Fax & Sharon Gilbert Transcript

Fax & Sharon Gilbert Interview

Summary: 

Rick: Welcome to Buddha in the Gas Pump, a weekly interview show in which we discuss  spiritual awakening, for lack of a better term.  This is the fifth in an ongoing series of interviews,  and if this is the first one that you’re watching,  there will be titles at the end of this show to tell you how to watch the other ones.  They’re archived on YouTube, they’re going to be archived on the Fairfield Public Access TV website, and there are various other alternatives.

The reason we are able to make this a weekly show is that there are a great number of people these days who are undergoing a spiritual awakening.  The terminology is a little bit ambiguous, because different people might mean different things by those terms, but every week we discuss that term in particular, and various other synonyms. Week by week, I think we’re arriving at a pretty good understanding of what is generally understood to be meant by a spiritual awakening.  And so far, I’m sure tonight will be no exception. Our guests have been very clear and articulate and very genuine about what they’re experiencing.  This is not a philosophical or metaphysical discussion show  in which we speculate about things we might have read in books.  It is a show in which we are discussing things that people are actually experiencing on a day-to-day basis.  My name is Rick Archer and I’m the host of this show.  My guests tonight are Fax and Sharon Gilbert,  who are very dear and long-time friends of mine,  and it is really a delight to have you two on the show.

Sharon: Thank you for having us.

Rick: So, what I’ve generally been doing on these shows is, I will give a couple of minutes of biographical information, who you are, what you do, what you do for a living, what are your hobbies, that kind of thing, just so we can get a feel for your relative personalities or relative life.  And then we will begin to get into what you may be experiencing or are experiencing.  So, whoever would like to go first.

Fax: I’m a performer. I’m in the schools. I do about 200 to 250 school programs a year, festivals.  I’m an artist and I use skills of mime and magic to communicate educational programs. I have one on character and bullying. I have one called health and happiness. I have a state history play where I bring about 100 costumes and kids do a whole play in one day.  So, I travel a lot. I’m in and out of Fairfield all the time, usually home weekends and out during the week. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.

Rick: Do you have a lot of that on video?

Fax: I do. I have some of it on video. I’m in the process of updating my website.

Rick: Yeah, you might want to put a lot of that on YouTube so people can watch it.  In fact, I have a website associated with this show and for the people who are on, if they have a website, I link to the guest’s websites.  Viewers are often curious to see what people are doing.  Last week’s guest was an artist and she has her artwork on the website.

Fax: Well, I could supply you with several minutes of it.

Rick: And also, this station where we are taping this could probably use some of your programming, if you feel like having it shown.  What did you do before that?

Fax: Before that, I taught Transcendental Meditation for almost 20 years.  I got into it right after college and became a teacher shortly thereafter.  Sharon and I taught probably over a thousand people all over the world.

Rick: Any hobbies or particular interests?

Fax: One of my passions is golf.

Rick: So, you and Tiger Woods have a lot in common, huh?

Sharon: I hope not.

Fax: That’s kind of a loaded question.

Sharon: No, they don’t have that much in common.  Except he plays good golf.

Fax: He has more mistresses than I do.

Rick: And more money.  How about you, Sharon?

Sharon: I’m the support staff for Fax. I spend a lot of time at home, actually, keeping the home fires burning, literally.  And since he’s gone quite a bit, I do a lot of the support work for that.  And cut people’s hair and do some teaching, Waking Down teaching.  And basically, just trying to stay out of trouble.

Rick: Are you successful?

Sharon: Pretty much.

Rick: Now, having known you both personally for a long time, it is my understanding that you have each, in your own way, undergone a spiritual awakening, if you are comfortable with that particular terminology.  So, perhaps you could each tell the story of that awakening.  Then we can work both back and forward from that point, to see what might have led up to it or caused it to occur, and how things have been developing since then.  So, whichever of you would like to go first on that.

Sharon: Do you want me to?  When you ask, “Is the term ‘spiritual awakening’ comfortable for me?”  It is, and yet I would not have described it that way myself.  I was thinking about this, thinking about this interview,  what I would actually even call what happened.  I would call it a coming into alignment with myself, or a falling into my actual size, something like that, where there wasn’t anything sticking out anymore or extraneous to who I am.  That happened for me very gradually, over many years,  and I didn’t know it was happening until the process had completed itself in a certain way.  Then there was a clicking in at some point, and looking back on it retrospectively, I could see that it was something that had been developing for many years.

Rick: That is kind of a metaphorical description, because you are talking about nothing sticking out, and of falling into or fitting properly in yourself.  It could easily be misconstrued, what you are actually saying.  So maybe, as much as possible, you could elaborate on that, trying to give the actual experience that you are trying to convey with those terms.

Sharon: OK. I see what you are saying. I know it is always…

Rick: It sounds like a clothing store where you are just…

Sharon: And it is really true that, even if you just say simply,  it was a spiritual awakening, that could be misconstrued.

Rick: What does that mean?

Sharon: Let me see if I can be a little more clear and specific about that.

Rick: It sounded as if you have just arrived at a state of psychological health,  or personal self-comfort with who you are, or something like that,  which may be an apt way of putting it,  but I think there is more to it than that, that you would like to convey.

Sharon: It was a time of coming into…  I guess I am coming back to the same words.

Rick: I’ll keep on nailing you on it.

Sharon: Coming into complete alignment with who I already am.

Rick: And who are you already?

Sharon: I am who you see before you.  And who I already am now is different in many ways  than who I was at the moment of that recognition.

Rick: And probably different than who you were before the moment of that recognition.

Sharon: And also, the same as I have always been, in some way.  And that is why it was a coming into alignment.  It was as though all that I had been striving for, or seeking for, for many years, even before learning Transcendental Meditation, that seeking just fell back into a place of being who I am.

Rick: What had you been striving and seeking for? Wealth? Fame?

Sharon: Definitely not that.  When I had heard about the possibility of God-realization, I knew immediately that was my purpose in life.  I didn’t know what it was, in the sense of being able to say, “These are the parameters of what God-realization will be,” until I would actually pin myself down about it.  And then, when I learned Transcendental Meditation, the whole understanding that was given around God-realization turned to enlightenment.  So, then I aspired to have enlightenment.  And though I didn’t really know what those were in a real sense,  they represented to me the purpose of why I am here on earth.  And in some intuitive, deep way, I knew that was what I came here to be, and to realize.  Then of course, in the realization of it, it is quite different than the words that I would have used to describe it beforehand.

Rick: And so, you meditated for decades, and we’ll get into some of the details, but then you did reach a point, or maybe it wasn’t a point, you say it was sort of a gradual transition, but perhaps it was a final acceptance of having found what you were seeking.

Sharon: Yes, that’s right.  There was a moment of owning who I already am,  as being what I’ve always been seeking.

Rick: And when that moment was reached, or if it’s easier to speak about now, how is your experience different than what it had been throughout your life prior to that point?

Sharon: In the seeking of that, there is always a bit of anxiety involved.

Rick: Right, there is always a dangling carrot you are going after.

Sharon: And that fell away, and the essential striving and confusion  around my sense of identity dropped away.  There just wasn’t a question about it.  At that time, I remember I described myself as a block of peace.  I know that sounds odd.

Rick: A block of peace?

Sharon: A block of peace, because I just felt like solid peace.

Rick: Right, p.e.a.c.e, not frozen peas, but a block of peace.

Sharon: Solid, just solid. And that was my experience, I would say, afterwards, for many months, during the honeymoon period, whatever you call it.  So, of course, that was a joy.

Rick: So, would you say that you are that peace?  You say, “I’m a block of peace.”  Ordinarily, if you say to somebody, “Okay, well, who are you?”  They say, “My name is Sharon Gilbert.”  “Well, no, I mean in more detail, who are you really?”  “Well, I live there, and I have this job, and I have these interests,  and I like music, and I have three kids,” if you had kids.  Whatever they can use to describe the various features of their life.  And to most people, to my understanding, those things define who they are.  And very often, when somebody loses a big chunk of those things, their whole self-image is shaken to the core, because that is who they are.  If a wealthy person loses all his wealth, or if someone loses a child, that was really the whole focus of their existence, or whatever.  So, I think what you’re saying is that you kind of discovered a deeper aspect of yourself that really can’t be defined by those external cues or definitions. And “peace” is one word you used, and usually we think of inner peace. We can think of a peaceful external situation, but you are referring to an inner peace, which might be just as peaceful while running through an airport as it would be sitting in the woods.

Sharon: Right, that inner peace, that is true, because the outer world is almost never exactly at peace. I mean, there are times when there are peaceful moments, peaceful periods in our life, but one can have inner peace, obviously, in the midst of what life continues to be.

Rick: And so, if your realization was one in which your self-definition or your self-concept or your self-perception or your self-understanding shifted, and your identification became predominantly with that peace, then surely you also still had external characteristics, a body, a family, interests, being hungry, being tired, being sleepy, sick, or healthy.  All those things are happening to another aspect of your life.

Sharon: Yes, and actually I’m glad you put it that way, because even though my experience at that time was of being a solid block of peace, the peace came because the inner and outer experience had come into alignment with each other. There was a kind of a seamlessness of being.  And so, even though there is a whole external range of activity and motion and change and my identity as a woman and a wife and whatever else I hold around myself as part of who I am externally, all that and the sense of my identity are not separate.

Rick: That’s interesting. So, I was going to say, do you consider that peace to be a component of who you are, that in addition to that component you have the various other components you just referred to. But you just said, “not separate,” and “not separate” implies that it’s not compartmentalized like that.  Everything is part of a larger wholeness. The peace is part of it, and all the other things you mentioned are part of it at the same time.

Sharon: At the same time, right. I mean, you can divide it into parts and components for the sake of talking about it, or sometimes even for doing inner work. I’m sure you have done this where you can notice something in you or that a part of you is experiencing something in the totality of who you are.  But that is really a conceptual separation and it doesn’t exist in reality.

Rick: But when the rubber meets the road,  let’s consider the last time you got really upset about something. In the midst of that experience, where was this peace and where was this awakening that you underwent?

Sharon: I guess, if we put it into a concept of a spectrum of experience, sometimes the peace is big and whatever the frazzled moment might include is smaller, and sometimes the frazzledness gets bigger and the peace becomes a little less dominant in my experience.

Rick: So, it is like a lens which can zoom in here and zoom back there.

Sharon: Yeah, a lot of it is in terms of where my attention is. I mean, I can be completely involved in the frustration of trying to get the cookies to come out right when I’m baking them for my family.  And it is as if there are so many little details that you have to be aware of and I can’t seem to get it exactly right each time.  At the same time, I would say there is a capacity in a moment to see myself and laugh at that, to laugh at myself going through that.  But mostly, I don’t try to separate myself from my experience in any way.  And if I’m going through external anxiety and even being totally upset, I don’t necessarily try to adjust to that, unless I’m hurting the environment in some way by my anger.

Rick: In other words, you don’t try to use that inner realization or inner peace as a tool to dampen down.

Sharon: No, no, no. No, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that because it isn’t necessary.  The peace has really no problem with the little fluff-ups in my personality.

Rick: And so, you probably would consider it to be repressive and even unhealthy to try to maintain some kind of external even keel.  Because the internal keel is the thing that is really guiding the ship.

Sharon: That is true. In some cases, I would consider it a bit intrusive or almost violent, to especially try to make everything fit into an attitude of equanimity or something. On the other hand, though, I would say that in dealing with other people and being in harmony with my environment,  I have more capacity now to take myself in hand and behave appropriately.  I don’t have to fly into a rage just because I’m feeling one at any given time.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to say, there is a stereotypical attitude about what enlightenment might be, that the Buddha himself depicts with his subtle smile and being so peaceful and all that stuff.  But all the people I’ve known, including some famous saints who are regarded by millions to be enlightened,  had a heck of a temper if the situation called for it.  Sometimes, as far as I could tell, it didn’t seem to call for it, but they had no qualms about expressing the full range of human emotions.

Sharon: That’s right. Anyone who has ever lived in close proximity to even great realized beings,  if you have been in an ashram, say, and you are one of the people who gets to be close to that person,  there are many stories about all of them in terms of their temper.  Very few of them were totally equanimous at all times.

Rick: Some of the old Zen masters were said to be very fierce and strict and even harsh.

Sharon: Even Ramana Maharshi, there are stories about him and his kitchen staff, if they spilled any rice on the floor.

Rick: He did not like waste.

Sharon: Anyway, that’s enough about me.

Rick: Yeah, we’ll come back to you, but let’s hear Fax’s story.

Fax: Well, I had been meditating for 25 years, and I was at the point where I pretty much had given up any chance of awakening in this life.  Because when I would sit to meditate, I had the same number of thoughts that I had 20 years before.  It didn’t seem as if my stress level was getting any lower, if anything, it might be growing.

Rick: Did you show any signs of levitating?

Fax: I showed no signs of levitation.  If anything, I was going in the opposite direction. I figured that when I became a teacher, I was meditating for hours and hours every day for months. If that didn’t do it, I wasn’t about to get back into that. So, I pretty much resigned myself to just enjoying meditation for the rest of my life, whatever happened. And then, about 10 years ago, in 1999 something started to get activated.  Somebody said something, we were talking about unity, I said something like unity is when everything is one, and this fellow said “not even one.”  I heard that for some reason, it just struck me as being very funny.

Sharon: Andy Ryan.

Fax: Andy Ryan, he was in town, I was talking to him. And I started laughing. It was something that sort of slipped past my conception of what unity might be, not even one.  What is it if it’s not even one?  It made it more intimate to me.  I had several other experiences over the next couple of months  that kind of activated my sense of presence or proximity to being. It was not so much a concept of far away. And I was doing shows the whole time, but there was a liveliness there, as if something was moving that hadn’t moved in a while. And Sharon set up an appointment with me with this fellow who was in town, he was a disciple of Papaji, an Indian master who had awakened a number of Western students, who then came to this country.  And so, he had this process called radical awakening, and I went to that.

Rick: Who was that?

Fax: His name was…

Sharon: Yukio.

Rick: Oh, the Japanese guy.

Fax: The Japanese guy.

Rick: Ramana or something.

Sharon: Ramana.

Rick: Right.

Fax: Ramana, the Japanese guy.

Rick: I remember that.

Fax: Ramana. And so I went to that having no idea what it was.  It was a type of self-inquiry which turned you back on yourself.  I had a recognition.  I wouldn’t even call it an experience.  It was just a recognition, like when you meditate, you have the experience of the identity of who you are, first of all.  You’re a person, you’re a Red Sox fan, a golfer, and so on.  There are whole layers of identity.  And when you meditate, you have the experience of pure consciousness.  Well, and then you come back and you are always having all these experiences. And it kind of flipped, in that it was as if consciousness became aware of itself, having the experience of Fax Gilbert. And it wasn’t anything flashy.  It wasn’t anything special. It was hardly even noteworthy, except that afterwards I just felt this peace. And I felt this connection. And I felt a separation between who I was as consciousness and who I was as Fax Gilbert. And I went home and I sat down to meditate and there was nowhere to go. And so, I went to sleep that night with nowhere to go. I mean, no mantra, nothing.  And this just deepened over the next six months to a year.

Rick: You kept meditating?

Fax: No, I didn’t. I didn’t use the mantra.

Rick: But you would sit and close your eyes?

Fax: I would sit and close my eyes.  There was no real way to describe it. I ended up reading these Advaitic books, Nisargadatta, Robert Adams, and always to just try to connect what I had experienced with something that I could hang on to.

Rick: I might just interject that Advaita usually means non-duality.  And it is an Indian system of philosophy and experience that aims to enable people to rise to a state in which they experience the oneness or the non-dual nature of life. Is that a good definition? If we throw out a term like that, we have to define it.

Fax: Of all the books, those are the ones that I resonated with the most in that recognition.

Rick: Nisargadatta, Robert Adams.

Fax: Yes, those guys. And it just kind of rolled out. From there it was as if I would look at people and there was a connection. Between who I was as consciousness and who they were as consciousness, there was a connection.

Rick: You basically see that whenever you’re…

Fax: You see it. But on the other hand, there was a disconnection between who I was as Fax Gilbert.  There was less of an attachment to the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat that comes with daily living and my relationship.  And that went on for several years, where I was just more up here.  And then I had another, I would call it a separate awakening, where that recognition of who I was as consciousness went into my heart.

Rick: Very interesting.

Fax: And that was through the instrumentality of working with people, Waking Down, which has a system of social interaction, speaking, gazing. And it was very clear, it just went into my heart. And that range of identity that we were talking about, Sharon described it as seamless. It was as if I was reconnected, this consciousness had finally owned itself as me. And there was a seamlessness about it.  And it was at that point when I just felt the fullness of being in my body for the first time, together, whole. And so that is kind of a Cliff Notes version.

Rick: Yeah. Has it gone beyond your heart?

Fax: I would say it is more in my body now, as well as the heart.

Rick: The reason I ask is related to an American teacher, who goes by the name of Adyashanti, who is coming to Fairfield in about a year and a half. That is as soon as he can come, because he is so popular. But in any case, he talks about a progression of awakening from the head to the heart to the gut. And, when you say it is in your body, maybe that is what he means by gut.  But it is kind of cool that you notice the same progression.

Fax: Yeah, it’s more physicalized. To me, evolution is not just going up and away.  There is an evolution or an incarnation of spirit into matter.  And there are different progressions that individuals have in experiencing this.  People seem to awaken in their own way, in different places and so on.  But it seems also, in addition to going up and recognizing yourself as consciousness, as if there is a movement inward. This is allowing that consciousness, when the rubber meets the road, to live itself as you, more and more fully.  So, you have this dynamic set up between who you are as consciousness and who you are as a human being,  the limitless and the limits, and then the interaction of the two creates this love, life, bliss, fear.  The whole range.

Rick: When you first started talking, you said you had been at a stage in your life, where you had thrown in the towel and you just felt as if, “I’ve been meditating for 25 years, it doesn’t look like anything much is going to change. I’ll just live it out like this.”  And it’s funny because there is this friend of mine, whom I’ve actually referred to a couple of times during interviews in previous weeks, and who is on what is called the Purusha program in India. That is a monastic group of guys who are doing TM for maybe 8-12 hours a day. They do TM and related practices up in the Himalayas, really going at it.  He sent me this email a few weeks ago in which he said that a lot of the guys who he hangs out with, and he feels maybe a lot of people out here, who have reached our age also have begun to reach a spiritual mid-life crisis,  in which they feel as if, “Well, maybe I’m not going to make it,  what do I do now, what are the implications of this? Am I going to sit here for the rest of my life, or what?”  And his accusation of my show was that I’ve found a lot of people who have compromised and who have lowered the bar just to make themselves feel better. As if they feel like, “Oh well, otherwise my life is in vain, everything I’ve been doing all these decades. So, I’m just going to cheapen the definition of enlightenment in order to claim it and make myself feel good.”  And his main sticking point was that in the TM movement there has been a teaching that being able to perform siddhis, or so-called supernormal abilities, is a litmus test of having actually attained enlightenment.  In the TM movement there is a hierarchy of states of consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness. According to his understanding, even cosmic consciousness should be associated with the ability to perform siddhis.

My own attitude, and I’ll let you respond to this, is that I take everything with a grain of salt, no matter who says it. I certainly respect and quote and read all kinds of so-called spiritual authorities, and I take what they have to say into consideration, but I’ve reached a stage in my own life where I’m not comfortable taking anything as a dogma, or anything as an iron-clad rule, because there seem to be exceptions to every generality, and awakening seems to show up in about 7 billion different flavors.  So anyway, could you perhaps respond and elaborate on what I’ve been saying there?  Either of you, really.

Sharon: Well, interesting idea, interesting question. I know that is a concern for people who have been very dedicated, as we all have been for many years. On the trajectory of self-recognition, God consciousness, and so on, they don’t want to fool themselves.  And that was certainly primary in my experience, too.  I didn’t want to accept anything less than the real thing, and I definitely did not want to be fooling myself.  In fact, for me, doubting was my ally in this process, in that I would hold off for many years even trusting my experience, because I didn’t want to believe anything that wasn’t true.  And so, when the realization fell in, there was a habit of doubting, and so there was a questioning that would come occasionally for about a week or two, a deep questioning of this, “This can’t be it, is this it?”  And really questioning. Then came the recognition that I could let go of the doubt of my mind and just fall into what I was actually being in that moment. That, for me, eased the pain and struggle of doubting. But yet, it took a while for me to let go of that, because of that very reason, not wanting to fool myself. I can certainly understand where that person is coming from in saying that.  And I think it doesn’t hurt to doubt to a point, and then after a point, you can question the doubt.

Rick: Right. It can be a game or a habit your mind has fallen into, just cranking along the same old pattern.

Sharon: That’s right. And actually, a lot of people that I talk to, who are still aspiring to Self-recognition, I see in them that there is a way in which they are denying their experience. They are so avidly concerned that they might be fooling themselves.

Rick: When I mention this show to people around town, there is generally a very positive, enthusiastic response. But some people have a reaction, and maybe it means I actually am not talking to a representative sample in the community. I have my own little circle of people who think the way I do. But some people have the reaction that they refer to it always saying “you’re interviewing people who think they’re enlightened.”  And there is a sarcastic undertone to the use of that phrase, almost a hostility sometimes.  Fairfield does have a history of people who cause a bit of trouble, and actually perhaps, argue to be crazy, and who proclaim enlightenment.  And so, I can understand why people might be a little bit squeamish, skittish,  about anyone who claims to be enlightened. But it’s becoming so commonplace almost. There are so many people who are having awakenings. And part of the reason I wanted to do this show was to make it obvious to the community, that there is actually something happening here.

Sharon: And I think that is one of the reasons we refer to the events of our recognition as recognition, awakening, realization, rather than enlightenment. Because there’s so much–

Rick: Baggage.

Sharon: Well, yeah, it’s like talking about God.  I mean, the conceptual understandings that we have gained over the years may not really be in line with your recognition.  And your recognition, maybe you are not one of the great realizers with all the siddhis and the halo around your head.  But you can be self-realized as you are.  And the concepts of enlightenment that we carry sometimes are actually getting in the way of letting ourselves be the awakened one that we are.

Rick: Yeah.  Which is not to say that somewhere down the line you might be the character with the halo and the supernormal powers. But who knows what the whole span of human development or spiritual development is.

Sharon: And growth doesn’t stop with what Maharishi calls ‘unity consciousness.’  There are possibilities of unfoldment and deepening that continue constantly.

Rick: From what I can gather, growth does not only not stop with the dawn of awakening,  but it accelerates.

Sharon: I would say that is true.  Absolutely, that is so true.

Rick: It is sort of, because you’ve gotten out of the way of your own progress at that point.  Maybe that’s one way of putting it.

Sharon: And another way of looking at it too, is that  if there is a solid base of ground under your feet,  instead of the ground of being, you can reach farther and you can bear more.

Rick: You can also relax more, I think. I think a lot of us, maybe it’s humans, the way humans operate, we tend to suppress or bottle up things that are too uncomfortable to look at, what you experience. But if you have, how do you put it,

Sharon: A solid ground of being.

Rick: A solid ground of being, then you can relax and if these things come up, they’re not so overwhelming as they might otherwise be.

Sharon: That’s really true.

Rick: And they can dissolve.  When I was a new meditator, I went to my TM teacher and I was really upset, because my girlfriend at the time was getting into heroin, or getting back into heroin or something like that, and I didn’t know what to do. And my teacher said, “Be an Ocean.”   And I’ve always liked that phrase. It is great. Because if you think of it, we have all this stuff, all this mud in us that we feel, from traumatic experiences and whatnot that we experience in life.  If you’re a glass of water and you’re trying to dissolve some mud in a glass of water, it’s not going to be successful. But if the water goes to the ocean, throw the mud in.  And so, we just drown the being, but there’s just perhaps a lot of stuff that dissolves more quickly and more thoroughly.

Sharon: Yeah.

Fax: I wouldn’t use the word “dissolve” so much.  What happens is that, when you accept your humanity, your consciousness connects with who you are as a person. Then a lot of the things that were submerged zoom forth.  It’s as if, to give an example in our marriage, this year, it will be 35 years we have been married.  And in order to make things comfortable over the years, certain things would come up which we didn’t really go into and deal with.  But after awakening, these same things would come up, and there was more of a foundation for going into it and bringing it into the light of consciousness, so to speak. There was a greater foundation. I remember I would get angry about something that Sharon did, and she wasn’t able to hold it because she had abusive parents and so on.  They would always get angry at her, and it was very traumatic.  After awakening, I found that she would come right back at me.  And so, it was such a relief to be able to just let it out and have it come back.

Sharon:  We could deal with stuff that was uncomfortable.

Fax: It was uncomfortable, right.  But what it did was to create more of a connection, a passion, a presence that hadn’t been there.  Everything was mechanical and it became alive.

Rick: It’s interesting, there may be a lesson in that for me.  Sometimes if my wife gets mad, I’m tempted to reciprocate,  but I find that if I can just hold my temper and be patient,  five minutes later she’s going to be completely removed and the whole thing is past.  And I feel as if, had I reciprocated, it would have exacerbated the situation,  and we would still be feeling bad.  But I don’t know, maybe I’m…

Fax: It’s just that every situation is different, every couple is different.  And sure, in certain situations that is the right thing to do, but in other situations maybe stuffing yourself over and over isn’t necessarily the right thing to do.  Maybe just by blowing it off, behavior becomes more spontaneous.  There’s no way, it just happens.

Sharon: The point you were making too, about being the ocean and dissolving the mud, it does seem as though there is an integration of aspects of myself which I had been uncomfortable with before.  For instance, you wake up at three in the morning and there’s anxiety.  In the past, perhaps I would have done everything I could to avoid doing that.  I would try to get back to sleep, get up, read a book, anything to avoid feeling the anxiety.  Whereas now, there is a willingness and a curiosity even to feel what is there, what is arising in me.  Because I have found that really, there is nothing which can overpower or overthrow my being.

Rick: That’s interesting.

Sharon: So, there’s more. And then when that fear or anxiety or whatever impulse like that might arise, it gets the energy behind it. I can say, it gets integrated, not dissipated.  In a way, maybe you could say dissipated, in that it becomes part of the whole.  Maybe there was something which I’d been holding out or which I hadn’t really been conscious of,  which then becomes conscious and part of what now is my being.

Rick: That’s interesting. I know the character of my own meditation has changed in recent times  from an underlying attitude of seeking the bliss  to an approach in which I consciously and willingly allow my awareness to go through discomfort, fear, vulnerability, anxiety.  A lot of times I’ll sit there for an hour and just feel these waves of fear and maybe depression and anxiety.  But it feels as if something very healing is taking place. It’s a little different than the way I used to go about it.

Sharon: And healing as well.  It’s not that you want to banish some demon, but more that you are being able to open your awareness within that impulse that is coming up.  Because there is awareness there, it is also possible.  And then it becomes part of the whole.

Rick: Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela is one example of those who makes the enemy his friend.  And that’s what he is, he’s the enemy.

Sharon: Right. That’s good.

Fax: So, I just wanted to say, the whole idea of enlightenment versus awakening.  The word itself, it seems like it’s a noun. It has an ending to it.  Enlightenment.  Whereas I don’t feel, from the recognitions that I’ve had, that the recognition of who you are as consciousness is a solid, non-changing identity.  But the rest of it, the recognition of who you are as consciousness, living itself as you,  is constantly changing, constantly growing.  So, it’s a paradox. You become comfortable with paradox.

Rick: Beautiful. I love that.

Fax: Because the idea that you think you are enlightened has nothing to do with thinking.  You don’t have to think that you are a male, or that you are an American, or that you are a Red Sox fan.  It’s part of your identity. It’s not a thought.  It’s not a concept that you own or that you figure out.  It’s a surprise, is what it is. It’s a surprise.  That’s what an awakening is. You are surprised by something. You are surprised by yourself.

Rick: I think it’s possible for a person to think erroneously.

Sharon: Or to believe they are.

Rick: To delude themselves.

Sharon: Because you don’t walk around thinking everyone is like that.

Rick: Right. I mean, it’s possible. I think we have all seen examples of it.

Fax: But this is not to say that whatever spiritual prowess and developments that people are having in Purusha and in caves around the world are anything like what we are doing.  I mean, it could be something totally different.  It could be a totally different identification, a totally different experience.

Rick: It could be culturally different.

Fax: Yeah, totally different Dharma.

Rick: And by Dharma we mean, a course of action which is most appropriate for that individual.  Right. Although I do think, wouldn’t you agree that, although externally people are doing very different things in the course of developing spiritual …

Fax: Self is the Self.

Rick: Yeah. There is some kind of commonality at the basis of it all.

Fax: And then how it reintegrates into that person, the personal journey is different.

Rick: Right. Life is one little lamp in many.  That’s a simple thing.

Fax: They should know.

Rick: Yeah.  So …

Sharon: I love this conversation about thinking one is enlightened because I don’t think about it as enlightened.  I don’t think about myself as enlightened.

Rick: Right.

Sharon: And one of the great joys of my realized existence since the time when I finally owned who I am,  is the joy of just being an ordinary realized person.  And also, just being in ordinary life and having the joys and the sorrows that come with that. To me, I enjoy the element of not knowing rather than the totality of knowing everything. You know, we’ve all heard that idea that one is enlightened and knows everything. For me it was the freedom of not knowing that was blissful. So, it can be blissful in your life.

Rick: Personally, in my terminology, I tend to hear you saying there is some sort of ultimate state of development, if such even exists. Maybe you can count people who have attained that on the fingers of one hand.  And people who have entered at a time in the world of the sages.  And it’s my perspective that there are many stages of awakening.  There may be an initial one that’s very significant, which is irreversible,  and from that point on you’re kind of grounded in the self.  But as you’ve been saying, it doesn’t stop there.  It doesn’t stop just as long as you’re enlightened.  And who knows how many stages there are in the world.

Sharon: And I think somehow it seems to be part of realization that realizations or awakenings,  often feel like “this is it.”  It’s almost as if…

Rick: It couldn’t get any better than this.

Sharon: Right. And when you had the realization you did with Ramana, where that self-recognition felt it was recognizing yourself as consciousness, for a couple of years at least, you couldn’t conceive of there being anything more to realize.  And then at some point there was.

Rick: Like the guys in that beer commercial sitting in the boat, fishing, and then saying “you couldn’t get any better than this.” It keeps getting better.

Fax: I would say it keeps getting more true. You see, “better” indicates, I’m happier and happier. So  I would say truer.  It’s as if truth begins to zoom forth in different levels and that becomes more your focus in life, those moments of truth, whether they are painful or not.

Rick: Is that the kind of thing you can give examples of?

Fax: Yeah.  About a month ago my mother passed away.  It was fairly quick, fairly sudden.  We went to Boston to be with her.  We were there just the day before she passed.  And what happened in my experience is that her life zoomed forth in both aspects, both the purity of it and the goodness of it and her quality of giving in her life.  And at the same time, there were the limitations that she had as a person.  And it was as if the aspects of my being, the wholeness of my own being was activated  and at the same time the excruciating limitations of her passing were also enlivened.  And so there was this poignancy of being that was very lively and very full.  It was as if both aspects of my identity, the identity of who I was as a person  and the limitations that came with that, were there fully.  And the fullness of that which held it, the consciousness that registered those experiences was there more fully.  And so, to me that is the stuff of life, because it’s real.  There is nothing conceptual about it. You are there and it is right there with you  and who you are zooms forth to meet it in whatever capacity you have.

Rick: It’s interesting because Maharishi used the phrase “200% of life.”  And I think most of us thought about it as being, “All right, on the inside I’m going to be a straight and white and wise yogi,  on the outside I’m going to be filthy rich.”  And what you’re saying is kind of a beautiful example, perhaps, well, there could be many examples, but I think it’s a very nice example.

Fax: There’s a place for the forms. In terms of forms, perhaps I mean limitations.  Because what it does is it caps the boundlessness of your consciousness.  It’s as if there is a limit. Looking at a sunset, it’s fragile, it’s gone.  And yet because it is fragile and because it is gone, that makes it beautiful, it creates that charge.  If the sun is there all the time, then there’s not that connection.  And so, the limitations create this polarity where the being flows to limitation.  It’s like a marriage, and the poignancy of life becomes precious.

Rick: So, in other words, it’s almost as if you are saying, maybe you’ll tell me if I’m wrong,  that the limitations make you appreciate the unlimited aspect more,  and the unlimited aspect makes you appreciate the limitations more.  They kind of mutually mix one another? Is that right?

Fax: I would say yeah. See what it does is, it’s as if who we are is both limited and unbounded.  And it’s like a slot machine. When stuff like that happens, it’s as if more of who you are comes forward into the moment.  There are times when you are more caught up in the limitation, the day-to-day getting through whatever, and then there are times when there is more of that fullness of who you are as being.  But when something like that powers it forward, then there is this kind of a sweet sadness of both together, which becomes precious.

Rick: You gave an example last week, which I think might be a good way to illustrate this.  An example of running through O’Hare trying to catch a connecting flight, and noticing that in the midst of all this chaos; close to Christmas, a crowded airport, late for the connection, lungs burning, running down; there was this deep silence, which was just as predominant, if not more so, than all the chaos at the airport.  And instead of thinking, ‘Oh, this sucks, I’m going to miss my flight, what a drag,’ the thoughts were, ‘Wow, this is fun. The silence is cool, the activity is cool, it’s beautiful, loving the experience.’

Sharon: So even while you were experiencing the burn of the lungs, and the concern about getting your flight,

Rick: Which I missed.

Sharon: You did?

Rick: Well, I got another one.

Sharon: But at the same time there was an enjoyment of the whole experience?

Rick: Yeah, it was a blast. It was fun. It’s just a case in point.

Sharon: So, there was a certain amount of freedom there at the time that you felt like, ‘Got to get to the plane.’

Rick: I was doing my darnedest to get to the plane, because I didn’t want to miss the connection,  but at the same time, I was just feeling as if, ‘It’s not going to be the end of the world, if I don’t make it,  the next thing will happen, whatever that is.’

Sharon: That’s good.

Rick: I like your use of the word ‘paradox.’  You find that your ability to incorporate the paradoxes within existence itself,  the universal value, the individualized value, also makes you more broad-minded in incorporating other paradoxes,  such as political perspectives, religious perspectives, different things like that,  about which people get so combative in this world.

Sharon: Sometimes.  You have to work at that one sometimes.

Fax: No. (Laughter)

Rick: Because you have your own particular political philosophy.

Sharon: Well, you know, I’m serious when I say I had to work at that one, because it’s painful to be only on one side of something. And yet you do find that you are on one side of something, at least in terms of your opinions, your sensibilities, and so on.  So, it’s useful to open, to recognize that there is room in life for opposites. That even having enemies is useful, because it strengthens one, having enemies.  So, having all the voices is a good thing, but it’s still painful. I’m saying it is painful to the personality to have somebody express a point of view different than my own.  And sometimes I get very angry at those people.  So, I think both are present. Both tendencies.

Rick: What I usually find is I feel as if I can see why they think that way, on gun control, abortion, health care, I can see why they have the attitude they have, but I don’t agree. Here’s my attitude.  And, it takes a variety of life, if we all thought the same way, it wouldn’t be a very interesting world.  But, you have your kind of point on the spectrum as well, in terms of your own opinions.  Which I think leads to a broader point, which is that some people feel that enlightenment, spiritual awakening,  or whatever term you want to use, kind of turns you into a blob, a colorless sap lacking personality.  Somebody who really doesn’t have any conviction.

Fax: Here’s the thing. You recognize yourself as consciousness, and that is a part of your identity.  And you can feed that, which can take you out of the colors that are the rest of your identity.  You can feed that through experience, through direction, through attention, so that it becomes more of who you are.  And that is your bigger reality, so to speak.  Or, you can go into the other aspects of your identity, the human aspect, the limitations, the personality, the story.  Whatever it is that’s there that makes your person who it is, can also be enlivened.  So, it just depends where the attention goes, in terms of what gets enlivened.  I don’t think there’s any, “Okay, you’ll be like this, or you’ll be like that.”

Rick: Do you think that is a Dharma issue again?

Fax: Yeah, I do.

Rick: Some people just have the natural inclination to be aloof and not so involved in things.

Fax: It could also be a lack of understanding. Somebody has an awakening, and for the first few years of mine, that was all there was.  And everything I did was to culture that consciousness, my identification with consciousness.  That was where my attention was, and that was dominant in my identity.  So, I think it’s just a natural kind of progression that takes place.

Rick: Some spiritual texts and teachers say that  the reason for having a more reclusive or less involved life is to scare yourself,  the impact of sensory impressions, of sensory overload, because that kind of overshadows being, or your consciousness.  When you took the opposite tack after those first several years, and began to plunge into your relative life more,  did you find that anything was lost, or overshadowed?

Fax: I would say that the other aspects of my identity began to balance out what was there in terms of consciousness.  There was both of that.

Rick: Do you mean a balance between your relative and your conscious?

Fax: I think that awakening is not just in one direction, it’s an individual thing.  It’s not something that is intrinsic to the awakening itself.  The awakening itself isn’t on the level of mind or feeling, it’s consciousness that awakes through itself.  It is who you are. What is going to stop it? It is beyond death.  It’s going to be beyond a feeling if it’s beyond death, it’s going to be beyond a thought about it.  It’s more intimate to you than who you are as a person, which is a thought.

Rick: I have a friend who had an awakening and she said, “I think I’m going to see if I can make this go away.”  So, she proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk, to see if it would. And it didn’t, although I don’t think that is something she made a daily habit of.

Sharon: It can’t go away.

Fax: Before the awakening is the self, after the awakening is the self.  There’s a dot, you put a dot right here, and that’s not awakened.  And you put another dot right there, and that’s awakened.  What’s the difference? One knows it’s awakened, the other one doesn’t.

Rick: Yes.

Fax: It’s the same situation.

Rick: From some perspective that might not make any difference,  but from the perspective of the person actually living life, it could make a heck of a lot of difference  in terms of the way in which they enjoy their life, or the quality of their life.

Sharon: If you have been a strong seeker before this all came about,  there was the idea that there were actions that we could do which would further the process of enlightenment.

Rick: Like rub oil on your body.

Sharon: Whatever, all of the myriad things that we believed would speed the process.  And I don’t know if they did or not. I know that we did them sincerely and diligently,  and then awakening happened.  So, I don’t know if there’s a cause and effect to that.

Rick: I would think it might all matter to you, but there is a cause and effect.  I mean, spiritual practices have a purpose, and people who practice them tend to awaken more commonly than those who don’t.  And I think it’s not just coincidental, it’s causal.  And what it really does is it does sort of purify, clarify, make the nervous system a more fit instrument for having that realization.  Because any realization, any experience is very soon retaliated by the nervous system.

Sharon: That is right.

Rick: I mean, in fact, if an awakened person had a stroke and the brain was severely damaged,  I wonder what would happen to that person.

Sharon: Well, Ram Das has a book about it.

Rick: That’s true.

Sharon: He has a whole book about it.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. It’s great. I saw the documentary.  So, I have some questions here, and I’m in no hurry to ask them, because you’re doing well.  And if I’m not asking something and some thought pops into your mind or you feel like there is some thread of a conversation that could have taken us in an interesting direction, feel free to bring it up, it’s very informal. Is there anything you want to ask me? One thing that occurred to me a minute ago, when you were talking about transforming into life, and I forget the terminology, but a lot of consciousness is relived in the relative life.  It seems to me that that’s …

Fax: The recognition is that it is now and always has been living itself as who you are.

Rick: Right.

Fax: And that there’s a joy in that.

Sharon: And a liberation, because there’s nothing to do. It never has not been and it continues to be that, because that’s always the situation. It never gets in its own way, because that which is realized has always been living in you anyway.

Rick: Yeah, although I think that kind of topic is a little bit dangerous, because I have run into people here and there who adopt that as an attitude.  “There’s nothing to do, I’m fine as I am, I’ll just go ahead and live my life.”

Sharon: You’re right, that’s absolutely right.

Rick: And they haven’t had any sort of awakening or realization, but they are just copping out.

Sharon: Yeah, it doesn’t work as an attitude.

Rick: It’s not an attitude.

Sharon: The right attitude if you’re going to have one is, “I must have this, I must know about it myself,” or whatever.  “Your hair should be on fire to have it.”  That would be a better attitude.

Rick: Right, the old story of the master holding a disciple underwater until he almost drowned, and then letting him up.  You have to want it as badly as you want to breathe.

Sharon: Yeah, if you have to have an attitude, the one that comes most naturally before awakening is that strong desire.  That is true, what you’re saying.

Fax: I think there is an element of grace to the whole thing.  You can make yourself available to awakening, you can have spiritual practices.  One Zen master said that awakening is not a linear thing, and that awakening is an accident.  But spiritual practices kind of make you accident-prone.

Rick: Yeah, I mean there have been instances in which people have been alcoholics or drug addicts or whatever,  and have come upon some spiritual awakening.  I mean, Byron Katie was in a halfway house, a cockroach crawled across her foot.

Sharon: Kind of unconscious, even.

Rick: Yeah, she was pretty out of it.  And a cockroach crawled across her foot, and somehow or other that triggered an awakening.

Sharon: A powerful awakening.

Rick: And she was never the same again.

Fax: In a sense, to me it was like a reset button.  The recognition of who you are as consciousness, knowing back, it was always there, registering every experience that my memory would have.  In order to have that experience, it was being registered by consciousness.  And it was like a reset, so that in a sense, nothing happened.  There was no change, there was no experience, it was just a recognition of a reality that has always been there.  And so, in that sense, that is why I said nothing happens.  Something happened, but it wasn’t an experience, it wasn’t something in time and space.

Rick: It was a recognition.

Fax: Yeah.

Rick: It’s as if you have always been a multi-millionaire, but you forgot you have the bank account.  And one day somehow you get the key and you open it up and you think, “Oh my God, this has been here all these years.  I’ve been scraping and saving and pinching pennies, and I’ve always been a millionaire. I’ll be darned.”

Fax: Or you’re looking for your glasses.

Rick: Yeah, they’re on your head.

Sharon: But at the time as we are saying this, I remember how frustrating it was to hear people talk like this.

Fax: Yeah, sure.

Sharon: Because you are just trying to get it, trying to understand it, intellectually cognize it, make it happen somehow.  And smugly sitting here and saying this can be very frustrating to hear for a true aspirant.  And so, I guess I would just have to say, when I was saying that there’s nothing you can do to get this,  even that is extremely frustrating, because you want to be doing something.  So, it is good to have this spiritual practice. At least it helps you to relax.

Rick: If we had to distill this down to a practical recommendation, mine would be, keep doing your spiritual practice. Do whatever you feel is helping you, and whatever you enjoy, and whatever seems to be producing benefits.

Sharon: Yeah, and just keep your mind open and listen.

Fax: I would say also, if you know somebody who has had an awakening, talk to them about it.

Sharon: Spend time with them.

Fax: Spend time with them.

Rick: It is contagious.

Sharon: It is contagious.

Fax: Absolutely, and don’t be afraid to speak about where you are in your process. And that way, if there are misconceptions to owning a recognition that anybody has, they can be cleared up.

Rick: Yeah, that’s important. I mean, and there are all kinds of groups and gatherings that a person can associate with, and others can interact with people who have had spiritual awakenings.  And you guys have been in the Waking Down group for some time, which if you do a search on Google for Waking Down, it will come right up near the top. And there is, of course, the TM Movement. And here at Fairfield, we have a weekly discussion group every Wednesday night, in which probably half the people in the room are awakened. And it has been very instrumental in helping others awaken. And that’s actually a traditional thing, too. Many of the ancient traditional scriptures say that the company of the enlightened, the company of other enlightened people is an extremely powerful advantage for awakening oneself.

Sharon: Absolutely. And for me anyway, part of the reason that that is true is because, being with people from my own culture in particular, or other women, or people who have had similar histories to mine, and who are obviously living in a state of deep self-acceptance and peace and joy, for me to see that they are just like me, and I’m just like them in most ways, and realizing I don’t have to perfect myself in order to be all of who I am. I don’t have to purify myself or be some other person,  have other kinds of experiences that are more exalted than the ones I’m having. And if there were something that I could tell my previous self, that is one of your questions, that if there is something I could tell myself, it would just be trust yourself, trust your experience.

Rick: We talked about lowering the bar. I think many people raise the bar to impossibly great heights. And I think, in this community at least, which has a spiritual background which by and large stems from an Indian tradition, there is a tendency to associate or perhaps to confuse many of the trappings of Indian culture with awakening or enlightenment itself. Anybody can come into town here wearing a dhoti and using an accent and people will fall at their feet. Enlightenment or awakening is not Indian, it’s not Asian, it’s not even earthly,  it’s a totally universal thing, which I imagine is pretty much the same thing on Alpha Centauri as it is here.

Sharon: Perhaps, yeah.

Rick: Perhaps. I don’t know too much about Waking Down aside from talking to friends who are involved in it, but it is my understanding that there is an interesting checklist that you actually can sit down and go through with someone to verify whether an awakening they feel they have had is legitimate or not. Can you talk about that? Is that sort of proprietary information?

Sharon: You know, it’s not exactly a checklist. We were at a conference for teachers in Waking Down, and we were at a teachers conference this summer where the teachers have the job of sitting with someone and hearing what their experience is and then confirming for them what they already know. They talked about it at length, and it isn’t a checklist, they all have their own way of appreciating what someone has said.

Rick: So, it is not some standardized questionnaire or something?

Sharon: No, not at all. In fact, a lot of it had to do with confidence in being. Confidence when a person speaks their own experience, their own words, and when I say their experience, I’m not speaking of experience like celestial experiences, but I’m talking about the way one has related to life and their own identity. In speaking that, there’s confidence in being that comes forward.

Fax: And a uniqueness of expression.

Sharon: And a uniqueness of expression.

Rick: Like you are not just doing a parody.

Fax: Right, exactly.  A uniqueness of expression where it is possible to determine that a person really owns this identity.

Rick: Do you feel that you have both been pretty reliably assessed?

Fax: No. We are kind of new teachers. We each have several people whom we work with, some on the phone, some in person. And we create the space where they can begin to own more who they are, in terms of who they are as an individual, who they are as consciousness. It is just in a conversational way.

Rick: I was talking to a friend at Cafe Paradiso, which is a local coffee shop here, and she was saying, “How are you going to choose people for your show?” And I said, “Well, I have to take them at their word. I’m not really qualified to determine whether someone is awake or not. I just maybe have a feeling about them. As if there’s somebody that I’m rather skeptical of, but I certainly can’t tell anything for certain.” And she said, “Sure you can. You can tell them.”  And I said, “No, actually I can’t. Maybe some of the criteria that you just stated is what I would use, just an obvious sincerity, genuineness of expression. They’re not parroting concepts, but they are obviously speaking the real thing.”

Fax: That was unique for me.  For years I have been reading the books of spiritual teachers. And you read the book and you try to understand what they are saying. And then afterwards, there’s a whole reset that takes place. And you read it and you say, “Okay, that’s what they’re saying. This is how I would say it.” It just came alive. It’s like night and day. The difference between concept and recognition.

Rick: Yeah, there’s some core, I can’t do it today, but from the Buddha, he actually says, “Don’t believe anything anybody says, just because they said it. Even if I say it, Buddha speaking, don’t just take it as truth. You have to go by your own life, by your own experience.”

Fax: Because depending upon the point of reference that that person is speaking about, the truth is going to be different. They are speaking from the point of reference of the Absolute. None of this exists. It’s not there. It’s not real. From the point of view of the relative, the Absolute doesn’t exist.  It’s just as if you have a zero and you multiply it or divide it into anything, whatever it is, it disappears. Only the zero remains. But if you add the zero to anything, the zero disappears. It’s the same integer, but the function changes the reality completely. So, in the same way, somebody who is very much identified with who they are as consciousness, speaks from their truth and it’s just gibberish for somebody hearing it from the point of reference of the relative, and the same and vice versa.

Rick: It was a very nice phrase that Maharishi must have repeated a million times,  which is that knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. And that you can hear something being said from one state of consciousness, from your own state of consciousness, and you’re inevitably going to misinterpret it. But when you rise to the same level of consciousness as the guy who said it, you do the same. And that’s just what you’re saying. You go back and read these books now  from 20 years ago and say, “Oh, well that’s the case.”

Fax: It’s not just misinterpretation either, it’s actual, literal truth. From the point of reference of absolute, this doesn’t exist. It’s like Fax Gilbert as a thought. From the point of reference of Fax Gilbert, the absolute doesn’t exist. And that’s real. The awakening is that you’re able to hold both as a paradox.

Rick: There you go again. I love it.

Fax: Because it is a paradox. I mean, both married together, one totally uninvolved, no qualities, quality-less sap, and the other totally limited, totally full of qualities, married together. And the mind can’t hold that. The only place it will hold that is the heart.

Rick: And as Sharon said earlier, you don’t want to conflate the two  so that you become a quality-less sap.

Sharon: That’s right.

Rick: Let’s go through a few of these questions.  These are some questions that people emailed to me,  and anyone watching this is welcome to email more of them.  At the end of this show there will be titles on the screen which will include my email address, a chat group where you can participate  with people who are interested in this topic, a YouTube channel where all these things are archived.  And we’ll just keep adding to it. Probably that will be the case for a while. But in any case, these are some questions that people have sent in. Let’s just skim through them, and maybe we’ve already covered some, so we’ll skip them. But the first one is, since you awoke or shifted or whatever you want to call it, how has your experience of various human emotions changed? Happiness, fear, compassion, anger, love, whichever ones you care to talk about. Are they the same, are they enhanced, are they muted? How have they changed?

Sharon: Well, for me, I would say that there’s much more of a dramatic experience  of all of the emotions. I think I tamped myself down quite a bit because it would be overwhelming  to experience things as fully as I do now. So, I do experience, what did you say, anger, anger especially, fear, happiness, passion, all of the above, much more fully. And I’m not afraid of experiencing great darkness in myself anymore.

Rick: I read a book when I was a kid, and there was stuff that you could sprinkle on a tree  called “Ever So Much More So.”  You know, everybody was sprinkling it on the tree, “Ever So Much More So.”

Sharon: Yeah, sort of like, what is that, MSG?

Fax: I would just say there is more passion.  The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat are more lively. It’s just plunging more into what I like.

Rick: Good. Has your diet been affected by this?

Fax: Oh, sorry, Dad. It’s probably gotten worse. Let’s see, I eat less pork than I used to.

Sharon: Pork producers.

Fax: I would say, my diet has probably become more eclectic.  I wasn’t a vegetarian. I was a vegetarian for a number of years and then stopped. And now I’m not a vegetarian.

Rick: Eclectic means you don’t worry about it so much.

Fax: Right.

Rick: Well, they say the Buddha died from eating rancid pork.

Sharon: Really?  I think you said about the Buddha, that he, the Buddha, apparently, had said, “Don’t listen to anyone.”

Rick: Don’t believe anything just because somebody said it. Not “don’t listen to anyone,” just don’t take anything as the gospel truth simply because some book says it or because one person said it or whatever. Check it.

Sharon: Right. Well, that exact sentiment is actually the moment that really allowed my being to do, as I remember I said, there was something like a clicking in. And I read it, I was reading this book that Samuel Bondrer had written. Samuel Bondrer is the one who began this “Waking Down” work.  And right here, I think the last page of this book, he said, “So I invite you,” I think I’m paraphrasing here, but it was very similar, “I invite you to disregard anything that other teachers have said and anything that I have said, which is not your experience, and to come forward with what your recognition is, with who you are, with your truth.” And there was something in it, just as if it invited my being forward to inhabit my whole life. It was a really powerful invitation that my being felt. And it was as if I’d always been looking to others. And even reading that book of his, I was looking for the truth or something in the book that would ring true. And having that invitation from a teacher I respect, saying, “No, ignore everything anyone has said. Find your truth and be willing to live your truth.” That was a really powerful thing for me.

Rick: A lot of people who are listening to this will be in the Fairfield community or will have a TM background. And Maharishi once said to a friend of mine who has been meditating since she was a little girl, I think it was way back, 40, 50 years she’s been meditating, he once said to her, “Don’t compare yourself with anybody else,” because she was doing that. And I think we have all, at one time or another, had a tendency to read things or hear people talk about flashy experiences they are having and think, “I’m not having that and I’m feeling like a lump of clay compared to that person.”

Sharon: That’s right. And that actually, I had that disease of comparing myself unfavorably to everybody else’s experience.  And at some point, it was as if, “Oh, they’re all having such good experiences. I’m not having that. I’m just such a slug.” And then there was a moment when my being said, “Well then, I guess I’m here to be that. I’m here to be this one.” And saying, “Whatever this is, this is who I am here to be. This is my job, in fact. My job description here is to be this one with these experiences, however unexalted they may be.” And it reminded me of one of Maharishi’s favorite verses in the Bhagavad Gita, which is an interesting text. It is, “better is death in one’s own dharma or station in life.”

Rick: I happen to have that one memorized.  “Because one can perform it, one’s own dharma, though lesser the merit, is better than the dharma of another. Better is death in one’s own dharma, than dharma of another, to attain it.”

Sharon: Yeah, right. So even someone with a very exalted set of ways of being in the world, siddhis or whatever they are, I would rather be who I am, no matter how humble and ordinary.

Rick: And the first phrase in that verse is, “Because one can perform it.”  You can’t be somebody else.

Sharon: You can’t be somebody else.

Rick: But you’re perfect at being who you are.

Sharon: Absolutely.

Rick: Who can do that better? Nobody. [Laughter]

Rick: Let’s see. Any change in priorities since your awakening?

Fax: Well, we were always drawn to teaching, and so we still are. Just that the teaching is a little different, more from us.

Rick: Now, you are not only a teacher of spiritual matters, but you do these seminars in high schools.

Fax: Schools, yeah.

Rick: In school, of all kinds, I guess. Did you feel that your ability to do that, to work as a mime and a presenter of these programs for children, did that change or improve?

Fax: I would say it improved in the sense that my ability to connect with the audience, to feel the audience and to just feel them in my heart, is amplified since the awakening.

Rick: So, you kind of tune in to them better.

Fax: Well, there’s more love there. There’s more love for who they are and what they are going through and all of that. Whereas before that, there was maybe more of a separation. And I would connect with them as consciousness, but not as the warp and woof of being human. But I also connect with myself.

Rick: Have you noticed a change in their response to you as a result of this?

Fax: Well, my programs are very successful.

Rick: That’s great. It must be fun.

Fax: It is. It’s a lot of fun. I feel very fortunate to be able to express myself and have it appreciated and all that. I go from school to school.

Rick: Yeah, it’s neat to have something to love like that.

Fax: It is.

Rick: Do you guys, well, I think we have covered this, but do you still feel an inclination to sit and meditate or are you completely engaged in activity when you’re awake?

Sharon: I was saying that I’m conscious about my business, acknowledging that I understand the question. I don’t meditate and I haven’t felt inclined to for many years now, actually. Except that I would say that I don’t not meditate ever. I feel as if I’m awake to what is happening and what is arising all the time. But I just wanted to emphasize that I don’t think there is anything wrong with meditation. I did not discontinue the practice after 30 years lightly. But I guess there was a different movement in my being that had to be honored and that is what has been going on. And, well, I imagine there is a possibility I could meditate again. So, I don’t have anything against meditation. I just haven’t been inclined to it for about 10 years now.

Fax: I meditate occasionally. I sit and close my eyes. And also, I’ll wake up at maybe 4 in the morning and I’ll just lie there and allow myself just to be. So that is a type of meditation, I guess.

Rick: Among the people that I know who have awakened, there is a whole gamut. Some people have that. I would say that no one tends to be OCD about it as they once might have been, you know, obsessive compulsive.  But some are quite regular with meditation, others don’t do it at all, others feel like it, there’s no set rule.

Fax: There is a difference that, previously, meditation was a way to get somewhere else. And if you already, if your boat is on the other side of the river, it means your relationship to it is different. That is my experience.

Sharon: If I feel something going on inside me, some rumbling, or I would say movement within my psyche or in my consciousness, I will sit, just sit more and more into it. But it’s not the meditation that I did for all those other years.

Rick: But, you could define it as meditation. It’s a dictionary definition.

Fax: Someone told me, “Well, how long did you meditate?” I said, “I did practice, I enjoyed it for almost 30 years.” He said, “Well, the mark is in there somewhere.” He’s probably right.

Rick: I’m going to ask you a question. This is one thing, I mean, you’re a professional public speaker, performer, so that’s something you’re totally comfortable with. You, Sharon, maybe haven’t done that sort of thing, but is there any area in your life where you have to do something that ordinarily would make you nervous, or where you maybe surprise yourself by being able to do it with, a little bit more calm, if that works?

Sharon: Yeah, I didn’t want to come do this.  When I heard it was television, it’s just something that’s a bit foreign to my experience, and I felt nervous about it.  But then, as soon as I got here, that fear, it felt completely natural.

Rick: I had a guy on a couple of weeks ago who used to be so shy, that he would calculate in class, where the questions were going to come around to, and which ones he’d have to answer, and study it, so he was just terrified of any sort of speaking out or doing anything. And after his awakening, he was invited to speak in front of a group of 12,000 people. He made that speech and such things, so he was proud. And he’s saying that he didn’t feel a ripple, it was as if he was speaking to himself.

Fax: On the other hand, I feel that you awaken as you are, and that necessarily means that if you were afraid of public speaking before, you’re going to be afraid after you awaken. And so, if you’re unconscious about certain aspects of your behavior before awakening, you’re going to be unconscious about those things after. And so, it’s as if you awaken as you are, and perhaps the capacity for growth and experience is going to gradually increase because you have more of a foundation. But it doesn’t necessarily convey a change in personality or a change in dharma or any of those things.

Rick: But what if you’re a wife beater or a thief or a drug addict, do you awaken as that?  Or are those things so much an impediment to awakening that chances are you’re going to have to work them out before you awaken?

Fax: I don’t know.

Rick: Because, someone’s going to hear that you awaken as you are,  and they’re going to think, “I don’t want to be what I am. I’ve got all these flaws. I really suck at this, and I can’t get along with people,” and so on and so forth. And so, I want awakening to improve me. I don’t want to just be an enlightened schmuck.

Fax: Well, maybe that’s a misconception.

Sharon: Yeah, maybe it is. Yeah, it’s pretty wrong. Well, I think that what Fax is saying, though, is, you do awaken as you are, so, whatever crumpled up version of yourself at that moment. But at the same time, there is always room for and ability to improve the character, the disposition, or whatever, if you choose to. And especially if you have true friends who are willing to reflect back to you how your actions impact them.  And so, if you’re a wife beater in your life, you know, you can actually hear and see the repercussions of your actions.  Chances are you’ll have a lot more capacity to change your behavior.

Rick: Well, we could probably go on all night, but I think we’ve covered quite a bit.  Is there anything else that you’d like to add before we close?

Fax: Well, I’ve enjoyed the conversation a lot. One of the questions was, is there any fear about public speaking, or whatever? I don’t have so much fear about that. I have no problem with large audiences.  But when people are asking you about awakening, it’s very intimate, and it isn’t the easiest thing to talk about. And what I find is that, with people who are really interested, it’s easy to talk about. There is a receptivity, and it just flows right out. And it’s a very spontaneous, creative, organic process that you surprise yourself with what you say. On the other hand, if I could sense that somebody is not really interested, and they’re just very kind of chit-chat, or critical, or whatever, then nothing much happens. And so, I feel that being here, you have made us both feel very comfortable and welcome. I felt that your questions indicated a level of awakening within yourself to be able to ask the questions. You have to have a certain degree of identity formed with that process in order to be able to ask the questions in the first place. And so, I want to congratulate you on having the courage to come forward with this show. I think that it’s something that will hopefully help a lot of people to give them the juice, if there’s some process that’s being activated, to move on it, to move with it. And I just feel gratified in the way that you’ve treated both of us with respect.  And we appreciate what you’re doing.

Rick: Well, thanks. I appreciate that appreciation. And it’s funny because in putting together a list of people to interview on this show, and contacting some of them, there are some who I’m convinced are very profoundly awakened, have been for many years, decades, who are still saying, “I don’t know, I don’t want to go out in public, I just don’t know if I want that label attached to me.” And one of my motivations in doing this show is to remove that stigma and make awakening no more unusual or something that one would want to be private about any more than one would be private once, I don’t know, in football or something that we all take for granted. Because it really shouldn’t be, it’s something that is everyone’s birthright, as far as I understand it. And it’s something that everyone can benefit from. And why should it be, why should one’s life get kept under a bushel?

Fax: Yeah, and as we said earlier, awakening itself is a beginning, it’s not an end process. And I think that the awakenings to come are going to be societal. They will be with people who are able to go more fully into who they are and to interact with each other in a more profound and true way. And I think that is going to provide the basis for not just individual awakening, but things that we can’t even conceive of right now.

Rick: Well, that’s a perfect ending. I won’t diminish it by commenting on it. So, thank you all for watching. You’ll see in the titles some links to email addresses, website addresses, and so on, which you might want to explore. And if you would like to be put on a mailing list, to be notified of future episodes of this show, you’ll see that. There is also a YouTube channel you can join, you’ll be notified whenever a new video is put up. And if you feel like you might like to be interviewed on the show, if you feel like the nature of your experience is the sort of thing we’ve been discussing, then please get in touch with us.  So, thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week.