025. Ted Strauss & Hillary Davis

Ted Swartz Hillary DavisAs a child, I had many experiences of the limitless side of my Being, but perhaps nothing extraordinary. I think most people have such experiences quite naturally. As I grew older, I felt increasingly overwhelmed by my own wounds and by all the separation and denial I felt inside and out. By the time I left grammar school, I was confused and repressed. But I was telling myself and the world I was fine and everything was OK.

By the time I’d reached my teens, I was in crisis and I found myself reaching out for something beyond the ordinary world. I began my spiritual search (as did many of my peers) reading books by J. Krishnamurti, Yogananda, Carlos Casteneda, Ram Dass, and Richard Bach. Soon thereafter, I began using hallucinogens as a tool in my self-inquiry process. I glimpsed my future realization in this life, but I also saw that I couldn’t reach it through drugs. At 17, I took initiation into TM and began to practice regularly. After meeting Maharishi, I found myself preparing to become a TM teacher. I took years of training, (over a year in deep meditations and fasting in the Switzerland), spent lots of time with Maharishi, and finally was endowed by him with the knowledge I needed to initiate others. I taught TM to hundreds of seekers, thinking that this simple technique would eventually bring them (and myself) freedom. It was around this time that it became perfectly clear to me that, until I and many others around me had awakened into some fundamental self-recognition and integrity of Being, nothing else was going to make the world any better.

Website: trilliumawakening.org

Batgap interview with Ted Strauss and Carole Griggs

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.

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013. Sandra Glickman

A lifelong seeker of spiritual awakening, Sandra has deeply applied and correlated many teachings, methods, disciplines, healings, experiments, adventures, and views of every kind to forge a comprehensive understanding of human identity. She attended the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, an interdisciplinary program, experientially based, and purposed toward personal transformation. Her investigations led her to become a devotee of Adi Da Samraj between 1986 and 1996. She then began studying with Saniel Bonder, founder of Waking Down in Mutuality, with whose guidance she awakened in 1996, to a non-dual conscious embodiment of both her divine and human nature. She is currently a Senior Teacher of Waking Down, participating also in the ongoing creation of dharma, organizational structure, courses, and workshops. Sandra has been in private practice as a transpersonal psychotherapist since 1987. She has been a resident of Fairfield, Iowa since 2004. Her personal web site

Interview recorded 2/24/2010.

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.

005. Fax & Sharon Gilbert

Fax & SharonGilbertFax and Sharon Gilbert met on a Transcendental Meditation teachers course in 1972 in Santa Barbara California and have been teaching together ever since. They’ve administered meditation centers and retreat facilities and inspired and taught thousands of people to meditate throughout the United States and in several foreign countries.

They became involved in the Waking Down work in 2002. Several awakenings and dark nights of the soul later they became mentors and then teachers of this work in 2007.

They both enjoy the freedom to express this teaching in their own way and marvel at the unique unfolding of each person in this mysterious process of awakening.

Fax is also an artist/educator and uses the performance skills of mime, magic, masks and comedy to teach and inspire students of all grade levels. Since 1990 he has presented over 5,000 school assembly programs, residencies, and community concerts, and keynoted many regional educational events. He now splits his time between his Waking Down work and delivering a range of educational and performance programs throughout the Midwest. Fax grew up in Boston and attended Brandeis University.

Sharon has been the president of the Waking Down Teachers Assn. for the past six years, is on its governing board and facilitates the monthly teachers meeting. In addition to her teaching and administrative activity she spends her time writing, editing, gardening, reading a wide range of books, and watching cooking shows.

Transcript of this interview

Interview recorded 12/16/2009.

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.