Della interview

Summary

Della describes a sudden awakening during hypnosis that brought profound love, unity, and a radical loss of personal identity. She discusses extraordinary experiences, the disruption of her medical career and family life, and the gradual return to grounded ordinary reality.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What is the difference between spiritual awakening and psychosis?
• What can happen when the sense of a separate personal self falls away?
• How should people relate to mystical experiences and spiritual gifts?
• Does spiritual awakening always require major changes in outer life?
• How can someone navigate the loss of a career or relationship after awakening?

Key takeaways

• Awakening can bring an immediate sense of unconditional love and oneness.
• Extraordinary perceptions may arise, but they are not necessary for realization.
• Letting go of identity can temporarily impair ordinary functioning.
• Grounded simplicity returned when attention no longer depended on unusual experiences.
• Awakening may transform work and relationships, but its outer effects vary by person.
• Support and spiritual context can help distinguish awakening from mental illness.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. There have been over 330 of them now, and you can find them all archived and categorized in various ways at batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P. We appreciate the financial support of those who feel inspired to offer it. There’s a donate button on the site that enables us to do this show. Our guest today is Della. She has a last name, but she’s just going to go by Della.

Della: [Laughter] Right.

Rick: And Della had the good fortune of a life that many would have wanted to live. She grew up in a loving environment. She went to college.

✨ When awakening feels frightening

Oh sure, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, because there are stories of people, one of the more dramatic ones is this woman named Suzanne Segal, who wrote a book called Collision with the Infinite . She underwent a really radical, abrupt awakening like that. Even though she had a spiritual background and was a meditation teacher, what she experienced was so different from what she had anticipated or understood that she had no idea what it was.

She lived in a state of abject terror for about ten years until she finally relaxed and accepted that it was something good. Jean Klein helped her make that shift. So I guess it’s just worth mentioning that, because there are probably other people out there having experiences like this who haven’t necessarily yet found any kind of reassurance or guidance as to what’s happening to them, and they could even end up in hospitals, in mental hospitals, and so on.

Della: Yeah, absolutely. I just read an article last week on Facebook about an article in psychology. It was called “Difference Between Psychosis and Awakening,” which was really, really interesting for me, so many years afterward, to see that there was something written on that and available on the internet. So anyway, it was really interesting for me to have.

Rick: Yeah, I’d like to see that article. Maybe forward it to me and I’ll check it out.

Della: Sure.

Rick: In fact, maybe people listening would like to see it too. I could even—I don’t know—post it on your page on Batgap or something if people are interested. Or you could put it on your Facebook page.

Della: Yeah, whatever.

Rick: People can go there. So, was there a lot of struggle within you in terms of having to let go of your profession and things like that, where you were kind of battling it and trying to hang on and trying to keep it together on that level?

Della: Yeah, of course there was a part of me that was trying to do something with that, but at the same time there was a knowing, a deep knowing, that I had no choice. So, I guess one of the things that was very difficult for me was to let go of medicine, because I loved my job, and it took about eight months.

When the knowledge left me, it took about eight months for me to go through the process of—the name is…

Rick: Integration.

Della: Yeah, when someone dies, you know, you go through…

Rick: Grieving?

Della: Grieving, yeah. So, it took about eight months for me to go through that process of letting go of that. And after that, it just became really simple.

Rick: Did other things in your life fall apart? I mean, your marriage—did that happen?

Della: Yeah, this fell apart too.

Rick: Because you just didn’t get what was going on?

Della: Yeah, well, there were many things, but, you know, I was very free also. There was this conditioning that was gone, and of course there was a part where I was seen as kind of a crazy lady and all that. So, there were many factors that led to that ending. But it was just part of what I had to go through, which is beautiful now.

Rick: Yeah. How many kids do you have?

Della: Three.

Rick: And what do they think about you now?

Della: Well, the girls are really, really close to me, and we have beautiful contact. My son is interested in what I’m teaching. You know, there’s a curiosity, but there’s also a distance. But there’s a lot of love.

Rick: Yeah.

Della: There’s a lot of love, so that’s beautiful. I think we all are being transformed by what we live, so it’s beautiful.

Rick: What would you say to people who hear your story and think, “You know, I don’t know if I actually want to go for this awakening business, because I don’t want my life to fall apart. I like my job; I like my family. I’m afraid that if I have an awakening, it’s all going to fall apart”? What would you say to them?

Della: I would say, “Well, if it’s going to happen, there’s no choice.” So, if the calling within is so strong, those questions will arise. And sometimes we have the freedom to say yes, and we have the freedom to say no, but if the yearning is there, it’s going to come back.

Nothing has to fall apart. I don’t think everything has to fall apart, but sometimes it does have to fall apart.

Rick: Yeah. So, in other words, some people, in your understanding, might undergo a profound, radical inner awakening and their outer life might not appear to change at all, and other people might be more like you, where everything changes.

Della: Yes, I think so too.

Rick: Yeah. And would you say that’s because some people have a calling that is not congruent with their current lifestyle, such as yours was, whereas other people don’t have that calling and they’ll be perfectly happy continuing to be an enlightened electrician or something?

Della: I don’t know. I really could not say. I felt really aligned with my life before, and I feel really aligned with my life now, so I don’t know. I think there was a part of me that could not exist in my prior life with this change in my life, so I don’t know. It’s difficult to put in a box, you know. It’s different from one person to another.

Rick: Yeah, and that was kind of a boxy question that I asked, but I guess I just asked it to reassure people that if you have a choice, if you feel an inspiration or an aspiration for spiritual development and spiritual awakening, go for it and don’t worry about the consequences. It will all be for the best. It doesn’t necessarily mean that things are going to change radically in your outer life, but they may, and if they do, it will be for the best.

Della: Yeah, I think so too. I think it’s fine. Of course, the spiritual path is scary for identification. I think that’s true; that’s the reality of things, because identification does not exist. So, of course, there is something really scary, but identification can also exist, and the soul, of course, exists through the process.

So it can be gentle; it doesn’t have to be hard. But we can question, with authenticity and love, what we share most, what is the most precious thing in our lives that we want to go through, you know, if we want to see through identification. Of course, identification won’t like it.

What identification means

Rick: Why don’t you define identification for the sake of the viewers?

Della: Well, identification is all the ideas we have about oneself and about who we are in life—our name, our family, our work, all the characters we play to be loved from outside, to be secure. All those characters we play are kind of limiting all the time, but it’s because they create security, which is good.

So, of course, when we realize that we are free of that, or when we wish to realize that we are free of that, well, it’s going to be a challenge to look at all those identifications and see if they’re still necessary or not in our lives.

Rick: It sounds like in your case, identification even included things like broccoli and spinach and cereal, because you had to take your kids to the grocery store because you didn’t know what to put in the cart.

Della: Yeah, yeah, it was amazing. But even at that point, I could just realize that everything was going great, everything was going the way it was supposed to go, even if I was not there. There was nothing there to take control of that, which was amazing.

Rick: So you were kind of on autopilot.

Della: Yeah, absolutely.

Letting go of extraordinary experiences

Rick: So, would one way of describing what happened to you be to say that there was a radical falling away of the sense of a personal self or personal me?

Della: Yeah, it was a radical transformation, but that lasted a long time. It took about a couple of years to let go of everything. And it ended after realizing that I had a lot of beautiful experiences of light. At one point, I meditated and asked that all those gifts be taken away from me. There was nothing necessary to add to the simple reality of what is.

So, about 36 hours later, it just left me. There was this flow of energy going out of me for about two hours. And when I came back from that experience, I could recognize what a kitchen was for and what a fork was for, and I could recognize my kids. So it was just an amazing, amazing experience to see how beautiful ordinary reality is.

There was nothing necessary to add to the simple reality of what is.

Rick: So, just to clarify, when you said you were having all kinds of beautiful experiences of light, I presume you mean auras and angels and all sorts of nice, flashy experiences, right?

Della: Yeah, yes.

Rick: And so you realized that those things were not necessary, right?

Della: Yes, yes.

Rick: And then when you say you asked them to be taken away and then they left, and then you could recognize what a kitchen is and what a fork is, did you mean to say that before they were taken away, you had a hard time recognizing what a kitchen is and what a fork is?

Della: I had no idea what they were for.

Rick: Really? So, does that mean you were so caught up in or engaged in these beautiful experiences of light that you had a really hard time recognizing and interacting with ordinary reality? Is that what you mean to say?

Della: Yeah, it was kind of that the attention went to the extraordinary things.

Rick: I see, yeah. So you’d be in your kitchen, for instance, and there would be angels or something, and you’d be all caught up in that to the point where you weren’t able to interact properly with the ordinary kitchen that was there.

Della: Yeah, well, there were no angels, but…

Rick: Whatever these experiences were, yeah.

Della: Yeah, the attention was elsewhere. So, yeah, I had no idea what a kitchen was for, which is interesting.

Rick: Yeah, that’s strange. I mean, it must have been very hard to function. If you didn’t know what a kitchen was for, how were you even eating?

Della: I guess it was eating. Well, most of the food was prepared by my husband at that time, because I could not organize my mind to cook something, which was okay. There was not a lot of problem with that, but I could totally see that it was functioning fine.

Rick: Yeah, it just wasn’t functioning so much in this world.

Della: No. But even my kids did not realize that I was going through all those experiences, because the mother role seemed to be fine from their point of view, which was curious, because I was living something totally different.

Rick: Yeah. So, what was that, about 2008 or 2009 or something, when you asked for the beautiful experiences to go away?

Della: 2007, July.

Rick: So, nine years ago, almost. And ever since then, it’s just been simple reality?

Della: Yeah.

Rick: Okay. Can you imagine or envision a time when those experiences returned again and it was sort of like that stuff was going on, but you were so grounded in the simple reality of what is that you had no problem functioning? Or do you think that they’ll probably never return and you wouldn’t even want them to?

Della: Oh, well, they can be there any time they need to be there, but that’s all there is to add to that part of reality. If it’s there, it’s just there, and there’s nothing to do with that. It’s just another, let’s say, expansion of the same reality, which is there too.

But you don’t need to make a story about that or make something special about that. It’s just another simple reality plane.

Rick: Little icing on the cake, as they say.

Della: Yeah.

Rick: Okay, so you pretty much gave up being a doctor, and now you’re a spiritual teacher. So how did you ease into becoming a spiritual teacher? I guess you would call yourself a spiritual teacher. How did you start transitioning into that? Did people start asking you questions or something, and you started talking to them, and one thing led to the next, or what?

Della: I was quite silent for a couple of years. There was no impulse to do anything except maybe share Adyashanti’s videos at my place, because of this aloneness I had during the transition. But finally, I didn’t do that either. I just went to someone who was offering videos, streets from where I was living.

Rick: Adyashanti videos?

Della: Yeah, and so I met those people and spoke about my experience. Then someone heard about my experience and arranged for me to meet someone who was giving satsang. When we met, he said, “Well, why don’t you give the four-day retreat with me this weekend?” And I said, “Well…”

Rick: Who was that? Who was asking?

Della: It was Michael Zyber. So I was there for the four-day retreat, and I didn’t say a word, I think, for four days because there was nothing to say. I just sat there, and finally I was asked to give satsangs and retreats. That’s the way it just started.

Rick: So when you started giving satsangs and retreats, did you feel like you had very much to say, or was it hard for you to fill up the time by actually talking?

Della: When I would arrive, I would always say that there was nothing to say, and then people would ask questions and it would talk. So it obviously had something to say because it was talking. Today, I think there are so many things to say and, at the same time, there’s nothing to say. But from a human incarnation point of view, I think there’s a lot to say. There’s a lot to discover and to let go of, and to have the mind help us let go of things, which is really interesting.

Rick: So what are some of the main things you say when you talk to people, when you give retreats or satsangs? What are some of your key points or most important points?

Della: Well, I think the first key point is that everything arises from love—the ego, everything we think is not good or should be transformed. Everything is an impulse of love from an intimate point of view. So that is really important for me to realize because it helps to stop the fight against reality.

That’s the first thing. The other thing that I emphasize is the security guards we create—the security guards of separation. That is a constant energy that is there to create the idea of separation. So it’s really interesting to identify those, because we think that we don’t want freedom, that we want to control. But that’s not who we are. Those are the guardians of separation that do that; it’s not who we are.

It’s really interesting to see that we are the masters. When I say “we,” it’s like our inner soul is totally free of those guardians. So it’s really interesting to see this mechanism, and to see that we’re free of that.

Rick: Now, in your case, you weren’t looking for this, and it just sort of happened to you. You had no control over it; it just happened. But when you give a retreat or a satsang, there’s a room full of people. It hasn’t just happened to them, necessarily, and they are looking for it. They’re there because they want what you have.

How successful do you feel it is to give descriptions like the one you just gave and actually convey something to those people—or, how should I say, be a catalyst so that the experiential quality of the words you just spoke can be enlivened in them, rather than having it just be an intellectual concept that’s taken in through the words?

Della: Okay. Well, I guess for me, I’m talking to the heart from the most intimate part, which is free of all the concepts. So if the yearning is there, it’s not a mental yearning; it is something deeper inside.

When we connect with this intimate part, there is something that can be seen through the veil, something that can be recognized and seen through the veil. Of course, it’s important to point out that awakening is most of the time a wish of the ego, because the ego wants to get something other than reality. That’s a loving impulse too, you know; we just want to be free.

But for me, the real path is opening the heart to reality as it is and seeing what we put in the way of just being touched by reality. It’s a protection, and we can be more vigilant to see what we put in the way of this beauty that is already here.

The real path is opening the heart to reality as it is.

Rick: Yeah, I think a lot of people want awakening because they’re suffering, like the guy I interviewed last week. He went through years where he felt like he was really suffering, and he was just dying to get out of that suffering. Finally, he had a breakthrough, and he feels more relieved now.

But what do we put in the way? And how much control do we have over putting it in the way? Is it a simple, voluntary thing to not put it in the way anymore, or does it take time and a deconditioning process?

Della: I guess it depends on the person. I usually try to see what the true intention of the moment is, because if you want something other than this reality, it’s going to be interesting to look at that.

If you want a change, for example, in your life, the change can occur here, by taking the risk of seeing the refusal that is here in the moment. This refusal is perfect because it’s there in the moment; it’s protecting something. But can there be enough love in the heart to include this refusal and go and see beyond? In the presence that’s there, can it embrace this refusal?

It’s an invitation to recognize the presence that is already here. But I guess if the ego really wants to have a change, a concrete change in the future, then it avoids the invitation to come back home in that moment, of course. It’s always an open chance, every second, to open to presence.

Rick: I don’t know if this would be possible for you, but would it be possible to remember a specific person you worked with, where they were resisting in some way, and you helped them break through that? They let go of the blockage they were putting between themselves and reality and underwent some shift. Can you think of an example?

Della: That’s a difficult question. It’s a problem with memory, which is a concern for me.

Rick: Yeah, I had a feeling it might be. We just arrived from a month-long retreat in Ecuador, which is a beautiful opportunity over the long term, because after a few days there are some openings and vulnerability coming up. After that, there are waves of the guardians coming in because they say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, vulnerability is dangerous.”

Then another wave comes in, and we open up to, “What is this refusal? What is at stake here? What is at stake?” And then it opens again. So there’s this beautiful way of fighting and letting go, fighting and letting go. The more you’re conscious of this movement, the more you taste that freedom. It’s so sweet to look at all those reactions of refusal of reality, and then they can be totally embraced, which is the most beautiful gift we can offer ourselves.

Rick: That’s nice. So you pretty much see everybody going through this kind of pattern—fighting and letting go, fighting and letting go?

Della: Yeah.

Rick: How many people were on the retreat?

Della: Thirty-three, I think.

Rick: That’s pretty good, for a whole month.

Della: Yeah, well, thirty-three for the first ten days, which was intensive, and then twenty-five stayed for the whole month.

Rick: So by the end of the retreat, how do you think people were compared to the beginning of the retreat? Was there really a profound transformation for most of them?

Della: Well, I guess it would be better to ask them.

Rick: Yeah, that’s true.

Della: But I’m really deeply touched by the transformation involved in taking the risk of going to the heart and being vulnerable. It’s just an amazing transformation for me to witness.

Rick: Among people you’ve worked with, have you seen many of them go through radical changes in their outer lives the way you did—job, marriage, that kind of thing?

Della: It happens. Not most of the time, but it happens.

Rick: And when you’re working with people, like on a retreat or however you work with them, do you prescribe something for them to do on a daily basis, such as meditation or some kind of self-inquiry, or do you mainly just work with them when they’re with you?

Della: I usually do not give homework. I’m not into homework. But at the same time, if there’s a thinking pattern that’s destructive or creates suffering all the time, I will probably suggest putting a tag on the fridge to remind them to notice that the pattern is coming back. But no, I’m not into homework.

Rick: Well, I was thinking a little bit earlier, when you were talking about just settling into the simple reality and realizing that everything arises from love, that it kind of reminded me of Byron Katie a little bit—loving what is. She, of course, has attempted to create a systematic process that people can practice independently of her in order to realize what she’s talking about.

So that’s where my question came from. I wonder if you have any kind of little procedures you’ve developed that people could do on an independent basis?

Della: Well, of course, I have guidelines, like suggesting that people be authentic and take responsibility—take responsibility for the inner emotion that is there, just encountering the emotion from an open heart.

There are many things that I suggest developing on a daily basis, just opening to what’s vibrant inside and acknowledging what is there. So I suggest things, but I have a strong belief that everybody has inside what is good for them. If it resonates, it will happen, and if it does not, it can even be violent to give homework that is not aligned.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. So it kind of sounds like you’re saying that any sort of external prescription might be hard to match properly with the needs of any large number of people, and that people are going to know from an inner impulse what they can do and what’s right for them.

Della: Yeah, I think there’s an inner wisdom that has to be heard over time. There are answers there, and so we suggest, but if it doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t fit.

Rick: Yeah. You know that voice that spoke to you for a couple of years, saying, “Come on, you want to step in and make this your life’s work”? Does that voice still speak, or have you actually fulfilled what it was suggesting you do, so it’s just sort of sitting back and letting you do it?

Della: It doesn’t talk to me anymore. It stopped, I guess, in 2008.

Rick: Probably because you had signed on for the project, and so it didn’t need to bother you anymore.

Della: I don’t know. I couldn’t give an explanation for that. It’s just not there anymore.

✨ Awakening in society

Rick: Yeah. In your observation, do you feel like there’s something happening in society, in the world, on a wider basis that is similar to what happened to you? In other words, people are just starting to wake up inside through whatever means. It might not be hypnosis, but whatever they’re doing, there’s just sort of this popcorn effect where people are waking up more and more. There’s something in the collective consciousness that seems to be conducive to that.

Della: Well, since this happened to me, I can observe that there’s a lot of popping up, which is really beautiful. I don’t know if it was happening before because my attention wasn’t there, so I don’t know. Maybe because the internet is there, it’s easier to witness that. I don’t know.

But at the same time, I think society is kind of toxic, more and more toxic for the soul. So we try to survive this strange society in which we live, where we need to have so many possessions, build up an image, have the right job, and be fulfilled from the outside. I guess that is a really strong motor to come back home, to see the craziness of these movements and come back home.

✨ Personal self and the free soul

Rick: Yeah, I have these conversations with various friends about this idea of no-self. I know you’re kind of an Adyashanti fan, and Adyashanti gave a whole course about the falling away of the sense of personal self. I don’t know if you saw that course. And yet there are other quotes from Adyashanti—maybe they were earlier quotes—where he talks about the idea that it wouldn’t even be possible to function as a human being if there’s not some sense of a personal self. And yet I have friends who say, “No sense of a personal self,” and I just don’t understand it.

So it’s something I actually bring up in interviews fairly often, just to help work out my own understanding. I mean, it seems to me that if you stub your toe and it’s very painful, there’s a sense that there’s some kind of localized experience of it. It’s not happening to some guy in China, and it’s not happening to a tree outside the window. It’s happening here to this body-mind, and you’d rather it were happening to the tree maybe, because it hurts. But maybe that’s not what is meant by the falling away of a personal sense of self. What do you say to that?

Della: Well, on my journey there was a point where there was no self, no personal self. The experience of it was no personal self, so I can totally understand the point of view that there is no personal self.

But then my journey after that was the invitation to let the soul—the free soul, which is the individual part of being—come back into this body. For me, that part of the soul is quite precious. It’s the most precious thing that we can live here on

Earth: just being this individual color of the unknown and radiating what we need to radiate while we’re here. So I think the personal self is really precious.

The free soul is this individual color of the unknown.

Rick: So, in your experience, when the sense of personal self had totally fallen away, was that the dysfunctional period in which it was hard to shop in the grocery store and all?

Della: Yeah, I would not say it was dysfunctional, because it was functioning really well.

Rick: Sort of, but you were kind of losing the ability to work as a doctor, and you needed your kids to pick up the groceries. You were not totally functional as you once had been, and maybe as you are now.

Della: Yeah, it was different from how we are conditioned to be, but I think it was functioning well. There’s a way we see that things are functioning okay, but it seemed to function very well.

Rick: But anyway, that was that phase where there was no personal self, right? And then, as the sense of personal self began to come back in, what was that like? Did it come in like—boom—like that, or just sort of gradually, incrementally?

Della: Gradually. It made me realize that it was safe for the soul to come back here. So there was a sense of fear, I think—a fear of the soul coming back here. So I guess the soul was gone, elsewhere, where life could be safe.

So the scraping of the ego and all this period was scary for the personal self, and I guess it just went away to take it easy for a while. Then the invitation was to come back here.

Rick: So, when you say “soul,” are you equating that with personal self? Is that what you mean by the word “soul”?

Della: Yeah, I would say so.

Rick: Okay. And just to probe this a little bit more, if you don’t mind: when you were in the no-personal-self phase, if you injured yourself in some way—painfully burned your finger or something—did that tend to bring in more of a sense of personal self, or was it still totally impersonal? There was pain, but it wasn’t pain felt by anyone?

Della: I remember hurting my toe. I remember banging my toe, and there was a sense of something happening on my foot, but I had no idea to look at it—no impulse. The next morning, I saw that there was blood all over. But there was no pain, no reaction to that, and no sense of protecting it. So that was my only experience of a physical problem during that time.

Rick: That’s interesting, because I often use pain as an example of how there seems to me to have to be some kind of personal self. If you hurt yourself, it happens to you, but you just kind of shot that argument down.

Della: Yeah, but that was the only thing. I didn’t have an arm cut or whatever. It was a simple thing, but it was strange.

Rick: Yeah. So now that the soul, as you put it, has returned, if you bang your toe, it’s like, “Ow, my toe!”

Della: Totally.

Rick: And you take care of it, right?

Della: Of course, and it hurts.

Rick: Yeah, and it hurts you—it hurts Della, right?

Della: Of course, of course. And being here, you can be touched by the beauty, by the pain, by whatever arises in reality, which is beautiful. It’s even more painful than before, because it’s just so direct. The experience is so direct that it’s overwhelming with intensity, but that’s the beauty of it.

Rick: Yeah. Now, is it a multidimensional sort of thing where Della feels the pain, but there’s also a dimension which is impersonal, beyond pain, and a large part of your awareness resides there? Or is it really just not so complicated? Is it just simple reality, experiencing what you’re experiencing?

Della: I guess it depends; it varies. Sometimes there’s more silence than experience, and sometimes there’s only the experience. It doesn’t matter—the point of view doesn’t matter—what is happening in reality.

Rick: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. The reason I ask that question is that some people say it’s kind of like a spectrum where your attention can move back and forth on the spectrum according to the need or the circumstances. Sometimes there might be a real sharp focus on some individual consideration, and sometimes it might be much more universal and transcendent, beyond the personal. Sometimes there’s a sense of integration of the whole spectrum in one awareness. People describe it differently, so I’m just curious what you had to say.

Della: I don’t know. I think one thing is that I do not discriminate a lot in how I experience things. It’s just so different from one moment to another, and it’s very simple because it’s just the way it is. There’s not a lot of discrimination about that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good. Probably sometimes my questions tend to overcomplicate the matter, because someone like you is living in a very simple state of awareness, and it is what it is. I’m more intellectual, asking all these questions and probing different perspectives and all that. It probably seems like I’m making more of a fuss about it than needs to be made.

Della: No, that’s fine. It’s really interesting. All people experience different things and different perspectives, and it’s beautiful, really.

Protection, vulnerability, and trust

Rick: Do you have a sense of continued progress or unfoldment, like a sense of adventure? Like, “Ooh, this month it’s this, and now it’s this,” and there’s some kind of exploration still taking place?

Della: I think the human experience is a never-ending story. It’s beautiful. I think there’s always opportunities to open the heart even more deeply through all that I go through, so for me it’s a never-ending thing.

There is something that is obvious, which is oneness and consciousness, and there’s only that. But from an incarnation point of view, it’s a never-ending and beautiful experience unfolding.

Rick: By incarnation point of view, do you mean reincarnation—that we might have multiple lives and keep on growing—or do you just mean as incarnate beings?

Della: Well, I was talking about incarnate beings, but I don’t know if there’s another incarnation. It would make sense from the point of view of time, but I really don’t know. I don’t know.

Rick: You write from—well, I haven’t read a lot of what you’ve written, because most of it’s in French, but you sent me some translations of little bits of it. You talk about being sort of guarded or protected, and in this interview you’ve also mentioned that.

So I’m just curious: a snail, for instance, has a shell, and it would die without the shell. It needs the protection. I guess we build up a kind of shell around our hearts or around our person in a certain way, due to certain life experiences that we feel protect us from the world.

Like snails, do we need to have that protection? Does there need to be a certain development of inner strength before the protection can be dropped? Will the protection just drop off spontaneously once that inner strength has developed? Or are we putting the cart before the horse here? Can we just somehow, in some way, voluntarily drop the protection, and the strength will rise to meet the challenges?

Della: Well, I guess there is one point: the protection can be just fine, and most human beings have their protection. They don’t even question it, because it’s comfortable and that’s the way they are.

The point for me is when the protection becomes uncomfortable, when we feel that there’s a lack of oxygen because we’re stuck in something. So, being strong or not doesn’t matter, because if you’re suffocating in the protection, you will have the impulse to look at that.

I think we totally have the strength because we are alive. There’s nothing separating us from life. That is the protection that is protecting us from this evidence. So I guess if there is this discomfort and this yearning for oxygen, for being, and for simplicity, I think that’s the most beautiful gift: to see that the protection is not needed. There’s nothing to protect.

If you’re suffocating in the protection, you will have the impulse to look at that.

Rick: Well, we are life, but you use the word “soul,” and some souls have been traumatized, abused, or damaged by rather severe circumstances, and therefore they throw up protective mechanisms.

So I’m wondering if those protective mechanisms are necessary for them, and how you best get them out of that kind of shell-bound existence. Is it just by ripping off the shell, or is there some way of inculcating or developing greater inner strength, in which case the shell will become superfluous?

Della: Well, I always ask what the people want, because I will never, ever think of removing a shell if the intention is not there. So that’s the basic thing.

If someone is asking, we can discuss together what’s there and whether there’s still something to protect. If so, it’s fine. But can we open to the possibility that maybe this time of protection is over—or not? It comes from the inner impulse of each individual to see if the shell is still important.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a nice, gentle way of putting it. Back in the sixties and seventies, there were these encounter groups that were popular, and they were quite brutal in terms of ripping away people’s protections. They could be quite damaging for people.

But it sounds like you’re going about it—I didn’t even think otherwise for a moment—in a very gentle, natural way that wouldn’t traumatize people even further.

Della: No, that’s really important for me: not to go beyond a limit that is obviously there. That’s basic.

The opening of the heart, for me, is associated with security and offering a loving environment in which to offer whatever is real for the person in front of me. That’s the thing. Even if we open totally to the fact that the protection is needed, sometimes that alone will make the person realize that it’s not necessary anymore, because we totally honor what’s there—the reality of the moment.

I think it’s simple.

✨ A different kind of personal self

Rick: Yeah. Here’s a question that came in from Dan in London. He asks, “It sounds like Della had a journey from ‘having a sense of personal self’ to ‘having no sense of a personal self’ to ‘having a sense of personal self’ again. Can Della explain the difference between the sense of personal self from before and after the awakening? It sounds like the pre-awakening personal self was more influenced by conditioning from society, whereas the post-awakening personal self is more influenced by her eternal soul.” That’s a really good question, Dan. Thank you.

Della: Well, I think that’s right. I think the previous personal self was a conditioned self. It was conditioned, it was limited, it was functioning according to society and family and personal beliefs, so it was really a limited expression of Della at the time. And it was fine because I was happy and it was a nice life, so there was nothing to say about that. But then afterwards, you see, there’s this free soul who’s here and is just enjoying, moment by moment, the reality of what is, and unfolding this joy of being here and being vulnerable and being touched by life.

Rick: Yeah, Dan’s question kind of reminded me of a nice metaphor, which is that the caterpillar has a personal self and the butterfly has a personal self, but in between, in the larva stage, it’s all mush. There’s no sort of distinguishable entity in there; it’s just mush. And then the imaginal cells kind of create the butterfly, and we end up with a beautiful butterfly. So you kind of have to go through that metamorphosis stage, I guess.

Della: Yeah, I guess so.

Rick: That’s very interesting. I imagine that if you were to—don’t let me put words in your mouth—but if you were to describe your sense of self now and how it functions, compared with your sense of self then and how it functioned, that now there’s a… I’ll let you carry on with what I’m saying here, but there must be just a night-and-day difference in terms of spontaneity and freedom and qualities like that.

Della: Yeah, I think the first word that would come is spontaneity, because everything is fresh. There’s this laugh inside to discover the moment as it is; there’s something really free and laughing. And, you know, there’s a way of seeing life as everything is a surprise and an invitation to open my heart more all the time, so there’s not a lot of thinking about, evaluation, and judgments and stuff like that.

There are thoughts; there can be a lot of thoughts sometimes, but it’s just passing. I cannot adhere to those processes of thinking most of the time. It’s just funny to see all this popcorn going on. It’s just amazing, amazing to see how life is generous with experiences. So yes, it’s quite different.

Rick: Yeah. With regard to thoughts, would you say that your mind tends to be generally more quiet than it was before the shift? There might be some extraneous popcorn, as you say, some flurry of mental activity, but is there much less inappropriate or extraneous or unnecessary mental noise going on?

Della: Yeah, I would say it’s really quiet.

Rick: A lot of silence.

Della: Yeah, there’s a lot of silence, yes. But even when there’s no attachment to what is going on, it doesn’t matter what’s going on. I do not believe what’s there. Even when I talk to you, everything I say, I know that that’s a story and life is simpler than that. It’s just a moment, and then we play a role in discovering what is beautiful in that experiment we are doing.

Rick: Yeah. I said this the other week, that in a way there’s a handicap in doing interviews like this because we’re talking about something that is kind of so simple and intimate and natural, but if we’re going to actually have a conversation, we have to use words, and words are a far cry from the actual experiences. If you and I were to sit here for an hour and talk about what a mango tastes like, and what its chemical composition is, and what its biological or genetic background is, we can go on and on, but it would be nothing like actually eating one.

Della: That’s true.

Rick: But that’s the nature of the medium. We have to use words here.

Della: Of course.

Rick: And, you know, one of my motivations for doing these interviews is that by using words, it inspires people to go for the experience. We get many, many reports of people who have had awakenings listening to interviews or going off and spending time with someone I’ve interviewed and undergoing some profound, beautiful shift of some sort, so that’s kind of what motivates this thing.

Della: Yeah, of course. It’s beautiful. I think it’s important to have some media to help people going through this stuff. It’s an amazing journey.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. One other thought about thoughts that came to mind—a thought about thoughts—is, do you find that your thought process is such that very quiet, gentle impulses just arise from who knows where, and that you find you can trust them to a great extent? They are probably a hundred percent trustworthy; they are just kind of a natural impulse of what’s right in the moment, and perhaps creative ideas that come up: “I think I’ll do this.” But they end up just having a kind of a rightness to them that you have come to rely on as being trustworthy.

Della: I think so. I think just listening in silence to what arises, there’s quite some wisdom there. There’s quite some wisdom there. So yeah, I think it’s good to put our attention on what’s arising before how we should think, but just listening from silence, I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.

✨ Awakening as a gentle path

Rick: Yeah. Okay, what else would you like to tell us? I know you’re probably not going to come up with a lot unless I ask you questions, because that’s the way you operate, but are there some major things that you’d like to talk about with people that I haven’t thought to ask you any kind of question about?

Della: Well, I guess the main message for me is that the awakening, for me, is overrated, in the sense that there’s a lot that ego puts on what awakening is and how it should be, and the experiences and the freedom and everything. But reality, coming back to reality, can be a step-by-step thing where we can just open our hearts to be touched by life and to meet the emotion that is there, and to stop just projecting onto others what we’re feeling and bringing this back inside and opening more and more and more.

And for me, it’s a beautiful, lovely path to take responsibility for the oneness we are. Because we play at being two all the time, but the invitation—and it is possible—is to bring oneness inside by taking responsibility for what we go through and what we live, questioning the beliefs that create separation, and bringing love and light to what’s there. It’s possible, and it’s a very gentle path to open ourselves to what’s inside. Totally beautiful. There’s nothing to protect. We can totally embrace protection and realize that there’s nothing to protect.

Rick: So, when you say “bring oneness inside,” I think what you mean by that is to experience oneness or live oneness, right?

Della: Yeah, yeah. Become this oneness inside that is already there, because it’s just that the attention plays at two, at being two, all the time.

Rick: Right, being fragmented.

Della: Yeah, and the invitation is really to take the chance to see: Is it really necessary to play duality?

Rick: Yeah. And the thing you said about the ego kind of projecting what awakening is supposed to be and all that, I think that’s an important point too. Well, I kind of see it both ways. On the one hand, a lot of times people dumb it down in the sense that they think, “Oh, it’s just this. Whatever you’re experiencing, that’s all it is; that’s awakening, you’re enlightened.” And I don’t know if they’re necessarily actually experiencing things as richly and deeply and clearly as one might.

On the other hand, sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s this incredible thing. If you could see the world the way Ramana Maharshi saw it, you would just be blown away. You’d be seeing angels and you’d be communing with devas and you’d be able to levitate,” and all kinds of marvelous things, which probably are not going to ever happen to the vast majority of people, in which case they’re going to wait forever for this marvelous thing that they might actually be much more in tune with right now than they realize.

Della: Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s true that, of course, we can see that there’s a shift, you know, there’s something that happened. But at the same time, from my point of view, it happens spontaneously, or it’s a by-product of surrendering to reality. But if we check all the time, “We surrender, we surrender, we surrender,” and then we see, “Is there a shift? No, okay,” then it’s not a total surrender to reality because there is a condition: “Okay, I will surrender up to the moment where there’s a shift.” So that’s ego again.

Surrendering to reality and being touched and taking responsibility, that’s the way for me, that’s the way, and the shift is a by-product. It’s something that happens when there is no attachment anymore that is more important than reality.

Rick: Yeah, and also, if you’re surrendering and surrendering and surrendering, if you’re kind of beating yourself up with the notion of surrendering all day long, haven’t you kind of spoiled the spontaneity and innocence of living? Is surrender really something you have to do?

Della: No, of course not. If you have to do something, there’s a problem, because reality is full right now. But it’s important to see the position you are in at the moment. Are you in refusal of reality or not? Because if you are in refusal, you feel duality all the time, so it’s interesting to look at. But the refusal is totally welcome also if it’s there. There’s nothing to change, really, but it depends on what people want.

Rick: Yeah. Well, what do you mean by what they want?

Della: Well, if the yearning—not what ego wants, but if the yearning is to discover reality even prior to the awakening shift, if there’s a yearning to discover the true nature of life, this is going to be interesting to look at, this position of refusal, because that’s the veil.

We refuse what we want because what we are is already here, so the only thing in the veil is the refusal of that, because we say that’s not enough. So that’s ego; that’s ego in the way. And so I say ego, but it’s a guardian that is playing with us to refuse the moment, to keep in control and to keep a safe area of knowing what is happening. So it creates a net, like a web, so we don’t dive into the mystery of life.

Surrendering to reality and being touched and taking responsibility, that’s the way for me.

Rick: So it kind of sounds like you’re saying that the more we assert control and try to maintain control and so on, the more we isolate ourselves and keep ourselves constrained and contained and blocked from the larger reality that life is as it is.

Della: Yes, yes. We play at that, and we don’t even realize that we play at being constrained like that. So it’s interesting to look at.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, couldn’t you almost say that that’s the crux of it right there? By definition, awakening or enlightenment, or whatever word we want to use, is a relinquishment of individual control and individual constriction, and a relaxation into that which is, and a surrender into allowing nature itself to run the show rather than us meddling with it. And so, in a way, individual effort is counterproductive.

Della: It depends. If it’s effort coming from ego to get something else than what’s already here, well, it has the positive effect of going towards exhaustion. So if that’s the path, that’s the path; there’s nothing to add to that. But if the impulse, the yearning, is to feel a sense of truth and reality, well then there are tools that are really helpful to see this game of duality and protecting ourselves from our true being. It’s really beautiful.

Rick: It’s interesting what you say about exhaustion because there have been a number of cases of people I’ve spoken with, such as Adyashanti, for instance, who just really applied effort. He was busting a gut trying to get enlightened, and finally he just sort of gave up one day. Then he had this big shift, this big awakening. So, in a paradoxical, roundabout way, effort can be effective, but it’s not the effort itself; it’s the relinquishment of it ultimately that does the trick.

Della: Yeah, but at the same time, if the impulse is to work really, really hard, that’s the path because it’s there. There’s nothing to argue about having one path that is easier than another. Just look where you put your foot, and that’s the path. There’s no way you can mistake yourself. There’s no way. We’re always in the right spot all the time.

Rick: Yeah, and it’s worth mentioning that there are paths that are effortless from the outset, that don’t involve hitting yourself over the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop, but that are effortless from the beginning and very effective. So if one can find a path like that, all the better, perhaps.

Della: Of course, if it talks to the inner wisdom, that’s great.

What awakens us?

Rick: Yeah. Let’s see, a question came in here, and my editor friend hasn’t sent it to me yet, but sometimes he doesn’t get them, so let me just take a crack at it. This is from Susanna, again in London. There’s a lot going on in London today.

Regarding your initial experience with hypnosis, did the hypnotist come across other clients who had similar reactions to his or her sessions with you? Did he or she believe in alternative paradigms such as past life, afterlife, spirituality, or transcendence, which would have influenced his or her way of working with you? Was he or she intentionally guiding you toward extraordinary expansion of consciousness, or was it just a happy accident during a standard routine that wasn’t spiritually inclined or oriented?

And if it was an unusual result for him or her, was he at all interested in exploring what happened to you and how he could use it in working with others from then on? Good question.

Della: I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him after that. I know that he heard what happened to me because he was a friend of friends, but we didn’t talk about it, and I don’t think that he was on a spiritual path when we met. But that’s all I know. I cannot say more about that.

Rick: Yeah, it sounds like you were kind of primed. You were just hot to trot; you were ready to go, and it could have been something else that might have triggered it for you, but it just happened to be this.

Della: Yeah, I think so. It feels like that, but you never know.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, so let me just ask you one more time: Is there anything else we haven’t covered that you feel is important? After I finish interviews, I always think to myself, “Oh, I should have asked that. I wish I thought of that.” So is there anything we’re leaving out here that you want to convey to people?

Della: I don’t know. I think that everyone is perfect just the way they are right now, and it’s just a beautiful gift to offer ourselves—to see the perfection we already are, and to see the loving impulse in every action and every thought we have. There is this loving impulse prior to the experiment. So I think it’s just so nice to offer ourselves the possibility to see ourselves from a loving impulse.

Everyone is perfect just the way they are right now.

Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. I remember reading some line from a Zen teacher recently. He said to his students, “You’re all perfect just the way you are, and you could use improvement.”

Della: Yeah, well, it’s fun to realize it too.

Rick: Yeah, it kind of works that way. I mean, everything is imperfect just as it is, and yet there’s more to explore.

Della: Yeah, I think there’s a natural yearning to open, to experience and experiment, and to discover our true nature. I think everything is just here for that: the suffering that is here, everything in society. I think it’s all calling us to open to who we are, which is beautiful. Even if you can see that there are dark energies and stuff like that—which I do not see them like that—I see more an awakening impulse of life to open to reality.

Rick: Yeah, and if, in the big picture, opening to reality is sort of the ultimate motivating force of the universe, then even the dark energies must in some way be in service to that.

Della: Yeah, that’s my feeling. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s my feeling.

Rick: Yeah, mine too. You don’t seem like the speculative type, but do you have any sort of feeling about where we’re headed as a society? I mean, any kind of New Agey perspectives on whether some kind of more enlightened age is on the horizon, or don’t you want to go there?

Della: I don’t know. I think it would be fun if there were more consciousness arising. I think it would be really great. I think the invitation is here for that. Where it’s going, I have no idea. I think everything is fine, but I have no idea where we’re going.

Rick: Yeah, but it’s interesting to be part of it, isn’t it?

Della: Yeah, it’s really fun. I think we are in this very special era here, with everything arising and happening, and the internet and ego with giant structures and stuff. It’s really amazing to look at.

Rick: Yeah, that kind of point is what leads me to believe that we are headed for big changes, just because it seems to be somewhat unprecedented that we’ve had such an explosion of spiritual teachers and people having awakenings, along with a technology to disseminate this information all over the world to millions of people.

There’s never been quite that combination of factors before, and I kind of feel like it can’t help but have an effect. Everything has an effect, and the changes that take place in individual consciousness do ripple up to the larger society. So it gives one hope, I think, for a better time coming, but also for pretty major changes, because there are so many things that won’t fit in really well with a more enlightened society, by most people’s definition.

Della: Yeah, I think it’s so precious to have someone with a distance from ego who can be transparent and authentic, and be free and spontaneous. It’s just so much fun to look at, and I think it’s refreshing for everybody to have people around coming with this new energy. I think it’s really precious to offer authenticity to our society today.

Rick: Yeah, I think it’s what we really need in terms of—well, there was a song years ago: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

Della: Yeah, that’s so true. We’re lacking this joy of just being, and I think we’re invited to—why not?—play a little bit more of that.

Trusting the inner wisdom

Rick: Yeah. Let me just—I was about to wrap it up, but another question just came in, so let me just see what this one says. It’s again from Zella in London. Yeah, okay, this sounds like a good question.

Regarding your transformation, it sounded from your conversation with Rick as though the process was sort of happening, unfolding, and running its course within you, so to speak. A guidance that was later recognized as none other than you led you itself to greater freedom, authenticity, and recognition of reality as it is and its ultimate perfection.

Do you think that had it not been for the initial wake-up call at the hypnotist, it would have found another way of waking itself up? Can we force it, or are we ultimately at the mercy of a process that is beyond us? Will it wake us up when it wakes us up, and not a second earlier, not a moment later? Is there really anything that we—or it—can do before it decides it’s time, before it is ready?

Della: Well, that’s a really interesting question because it depends on what is talking inside the inner wisdom. Because if the mind wants to be in control, if the ego wants to be in control, there is no way, because it’s the obstacle to opening to our true nature. But inside, at the same time, there is this oneness; it is who we are.

So if there is a yearning, there is a calling, well, there is no way we can avoid doing the steps we do. Even if the mind will say there is nothing to do, it will do; it will go toward the yearning, whatever strategies you will find, right? But it will happen.

So it can be a guardian of the mind saying, “There is nothing to do,” because saying “There is nothing to do” can also be a refuge where there is no opening. Because there is nothing to do, it’s a safe place for the guardian: There is nothing to do. But at the same time, if it comes from the heart and there is humility of the heart that says there is nothing to do and there is nothing to add, that’s different.

Rick: Yeah, I think you’re making a very subtle and profound point, and it’s one I’ve thought about a lot. Because there are a lot of people around saying there is nothing to do and nobody to do it, and it can lead to a sort of passivity, or sort of defeatism, or something like, “Oh well, there is nothing to do; it’s just going to happen if it happens,” and kind of a spiritual laziness in a way.

But there is a deeper, more profound sense in which there is nothing to do, which is very much associated, I think, with the word you’ve used a lot in this interview: surrender. That’s a totally different matter from when that phrase is used superficially.

Della: Yeah, it comes from the heart, from a deeper place. Of course, there is nothing to do and there is everything to do, but for me the most important thing is to take the risk to see what we’re playing. Are we playing? Are we taking refuge in the ego’s mind, or are we really willing to open to taking the risk of surrendering?

So it’s really important for me to see. Not even to do, because doing is already doing itself; it’s happening, whatever we think. But are we hiding from our true nature? Are we playing duality? That’s interesting.

Rick: Yeah, and the point you made in response to Susanna’s—or whatever the name was—question, “Is it just going to happen when it happens?” and without our having any say in the matter, a thought came to mind that a lot—and you said, “Well, if you have the impulse, if you have the inspiration, or if you have the motivation.”

But looking at it in a larger sense, if again this sort of awakening or evolutionary development is built into the very purpose of the universe, then everything that happens to us can be seen as being in service of that. Even the difficult stuff can be a kind of goad or an incentive moving us toward seeking release from it, seeking freedom. You know what I’m trying to say?

Della: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. I think that we have so many opportunities. Of course, if our life is happy and we have joy, there’s no question about the meaning of life and what is true. But if we have difficult stuff to go through, well, sometimes we have the question arising, “Well, who am I, and what is this for?”

So, from a psychological point of view, we can have so many explanations, but from a more intimate point of view, that’s the way to come back home and to see, “Who am I?”

Rick: Yeah, I don’t know if this story is just sort of metaphorical or actual, but there are some spiritual teachers who have said that the angels don’t have very much incentive in heaven for spiritual enlightenment because they’re so comfortable there; it’s so nice. Human life is much more conducive to it, because it’s not just an easy ride like that.

Della: Absolutely. I think there are so many opportunities. Every day we have something that is refusing reality, so that’s it. That’s the moment. That’s the moment.

Rick: Nice. Okay, well, I don’t think there are any more questions that have come in, and this has been a great conversation, so I think we should wrap it up. Any final words before I do that? And they don’t need to be final. [Dog barks] Hey, now the dog is excited about something. They don’t need to be final if we get going on something again, but if you have any little wrap-up words you’d like to speak.

Della: I think everybody can just trust their inner wisdom, and they’re already on the right path, right away, in this moment.

Everybody can just trust their inner wisdom, and they’re already on the right path.

Closing thoughts and resources

Rick: Nice. And since Luna just introduced herself, let me introduce Luna. Come here, Luna. There we go. This is Luna.

Della: Whoa, nice dog. Hello.

Rick: Yeah, we adopted her about a year ago, after driving hours and hours all around Iowa looking for the perfect dog. We finally found her down at a shelter somewhere down in Illinois.

Della: Beautiful.

Rick: Yeah, over the years I’ve introduced various pets of ours on the show. All right, so Della’s website is dellainvitation.com, and I’ll be linking to it from her page on batgap.com. You have a book in French, don’t you?

Della: Yeah, I just went to libraries in January.

Rick: So, is it on Amazon or anything like that?

Della: Yeah, Amazon.

Rick: All right, so I’ll link to it also on Amazon so people can get that, and they can go to your website. There are parts of your website that are in French and some in English. When you conduct retreats and stuff, do you do it in French or English or both?

Della: Well, for now we have French groups, but we’re open to English groups if there’s a need for that.

Rick: Yeah, I’m sure there’ll be interest, so you might need to set up both. Your English is probably as good as your French. I mean, you speak English perfectly well.

Della: I feel it’s not my mother tongue.

Rick: Right. I suppose training as a doctor, you had to learn English or speak it well to go through medical school.

Della: Yeah, well, I worked in British Columbia and New Zealand, so I had to. I learned to speak English; I had to.

Rick: Okay, so thank you, Della. People can go to your website to find out more about you. You probably have some mailing lists they can get on and so on.

Della: Of course.

Rick: Yeah. Thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. Let me just make a general wrap-up point or two. This, as I said in the beginning, is an ongoing series, and if you found this interesting, then go to www.batgap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu. You’ll find hundreds of other interviews categorized in various ways.

If you’d like to be notified each time there’s a new one, then there’s a sign-up form on the website for that. There’s also an audio podcast of this, and a page that you’ll see a link to where you can sign up on Android devices or Apple devices and so on.

The donate button, as I mentioned in the beginning, helps support the thing. It’s important that it have that support because it’s pretty much a full-time occupation for my wife and me. And that’s about it, so thanks for listening or watching, and we will see you next week. That’s it. Thanks, Della.

Della: Thank you so much.

Rick: All right, enjoy it.

Della: Thank you.

Rick: Enjoyed it. [Music]