development at this time.
Ted Strauss: And some of these teachers have a huge range in which you know, like Adyashanti has a huge range. So he might show up in a whole bunch of these different boxes.
Rick Archer: Yeah, boy, boy.
Ted Strauss: And then we’ve got this forum thing. So when you hit the forum tab, and then you go over here and click this, you’ll get into the actual forum. For that chapter. We didn’t want to have 400 forums. So I got 16 of them, one for each chapter. So if you hit that, from with any one of the domain resources, will come to the same place where everybody who’s at a similar place in their development, can chat. And I think that’s in my experience, an extremely important thing for people to do.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Let’s pause in our dialog for a minute so I can explain something to Irene. So, I did update the you don’t have to type that you can just tell me now.
Irene Archer: This is blurry.
Rick Archer: Oh, well,
Irene Archer: You can’t see anything.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Irene Archer: Just totally blurry.
Rick Archer: Irene saying that on the live feed, the image looks blurry.
Irene Archer: It’s pointless to show it.
Rick Archer: I’m not sure.
Ted Strauss: Well, let’s tell you what, we’ll give you these images to cut in.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we can paste them in also
Ted Strauss: We’ll paste them in.
Rick Archer: And also, in terms of the link, Irene, there was a confusion in the beginning, I have updated the page. And last time I checked 85 people were watching the live stream. And maybe maybe it’s more now. Yeah, there was just some confusion. We couldn’t stop the chat, but because it was this whole different way of setting it up. Alright, we’ll have to find this point in the video and edit it out. Okay, so proceed?
Ted Strauss: Yeah, well, I think we’ve, you know, I just wanted to show how you know, what’s going on with the Treasury, you know, the Treasury isn’t complete right now. It’ll be done in approximately a month. And we’ll, you know, if people sign up for a free account, which is we’ll have a prominent button on our website in the top right corner, on the sidebar, then as soon as this is ready, we’ll just email you, and you can go and check it out.
Carol Griggs: Okay, the guidance health assessment is available, though it’s live. So if anybody wants to take the Guided Self Assessment, they can go to AI conscious that global and they can take the test again, it’s probably about anywhere between, I don’t know, 30 and 100 questions and shouldn’t take more than about 15 minutes or so.
Rick Archer: You have to pay or anything to do that, or
Carol Griggs: 15 bucks. Yep. And then there’ll be we’ll email the results. And then once you get their results, they you can you can take a post GSA and kind of have an interpretation and a walkthrough of what does my one of my results mean? And then within probably about a month, we should have the treasured resources all up and running, where people can subscribe and have access to all the resources that we’ll have.
Rick Archer: Okay, great. So, in terms of you guys, I mean, do you claim to have personally traversed this whole range of possibilities that you’ve outlined here? Or would you rate yourself as having, you know, degrees of development in each of these areas and being not necessarily the final chapter and, you know, your works in you, you yourselves are works in progress that are still kind of exploring all this. And to a certain extent, a lot of what you’ve mapped out here is theoretical, even for you.
Ted Strauss: Great question. You know, when I was a TM teacher, I when people would say, Are you enlightened?
Rick Archer: Right?
Ted Strauss: I was trained to say, well, we don’t talk about that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Oh, because if you said you are then people would say, You’re a bit of a jerk. That’s Enlightenment? And if you said you aren’t, then they think, well, he’s been mentoring all these years, he’s not enlightened. Now, how effective this? So we were taught to sort of duck that question.
Ted Strauss: Yeah. Which, by the way, and I’m not talking the question, but I do want to say that. I think that, especially here in the West, my observation is that people get all kinds of really interesting ideas about what awake, people are supposed to look like, and act like and sound like and smell like or whatever. You know, and they’re supposed to look and act and smell exactly like them, or not like the guru. Right? So that’s one of the reasons it’s been so hard to identify what awakening is really about, because the guru claims to have their own awakening, and the Guru has their own, you know, unique personal issues and glitches or whatever and personality traits, right? So then everybody tries copying the gurus, you know, way of being, and it doesn’t work for them. They’re like, Yeah, something’s really out of whack here.
Rick Archer: Well, that was one of my original motivations for starting BatGap, as I was in this weekly sort of Satsang, that we did locally, there wasn’t any one teacher, there’s a bunch of people just chatting with each other. And then many people were having awakenings. And many people would say, Well, I had this profound awakening, and then I told my friends, you know, hey, I’m witnessing sleep. And I seem to be in this in pure consciousness, 24/7, and so on. And, you know, in other words, they’re implying that they’re enlightened in some way. And they really get shot down, you know, the friends will say, well, that’s possible, you know, you’re imagining it, and you can’t levitate, and you don’t seem holy, and, and all that. So so a lot of them would get it, they just want to shut up not talking about it. And so I thought, all right, well, all these people having awakenings. And all these people, others, other people don’t believe it. So I’m gonna just start taking ordinary people and interviewing them and getting it out there so that people can see that it’s happening to people just like them, and that might help them have the same thing happen.
Ted Strauss: Right? So if we drop the impossibly idealistic standards about what awake people are supposed to be like, then I can say that yeah, I personally am living in chapter 14. I crossed into singularity about a year and a half ago. And that shift was really different from any other shift I’ve been through. And, you know, Carol and I are both Enneagram, type sevens. And my observation is that Enneagram type sevens tend to go through a pretty kind of dramatic shifts in their process. Other people like type nines, kind of like slow and steady usually until something pops. But basically, I’ve been through all kinds of shifts my whole life and lots of ways in which I could say, Wow, I’m awake. Wow, I’m even more awake. Now. I’m even more awake. You know, after a while. It’s like this is sounding redundant. Maybe it never stops. Yeah. But yeah, for me, it’s like crossing into the singular phase was very palpable. And then a little about half a year after that, that 14, let me go back to the model.
Carol Griggs: You want to screenshot?
Ted Strauss: Yeah. Back to get this out of the way. Over here at 14, we describe it as fluidity, you know, and there’s only you know, there’s descriptions in every one of these domains. But the fluidity is basically an experience of 24 by seven flow, absolute flow. And the reason that it is so at least in my observation, is because all fundamental resistance to life, as it is, is gone. And when that resistance is gone, there’s nothing in us to declare ourselves separate. Because that illusion of separation was really about, oh, I don’t like it, what do I do about it? And there’s this kind of like, automatic way of going into of living in the subject object perspective, that’s separating ourselves from it without even knowing it. But when you cross into singularity, that’s not possible. Yeah, singular, it’s not possible anymore. So at that point, you just find yourself flowing with life as it is. And that flow becomes after a little while, becomes the primary feature of that realization. It’s chapter 15. I can’t say I’m living that. No, but that is our observation, looking around us at the other people who appears to have gone beyond.
Rick Archer: How about you care? Would you say pretty much what he said?
Carol Griggs: Pretty much what he said, I probably oscillate a little bit more with 1213 is what I’ve noticed.
Rick Archer: And what about some of the kind of standard, you can unscreened share, if you want? What about some of the standard earmarks of higher states of consciousness such as witnessing sleep or celestial perception and things like that? Those fit into your models? And those are, those aren’t exclusive to any one spiritual organization. You find references to them across many traditions. Yeah, yeah. You know, that is a question that I brought to a previous teacher. And that teacher helped me understand something that I think I still agree with. And that is that the, the idea of witnessing sleep. Yeah, so you can develop that that’s a sort of, I would consider that as sort of a, an advanced skill that some people will have the ability will naturally have that more. Others will naturally have that louts. But that doesn’t define what we mean by these various creating the consciousness awakening, it’s like, I’ve had lots of experience of all those things. And I still do from time to time, but it’s does not describe the stage. It’s, I think it describes a special skill. It’s not an acid litmus test.
Carol Griggs: No, no, not at all. And actually, you know, I, you know, I know a lot of healers, as well. And it’s the same thing, it’s just because you have the capacity to heal with certain in certain modalities or, you know, in certain ways doesn’t, it’s, it’s a skill set, that it might be that individual,
Rick Archer: right? And also, conversely, just, you know, so that he’ll be able to heal doesn’t mean you’re in a certain state of consciousness, but also being in a certain state of consciousness, doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to be able to heal. Absolutely, exactly. It might have been a skill that Jesus had or something, but Jesus’s brother who might have been equally enlightened, wouldn’t necessarily have that ability.
Ted Strauss: Exactly, exactly. You know, and so, you know, the ability to see on a celestial level that, again, is very individual kind of thing. So the more you awaken, the more you’re going to find yourself having specific experiences that to you are absolutely linked with awakening, right. But when you step back and look at the model and understand the bigger context, it’s like, no, that’s just you, dude.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting to talk about because that that one really hangs up some people because they’ve been told that there’s this, this map that involves these specific things, each and every stage and that these are like, you know, verifiers that you’ve actually reached that stage. And if you’re not having them, then you haven’t reached that stage. And so people figure well, I’m nowhere because I’m not having this.
Carol Griggs: Well, we have verifiers, if you will, or qualities that one would probably experience if they were at a certain stage or chapter of development, but they’re not going to be specific to lucid dreaming or capacity to heal or anything like that.
Rick Archer: Right
Ted Strauss: Yeah. In fact, I just want to point out, because there’s a lot of people who are going to go, when they’re listening to this part of the conversation, they’re gonna go, Oh, these guys are just, they’re not there. And that’s why they’re saying that that’s why they made their map around their own thing. It’s like, No, I don’t think so. Because we’re like, we’re viewing 1000s of people. And we’re telling you what our experiences and we’re lining it up with the research. But anyway, there’ll be a lot more to be said about that. Yeah, specific skills are going to show up for specific people. And it’s not going to look like those things that we heard about when we were growing up. Because humanity’s understanding of what this awakening process is about, was really limited, like what I was, you know, in school with Maharishi, there was sort of like, you know, the model was kind of like three or four stages, you could push it to five, maybe, and it was like, ignorant, enlightened. Like, oh, yeah, cosmic consciousness, unity, you know, God consciousness, unity consciousness. And I asked Maharishi about what’s beyond that. And he said, Krishna consciousness, which is some sort of group realization, which actually, I think that’s true. But it’s very low res. Right? Now we have a mic, that’s one of the things Carol and I have done is we have made this image, especially after chapter six, and especially down through the domains, we’ve made the picture very high res, which allows us to then test it with more and more accuracy.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Carol Griggs: Any questions? Rick, I don’t know if there are any questions,
Rick Archer: well, no one has sent in any yet they can, if they wish, by going to the upcoming interviews page on batgap.com. And, you know, about verification, Ted, as you were speaking earlier about EEG, and all it would, it would seem to me that there should really be some neurophysiological correlates to all these stages of development. And, you know, we may be a long way from having instrumentation that sophisticated enough to really measure them because we’re talking about very subtle shifts in in consciousness and experience and emotions and all kinds of things. But, you know, hypothetically, if we got to the stage where we had the technology to measure this stuff accurately, there could be a kind of a physiological correlate for every little box on your grid. We may not happen in our lifetimes, but we get there.
Carol Griggs: Yeah, and I started to see that you know, they’re starting to see the comparison. I mean, there was a you know, as definitely studies on gray matter in the brain based on how much one has been meditating. So there is they are showing variations with that. So yeah, we we’ve got a long ways to go the techniques ology isn’t quite there. And the technology that is there is extremely expensive. So yeah, our ultimate goal would be to be able to map all of that stuff, all the objective, statistical type stuff to correlate with the subjective experience.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Ted Strauss: that gets us by the way, you know,
Rick Archer: it seems like it’s a project that you could, it could become like, you know, CERN, you know, trying to build find the Higgs boson with the Large Hadron Collider, I mean, you could have a huge team of people working on this in order to really nail down every little aspect of it. And at this point is just you two guys, but of course, other people elsewhere are doing all kinds of research and stuff.
Ted Strauss: And by the way, you know, we could get lucky and find out that doing that research may not be quite as expensive or big as CERN. But we might find out that the kind of data that we can pull in through the process that we’re creating on our website, will allow us to start understanding correlations. So for instance, maybe in a couple of years, when the EEG headsets become good enough and cheap enough to just like be because everybody will have one, it’ll just be part of something they’re already wearing. Or whatever, then we can start using the deep learning algorithms to understand these correlations, without having to do an enormous project like that the artificial intelligence will start understanding what’s going on.
Rick Archer: Yeah. It’s interesting to consider though, how important is it to find the Higgs boson? Compared to how important is it to really understand human potential and human development and, you know, higher states of consciousness? And, and you know, which which thing it fully understood will have the biggest impact on our world? Well, the way I would answer a question like that is to say they’re all important, and they’re all happening simultaneously. Yeah, yeah. But imagine if you took the out, even if you took the resources from, you know, from CERN, and allocated them to conscious development, I don’t know if you can just throw money at it and have it all happen, but probably a lot more could be thrown at it, and it would accelerate it and given the state of the world and you know, how all problems are really manifestations of human consciousness at whatever stage that would seem to be that that’s, that should be our prime, our main priority?
Carol Griggs: Well, and actually, you know, Ted and I are in the process right now of utilizing artificial intelligence to create basically a coach in your pocket. So that our model will be the, the artificial intelligent avatar basically will be informed by our model to help guide people through this awakening process, to hopefully expedite it all over the world in a way that you don’t need to sit down with a coach, or somebody like ourselves, who have this experience that can guide you through the process, you know, one day at a time, that you will have access to that on a regular basis. And access people from all over the world will have access to this no matter where you are developmentally, if you can’t afford certain things, and some people can’t even afford running water. But you know, if we can, if we can make this avatar accessible to everybody in the world, as you said, awakened consciousness, can you imagine how world problems will start to shift if that is accessible for everybody. So that’s one of our big projects, actually, we’re in the process of now is creating that avatar that people can have access to, and basically in their pocket.
Ted Strauss: So there’s really two I just want to point out, there’s two projects there. One is, for a while now, we’ve been working with a project called Loving AI. In which we are, we designed the dialogue for Sophia, the famous robot made by Hanson robotics, who’s, you know, on YouTube all the time and talking to major personalities. We were invited to design the dialogue to help people awaken through the robot. And they just did their first tests. They’re, they’re going for another test soon. But their first test had some really incredible results. Like, you’ll start seeing maybe in the next month or less, some will put on our site under about media will start showing some of the results of that test. But some people were having experiences of transcendence. Yeah, more easily and more directly because it was a robot and not a person.
Carol Griggs: Yeah, which I was pretty skeptical. To be honest. Like, I was pretty skeptical about the capacity for robots to really help awaken people. You know, there’s, there’s something about sitting with somebody in person transmission that, in my experience is incredibly powerful. I mean, my whole dissertation was basically on how the coach identifies themselves and the transformative possibilities then that are in the space for the client to to change. And so, you know, having a robot, you know, I was really concerned that would this robot be able to hold some kind of a conscious space for a human being to really be invited into awakening? And the results so far are daggering and actually people are, there’s a book that was written by Jamie Weil recently, I think stealing fire. And in there, he talks a little bit about people that are coming back from war. And they have the option between a robot therapist or an avatar therapist and a live therapist. And people are even choosing more and more the avatar for various reasons that they’re doing some research on now. And so there there is actually a demand and a need and a desire for the avatar for the robots and not the not that humans are not going to be chosen ever again anymore. I mean, I’m a coach myself, and I love what I’m doing I, you know, so puts me out of a job just as much as a therapist out of a job, but there are going to be plenty of people that that still want that live person. But I mean, so far, statistically speaking, people are really leaning towards this avatar. So it’s interesting, how technology is really supporting this movement to awaken the world.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, and I don’t, by the way, see this put in any coaches out of job any more than, you know, having all kinds of knowledge that doctors have at their fingertips these days, they’re not out of a job, they just go, you know, when you’re sitting with a doctor these days, they’re just on their computer, filling out forms, getting information on the internet and stuff like that, that that could be part of what goes on at least a portion of it. So I don’t think it’s going to put people out of a job quite,
Carol Griggs: I should have said that I was kind of,
Ted Strauss: yeah, but you know, in a way, I think it’s going to likely be the opposite. More and more people will have access to systems like this that will help them awaken and realize that there are portions of the process where they really need human support.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And chances are robots aren’t going to end up getting arrested for sleeping with their clients and losing their licenses and stuff. So
Ted Strauss: you could just decommission them, and you know, make them build cinderblock walls.
Rick Archer: So a while ago, you were showing us, you know, in the chart, you were showing us a particular stage, and then you you click on teachers, and we saw Adi Shanti, and Byron, Katie and stuff like that. Is your thing, largely a referral service in a sense? Or do you yourself have a whole collection of techniques and practices that you would teach people directly?
Carol Griggs: Yeah, that’s a great question. So we we will be populating this with as much content and information we have access to with all of our background, everything, and we’ll be opening it to anybody who wants to dump some things in there and let the cream of the crop rise to the top, we’ll also be our current plan is to we’re gonna be starting to contact a lot of these teachers and saying, Hey, if you, if you want, we will put your name in here. And we just love to advertise you and you know, get people to where they really need to be, and they want to come to a retreat from you, they can come find a retreat from you, and exchange just, you know, put our website somewhere on there. And they can find us so that there’s just kind of an exchange, let’s all help each other find each other. So that’s kind of our current plan, how logistically that will work out, we’ll see. But that’s kind of the general direction right now.
Rick Archer: You could even give…
Ted Strauss: context towards content, I just want to say, yeah, we’ll have, we’ll also have some of our own content on that. And that’s going to grow over the years. Because one of the things we did was we, we created our own software that gave us the gives us the ability to have guided interactions with people through audio, video, text, graphics, and buttons. So we just, you know, like it is on the site. In fact, if I don’t think I could do it right now. But basically, we could paste in an interaction that would happen, that you can actually go and do right now just go over to Koshas dot global, and what’s going to happen is a box will pop up and take over most of your screen. And it’ll engage you in this interaction. Right now, the interaction it’s engaging you in, is helping you understand our system and tour the various pieces that we’re offering. And then you can sign up for this or that. But after you’ve gotten into this system, you’re going to start seeing interactive courses pop up that you could just click on pay a few bucks and take the thing about that and other people’s resources. At the same time.
Rick Archer: I just wanted to make a comment on what Carol said about contacting the teachers, which is that, you know, you can even give them a questionnaire that would make it a lot easier for you to fit them into your model. Because you may not know everything about them, you know?
Carol Griggs: Yeah, that’s very true.
Ted Strauss: Idea. We just have the odd the form online and automatically puts them in.
Rick Archer: Yeah, a question came in from Jared in St. Paul, Minnesota. He’s and we’ve kind of covered this, but I think there’s an opportunity for elaboration here. He’s asking where would things like Kundalini and other mystical experiences fit into your model?
Ted Strauss: Yeah, you know, that’s a great question. Thanks for asking that, Jared. And I think you know, I want to hear what Carol has to say too, but I would just say that Kundalini openings can happen at almost any point in the process. You know, Carol had something going on recently that really was pretty major. You probably want to talk about that. No, I don’t think that they they’re more like status. experiences there. They’re always temporary, right? You’ve never heard of anybody who had a Kundalini opening that never stopped. So it’s a state it’s something is opening, something is shifting, some new energy is flooding the system, you know, the word Kundalini can cover all kinds of a huge range of description of experiences. But one way or the other, I would call that a State experience, and it will integrate and the energy that you experienced in that state, it’s sort of like a vision of the future, you will eventually experience that kind of ease and flow and openness. It’s just, you know, you’re getting there. And this bad experience tells you, you’re on the right direction.
Rick Archer: You want to tell us about your Kundalini experience.
Carol Griggs: I mean, I could, I don’t know that that’s the direction I really want to go. Today. I mean, just in general, there was an experience of just multiple, multiple, actually, over the course of the week, one was more in the head region, one was definitely more in the heart, and the other was definitely from my gut. And so they’re just different openings. And different cleaning outs is what it felt like and processing and coming up and, you know, integrating into the whole. And so I think those I agree with Ted, I think those can happen at any stage of development. And like anything else, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t always, you know, happen in a certain place. But they’re often a part of a lot of people’s experiences. So it doesn’t necessarily tell you what chapter you’re in, they’re more state experiences that can really place anywhere in the model,
Ted Strauss: you know, and people who don’t have these big experiences, you know, often look at people who do and go, Oh, gosh, I wish I had that.
Carol Griggs: Yeah,
Ted Strauss: you know, and then they’re like, I guess I’m not there yet. And you know, and you know, what’s really interesting about that is I have had so many interviews with people who actually have had all kinds of major stabilised, awakening shifts, but they’re still comparing themselves to people who are more highly developed, because the guru says, You have to have this or that. And so when I just go, you know, I think I would put you a chapter nine, based on what I’m feeling and everything we, you said in the interview, sometimes what happens is they go, right, I had that shift back in 1997, or whatever it was, but nobody validated it. And when you validate it, they can own it and embody it.
Carol Griggs: Yeah. And that’s, that’s a great point. And I’m glad you brought that up, you know, Ted and I actually had a chapter called owning, because there was such a big pattern that people would have these openings. But there wasn’t a a yes, I’ve had this, there’s kind of a humble element, or I don’t even know what it is where people just didn’t want to claim that they’ve had this experience. And, and when you claim that experience it, it drops in in a deeper way. That is important in for one’s continued development to to be able to own that recognize it and fully embody it.
Rick Archer: Let’s actually think about validation. Because it’s been said, traditionally, in some circles, that you do need a guru to validate your experience, otherwise, there’s going to be some final doubts, which will prevent you from completely owning it. And seems like you’re developing a system which can kind of systematize or automate that validation,
Ted Strauss: It will certainly help. But I want to say that there’s an element here, that’s about being an element that’s about being human mammals. Because mammal creatures are always, you know, when they come out of when they’re born, first thing they do is like, look at their mom and go, like, how do I they, and then they just start templating. Right? On Mom, that’s how to be I’m gonna be like, mom. And that’s just natural part of the process. So another part of this is that you can have all kinds of subjective Illuminations, awakenings and shifts, but that doesn’t mean you know what that means, from a larger systemic perspective. So you know, okay, I had this big experience, something shifted, it appears to be permanent, but what is it? You got to talk to somebody who knows what that is? Or at least a robot or some, you know, something in our system? Perhaps that will help you understand? Oh, yeah, you just have like a, you know, a chapter seven consciousness awakening. You know, please, it’s great. It’s awesome. You’re going in the right direction, but that’s the highest anything, right? It’s just where you are. But we can confirm based on everything you’re telling us? Yeah, Chapter Seven awakening, or whatever it is. And I think that’s a hugely important part of the process.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Another thing I just thread of the conversation about the Kundalini awakening, even Kundalini experts like Joan Harrigan, and others will tell you that they’re an almost an infinite variety of ways in which Kundalini can rise and work its way through the system. I can go off on little you know, little tangents and sidetracks and or can go straight up or it can get stuck here and all that, so that it that can give tries to almost infinite variety of experiences and it can also be real flashy, or it can be so quiet that you don’t even know anything’s happening. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, so anyone listening to this, you know, if you’re reading, if you’re reading literature or things online about Kundalini awakenings never compare yourself. Somebody else, not only with Kundalini, but with any of this stuff. Yeah. You know, it’s, it can be very confusing.
Carol Griggs: Yeah. And I actually am so glad you brought that up, right? Like, it’s just so important to just honor where you are and not compare, you know, where you think you should be, or to somebody else, the sooner you can just love where you are. Actually, the quicker you will probably move through your process.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, my standard answer, if somebody asked me if I’m awakened, as I say, Well, I’m more awake than I used to be and less awake, then I will be God willing.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, cuz as soon as you put up like any kind of a model, people will go, Well, that’s the goal over there. And then they’re like, Oh, we’re they’re seeking that goal. And they’re not being here. Attending to what’s happening right here.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Ted Strauss: Which is, that’s the real fire of transformation. If you want Kundalini be here now. In all your your whole body, your emotions, your body, all domains.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s important. I mean, some people say, you know, give up the search and all that, my attitude is, if you have the kind of if you have the understanding that, like you say, with your, your 17th Chapter, who knows where it goes from here, if you have the understanding that this is a sort of a never ending, adventure or progression, then you don’t really sweat too much about whether you’ve reached this to that of the other stage. You know, it’s like, you know, I’m fine where I am. And I’m just going to keep on trucking. And, and we’ll see where it unfolds. But it’s an also it helps to kind of have in mind that the notion that, you know, this whole process doesn’t end with the death of this body. If you can really take a long view, then you just keep on moving along, doing the best you can.
Carol Griggs: And, you know, to speak to your like seeking, you know, you can’t stop steam seeking, even if you tried,
Rick Archer: if you’re seeking Exactly.
Carol Griggs: Thought you’re just the energy is still here to do that. And you will do that until you don’t, you know,
Rick Archer: if someone tells you you should and then you find that you’re tending not to, then that’s only going to make it more complicated for you.
Ted Strauss: Yeah. And by the way, that whole seeking impulse is absolutely natural and good and necessary and right. It’s it’s our own being trying to find all of itself. Well, there are parts of the whole context, how do I be all of who I am? That’s the seeking impulse. Why would you want that to stop?
Rick Archer: I also think that there’s an evolutionary impulse intrinsic to the nature of the universe, the seeking impulse is that being reflected within us,
Ted Strauss: right, it’s just that the seeking impulse, I just want to point out that the seeking impulse has its own trajectory of evolution. You know, when we’re down in the dual phase, it tends to start peeking around chapter six, when we’re getting to the point where it’s like, there’s more I know, there’s more, I’m looking for it. And that’s, that’s the infinite at that point that they’re looking for. But then when you realize the infinite, after a while, you get pretty sick of seeking it. So then the seeking impulse is actually prompting you to seek the other parts you haven’t fully discovered or are embraced. And then when you fundamentally fall into that unity awakening, and you’re like here in your body, and you’re very deeply present, but it’s not all integrated, yet. The seeking impulse turns into how do I get this all integrated? How do I sort out all these issues that I haven’t ever been able to fully get to the bottom of, and frankly, you can’t, until you’re at least in chapter nine, you just, you don’t have enough wholeness, wellness, and stillness, in all circumstances, to deal with all possible healings that you need to go through. So, so the seeking will just keep you out? Now that, you know, when you get into this singular phase, the seeking becomes it isn’t really seeking at that point actually has to say it’s not Yeah, it doesn’t like that. It’s just being what it is.
Rick Archer: But it’s a very interesting point, which is that the very that that energy, or that impulse, or that natural tendency, morphs into different things over the different stages, you know, it’s sort of might not even be recognizable, if you compare the, you know, this stage to that stage, but it’s the very same energy that’s just sort of taking a different form and it’s not like some kind of cosmic vacuum cleaner that just moving around and wherever the next you know, dirt is it goes.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, it’s just the, you know, the universal impulse of evolution, individuals and for everything.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay, good. covered that point. So, what else do we want to cover in our remaining time?
Ted Strauss: Well, I think we’ve actually kind of done it. Um,
Carol Griggs: you know, not necessarily specifically, I’m just wondering if there any other questions from people that we could answer specifically that, you know, Ted and I talk about this stuff all the time. So sometimes we, you know, brush over certain topics, or we’re not as clear and detailed as we could be. So just curious if there are any areas that would be helpful for us to clarify?
Rick Archer: Well, if there are that people should send them in quickly, because we won’t go into much longer. You know, that there was that movie in the in the 60s or something called Bob Carroll Ted analysis I read was saying, we should call this Rick Carroll 10, BatGap, or something? Yeah, you sent me a thing here. Let me see if we got all this. I read these through and see if there’s anything we haven’t covered. Our big vision, what led us to create the model JFK course they need to go digital loving AI project, we kind of gotten that the LA startup, your offerings, GSA intelligence, Treasury, blah, blah, purpose, mission vision.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, I think that’s I think I have one thing to say from that list. And that is, yeah, if anybody wants to, you know, is interested and wants to be supportive of our startup, we’re, we’re in the planning stages. Right now. We’re in the planning stages. Right now. We have a kind of a stellar team of founders that we’re reaching out to Carol and I and a couple other people. And we have a tremendous amount of support from worldwide community of people who are involved with the same kinds of things we are artificial intelligence, and how it gets applied to consciousness and human evolution. So there’s going to be pretty soon we’ll start going around holding meetings, trying to get some investment. And if this is something that you know, you or any of your friends believe in and want to help us just go send us an email or the website, send us an email, let us know.
Rick Archer: There’s one question I thought of earlier when I was preparing for this interview, and we’ve kind of covered it, but I think it would be worth asking, which is that, you know, since you’ve been so immersed and developing this map, you know, you kind of live and breathe it, I’m sure. Do you find that? You’ve automatically when you listen to a particular spiritual teacher, it just kind of comes to you where he or she would fit into the map, or not necessarily even teachers, spiritual person reporting experience. Oh, there they go random out there. Yeah, yeah,
Carol Griggs: no, thank you for that, Rick. Yeah. And I do it with my clients all the time, it’s just kind of information that comes in, it’s just kind of digitally, internally, kind of landing in certain places. And then, you know, coaching from that place immediately, you know, based on what what I’m seeing or feeling and get the model early, I intend, I talked about this, it really lives in both of us in a way that, yeah, whether it’s coaching or whether it’s interaction with other teachers or interactions with other people in general, it really, the model is really alive in both of us and how we how we see and how we coach and how we interact.
Rick Archer: One of the things that just had is that, you know, with teachers, especially if they become more popular, and start attracting bigger audiences, there’s the problem of just speaking to a crowd, not really having the time to give individual attention, and, and actually trying to address people at a whole range of different stages of development in one presentation, you know, and they’re kind of stuck there, because they’re never going to be able to give the individual attention that people need. So it you know, and you can still get tremendous inspiration from such people, even people at various stages might be hearing the very same talk and hearing different things, but getting inspiration from it. But it’s nice that you have something that could actually give customized tailored. Yeah,
Carol Griggs: absolutely. And, you know, one pattern I have noticed with students and clients of mine is, people do tend to find who they need when they need them on their path. So, you know, for instance, I found Byron, Katie, you know, 10 years ago when it was like, just so perfectly appropriate for where I was, it just spoke to me at that time, and her work was just perfect for my level of development at that time. And I’d say it was the same thing with every teacher that I bumped into along the way. And so there is kind of a naturalness and organic pneus to finding the right teacher the right time. And, you know, we’re dropping these teachers in the right places if people can’t find them, uh, probably a little bit quicker than, than the way to deny found people to support our process.
Ted Strauss: But back in, I just want to add something back in 1996 I think it was. You know, I had spent years going to teachers who were sitting on stages proclaiming Absolute Truth, and right around 1996 It’s like, I started rotting out of that. I got to the place where it’s like, yeah, I can’t do that anywhere. It’s just me personally, right? I needed somebody who could give me individual attention and customized help to get where I needed to go. And I went and found a teacher and I got the help I needed and it worked. And that was a wonderful thing. So we’re not really putting down any teachers, or any system or any approach to any of these things. We’re saying it’s all necessary at different points in the process. But yeah, ultimately, we’re going to, we’re building an artificially intelligent agent, that will deal with each person in an incredibly specific, individual way, finding out who they are, like we do when we’re working with people, and giving them what they need. But it’ll be better than any teacher could possibly be. Because the idea is, it’ll have the information from all the teachers and traditions. You know, it’s kind of like what Google was doing with all the information on the planet, when it’s just indexed the whole thing and make it available in the right way from what people need in one. That’s exactly what we’re doing for a wing.
Rick Archer: Let me say about three things to that before I forget them all. And I think Carol wants this. But um, you know, one is that people shouldn’t feel guilty about moving from teacher to teacher, because, you know, teachers have a certain range of applicability or relevance. And you may be you may hit up against the limit of that range and actually need something else. And it’s, it’s good to be loyal. And it’s good not to be a dilettante. But on the other hand, you you might need to move on, and you shouldn’t agonize over it, you can let you know, I really appreciated my second grade teacher, Mrs. Heffernan, she was really nice. But then I had other ones in later grades that I also really liked.
Ted Strauss: Exactly.
Carol Griggs: Well said Rick, well said,
Ted Strauss: Oh, and let me quickly add to that, like, if you find yourself agonizing over it, embrace that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And the second point I want to make is that I’ve encountered teachers who themselves or gotten have got rotted out, as you put it of the hierarchical arrangement. Like, for instance, I interviewed Raphael Kushner a couple weeks ago, and he was saying how, you know, he did Satsang for a while and just got so uncomfortable with sitting on a stage in any way elevated above everybody in the audience. Susanna Murray is that way too, she just really prefer a kind of a circular kind of arrangement. And I’m not sure if I remember what the third point is, I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember them all. But maybe Carol has
Ted Strauss: Let me let me just say something to us, it said in that is that some people are going to be designed to sit on a stage, that’s just because that’s what they’re here to do. But I can say for myself
Rick Archer: I just remembered my third point, let me just say
Ted Strauss: OK go ahead
Rick Archer: and that was that it doesn’t have to be an either or situation. It can be both. I mean, you can I like to go and see Amma once a year and big, big scene. But so you can you can go for the group thing and derive benefit from it. But you can also simultaneously get the individualized attention you may need. Okay, I’m gonna go back to what you’re so
Ted Strauss: I just want to say yeah, but I think there’s different reasons why teachers, you know, end up at a place where they maybe no longer want to sit on the stage and do that. I’ve done that, you know, I was, you know, in the prior work I was in, I was doing a heck of a lot of teaching work, sometimes 40 hours a week for, you know, years. And after, after a while I started, I was forced through a series of healings that were really all about my sort of two year old needs to be acknowledged for who I am. You know, like, yeah, Ted, you aren’t good enough. And, you know, once I finally got to that place, where it’s like, I got that thing, fed that needed to get fed that part of me that needed that acknowledgement. It’s like, I don’t care anymore. After that, it’s like, doesn’t matter. You know, if I said, I kind of don’t really like sitting on stage that much. Kind of little, you know, I got that part did I got the five weighing in me, that’s like, Ooh, that’s a little much. I also like it at the same time, but I have no particular interest ever since I went through that transformation. And I don’t seek that at all. But there will still be people who are very deeply evolved. And they’re designed to be sitting on a stage and give their teaching that way.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And their popularity is such that they couldn’t really do it on a one to one basis or anything.
Carol Griggs: Right. Right. And, you know, I’m a one to one coach, I think it’s one of my gifts, it’s and other people are much better on a big stage of 500 people, I can do that. And I do do that. And I noticed that my skill sets are in the smaller, you know, the smaller places. So there’s no right or wrong as to how a teacher shows up, you know, whether they’re one on one or big group or are there plenty of ordinary awakened people that are software developers for Google, you know that they’re there. They’re not, you know, advertising as anything. They’re chop wood carry water, they do their thing. They have a skill set, and they’re living in the world from that skill set from an awakened The states, and I think that we’re going to see a heck of a lot more of that, in time to come that not every beings job to go out and teach awakening. It’s just not. They will be Yeah, you know, they will be, you know, at the gas pump, basically. And the gas.
Rick Archer: Well, if it were every every awakened beings job to do that we pretty soon wouldn’t have anybody to do all the things in the world have done exactly. contemplating our navels,
Ted Strauss: Right. It was really just that whole thing was sort of an inheritance. From the time in humanity’s development…
Carol Griggs: Yeah,
Ted Strauss: …when awakening wasn’t that prominent, we know it would happen to somebody once in a while. They’re like, wow, this incredible thing happened. And everybody else is like, tell me how to do that. And so, but that’s not what’s going on right now. People are awakening in all kinds of ways all over the place. Like Carol said, it’s just going more into the ordinary.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Here’s an interesting question that came up from Matteo in Carpi Italy. He’s asking if you know about Jeffrey Martin’s work. And the reason I find that interesting is Jeffrey has been trying to do something kind of similar. He’s got a whole map that he’s worked out. And he’s trying to do neurophysiological research to go along with it, and so on. So have you collaborated with Jeffrey at all?
Carol Griggs: You know, I met Jeffrey, I was aware of his work about three years ago, and kind of felt him, you know, for a while. And actually, I met Jeffrey Martin in person, about four or five months ago, in Shanghai, China, we were both speaking at a conference in technology. And I made a point to have lunch with him one day, and probably three or four hours later, we walked we walked away from lunch, and just really enjoyed my conversation with him and the overlaps and the curiosities on both ends. And what we’re each of us are discovering, and there are some similarities, there are some differences. You know, I think one of the biggest differences is, is Jeffrey primarily focuses on consciousness, where we focus on an integrated model, including all five domains, not just primarily the consciousness awakening. And there are other similarities and differences. But you know, there are plenty of similarities with his work. And I love following his work, because he is coming at it more from a, you know, he’s a scientist and a researcher. And, and I deeply respect him and his work, and I’m sure he and I will, you know, or, you know, we tend I will, will stay in touch with him. And perhaps, you know, by the time we were done, we both were just curious how we’re going to end up collaborating at some point. So,
Ted Strauss: oh, by the way, I just want to mention there’s a potential interest in collaboration we explored. They’re working on some platform for gaming and human development, and we might participate.
Rick Archer: That’d be fun.
Carol Griggs: Yeah, we’re basically
Rick Archer: regarding, well, regarding Jeffrey, I’ve interviewed him so people can look that up. And I just want to say, while we’re still on the topic of him, that it’s kind of interesting, because his model, as I understand it, obviously a lot more I could understand, kind of gets you weed before you go through too many stages, you’re not gonna be able to function in the world. And he actually even talks about sort of coming back down to a lower stage. So you can function. I kind of had problems with that. So, I mean, there obviously have been examples like Ramana Maharshi, or whoever, who probably couldn’t hold down a job. You know, I mean, he’s just very high up there, but not in any kind of worldly capacity. And but I really wonder I kind of idealistically at least think that one should be able to integrate to the point where you could have all kinds of responsibilities and practical things, and yet be in a very highly developed state. In fact, you should be much better at functioning in the world if things are properly integrated.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, I think that, you know, without specifically knowing what he said, or what the context was, I would say it sounds like that was his way of talking about the same thing we’re saying, which is, you know, if you’re not developed in your body domain, very much, and your consciousness is way out there somewhere. There’s gonna be this bungee effect, you have to come back to your body, the, you know, the universe is gonna keep poking you until you do. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Carol Griggs: That’s okay. I was just going to kind of for those listeners that don’t know, Jeffers work, and I don’t, I don’t claim to speak too detailed for his work. But he primarily has four locations. And he calls them locations because he doesn’t feel they’re linear that you don’t have to go from one to the other to the other, that you can land in locations three as your primary kind of awakening. And you can go back to two and then you can jump for four and four is kind of like the non more than non functional and non heart feeling. I’ve heard you know, stories about that, that people want to at least go back to three so that people can actually feel love for their child and actually care for their child. Yeah, that’s what I’m so yeah, so there’s these four locations. And that’s a little different. Ted and I our system is not necessarily that you’re bouncing all over the place like that and choosing, choosing areas like that. And I also know after his fourth location, there were another series of locations that
Rick Archer: he goes up into the 20 Exactly, I asked him, I asked him about that. And he said, you have a light body or something. But you know, I just think that ideally, the very best of any location would be carried into subsequent ones. And, you know, you could be way high up on the scale, and it wouldn’t diminish your feeling for your children or any other capacity that Right,
Carol Griggs: right. So our model is more transcend and include. So you can go from chapter three, and when you go from three to four, it includes one, two, and three, and you go to five includes 123, and four, it’s not transcend, and chop off, you know, it’s trans
Ted Strauss: and then come back and figure out what you left.
Carol Griggs: Yeah. So yeah, that would possibly be a little bit different than than his system as well.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And so apologies to Jeffrey for not doing justice is system here. We may not be, and he might have good answers to the points we’re making here. But we don’t want to miss characterize it
Carol Griggs: no not at all
Ted Strauss: Right? Yeah.
Rick Archer: Okay. So we’re, we’ve been going on for quite a while, no more questions have come in. Is there anything you’d like to say by way of wrap up in conclusion. And also in doing that, we’ll do that first. And then we’ll maybe have one more practical point?
Ted Strauss: Well, I just want to say thank you for having us on, you know, allowing us to share what we’re up to with your audience. Really appreciate that. And really appreciate your questions, especially your perspective, because you’re not, you know, like another spiritual seeker who’s just like doing their thing, trying to figure out what you’re out there interviewing all these teachers. So you have an enormous perspective, what’s what’s going on. And that really informs all your questioning and how you’re holding it. I really appreciate that. Thanks.
Rick Archer: So I guess in terms of practical steps, if people are interested in finding out more, they should just go to your website, which I’ll be linking to, from your page on batgap.com. And if it’s not clear to them what they should do when they get there that there’s a contact thing. I’m sure they can get in touch with you sign up, sign up for an email notification thing or something like that.
Ted Strauss: Right. If it’s not clear, we haven’t done our job. And we’ll be constantly working on that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And you are it’s a work in progress.
Ted Strauss: Yeah, it’s a work in progress. You know, we just are we’re just now launching the Guided Self Assessment and an Ubuntu in a month, we’ll be launching the Treasury service. And so we’re just like, sort of at the end of this long marathon. And now we can go back to the website and go, Okay, what’s working? You know, what’s not clear, what are we going to fix? But that’s, that’s where we’re at.
Rick Archer: Okay, great. So thanks. Let me just make a couple of wrap up points. Just that. This, as most people watching, this will know, this is an ongoing series that’s been going on for years. And hopefully it will continue to. And if you are somewhat new to it, then go to batgap.com, you can check out all the previous interviews, you can sign up to be notified by email of, of new ones as they’re released. You can sign up to be to get on to the audio podcast on various platforms such as iTunes and Stitcher and Android devices and all and a bunch of other things. Just explore the menus, and you’ll see what’s going on. Also, the upcoming interviews menu is the place you want to go if you’d like to watch these live and submit questions, because each week there’s a live stream link. You can click on that and you can watch it. And it also says when when they’re scheduled and everything. Okay, great. Okay, great. Thank you. So, see you all next week. My next guest will be Cynthia Bourgeault, who is a mystic and Episcopal priest or minister and an expert in the field of centering prayer, which was developed by Tom Thomas Keating, whom I’ve also interviewed. So I’ll see you then maybe, thanks.
Carol Griggs: All right. Thanks.
Ted Strauss: Thanks, Rick.
Rick Archer: Yep,
Ted Strauss: take care.
Rick Archer: Yep.
