Christine Wushke Interview

Summary:

Full transcript:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Christine Wushke. Welcome, Christine. Thank you. And Christine and I have been in touch through e-mails for the past couple of years because she watches some of the BatGap interviews and every now and then she’ll send a comment or, you know, something about one of the interviews. And I’ve been a little bit aware of what she’s been up to, but I haven’t really had a chance to delve into it until last week or so, where I read her whole book, which is kind of a rare accomplishment for me. I don’t always get through an entire book, but this one was very good. It’s entitled “Becoming Freely Human.” That’s still the title, right? You haven’t changed the title? Actually, we did change it. Oh, okay. What is it now? It’s “Freedom is Your Nature.” Okay, “Freedom is Your Nature.” And the reason I enjoyed the book is that I really felt like she was speaking from experience. She wasn’t just philosophizing and kind of fishing around in metaphysical waters, but she was, in a way, describing things and perspectives and points, which might be considered philosophical, but in her case were actually experiential. And so that made it very alive and meaningful, and it’s almost like every little sentence was kind of a sutra or, you know, kind of a pithy little bit of wisdom. And even though I found there was some repetition, I think that was good, and good teachers very often do repeat themselves over and over again in order to get at things from different angles, you know, and you kind of go deeper and deeper on a single point, you kind of go subtler each time you hear it. So, it was a great accomplishment.

Christine: Thank you.

Rick: So, Christine and I thought we might proceed by having her tell her personal story. She seems to have had profound mystical experiences from a very young age, and yet went through a lot of the crazy stuff we all go through in teenage years and whatnot. And I think a lot of people would be able to relate to it. So, let’s start wherever you’d like to start.

Christine: Okay. Well, I can tell the story of when I was six, which was the first mystical type of experience that I had of, I guess, transcendental consciousness or the recognition that I’m not Christine. It first happened when I was six, and it was after a period of about a year where I was very, very sick and very near death a couple of times in that time frame. And I woke up one morning and all of a sudden the room didn’t make sense, and it didn’t feel like my room. Like, it was like, “Where am I? Who am I? What is this? What is this place?” And then it was like this sudden recognition that there’s only consciousness. I wouldn’t have used those words at that time, but it was this sudden recognition that everything is this warm, enveloping piece. And then the recognition came in, “Who am I?” And it was just sort of a spontaneous inquiry into, “Who am I? What am I? What is this all about?” And I never forgot the experience; it was just a very profound state of consciousness and recognition that I’m not Christine. And then, over the period of the next few weeks, there was a feeling like it stayed in my consciousness, this “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” And instinctively I never told anybody about it; it just felt like something to keep quiet. And then the next sort of experience like that happened ten years later, when I was 16. And it was a little bit more profound and it lasted a little bit longer, but it was the same type of thing. It was sort of the dropping away of the personal story or the personal identity and this expanded consciousness, this expanded opening into, “What is this? Who am I? What is this all about?”

Rick: Any idea what triggered it when you were 16?

Christine: When I was 16 it was the death of a family member that triggered it, and she had taken a conscious dying course. And I think part of it was that I spoke with the teacher at her funeral, and also her experience, my aunt’s experience, also in that she started really questioning things and mortality. And she kind of went through a shift, and just watching that happen and watch her becoming more peaceful herself and more accepting herself. And the teacher that she had worked with spoke at her funeral, and I had gone up and I had been sort of like, as soon as I heard her speak I was like, “Oh, this is the thing I’ve been looking for.” Because up to that point I had been reading the Bible and reading these spiritual texts and sort of looking for something. And when I heard her speak it definitely hit something in me, struck something in me, and I started talking to her. And then it was shortly after that, maybe two weeks after that, that this experience happened. I was just out for a walk and all of a sudden it just hit me. And the state lasted for a little bit longer and was definitely impacting.

Rick: It always interests me when people undergo a profound experiential shift just upon gaining some bit of knowledge, some intellectual insight almost. I’ve had friends and have friends who are, and I have interviewed people who are very much that way. They’ll sort of gain an understanding of something and it will be like a fulcrum which moves their whole world, just gaining that understanding. Whereas other people, they don’t seem to be so flexible in that way.

Christine: Interesting, yeah. Definitely my experience was that every time I seemed to encounter these sort of deep ancient truths it would move me or impact me a lot. And I was remembering when my aunt was in the last few weeks of her life going to visit her and it was something very impacting about just being in that presence. And I could never really put it into words. And then years ago, maybe two years ago recently, I remember listening to an Adyashanti talk about transmission. And he made the comment that the best kind of transmission is being around somebody who is dying and who has fully accepted that they are dying and are sort of ready to go. And it just almost put words to the experience back when I was 16 and being in that room and the feeling that would come over me that I just had absolutely no words for, but it was just a presence in the room that hit something, woke something up.

Rick: Yeah, I bet you a lot of people have experienced that. When my mother was dying her attitude was, “Woohoo, get me out of here, I’ve had enough of this.” You know, she had all kinds of health problems and everything, and it triggered in me a very deep kind of experience.

Christine: Yeah, it definitely moved me a lot.

Rick: Okay, so I know when I was 16 I was a pretty wild and crazy guy, but did it really impact your life in a behavioral way and all, having that insight? Did you become a serious seeker at that stage or was it just a passing phase?

Christine: No, I would say that was definitely when I became a seeker at 16, and at the time I was a competitive swimmer. So shortly after that, maybe a year or two after that, I decided to quit swimming and I had been working with the woman that spoke at my aunt’s funeral, the one that had been teaching her, and I became her student, like right at 16, so I worked privately with her. And then, sort of a series of events happened, but it was mainly her influence on me, going to see her and her talking about these ancient yogic teachings. And just every time she would talk it would strike something in me. And she actually made the comment, “You should become a yoga teacher.” And so right out of high school I was like, “Yep, that’s the thing, I’m going to go be a yoga teacher.” And I went to Africa after high school, so there was a period of a few years where it was just seeking, like really, what is the meaning of life? Who am I? What do I want to do? And then her mentioning, “You should be a yoga teacher,” just kind of like, “Yep.”

Rick: So did you take formal training as a yoga teacher and everything?

Christine: Yeah, yeah, that’s where I went right out of high school. So rather than university, college years, I went into studying the Yoga Sutras and studying to be a yoga teacher, and then I went and lived at an ashram.

Rick: That’s great. Whose ashram?

Christine: The Yashodhara Ashram in Kootenay Bay, B.C.

Rick: Hmm, not familiar with that one. So that’s great, I mean, most of us were blowing our brains out with drugs and all, you were doing yoga and got a head start on the rest of us. Didn’t have to spend the rest of the next couple of decades doing repair work.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah, and so then what?

Christine: Then I got pregnant, had a baby at 23, and of course that was very life-changing too, just all of a sudden being a mother. And right after my son was born I started reading A Course in Miracles, and that too had a resonance with me, so I just dove right into that book. I read it every single day, I took every single lesson and just sat with it for hours and absorbed it. So for like the next 7 years that was sort of my Bible, I would open it every day, read it every day, immerse myself in it every day.

Rick: And was it also having a profound impact on the experiential level? Because you know, you’re just reading a book, but was it altering your experience a lot?

Christine: Yeah, I think the thing with the Course is that it’s meant to take it experientially rather than intellectually. Like the lessons are very, just like a tiny little nugget or a tiny little sentence that you then take in and you sit with it. And I’m not sure if everyone experiences it in the same way, but I found it to be very experiential.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, that’s the way a lot of the traditional Eastern scriptures are supposed to be. All these little aphorisms and everything, they’re supposed to be either triggers for deeper experience or kind of confirmations of one’s experience. But it’s not just a matter of philosophical entertainment. It’s very, I mean, the main thing is the experience. Obviously, just as eating a meal is much more important than reading a book about food.

Christine: Exactly. Yeah, the Course in Miracles was very experiential for me, so it definitely triggered a bunch of states. Well, even at the ashram and even in my yoga training, there would be, sort of from the age of 16, like every maybe two months or so, there would be a peak experience like that. And so, it would sort of go in and out for me, where I’d have like a high, or like a mystical high and a clarity, and then it would sort of follow by like a despair. And they almost seemed to get further and further, like the despair got more despairing.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah, and the highs got very high, up to the point where I had sort of a massive Kundalini eruption. And I was meditating on a Course in Miracles lesson right at the time that it happened, which was, “These thoughts don’t mean anything.” So, I was meditating on, “These thoughts don’t mean anything,” and then there was this spontaneous, “Well, who’s thinking the thoughts? Who’s the thinker?” and then I was like, “Well, what if the thinker doesn’t mean anything?” And then that became the focus, “What if the thinker doesn’t mean anything?” And then it went into “Who am I?” again, so that spontaneous “Who am I?” kind of would come in.

Rick: And that triggered the Kundalini eruption? Yeah, it kind of went from the “Thinker doesn’t mean anything” to “Who am I?” to “I’m not real.” And it was almost like a pulling apart of this “I” that I thought was real, to “What if that’s not real? What if I’m not who I think I am?” And then it felt like there was an inner collapsing and then a liquid sensation moving up my spine. So, it was a pretty profound experience that actually lasted for several weeks, almost like water rushing through the body, which is still there to this day, I can say, I’m still very sensitive to energies in the body and stuff, but for the first maybe two or three weeks of that, of it happening, it was very pronounced.

Rick: And novelty of it.

Christine: And the novelty of it, yeah.

Rick: Well, you know, people kind of put down the experience of states, but I think, I don’t know, I haven’t done a scientific survey, but it seems to me, most people I know, it’s natural to initially have tastes and glimpses and so on, but for those to eventually become more stable and integrated until it becomes a perpetuum or a continuum, rather than just an isolated incident. So, I don’t think we should necessarily belittle the experience of momentary or temporary experiences as much as is sometimes done in spiritual circles.

Christine: Oh, definitely. I tend to think that everything has value.

Rick: Yeah, exactly.

Christine: So, the expanded states of consciousness have their place and they’re very valuable, but for me the experience was these ups and downs. So, there would be the mystical state and then almost like the going, sort of re-identifying with the mind and the human experience and feeling trapped and contained and despairing, and this back and forth. And over the years it started to level out, so I can kind of look back and see, oh, there was definitely a process for me. And it did, I mean, even though my experience of being in the field now, there’s no linear time, I can still look through the eyes of the human embodiment and say, yeah, there was a linear …

Rick: Sure, yeah.

Christine: … it seemed to be a linear progression or ups and downs that eventually leveled out to sort of more of a constant.

Rick: Yeah, I went through a very similar thing. I mean, there would be days where I’d feel like, I can’t wait until I go to sleep tonight so I can end this misery. I just want to be unconscious, I can’t stand this feeling of being so trapped. And then, you know, after a couple of days or something, that would break and it would be all freedom and bliss and smooth flowing. And then the next thing I know I’d be trapped again.

Christine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it went like that for me too, for probably like seven or eight years.

Rick: Yeah, and I thought of an analogy just now as you were talking about states and momentary experiences. I mean, you eat a delicious meal and that’s kind of a momentary experience. It only lasts so long and feeling full from the food only lasts so long and next thing you know you’re hungry again. But that food has gone into your system and it has helped to build cells and nourish your body and everything. So there’s kind of a cumulative influence from it.

Christine: Absolutely.

Rick: And I think there’s something to be said in the spiritual realm when we have these different experiences, even if they’re momentary. There’s a kind of a permanent transformation on some deep level that takes place and that can be cumulative.

Christine: Oh, I like that. That’s a great analogy.

Rick: Yeah, it just kind of occurred to me.

Christine: I like it.

Rick: Good, you can add it to your book. I don’t need attribution. Okay, so continue on with the story.

Christine: Okay, yeah, so that experience, the kundalini eruption experience happened when I was 28.

Rick: Do you mind my asking how old you are now?

Christine: I’m 37.

Rick: Okay, good. Because in your book you kept saying, “Well I went through this for so many years, I thought, ‘How old is this girl? She doesn’t look that old!'” But you started young.

Christine: I’m ageless, really.

Rick: Yeah, really.

Christine: So that was, it was almost like things started to really wake up at that point, and then the leveling out started to happen. But it still took several years for it to kind of all tip over and become like a permanent, where I could access what I call the field. It was just kind of a constant, sort of a constant recognition that that’s always there.

Rick: In other words, before you were accessing it, but it was intermittent, and then eventually it leveled out and became kind of perpetual, right?

Christine: Yeah, yeah, like the way that it was like, it was almost like I was inside, it was almost like I was inside a room, locked inside a room, and all the windows and doors and everything was shut, and I was in there. And sometimes I liked myself in there, and sometimes I didn’t like myself in there, but the feeling was always like everything was locked down. And then when the kundalini thing happened, it was like a door cracked open. So for the first time I could kind of see out of what’s in that room, and I could even go out the door and come back, but there was still like a sense of sort of remaining in there and not knowing how to always access that space. And the door kind of would creep open more and more and more and more and more and more and more, until one day it was like, “Oh, I’m in the same room,” but now all the windows and doors are open.

Rick: So after the kundalini thing happened, was that the end of the on-again, off-again?

Christine: No, the on-again, off-again would still happen. It was almost like these big waves, and then they started to go into little waves, and then eventually there was a leveling out. But that was when they started to sort of start to move together.

Rick: Okay. So when the leveling out finally occurred, was there kind of an identifiable moment? Was there some kind of transitional day when you thought, “Okay, I’m level,” or was it just like in retrospect, you realized, “Hey, I’m not going through these waves anymore”?

Christine: I think actually, I mean, there have definitely been very pivotal days, but it is more of a retrospect thing. It is more of a looking back, maybe on the last five-year period, and going, “Oh, yeah.” It is definitely not very much stuff comes up anymore. When it does come up, when stuff comes up or there is a feeling of containment, it is almost enjoyable now. It is almost like, “Oh, good, there is something to sit with today.”

Rick: Yeah, something to chew on.

Christine: Something to be conscious of.

Rick: Right. Huh, interesting.

Christine: Yeah, so I almost looked at A Course in Miracles sort of as the thing that made me start to wake up. And then over the years, it was like, “Okay, now I know what I am, but how do I live as a human being?” So it almost was like an embodiment, an embodying or an integration phase.

Rick: A Course in Miracles was?

Christine: No, A Course in Miracles was more the wake up.

Rick: Oh, okay.

Christine: Wake up. And then an analogy that I like to use is like, if you were thinking you were falling down a well, like let’s say you wanted to go explore a well, and then at some point you kind of bumped your head and the headlamp turned off and you felt like you were falling, you would go into, “Oh my God, this is terrifying. I am going to hit the ground.” And then at some point you remember, “Oh yeah, I have a headlamp, I have a rope, I am safe,” but you are in that same exact well as you were a minute ago. You are still in the same place, but all of a sudden you are sort of remembering, “Oh yeah, I was here because I wanted to be here, so now I can explore the walls and look around this sort of inherent ‘I am safe.'”

Rick: So in this metaphor, the headlamp represents what?

Christine: Just clear seeing, being able to see.

Rick: Uh-huh. And was there a phase when your headlamp was off and there was something scary about what was going on?

Christine: Definitely. Life was scary. Yeah, life was sort of like threatening because there was this feeling of “I am falling,” and “I don’t know what I am doing here and I don’t know what I am.”

Rick: Yeah, you mentioned in your book there was a period where for days you huddled up in bed with this morbid fear of death, like, “What is happening to me? I am afraid I am going to die,” or something. Is that the kind of thing you are referring to where it was really scary because you didn’t know quite what was going on, or was it more like ego death was taking place and you just had to suffer through it?

Christine: Yeah, like in the metaphor, the death is sort of further back than that, more when I really thought that I am a personality. So, that sense of total identification with the personal self was like the falling. And because I thought I was this person and this story and this human that I could be harmed, and then when everything, when the light came back on, it’s like, “Oh, what I am can’t be harmed.” What I am as consciousness, what I am as energy can’t be harmed. And then there was a kind of coming back into the human experience and the personal side of things, and then it was like an enjoyment. I’m sort of using the well as the personal self. So, the personal self was scary because it could be harmed. And then all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, but I’m not the person.” And then it’s like, “Okay, well now let’s explore the person.”

Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. I can think of a number of analogies. There’s this thing in the Upanishads which says, “Certainly all fear is born of duality.” And if we think of ourselves as this isolated, little, fragile, vulnerable thing, which only has so much of a lifespan and it could be snuffed out at any time, that can be a very scary perspective.

Christine: Definitely. Yeah, and then I think there’s a tendency to want to get out of the well, like, “Just get me out of here. Take me out of the well altogether so that I can be free. I want to just be in the white space and the nice.” And my experience was that the light came on and then it was like, “Oh, but I want to be here. I don’t want to eradicate the personal story and the personal self. I don’t want to blow that thing up. I want to explore it.”

Rick: And could you eradicate it even if you wanted to? Can anybody actually eradicate it?

Christine: Yeah, I always think that if you take yourself out of the well completely, it’s almost like, well, you know, sort of defeating the whole purpose of being here and embodying and having a fully conscious human experience. And for me it’s such a gift, it’s so precious that we’re here and we have these bodies.

Rick: I mean, you can think of examples of people like Anandamayi Ma or Neem Karoli Baba or something who really didn’t have any sort of personal life, they just sort of had to practically be fed or else they wouldn’t eat. But obviously the vast majority of humanity is not like that and we’re wired differently.

Christine: Yeah, yeah. I kind of have the sense that you can hold both at the same time, like you can hold the personal self and just the absolute and just pure consciousness that can’t be harmed, it’s perfect, it’s unalterable, and at the same time there’s this human experience. And they can just be sort of held, this consciousness can just touch the whole thing all at one time and both poles can be held.

Rick: Now a lot of teachers would stop you right there and they would say, “Yeah, but there is no personal self.”

Christine: Right.

Rick: So what is this personal self you’re referring to?

Christine: Yeah, I mean the human embodiment.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: And some people kind of like build their whole teaching on, “All right, see if you can find a personal self, show me that entity.” And of course we can’t find any sort of kernel or isolated little thing that is the personal self, can’t be located, and then that’s taken to mean, “Okay, fine, that proves there isn’t one.”

Christine: Right.

Rick: But obviously, you know, go ahead, I think you can respond to that.

Christine: Well it’s sort of like a computer. Like I can look into my computer and I can say, “Well this is all just bits of information.” I can start really sifting through and going, “Yeah, this is just all pixels, this is all just …” but at the same time I still am going to want to get on my computer and use it.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: So, I have this analogy that it’s like, and I’m a Windows user so I don’t know if it works for Mac people, but if you have a computer and it’s just in DOS mode, like it doesn’t have any operating system, that would be like just pure consciousness. It’s almost like to function there needs to be an operating system. It needs to have like a Windows 7 or something in order for it to be really usable. So, I think of that there’s that pure consciousness, but then we need to have these pieces of information, we need to have data and an operating system and a personality and all these things, and then we can function in the world.

Rick: Yeah, exactly. I think on the Mac it would be Unix, there’s this underlying core operating system that’s based on Unix and then the Mac OS is built on that. But, yeah, and using the computer analogy again, I mean, it’s all just pictures but you can look at a picture of your child or read an email from your friend or we’re having this conversation and it has a meaning that is much more rich than just a bunch of ones and zeros.

Christine: Exactly, and I kind of think that those analogies are really great, like that I can look inside and find that there’s no self. I think that definitely has a value in the sense that it sort of wakes you up, but then it’s kind of like, “Okay, then what?” So, then it’s kind of like with the computer, so if I wipe everything down to just DOS and I’m now just an empty computer that’s just consciousness with no content, it’s just totally empty, okay, then what? Now, what if I want to make a Skype call? So, in a sense there needs to be that re-embodying or that sense of full embodiment or full consciousness of the human parts so that you can function in the world as both at the same time.

Rick: Yeah, and actually we might be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, but I think there, you know, you allude to this in your book, but there’s this sort of evolutionary force that seems to be orchestrating the universe, and it’s always kind of moving us along. And when, you know, there can be sort of this absolute realization, “I am pure consciousness, there is no personal self,” but the evolutionary force doesn’t let you rest there. You know, it’s like, “Okay, next,” and “Okay, got that,” but now comes the integration and the refinement and the infusion of that into the relative structure, the relative life.

Christine: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: And it would be interesting to explore in our conversation today to what extent that infusion can go.

Christine: Yeah, and which is why I initially titled my book “Freely Human,” because I really wanted to explore, so what’s after we wake up and we recognize, “Okay, I’m not just this isolated individual, separated and alone and scared; I’m consciousness, I’m part of it all, I am it all,” and then what’s after that? So then, how do we go about living a human life, fully conscious of all the human aspects? So yeah, it’s a great thing to talk about, how deeply can we integrate the awareness that I am pure consciousness and how deeply can I embody that? I had an experience the other day with anxiety, where it was like I was sitting with a client and she was feeling all of this anxiety coming up, and I could feel it in my body too. And she was Christian so I was using the word “God,” and it was just like, “Well, the anxiety is God coming to visit.” So God is coming to visit, let’s let it sit down inside the body and hold that space until it wants to leave on its own, rather than God coming to visit and kicking it out and saying, “No, you’re not welcome here, I’m pure consciousness.” Sort of seeing that there’s nothing that’s not that. It’s all made up of the same stuff, so it’s form and formless are the same, which was another experience that I had that I can talk about, that they’re all the same.

Rick: Well, you know, the Mona Lisa is just paint. That paint gets arranged in a certain way and it has a value that paint alone doesn’t have. Have we actually completed the story of your personal sojourn or did we kind of interrupt that? So far you talked about yoga and A Course in Miracles. Was there another interesting chapter to add?

Christine: There was definitely another chapter. After probably about 3 or 4 years, I can’t remember exactly the timing, after the kundalini I met a satsang teacher for the first time, and that was when I became introduced to Ramana Maharshi’s teachings and the whole non-duality world, and I kind of came onto the satsang circuit at that point in time.

Rick: Who was the satsang teacher?

Christine: His name was John Taylor. He’s passed away now, but really an amazing man, very all about love and heart-centered focus to his teachings. I think he wrote a book, I think it’s called “Let Love Have You,” and so his teachings were very much about love. So I worked with him for several years and then met another satsang teacher named Karam Guirgis, and it was through him that I really was able to go very, very deeply into the integration aspects, and he’s so deeply rooted in his state that there was just almost an unspoken permission, like all is welcome. There’s nothing to turn away from, it’s all the same. He really lives that, not to … so after meeting him there was a very strong shift and that was when things started really becoming where it was like what I call the field, was just access to all the time, it was just permanently there, and so there wasn’t a sense of needing to fear or avoid or resist any of the different things that would arise in life. It’s almost like, “Oh, I can live this non-resistance, I can see anxiety as God,” or those types of things.

Rick: Did these people come through Edmonton or wherever you are, or did you travel around Calgary?

Christine: Yeah, John Taylor came to Calgary on a regular basis. Karam lives in Toronto but he does come here, like maybe twice a year kind of thing.

Rick: Well I can just see the ears of some of my listeners perking up because there’s a certain kind of group of people who listen to these interviews who rightfully are very emphatic about the value of sitting with a teacher who has some sort of transmission, who can kind of shift your reality by their mere presence. In fact, just this morning I was listening to Francis Lucille, whom I’m going to interview next week, and he was saying the same thing, that the most potent thing is to sit with a teacher who has that transmittive ability.

Christine: Yeah, that’s my feeling too, especially after working with Karam. And I can see now that the stuff that was coming off of my aunt as she was dying is the same, like there’s really only one transmission. But the experience of sitting with a living teacher who is fully conscious of that state and can kind of emanate it definitely, it’s like you talked about the food, it’s like a medicine that comes in and starts to work on you and you don’t necessarily know how it’s working. Like, if I take a Tylenol I don’t know how that works, that it makes my headache go away, but it does, and so I feel the transmission to be like that, it’s just something that enters your veins and it enters your bones and it seeps in.

Rick: And I’m sure it’s subtler than veins and bones, because if we were able to see the full range of mechanics of creation, we would see stuff going on on very subtle levels, in terms of subtle body or chakras or whatever, that was actually mechanically shifting as a result of the proximity to that teacher. There’s something in the subtle physiology that correlates with stable pure awareness or with enlightenment or whatever that’s actually being altered by that association.

Christine: Well, it was definitely my experience, and it’s really hard to put words to it because it’s happening on such a subtle level that it’s so experiential, it’s just something that’s felt inside. There’s a transformation taking place, just in the relationship between a teacher and a student.

Rick: Yeah, I was a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s for many years and in his commentary on the Gita he says, “Well the fastest path is to be able to actually breathe in the breath of an enlightened master, if you can be in that presence, like a shadow.” But he said that’s not practical for everybody, so here’s a mechanical technique that you can do on your own, but it’s a precious opportunity if it’s available.

Christine: Yeah, definitely.

Rick: And in this day and age there are a lot of teachers out there, now they may be of different calibers, but there’s this kind of proliferation taking place and it must be happening for a reason.

Christine: Yeah, there does seem to be a lot of teachers, and even for me, being in the presence of dolphins, they transmit this joy. To me, they are just in the field, they just are in the field, and so the whole pod of them holds that space. So I mean, there are so many different ways, there are so many ways to access transmission. It doesn’t have to be one specific teacher.

Rick: I heard a great story this morning, I wanted to tell it and this seems like it might be a good opportunity, I’ll just tell it quickly and then we’ll go on. This is a story of Ashtavakra and King Janaka, an ancient story from the Vedic literature. I guess Ashtavakra was King Janaka’s guru, and so King Janaka was there visiting Ashtavakra and he had a couple of his guards that always accompanied him. And he asked Ashtavakra, “It’s said that if a teacher imparts a mantra or a teaching, a guru, then it has a certain potency that really makes it effective, and I’d like you to comment on that.” And so Ashtavakra turned to the guards and he said, “Arrest this man.” And the guards didn’t move, it was their king, they weren’t about to arrest him. But King Janaka got upset and he said, “Arrest this man!” And so immediately the guards went and grabbed Ashtavakra, and Ashtavakra said, “You see?” And actually exact same words, but a completely different effect when I said them versus when you said them.

Christine: Wow, that’s a great story. I actually really love the book, the Ashtavakra Gita. John Taylor was the one that turned me on to that book, and one of the things, like just talking about teacher and student and this whole topic, I love the layout in the book how in the beginning it’s very much the student saying, “So what’s it like?” And the teacher is saying, “It’s like this.” And the student is saying, “Oh, it’s like this? No, no, no, no. It’s like this. Oh, it’s like this? No.” And then it goes back and forth and then the student is like, “I got it, I got it!” And he’s like, “No, you don’t got it.” And then at the end of the book you can’t tell who is speaking anymore.

Rick: Ah, nice.

Christine: Yeah, so I just love how it sort of shows that whole progression of things.

Rick: Yeah, cool. So we just covered the third phase, which was you having these satsang teachers and how that really kind of anchored it for you.

Christine: Yeah, yeah, the transmission for me. And then the teachings became of a direct nature, rather than … because before the teachings were I was reading a book. I was reading A Course in Miracles, I was reading Yoga Sutras, the Upanishads, and all the Gitas, and I was reading all the texts, and then it became alive. It became real-time, so it became questions and answers, my own questions and being able to be answered. And both these teachers were very available, which I also think is really rare, that I could fire off a Skype message or an email and get an immediate answer back. So being able to have that constant contact is very helpful.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. And it’s pretty available these days, so around the country there are some great teachers, and around the world I should say. Okay, so let’s talk about your book a little bit. What did you say the new title is?

Christine: “Freedom is Your Nature.”

Rick: “Freedom is Your Nature,” good. And I think everyone intuitively understands what that means, but why don’t you just talk about it for a moment.

Christine: So basically, “Freedom” … I guess I should just go into the subtitle, which is “A Practical Guide to Transformation.” So it’s “Freedom is Your Nature, A Practical Guide to Transformation.” So it’s about that sort of journey from personal identification, or identification with the personal self, to the freedom, to recognizing that we are inherently free. And then the transformation would be the process of integrating that or embodying that into the human experience, into the day-to-day life, into all the little moments.

Rick: So would you say that the book is primarily about discovering the inner freedom, or primarily about integrating that inner freedom into human life, or both?

Christine: I would say both, yeah.

Rick: Okay, good.

Christine: It’s definitely about both parts.

Rick: Yeah. So I have an outline here of your book, so let’s go through a few points in it. You say, “What do you really want?” is one of the first points. So what do you think people really want?

Christine: Well, in my work with clients it’s always a little bit different.

Rick: When you say clients, do you have one-on-ones with people? Are you like a spiritual counselor of some sort? Do you teach satsangs, or what do you do?

Christine: No, well I teach yoga and meditation in groups, and then if people want to ask me questions privately they can book a … it’s basically, I call it energy work.

Rick: Right.

Christine: Lately I’ve been calling it field healing. So I’m a massage therapist, officially, but I do a lot of different modalities of energy work. So the clients that come for the one-on-one sessions, it’s sort of formally a bodywork session, but then we’re accessing the body as a point one, but then it kind of goes into wherever they’re stuck in their life.

Rick: Okay, good. And this is in the Calgary area, obviously?

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: Okay, good. So what do people really want?

Christine: You know, usually it comes down to peace, or relaxation, or freedom, or ease, or to feel well.

Rick: Yeah. How many kids do you have, by the way?

Christine: I just have one.

Rick: Just one?

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: And a husband?

Christine: We’re separated, yeah.

Rick: Oh, okay. But I think, well, okay, that makes my question even more potent. And you’re a single mom with a kid. How old is your son now?

Christine: He’s 13.

Rick: 13, so that’s a pretty dangerous age. So it’s good for people to hear that because I’ve run into people saying, “Oh, my life is just too crazy. I don’t really have time for meditation or spiritual work. There’s too much going on. I can’t just sit around on my butt.” And so here’s somebody who obviously has, you know, dealing with a lot of practical considerations.

Christine: Yeah, definitely. It’s a very busy life situation that I’m running.

Rick: Yeah, and yet that has not, in the least, interfered with your spiritual life. In fact, you’d probably say it’s been an aid to it.

Christine: Yeah, because for me it’s like a marriage. So it’s like, I have an analogy that I put in the book that the awakening experience we talked about states and experience, is kind of like the wedding day. So you have maybe a peak experience or that initial opening, that “Oh my god, I’m consciousness.” And that experience is like the wedding day, but the importance of a marriage is the marriage, is the every single moment of every single day and everything that’s shared. So I look at awakening like a marriage.

Rick: Yeah, and obviously all the challenges that come up.

Christine: Every single thing in life, yeah, every single moment, every single … there’s nothing that isn’t part of it, so anything that comes up is going to be part of it.

Rick: Well, we’ll get back to that. So we’re talking about what do people really want, and you said peace.

Christine: Yeah, actually. I mean, occasionally someone will say, like, a million dollars.

Rick: Right, but why do they want that? So they can relax and just go to the Bahamas or something and be peaceful.

Christine: Yeah, which then comes down to the ease, yeah, to rest. And that ease of being is definitely something you can have amidst. So I’m living proof that you can have ease in working 12-hour days and mothering and going back to school.

Rick: Oh, you’re going back to school?

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: What are you studying?

Christine: That’s called Hakomi, it’s body-centered psychotherapy.

Rick: Uh-huh, cool, up the same alley as all the other stuff you do. So I suppose maybe synonymous with peace would be happiness, maybe even more fundamental than peace, because why do we want peace, right?

Christine: Yeah, I mean, there’s lots of different words that you could put on it, and like you said with the story, the words are coming out of a state or a lived experience of. And so ease of being for me is kind of that you’re just being here, and you’re just fully here and there’s an ease behind that or an ease within that, and that freedom is the thing that people are looking for. So back to the title of the book, that is your nature. It’s totally natural for you to be that right now and already be that, because you are that, so it’s kind of like that’s your nature.

Rick: And maybe to put it in terms of getting out of the opposite, we could say, you know, people want relief from suffering, you know, they want relief from any form of discomfort.

Christine: Yeah, or feeling trapped.

Rick: Trapped, exactly.

Christine: Within the human, and that was part of the analogy of being trapped in a room for me and the experience of if you were sitting in a room and you knew you could never get out of it, it would be a different experience being in the same room knowing that you can get out of it at any time you want. So that’s, when you’re feeling trapped like that, I think that’s the suffering, that it’s like there’s no way out. And then if someone can kind of show you actually, you’re free right now, then you can enjoy that room. You don’t necessarily have to leave the room, you can stay in it if you like it.

Rick: Also you mentioned that ever since your kundalini experience there was this kind of liquid flow as if of energy or maybe even bliss, you could say. And you know, deprived of that flow, there’s a pinch in the heart, there’s a kind of a lack of, it’s like a subtle desperation to paraphrase Thoreau. So what we really want is that steady stream of contentment that arises from the kind of freedom you’re talking about.

Christine: Yeah, or being able to access what I call the field, that expanded consciousness that doesn’t have any borders. It’s just like an open field and being able to fall back into that space at any time, it’s like being able to open the door and walk out of the room, come in and out as much as you want. And then when you want to sit down in the room and read a book, it’s not a bad experience, it’s just enjoying a room.

Rick: Maharishi always used to use the phrase, “Mother is at home.” He would say, you know, if the kid’s mother is gone, then there’s a sort of a trepidation and a dis-ease and a concern, and it just doesn’t feel free, you know? But if mother is home, then there’s this kind of underlying foundation that makes him confident and content and so on. So it’s like, you know, if this is really our true nature, what we’ve been alluding to, and if we’re estranged from it, then there’s always going to be a restlessness.

Christine: Yeah, there’s a sense of feeling trapped, I think. There’s a sense of feeling cut off and isolated and separated from it, which you actually aren’t ever separated from.

Rick: In reality, correct.

Christine: In reality, you’re not. So it’s just that experience of, it’s sort of like that kind of mental shift, like somebody coming in and saying, “By the way, this door is now locked, the windows are now locked, you have to stay in this room forever and there’s no way out.” And all of a sudden, the same room would be like, “Oh, what? Oh my god, I hate it in here! Let me out!” So it’s the same room.

Rick: So your next point in the book was, “What is transformation?” And transformation is the realization of your inherent freedom? Is that what transformation is?

Christine: Transformation is the process of the seeming reality of being stuck and trapped.

Rick: Mm-hmm.

Christine: To the total freedom, and staying in the room, or like the well analogy, the process of having the lights come on and having the recognition that you’re safe, and then living that in every moment of every day.

Rick: Now, for you, it was yoga, A Course in Miracles, sitting with a satsang teacher, and all these things were instrumental in bringing you to that, in facilitating that transformation, right? And obviously, it could be different things for different people, but the very fact that you had profound experience when you were six years old and really began to think about the meaning of life and everything is a little unique. And I think a lot of people feel a lot more beleaguered, a lot more burdened and overshadowed and trapped and stressed out and stuck. You know, so what would you say to those people who kind of say, “Well, it’s easy for her to say, but I’ve been, you know, maybe I’ve even been seeking for 20 years and I feel as stuck as I’ve ever felt.”

Christine: Well, I guess I would probably want to talk a little bit about having a teacher and just the value in being in the presence of somebody who is living it, because it really does start to break it down on the subtle levels. It sneaks in and starts to open up all of the channels, and then the next thing you know there is that river flowing into the ocean. And if it feels cut off, and there is just no way I’m ever going to get there, it’s almost like it just gives that little help of something to come along and push that open. And to find a teacher that you resonate with that feels right.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, there are a lot of teachers out there, how does one find the one? I suppose it’s, you know, to a certain extent it’s a matter of practicality. In your case, a teacher coming to your town, you couldn’t be with some teacher who only stayed in Europe or something, very practically. But then of course, you know, if there were a dozen teachers in your town, maybe what do you do? Check them out and just see which one really resonates with you.

Christine: I would say go by resonation. See what resonates. Yeah, I have a friend who says, “They only need to be one step ahead of you.” It’s nice if they are 50 steps ahead of you, but they really only need to be one step ahead. They really only need to be a little bit more established in that state.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a very good point. I’m sorry to be referencing Maharishi so much, I’m not sure why I’m doing that today, but when we first became meditation teachers back in 1970, he said, “You know, it’s like a little boy goes to school and the first day he learns A, B and C, and he comes home and he talks to his little sister and he says, ‘Okay, now I’m going to teach you something. This is A and this is B and this is C,’ and she says, ‘Well, what next?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you tomorrow.’ And of course, I was a 20, 21 year old bozo out there giving lectures on meditation, but there was enough to give people something of value. So all these, sometimes people complain, “Well, all these satsang teachers running around, you know, they’re not Ramana Maharishi or whatever,” but they have something of value. And if you feel like you have kind of surpassed your teacher, then find a more advanced one.

Christine: Yeah, and kind of like in the Ashtavakra Gita too, there’s probably going to come a point where you will be able to tell the difference between what you’re saying and what the teacher is saying, and then you can go find another teacher or just walk together.

Rick: Yeah, exactly.

Christine: But I definitely strongly feel that everything has value. If a teacher is not fully enlightened, that doesn’t mean they have zero value, that there’s still value in what they have to offer.

Rick: True. And that’s true not only of the genre that we’re talking about, you know, the satsang non-duality scene, but people studying all kinds of things, doing Sufi dancing or …

Christine: Yeah, swimming with dolphins.

Rick: Yeah, swimming with dolphins or attending a fundamentalist Christian church or whatever, or madrasa for that matter. I mean, we’re all on the path. It’s just, you know …

Christine: Well, and it’s kind of like an art museum, you know, it’s like you and I could both walk into a museum and be drawn to totally different rooms and totally different sculptures, and I’d be like, “This one is so beautiful,” and you could look at it and say, “Meh.” So, it’s the same with all the different teachers and all the different expressions of the one that there’s going to be, I’m going to appreciate my teacher maybe in a different way than somebody else if they met him, but have zero resonance and someone else could, you know. We all appreciate what we appreciate.

Rick: Yeah, good. All right, we covered that point. So the next chapter in your book, or maybe it’s “What does it mean to be freely human?” Have we covered that, do you think?

Christine: I think so.

Rick: Okay, we covered that one, really. It’s tapping into and getting rooted in your …

Christine: Yeah, like that’s the embodiment of living.

Rick: Yeah, your inner, inherent freedom, which is already there, but which you may not be rooted in.

Christine: Yes, it’s living. That’s the living part.

Rick: So, you’re going to make that connection.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah. It’s like the old analogy of, you know, the guy’s got a million dollars in the bank but he’s kind of forgotten that he has, and then maybe he discovers that he has, but he doesn’t have access to the bank account, he’s forgotten the password or something. So there’s some process that you might need to go to to connect with that wealth in order to start living it.

Christine: To live the wealth.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah, and it’s really just about being fully conscious of your humanity.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: And your divinity.

Christine: Exactly. And seeing that they’re not different.

Rick: Right. Yeah. Okay, in your book you used the space suit analogy, which you referred to a number of times. Would that be helpful to kind of run through that?

Christine: Yeah, sure.

Rick: Why don’t you do that?

Christine: Definitely. So the analogy is like if I wanted to go to Mars and explore Mars. I wouldn’t be able to breathe there, I wouldn’t be able to live in that environment, so I’d need to put on a space suit, and then I could navigate through the environment. But if something happened and the mass became cloudy and all of a sudden I couldn’t see, and maybe there is such strong disorientation that after a little while I completely forgot what I was doing. And after another maybe time period passes, now I’m really kind of frantic and I’m like, “Oh my God, who am I? Where am I? What’s going on? Why can’t I see? What’s going on?” And so that would be that isolation or that feeling of being fully identified with the personal self. And then having somebody sort of wipe the mask and remind you of what you’re doing. You wanted to be on Mars, you’re here. Oh yeah, right, right. I remember now. Then you can use the space suit for its intended purpose. So that’s basically the full analogy of the story. In the story, they’re are angels that want to be human. And then they get identified with the space suit. They have to put on a space suit in order to exist on earth in this density, and then they forget.

Rick: I love that point actually. I read a number of these books by Michael Newton, you know, “Life Between Life” and so on, where he hypnotizes people to go back and remember the period between birth, between incarnations where they were kind of like reviewing what they had done and setting themselves up for the next one. It’s kind of fascinating though to see, I mean, presuming that we are in a state before we’re born where we kind of have a broader picture of what it’s all about, it’s kind of fascinating to see what the density of becoming an incarnate being does to that perspective and the whole game of kind of remembering it or rediscovering, you know, remembering really our true nature in the midst of the density.

Christine: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I was sort of between the age of five and six in the period of time where I was very sick and near death, there were a few moments where it was like I don’t even know if I actually died. I know I definitely lost consciousness, but there were moments in that time period where it was like a memory of that. It was almost like this reconnection to an intention, and it’s so language-less. Like there’s no way I could even really put it into words. It’s so subtle. It almost feels like a completely different language or something, but this reconnection to you’re here because you wanted to be here.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: You came to Mars for a reason.

Rick: Yeah. I think maybe one definition we could give to enlightenment, if we want to use that word, is having fully and permanently recognized our divine nature in the midst of concrete human life. I mean it’s said in some circles, for instance, that the angels are jealous of human beings because human beings have the opportunity to actually complete the process of evolution, whereas angels don’t have the nervous system to do it. They’re in a very sublime celestial state, but the name of the game ultimately is being able to live on all levels.

Christine: Yeah, and this density is a tough one. It’s like playing the video game on the hardest possible level.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. And in a way it’s kind of sad to think � I don’t know if sad is the right word but when you look at the world, how … I mean we’re privileged in a way, you and I and people like us, because we’re able to talk about something which the vast majority of the world, the people in Syria right now, the people in Uganda, people in various places going through horrible, difficult circumstances, boy the density for them, the reality of the dream is very compelling and very hard to see through.

Christine: Yeah, because they’re sort of in survival mode, and even just that we have idle time is pretty rare.

Rick: It’s huge, yeah.

Christine: Yeah, so it’s a huge gift.

Rick: It is, so something to be very grateful for. And I’m sure if we want to dip into a bit of woo-woo now, I’m sure that we’ve all had those tough lifetimes, you know.

Christine: Yeah, definitely.

Rick: Yeah, having to go through all the horrible stuff. As a matter of fact, I’ve had this shoulder problem for a while now, I can’t move my shoulder very properly. And the funny thing is, for a while before this developed, I was going through these kind of obsessions with torture and being on a rack, you know, the rack they used to use, and I even looked it up on the internet and I thought, “Why am I interested in this?” And this shoulder thing started, and I thought, “Geez, I wonder if that happened to me, or maybe I was the executioner or something, and I’m having to kind of work out some karma from it.”

Christine: Interesting, your body stored it, held on to it, got stuck there.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. Okay, back from woo-woo land, we’ll go back to woo-woo land again in a little while, because I know you like that. All right, so you have a chapter entitled, “The Courage to be Authentically You.” Is it a matter of courage?

Christine: I feel it is, because I think what tends to happen is that we get locked down into these patterns, into these unconscious ways of being, and they start to feel safe. And so, there isn’t a sense of questioning them, like, “Why am I doing that?” or “Why am I always ending up in this job that I hate?” or “Why am I always ending up in this relationship with this particular personality type?” And in a sense, there’s both the feeling trapped in that pattern and there’s feeling safe in that pattern. You may not be consciously aware that it feels safe, but it’s because it’s become known. And I think what the courage part is, is that we need to step into the unknown before we can become fully conscious of that pattern. And then, once that pattern is fully conscious, then we may break out of it or we may even live it out consciously for a while and it’ll fall away. But, I think there’s definitely a moment where it’s like if you’re jumping off the high-diving board, you have to take that step and there’s like an invocation of courage. Okay, I’m going to leap into the unknown, I’m going to step out of this pattern that’s known and I don’t like it. I don’t like being there, but I also don’t like the unknown. So, there’s like a, there’s a courage first and then there’s just the raw you that can be unprotected, undefended and you’re not protected by that pattern anymore, so it feels a little bit vulnerable and then you get used to it and then it just is, it’s actually …

Rick: So, you’re talking primarily about practical, mundane situations like being in a marriage that you might not have the courage to leave or being in a job that you might not have the courage to leave because you don’t think you’re going to be able to get another job, or are you talking more really about kind of more of a spiritual dimension to it where we’re kind of stuck in a certain reality of experience and it takes courage to move to a deeper level?

Christine: Well, I think it’s all the same, like the, you know, in the yogic terms it would be the samskara or the repetition, the karmic, I like to call it a karmic riptide, you know, or undertow of energy that keeps us stuck or a tendency that kind of we sort of fall into and that, when you look at a life and you look at a life situation, you can see those and what are the things that repeat? What are the things that I’m doing? I’m not conscious of it but I’ve got this job again and it’s the same scenario as my last job that I left because I didn’t like, so why am I there again? And that’s a spiritual or that’s a samskara or a karmic undertow that’s pulled us in.

Rick: Yeah, but a lot of people feel they don’t have a choice. They feel like, “Well, I’ve got kids to feed, you know, I’ve got bills to pay and so on, so I can’t really make a leap here even though I’d much rather be doing something different. You know, what can I do?” You know, and courage might, you know, just leaving might seem reckless or irresponsible or something.

Christine: Yeah, and it’s not necessary because leaving it wouldn’t be the solution though because if you left, if you weren’t taking consciousness fully to the underlying source of why is that pattern there to begin with, then you’re going to leave that marriage and then you’re going to end up in, the new guy is going to turn out to be the same guy. He’s just going to look different at first. So it’s not necessarily courage to leave a marriage that isn’t working because that’s not necessarily going to take you to the root of it.

Rick: Yeah, I had this old friend who became somewhat famous relationship counselor and everything and one of her claims to fame was that she’d been married about six times, so she felt like she really had an expertise in what you can do wrong. So how do you get to the root of it then? And I mean, how do you really root out the cause of dead-end marriages or dead-end jobs or whatever, so as to create a much more healthy situation for yourself?

Christine: Well, that would be where I would say you start to enter into the energetic or the woo-woo stuff. So you start to get into the underlying issue is a very deep, karmic place to go to and there’s an energetic component that has to be basically penetrated and seen. And then, the whole pattern will start to unravel. So it’s kind of like if I was weeding a garden and I was just cutting the weeds off on the top and left the root there, that weed would just come back. But if I was able to somehow dig down into the root and pull it out, then that would shift that whole landscape.

Rick: But how does a person do that?

Christine: Well, that’s the energetic component is basically going into the feeling level and dropping into the feeling first and letting that be like, if I were to take the form, which would be, so just I’ll back up a little bit. So if it were a pattern that had a feeling underneath it, like if we’re talking about say a dead-end relationship, there will be a feeling underneath there and that would be the starting point. So if the feeling is desperation or helpless or grief or loss or whatever it is, it’s to sort of first find that feeling. What does it feel like for me to be in this situation? What do I feel?

Rick: So would you suggest that a person sit down on the couch and close their eyes and kind of try to go into that feeling?

Christine: Definitely, yeah. To get still and relaxed and then drop into the feeling. First find what the feeling is and then start to just allow that feeling to be there and really drop into it. So if it were a feeling of, “I’m afraid of loss,” or “I’m afraid to be alone, I don’t like being alone.” So then what I would recommend to do, and this is sort of what I do in the energy work, is we would hold the feeling of aloneness as energy. It’s a little bit like alchemy. So we hold the feeling of aloneness together as just an energy and kind of on an impersonal level. So we see that aloneness is just a frequency, it’s just something like the moon that’s just kind of passing by. It doesn’t actually belong to you. It’s just this feeling that happens to be registering in your particular nervous system. This universal feeling called aloneness. And then we would drop into that and that’s like finding, that’s like taking the top of the weed and following it down to get to the root. And at some point it’s sort of penetrated and the form becomes the formless. And that’s when it starts to be, that’s when you can really see it clearly and once it’s seen then it starts to unravel by itself. Because once you’re really aware of it then you’re conscious of it.

Rick: So in your experience in dealing with clients, as you call them, have you found that after helping people through this kind of process, their relationships change, they get better jobs, you know, the surface things kind of shift around?

Christine: Yeah, I’d say there’s, some of them are big dramatic changes, some of them are changes that are smaller, that take a longer period of time. But there’s definitely, you can definitely start to see changes when people start to do this work.

Rick: Yeah, well there’s an interesting juxtaposition with this, which actually leads into your next chapter entitled, “The Secret to Letting Things Be As They Are.” And there’s kind of a balancing thing, you know, does one just let things be as they are and figure, “Oh well, this is some kind of divine intelligence giving me this shitty job and I’m just going to play it out and see what it has to teach me. Maybe it’s teaching me patience and tolerance in a mind-numbing situation.” Or does one sort of, you know, it’s like the old Hamlet thing, “To be or not to be,” I guess that was Hamlet, do you kind of exert some kind of individual volition and say, “No, this isn’t acceptable, I’m not going to accept this as it is, I’m going to change it.” So there’s kind of a balancing act between those two things.

Christine: Yeah, like as long as you’re trying to change it on that surface level, it’s not going to work anyway. So the secret to letting things be as they are is kind of like the, how do we get into the, that’s sort of the how do I get into that root, is by allowing. Because as soon as I start to allow, then I start to access that feeling level and then I start to access that energetic level, and then I’m sort of falling into the field where things, where everything originates out of. And then I’m seeing it come up as it is, come up as it is out of the field. So on the energetic level, just allowing things to be as they are, kind of give you that impersonal dimension of this is just consciousness, this is just energy.

Rick: So you’re saying that it’s not sufficient to just plod along year after year, allowing something to just be as it is and just passively accepting it. You’re saying that one should actively be probing deeper and deeper.

Christine: Well I kind of feel like the true allowing, I call it the allowing practice, the true allowing practice is done on the energetic level, it’s done on the feeling level, not necessarily the situational level or the surface level. I mean you can do it that way, but it impacts you more if it’s a felt experience.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: So if the boss guy is a real jerk and he’s always a jerk every day and I’m troubled about that, there’s allowing myself to be troubled on a feeling level. Allowing him to be a jerk kind of stops the externalizing of it and then I’m just with my own feelings.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: I start to think, okay, I can change him, I can make him not be a jerk. There’s kind of a whole energetic feed going into that project of trying to change him and when I just sit with my own, okay, I’m just going to let him be a jerk and what am I left with? Like, if he didn’t even exist, what am I left with here in this energetic field, in this energetic space, what am I left with? And then I would take that feeling to the root.

Rick: But let’s say he’s sexually harassing you.

Christine: Yeah, and then you would deal with it, right? So you’re first dealing with it on the energetic level and getting yourself clear, because you can deal with these things from a place of clarity and still you’re not spinning out on an unconscious pattern but you’re actually meeting the situation with full conscious awareness and full presence and then you could say, you know, no.

Rick: Yeah, or call the police or do something.

Christine: There’s an actual action that would happen.

Rick: Yeah, and so you might be quite assertive, you’re not just going to say, “Oh, let everything be as it is.”

Christine: No, definitely not, because what is, is that he’s sexually harassing you.

Rick: Right, right, and it’s not acceptable.

Christine: Yeah, and if that’s not okay for you, then there’s an action that would take place. I mean definitely if I was walking down the street and one kid was bullying another kid, there would definitely be an action taking place, there would be like, “Ugh!”

Rick: Yeah, I think that’s good to bring up because a lot of times people kind of mix levels. For instance, on a certain level you can say, “Everything is divinely orchestrated and perfect just as it is,” you know, but that doesn’t, that shouldn’t take the steam out of your determination to end, you know, child prostitution or hunger or all these other things that really need fixing in the world.

Christine: Yeah, yeah, definitely, because we’re not all going to be moved by the same things. There’s all these different bodies that are aware of what’s happening in the world, and we’re not all going to be performing the same actions, but I think the more conscious that we become and the more we can meet life as it is, we’re actually available to life, so then an action can take place from that place of full consciousness and full presence.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a line in the Gita which I’ve quoted before, but I think kind of pertains to this discussion, which is, “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits.” And I think of that when I think of letting everything be as it is, because to me that means you do have control over action, so you have all kinds of choices to make and motivation to apply and so on and so forth, but once you have done the action, you don’t really have control over the outcome. And so you kind of let the outcome be as it is while continuing to do your best over the action in the moment over which you do have control.

Christine: Yeah, there’s an analogy in my book that I use like being in a building, being on the top floor of a building, which is sort of like at the mind level, and looking out the window at somebody on the street who’s getting mugged.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: So you actually can’t, if you don’t take the elevator down to the street level, there’s not a lot that you can do. I mean, maybe you can call the police from up there, but if you, the confusion of levels would be if I stay on that top floor and I try to interfere with the situation from up there, I’m not going to impact a change. I’m not going to impact the actual guy actually mugging the woman on the street. So you have to kind of come down out of the mind into the present moment, being fully conscious and fully aware, and then you can meet the guy who’s mugging the girl and say, “Hey, stop.”

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting, there’s an interesting thing going on here, because on the one hand we’re talking about needing to go to a level that’s much deeper than the surface situation in order to really make a permanent change in the surface situation, like you need to water the root of a tree to nourish the fruits that are going to come out on the tree. You can’t just water the leaves and hope that that’s going to nourish the tree. So on the other hand, we’re saying that action, that we’re also obligated in many circumstances to deal with situations as they are on their own level, and it’s not sufficient to just play around on the subtle and hope that things are going to change. You wouldn’t go in the other room and meditate when you saw the person being mugged on the street and hoping to send out peace vibes, you know, you’d go down there and do something.

Christine: Yeah, that’s exactly, that’s perfect to see. And basically what the transformation is, is that seeing that they’re actually not different. So that meditative space of clarity, when it’s lived, then life is lived consciously. So every single moment is the meditation on the deep level. So that’s kind of like the whole purpose of transformation, is so that it’s not two separate things. So you’re going into the deep energetic and meditating, and then over here, the living in the moment is a whole other thing, that they’re actually the same. So like you were saying a little while ago about how if somebody’s feeling very, very stuck and they’re feeling disconnected, if I were to meet that person where they were, in that moment, I would want to take that person into deep meditation, to kind of show them, to sort of free them up a little bit. But if a person has kind of gone through a transformation and they’re already accessing that on a regular basis, they’re already very familiar with that, then it’s kind of becomes that they can meet that. They don’t need to stop and meditate anymore, it starts to become lived. It’s just totally integrated into the human life. And then it’s not two things.

Rick: It’s kind of like we’re multidimensional beings, we kind of have to take care of all the dimensions, you can’t just take care of one to the exclusion of the others.

Christine: yeah. So in your own case, do you still spend periods in meditation or do you feel like that’s unnecessary now?

Christine: I do because I’m teaching it, so it has just become kind of a part of my day. I’m not sure if I had a different job, if I would or not, if I would still sit, but definitely sometimes there are days where I just feel called to just go sit. And so I do.

Rick: Yeah, it’s funny because in my own case I’ve been like an obsessively regular meditator for 45 years, and sometimes people chide me on that, they say, “Why are you still doing it after all this time?” But I just go by my experience, which is that if I’ve been sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours, first of all I won’t go sit and meditate, I’ll go take a bike ride or something to get my blood moving a bit, but then when I do sit and meditate I can feel the influence of all that computerizing in my nervous system and it’s an opportunity to kind of soothe and heal it. So it almost still feels like if I didn’t do that I would be accumulating layers of crud that meditation gives me an opportunity to get rid of, but I don’t know for sure, you know, I don’t know.

Christine: Yeah, I mean I remember one of the very first meditation teachers I ever had, somebody asked him, “When do I get to not ever meditate again?” And he said, “The same day when you get to not ever brush your teeth again.”

Rick: Ah, an interesting point. And actually a simpler answer to the whole thing is, “I enjoy it,” you know, and if I get to a point where I don’t find it doesn’t feel right to do anymore, then I suppose I’ll stop.

Christine: If it was a chore.

Rick: Yeah, it’s real simple. Yeah, it’s not a chore, it’s like a delight.

Christine: And I think the other thing too is that it becomes less of a methodology and it becomes just a place to be and enjoy. Like it just becomes, I just love to fall back into the field.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: It’s a wonderful feeling and often life will pull it out of me anyway. Somebody will write me and say, you know, “Can you work on me today? Can you send me some healing vibes today? I’m feeling really sick,” and so then I’m naturally compelled to just go sit and go to the field and hold that person.

Rick: Again, to each his own.

Christine: Yes.

Rick: All right, so we’ve talked quite a bit about relationships, which was your next chapter, but we kind of touched upon that with bosses and marriages and whatnot. Is there anything more we want to say about relationships before we move on?

Christine: I think that, yeah, probably. I mean there’s probably more to go into in that, but it probably does cover it.

Rick: Yeah. We want people to still buy the book, we don’t want to tell them everything.

Christine: Relationship chapters, yeah. Partner meditations in there.

Rick: Yeah. So you have a chapter on trauma and fear of loss. Anything to say about that that we haven’t covered? Trauma might be a good one. I mean, look at how much in the news post-traumatic stress disorder is these days, with all these soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a big issue.

Christine: Yeah, I mean it’s a pretty, it’s kind of an extensive topic, yeah, for sure.

Rick: In fact, your whole theme about, I was thinking about this a lot as I was reading your book, because you talk a lot about building a protective shell around ourselves versus just being open and feeling whatever we feel, without any kind of defenses. And I kept thinking, yeah, that’s easy to say, but it’s kind of a natural human tendency to shield oneself. If somebody goes to punch you, you shield yourself. That’s the same thing happens if we’re serving in Afghanistan and people are dropping bombs and shooting machine guns and whatnot. There’s a kind of a natural reaction that the nervous system has.

Christine: Yeah, but I think that’s different when it’s conscious. Like I think when the defensive patterns are unconscious, it has a totally different flavor than if a very present, conscious person puts up a shield for somebody that’s about to punch them, or like a master martial artist would have moves, and still be fully, fully present and conscious. It kind of has a different flavor than the type of defense that is unconscious, because those ones don’t actually protect you. They just seem to. So they’re sort of put up as an old strategy that was working, that was maybe, or we thought was going to work as a child, and then we became unconscious of it. And then we were still doing it as an adult, but it’s actually not working. So once it’s evaluated, then it’s seen, “Okay, this isn’t, it’s not like a true defense, it’s sort of like a seeming defense.”

Rick: So let’s, I don’t know if the PTSD example is a good one for this, but you know, it’s common these days. So let’s say that one is in a situation where one is in a National Guard or something and they have to go to Afghanistan and it’s a very stressful situation. Is it possible to conceive of a way of dealing with that where you’re kind of consciously just feeling stuff but not accumulating stress and not unconsciously throwing up defenses?

Christine: Well when you’re fully conscious you’re just meeting every moment as it is. So you’re present, you’re meeting the moment, and then you’re kind of meeting that situation appropriately. So if someone came up with a gun, there would be an appropriate action that would need to take place. And if I was fear-based or contracted or stuck, then I wouldn’t be able to be very conscious, so it would be harder to respond appropriately to the situation.

Rick: So you’re saying these people really are not really prepared to go into battle or into the military because they’re not fully conscious, and if we had a kind of a way of preparation during boot camp of enabling people to be fully conscious, then we’d have far fewer people coming back with PTSD.

Christine: Well this might be a really controversial statement, but I kind of feel like if they were fully conscious …

Rick: They wouldn’t be going over there in the first place.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: Right, yeah, Neelam said the same thing. I was interviewing Neelam and I said, “What if the army hires you?” And she said, “Well they wouldn’t have much of an army left.”

Christine: Yeah, I mean if all of a sudden there was a mass awakening and all of humanity became suddenly fully conscious, I really can’t see war continuing. I just can’t see it.

Rick: Yeah, good point. So you know, maybe that’s the answer to it. It’s a moot point because if there were adequate development of consciousness then we wouldn’t have people going over there in the first place so there would be no PTSD. So it’s kind of like PTSD is the inevitable outcome of society in which we’re going and engaging in such battles.

Christine: Well, and the unconsciousness in general, I mean, I just can’t even fathom taking an animal and being fully present and fully conscious and harming it.

Rick: Right, right.

Christine: I just can’t even conceive of it.

Rick: Forgive them, Father, they know not what to do.

Christine: Yeah, so it’s kind of, yeah, exactly. So as soon as you know what you’re doing, then you see how precious life is. And it’s not an unconscious religious, “Oh, I have to respect life.” It’s like just being fully present, like every once in a while I get mice in my garage and I just can’t kill them.

Rick: Right, yeah.

Christine: I have to live-trap them. So it’s kind of like you start to really see the value of life, of a human life, of an animal life, of an ant even, and the more conscious you are I think the more you recognize the preciousness of it.

Rick: Yeah, so we were talking earlier about the density of the world and how tough it is for many people. You know, you just get thrown into this hellish situation, you don’t know what the heck is going on. and the world tends to coarsen you, you know? It tends to numb and blunt your sensitivity, your delicacy. So I think what we’re talking about here is …

Christine: It hardens us.

Rick: It hardens us, yeah. We’re talking about reversing that tendency and culturing the ability to be sensitive yet strong in the midst of challenging situations. You don’t have to be numb and blunt and dull to withstand the vicissitudes of life. There can be a kind of a subtlety and a sensitivity that’s cultured. Which again I wanted to ask you about, because you know, you talked of not having protective barriers up and just feeling things fully, but when I heard you say that in your book, it seemed to me, I kept thinking, “Yeah, but there needs to be an inner strength.”

Christine: Yes.

Rick: And if the inner strength is there, then that will just be the way it is. But if there’s an inner weakness, then it’s kind of inevitable that you’re going to be throwing up barriers and protective shields.

Christine: Yeah, that’s a really, really good point, and that’s the freedom. So if you recognize what you are, you can’t be harmed. So if there’s that recognition that, okay, what I am is inherently safe. It’s like going back to the well analogy. That would be like recognizing that there’s a rope attached to you and that I’m actually secure. So, I think I give an analogy in the book like being on a rollercoaster in the dark. That if there’s consciousness, if you know, okay, I’m going to go on this rollercoaster and I’m strapped in and I’m safe, and it’s pitch black in there, it’s going to be fun rather than it, if you don’t know, if you’re unconscious and you go in and you’re forgetting why you were there and all of a sudden you’re in the dark and getting thrown around, then it’s a terrifying experience. So it kind of goes into that freedom is your nature, again, that in that sense of what you are can’t be harmed.

Rick: Yeah, and it’s not just the concept that what you are can’t be harmed, because the concept isn’t necessarily going to do you any good. It’s the sort of actual, you use the word often in your book, “rooted” in that. It’s the experiential establishment in that, that really becomes a genuine foundation. You can’t just go through life with the notion, “Oh, I can’t be harmed,” and have any practical value.

Christine: No, yeah, and that’s the strength that you just brought up. The rooting in that is the true strength, and then you don’t need all those pseudo-defenses, because those weren’t working anyway. They were sort of replacing that, because we didn’t feel safe. So we tried to find a way to survive here without that direct connection to what we are.

Rick: And to take an extreme example, Christ on the cross, people always use Hitler or Christ on the cross or whatever to illustrate points, but in his case, how far would the concept “I can’t be harmed” get you in a circumstance like that? Not very far, but his actual status being what it was, that experience was undergone, I would argue, in his core of being, without suffering. The body was suffering obviously, but there was a dimension to his life that was beyond suffering and that inner dimension, which we could think of as inner strength, was untouched by it.

Christine: Yeah, and I would also say clarity, that there is a clear seeing of what’s what. That physical pain is physical pain. And when you’re rooted in that inherent “I am consciousness” or “I am that harmlessness,” then it’s like you can hold both feelings at the same time.

Rick: Not through any volition, but spontaneously you live both at the same time.

Christine: Yeah, it’s just sort of there. The physical pain is just there, but it’s seen clearly.

Rick: Right, there’s a kind of a natural… again, you’re multidimensional and your awareness at that stage is bridging the full range of dimensions, and so the untouchable, invincible level is being appreciated. Well, at the same time, the …

Christine: Human frailty.

Rick: The frailty, the vulnerable level is being killed, but there’s a level which is free from that, even in the midst of that. And of course, the people watching the situation are only relating it to it from their level of experience and thinking, “Oh, this must be unbearable,” but that’s their perspective.

Christine: Right, yeah. And the first teacher I had, John Taylor, used to talk about suffering on top of suffering.

Rick: What did he mean by that?

Christine: Well, there would be the physical pain, so when that’s held in clarity, that would be physical pain-suffering. And when there’s no clarity, then there’s another layer of suffering on top of that, the confusion and the misplaced identity that creates a whole other layer of suffering on top of that.

Rick: Yeah, people say that when Ramana Maharshi was dying of cancer, you know, and sometimes he would scream out in pain, and people would express all this concern, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’m okay, I’m not suffering.”

Christine: It’s just pain.

Rick: Yeah, cool. Let’s talk, I don’t know if we skipped over this, but there’s a whole chapter here about living in your heart, and it ends up with this lazy Zen master story, which I think would be worth telling. So let’s dwell on some of the points in that chapter.

Christine: Sure. The lazy Zen master story is an analogy, I think it’s like a Zen parable, that is the description between complacency and contentment, it’s just kind of clarifying that distinction. And actually, it kind of touches a little bit on what you said earlier about …

Rick: Letting things be as they are, versus whether it’s nobler to take action against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.

Christine: Yeah, so it’s really just sort of bringing clarity to … complacency would be almost from a place of unconsciousness, like I don’t care, almost as a defense. And contentment is I am living and truly content with what is. And the lazy Zen master story is about the master, the Zen master that is living contentment, and he’s so content that he’s lazy, so he doesn’t do anything, he just sits on the couch. Too lazy as a high state, not as our Western negative connotation. So, he’s sitting on the couch, staring out the window, content, letting life be as it is. And his friend contacts him and says, “Oh, what are you up to since you left the monastery?” He’s like, “Oh, nothing, I’m just so happy to be here. I’m just sitting here, I’m not doing anything, just not resisting life and being here. It’s very peaceful.” And then about six months later or a year later, he calls him up again and says, “Oh, you want to connect? What are you doing?” He’s like, “Oh, well now I’m a successful owner of a bookstore chain.” And he’s like, “Well, how did that happen? I thought you were just watching life go by.” And he’s like, “Yeah, but the impulse to open a bookstore came when I was too lazy to resist it.”

Rick: That’s great. Yeah, I like that.

Christine: It’s just that being moved by life and letting things get pulled out of you.

Rick: Yeah, which kind of segues into chapter 9 of your book, Divine Timing and Natural Intelligence, which is that ultimately, what is it that’s moving us? There’s a lot of talk by various spiritual teachers about how, and even science, you know, there have been some scientific studies that we don’t seem to really be the author of our thoughts and actions. They just kind of happen and then we claim ownership from them afterwards. But if we are not the author, then who or what is the author? You know, what is the motivating force of life? And I think you identify that in your book as natural intelligence.

Christine: Natural intelligence, yeah. I mean, I kind of see it like a fractal. If you were to look at just like spinning galaxies or like a sunflower opening or a flower opening, it’s not like the flower is saying, “Okay, now I’m going to open. Okay, now I’m going to make my leaf reach out over toward the sun.” There’s just a natural mechanism that’s just happening. And then the ego would claim that, and a human, the ego would claim it and say, “I did that. I made it happen.” And there’s a space that you can get into where it’s sort of like you come in, you can come in between that time delay in the space, I just call it the field, where you see that things are arising by themselves. It’s just happening by itself, it’s just this intelligence that’s just popping up as itself. And it’s kind of living in between that, sort of prior to where the ego claims it and says, “I did that, I made that.”

Rick: So in other words, you’re kind of dwelling in the field and enjoying the play as it unfolds and displays itself, but you’re not kind of, you don’t feel like, “I’m the one who’s got the reins here.”

Christine: Yeah, it’s like there’s nobody driving the bus, it’s just driving.

Rick: There’s a whole lot of stuff in the Gita about that too, as you probably know, the authorship of action, it’s really the gunas that are doing it and so on. But I think the interesting implication of it is that generally speaking, as I see it, when people really feel like they are firmly in control of their life, generally their life isn’t flowing too smoothly. You know, there’s all kinds of problems and roughness and stress and turmoil, but if you’ve gotten to the perspective where you realize that you’re not in control of it and there really does seem to be some Divine intelligence conducting it, then it’s generally quite a delightful life. So what’s the advantage really of being in control?

Christine: Not too much.

Rick: And when you think about it, I mean, you think of the vastness of the intelligence governing this universe, even the vastness of the intelligence that you see displayed in a single cell, how can our human intelligence compare with that in terms of its ability to organize and know what’s best and so on?

Christine: That’s a really good testament to natural intelligence actually. If someone is sort of arguing and saying, “No, I can run my life better,” it’s like, “Okay, well I want you to make me a cell.”

Rick: Yeah, exactly, or a housefly or something, create one of those.

Christine: Or go digest your food.

Rick: Yeah, but the implication of this point is that the intelligence that’s governing the universe isn’t capricious, it isn’t random, it isn’t dumb, it isn’t uncaring. It may seem so sometimes, but if we come back to the right perspective, there’s an evolutionary, really compassionate, we could almost say. It’s funny to say “motivation” because you usually use that word in association with an individual, but there’s that quality or tendency in that cosmic intelligence. The whole thing is a giant evolution machine and whatever is happening we’re all being kind of moved along toward higher levels of expression of that intelligence.

Christine: Yeah, I see it as very harmonious. I almost see it as mathematically perfect, in the sense that there is this flow to it that’s just, you know, when I look into the field and I see it, it’s just awe. It’s like, oh my god, it’s so perfect I can’t even put words to it. How everything is flowing in this harmonious way, there’s absolutely no way that me as a human being could compare with that. So it’s much easier to just let it happen.

Rick: Yeah. Well, like you say, even digestion. I mean, if we had to consciously control all the things that keep our body alive, we’d die within a second.

Christine: Yeah, and it’s all the same intelligence.

Rick: Yeah, it is.

Christine: The intelligence that’s growing your hair right now is the same intelligence that is waking us up and going through that process of transformation that a lot of us seem to be going through right now. It’s that same intelligence that’s behind that. So that’s kind of a relaxing thought too, it’s like, okay, it’s already being done.

Rick: So I guess the question is, how can we best cooperate with it? Get out of the way, how do we sort of prevent ourselves from thwarting that intelligence and just bring it on, you know, let me do your thing as fully as you can, I don’t want to interfere.

Christine: My feeling is that it’s a relaxation that happens, that it’s a softening back into the moment, and relaxing into the moment, but at the same time there’s an alertness there. There’s kind of a balance between a very deep rest and a presence, or a conscious alertness. And then it’s kind of like, it’s like a surfer, surfing the wave. If the surfer is trying to change the wave, he’s not going to have a very good surf. So if he’s going, oh that’s my wave, okay, I’ve got to meet that wave, how do I get up in it, and there’s such focus and clarity in just being in that moment that the wave has surfed well.

Rick: There’s a nice line from the Vedas that goes, “Be easy to us with gentle effort.”

Christine: Ah, so good.

Rick: Yeah, so there’s that just gentle sort of intentionality, like the surfer would use, just balancing, just kind of riding this wave and accepting this wave as it is, because you can’t make it a different wave, and then it’s easy.

Christine: Yeah, and if you’re trying to make the wave as a different wave, then you just get crashed around.

Rick: Nice. So one thing that you and I have kind of exchanged emails about over the last couple of years is the “woo-woo” word, when there’s a particular interview and you ask, you say, “Is there some woo-woo in this one?” I say, “Yeah,” and she says, “Oh boy.” So I think everybody knows what we mean by woo-woo, but just something a little bit beyond the ordinary stuff that’s often talked about in spiritual circles, which is sometimes kind of nuts and bolts in a way. So why do you find woo-woo fascinating? Maybe just better clarify what you mean by it also.

Christine: Anything out of the mainstream, just like supernatural or like in yoga, the siddhis, you know, or the miraculous even. I find it to be fascinating because my feeling is that the human potential is actually very natural for us to have these abilities to see into the future or instantaneous healing or telepathy or empathy or any of those things. Maybe empathy is a little more mainstream, but these qualities are actually totally natural to the human form. And so, the more conscious we are, the more conscious we are of those things, these possibilities. At the same time, though, I don’t like to emphasize it sort of, basically, quote-unquote too soon because otherwise I think it can become like a …

Rick: Distraction.

Christine: Like a dangling carrot, yeah. If you’re a good girl and you do your meditation, you’ll get powers. So I kind of don’t like that.

Rick: There’s an analogy that’s used in this context, which is that, let’s say there’s a territory and the territory is commanded by a fort, and then throughout the territory there are all kinds of diamond mines and gold mines and silver mines and interesting things that one could potentially want to explore and possess. But if you go after the diamond mine or the gold mine without having first captured the fort, you’re on very shaky ground because you don’t own the territory. And so the trick is, capture the fort first and then you’ll be at liberty to explore the territory.

Christine: Yeah, that’s a very good one. Another one I like too is like the Wizard of Oz, and they’re going on this journey to get to the Emerald Palace or whatever, and there’s this point where they hit the Field of Poppies. And to me, I would call that the field, you know, and once you start to really access the field, that’s where all the siddhis are and all the extraordinary things are happening and the miraculous are just very ordinary. But there’s also a sleepiness that can come at that point. So in the Wizard of Oz, that’s where they all fall asleep. They kind of get drunk on the opium or whatever. And so there’s also a sleepiness that can happen there too, or you can kind of get carried off by the specialness of it. And it can kind of create almost a further separation rather than continuing on through the Field of Poppies and carrying on the journey.

Rick: Yeah, so in other words, it can become a diversion at that point. You can become allured by the fascination with it.

Christine: Yeah, like the specialness.

Rick: You haven’t actually captured the fort, you haven’t reached Oz.

Christine: You haven’t reached Oz, yes.

Rick: Right, and so you’re getting … there’s even a verse in the Yoga Sutras, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, that you may be sort of appealed to by the celestial power, the celestial beings, and they’re saying, “Here, have this blessing, have this boon,” but that itself can be a trap to keep you from going all the way.

Christine: Yeah, and it’s sort of like, once you go all the way and you see, “Oh, those shoes were always on my feet. It’s always been right with me,” then you can go back to the Field of Poppies and you probably won’t fall asleep. You can stay, or like how I love the … they shower snow on them to wake them up, which is very symbolic of the innocence. So if you maintain your innocence and your purity, then you probably, that’s a good chance to stay awake in the field and use these abilities consciously to benefit humanity. But it’s not, I tend to think of this whole human trip like a team sport. You know, it’s not an individual sport, it’s a team sport. So if I’m conscious and I know those shoes are on my feet and I’m pure and innocent, those abilities that you find in the field can be used to help the whole.

Rick: Absolutely. When I was reading that chapter in your book, I somehow thought of, “Well, what if there’s a planet,” and I’m sure there are in this vast universe, “where the level of evolution of someone like Ramana Maharshi is the norm?” Or maybe he’d even be kind of a dullard in that world, you know? It’s a very enlightened place. And so what would we actually see on that planet in terms of what was taken for granted, in terms of what people were capable of? Not only their technologies, which might be incredible, but even their human abilities. Would for instance, levitation be run-of-the-mill, or anything like that?

Christine: Yeah, or like teleportation or any of those types of things.

Rick: Yeah, and I mean, to use an example from our own world, 150 years ago if you’d seen a jet plane take off, you would have been completely flabbergasted. So outside the realm of your experience, now we take them for granted. And so we very easily become accustomed to the norm, and so there could very well be places where the norm is really beyond the reaches of our imagination.

Christine: Yeah, yeah, and so the doubting mind would be kind of like, “There’s no way that’s possible.” But then when it’s seen, or your level of consciousness is to a degree where it’s experienced directly, and then that sense of doubt is just kind of moot, it’s sort of dispelled because you’re seeing it, or experiencing it for yourself.

Rick: Great. So what would you like to leave people with in terms of, I don’t know, just whole discussion? What would you like people, if you had to wrap it up in a nutshell and give people some kind of words of inspiration or something, what would you like to say?

Christine: Hmm, I guess what I like to leave people with when I teach yoga or meditation classes is actually the breath, is actually that within the breath there is, that’s the way into the field, that’s that direct connection to that unlimited source of that natural intelligence that’s growing your hair and spinning the galaxies is there in the breath. So if you ever feel disconnected or you can’t find it, that just one simple way is to just consciously breathe, to just relax back and fall into that space where breath is moving in and out and then drop into the feeling of it. And what’s great about just conscious breathing is you can do it. You don’t have to be in a deep meditative space to feel that life force in the breath. You can be in a traffic jam or sitting at your desk.

Rick: Good.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: Alrighty. When do you think your book is going to be published?

Christine: Well, so far the date is set for November 15th.

Rick: Oh, very soon.

Christine: Yeah, there’s a DVD coming out, also a yoga relaxation DVD, and there’s some meditation CDs with the allowing practice.

Rick: Good. They are coming out or you already have those?

Christine: The CDs are available. If you just put my name into iTunes you’d find them there. The Ocean of Light CD, I think, is the one, or the Deep Rest one, I think, is the one that has the allowing practice sort of guided and talked through.

Rick: And I’ll be linking to your website so that people … you have all that stuff listed there, I imagine?

Christine: Yeah, you can see it on the blog.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah.

Rick: Okay, good. So this has been delightful.

Christine: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah, next week I’ll be going out to the Science and Non-Duality Conference in California, but I will be doing an interview out there. I’m going to interview Francis Lucille at the end of the conference, and after the conference, and I’ll be conducting a little forum out there with several different speakers, including Igor Kufayev, whom I interviewed a couple of times, and a couple of other fellows.

Christine: Yes, I liked it.

Rick: Yeah. And the theme of our forum is going to be very much some of the stuff we’ve been talking about today, about not letting understanding alone, not mistaking understanding for realization, and not mistaking an initial realization for final liberation. And we’re also going to talk about this whole point of different levels of reality and how each has to be given its due, and you can’t sort of take the realization of one level to be a substitute for action on another level.

Christine: Oh, that’s great.

Rick: Yeah.

Christine: That sounds awesome.

Rick: I wish you had been able to come out; I didn’t think of it. It’s all four guys on the panel and I really should have reached into my binder of women to use a current phrase and invited you to come down, but maybe we’ll do that next year.

Christine: Sure, okay. That’s good.

Rick: Okay, so thanks. So in conclusion, I’ve been speaking with Christine Wushke. I’ll be linking to her website from www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and if you’d like to be notified of upcoming interviews, there’s a new one each week, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel and YouTube will notify you, or you can go to www.batgap.com and there’s a tab where you can click and put in your email address and your name and you’ll receive an email once a week when a new interview is posted. And there’s also a discussion group there, which gets quite lively at times, almost too lively. I’m being asked to come in and moderate and kick people out and all that, which is really not my nature. But feel free to participate in that. And Christine will come in and answer questions and so on, I imagine, if anybody has any.

Christine: Sure, I’ll do that.

Rick: Yeah, and this exists also as an audio podcast, if you’d like to get it on your iPod, there’s a link with each interview to the iTunes place where you can sign up for that podcast. And there’s a donate button on the site, which makes it possible for me to attend this conference next week, for instance, and to do other things that are related to BATGAP and maybe eventually even to shift this into becoming a full-time profession, although I’ve got a long way to go before doing that, but it may happen. So thank you everybody for listening or watching and we’ll see you next week.

Christine: Thank you.

Rick: Bye.

Christine: Bye. [music] [music]