Birthing Radiant Being into Our Humanity, with Susanne Marie, Amoda Maa, & T Jonathon Proctor Transcript

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Birthing Radiant Being into Our Humanity, with Susanne Marie, Amoda Maa, & T Jonathon Proctor

Rick Archer: So I’m going to start this as a BatGap interview just to so because it will be going up on BatGap. And people who are watching on the internet will be familiar with that opening. So are you ready? Is it recording? Great. Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and I am out at the Science and Nonduality conference in San Jose, California, where I’ve been recording a number of shows. Tonight we’re going to have a discussion, which I think is very important and which has actually come up repeatedly during this conference. It seems to be a theme that spiritual teachers and people on the spiritual path are realizing the importance of more and more. And that theme is what we might call embodiment. Another word, I think that’s somewhat synonymous is integration. And we’ll be explaining what that is as we go along. We have an audience here and the audience will be asking questions a little bit later in the presentation. But the the panel members, and I’m just the moderator are as follows. To my left T Proctor, who is the founder of being real being embodied. He offers private sessions and group work in Humboldt County, California, on this theme that we’ll be talking about tonight. To his left, Susanne Marie is a spiritual mentor and founder of transformation through presence. She offers private sessions and groups. She is a mother of two teens and lives in Northern California. And to her left, Amoda Ma, Spiritual Teacher and Author offers thoughts on retreats and private sessions in the UK, Europe and United States. She currently lives in the UK. I’ve interviewed Susanne and Amoda Ma on BatGap. And you can search and find their interviews if you like. And one of these days maybe even this weekend, I’ll interview t as well. T stands for Tyrannosaurus by the way his parents were paleontologists and had a wicked sense of humor.

T Jonathon Proctor: That’s not really true.

Susanne Marie: Actually, it’s a good story.

T Jonathon Proctor: spread that

Rick Archer: So let me ask you a few questions we brainstormed earlier before the conference and about what we’re going to say, and we came up with some questions we might want to ask, we want to ask you in the beginning to see what you have to say. So how many of you would agree that spiritual realization is relevant to everyday life? Okay, and how many feel that it has intrinsic value in terms of subjective fulfillment or, you know, deep experiences, but doesn’t necessarily apply to raising kids or working at a job or any of that kind of stuff? And nobody good. Sorry?

Susanne Marie: You’re in the right room.

Rick Archer: How many of you have had some kind of awakening? Maybe you define it as a non dual awakening? Something along those lines, great, almost everybody. But how many people who just raised their hands, feel that it hasn’t really stabilized in your life as an ongoing living reality? At least not to the extent you would like it to? Okay, how many feel that it has stabilized? Okay. Is it unshakably stabilized? Very good. Does it seem to be getting well? How many of you are confused or curious about about how spiritual realization is lived amidst ordinary life? What it feels like? Do strong emotions still arise, are relationships experienced differently does the focus or purpose of life change? How many are curious about that, right, maybe you’re not so curious because you’re actually experiencing the answer to those questions. How many of you feel that you’re awakening deepens as you learn to be more skillful with your animal instincts, emotions, relationships, physical existence, the somehow that deepens your relationship. Okay? Almost everybody. So we’re all kind of on the same page, I think. So you can see where we’re going with this. And how many of you saw Adyashanti and A. H. Almaas’s talk tonight? That whole talk was about what we’re going to talk about tonight. And you know, this will give you more chance for you maybe probing some different areas and asking questions and stuff. So some of the themes we’re going to talk about tonight are what the difference between an experience of awakening and an embodied awakening might be. What the relationship between the personality self, the mind, body vehicle, and awakened consciousness might be. Whether clearing the mind body vessel is a support for awakening. The never ending unfoldment of awakening as Adya was meant to be referring to tonight, through the human experience. And the question, is this inclusive recognition of awakeness and evolutionary impulse of consciousness? And what is its relevance to our contemporary world? Okay, so who feels motivated to start?

Amoda Ma: What’s the question?

Rick Archer: There’s no question. I’ve just been asked a whole bunch of questions and thrown out a whole bunch of points. As I was reading those, a bunch of little thoughts were popping in your head, like to say this, about that. So let’s start with something that most grabbed your interest.

T Jonathon Proctor: I’ll actually start

Rick Archer: good.

T Jonathon Proctor: Yeah. All right. Hi, everybody. You know, about 16-17 years ago, I had this very profound experience of what people are calling awakening, this profound experience of feeling freed from a really difficult life freed from a very painful existence. And I, you know, kind of, in some ways, like Eckhart Tolle was sitting on park benches, I was going to parks and I was sitting in ecstasy, at the light glistening off the blades of grass, I just was falling in love with like nature in the world, I was going out, I had a camp where I would go out and be alone in the wilderness for weeks at a time and I had this beautiful connection with with the Earth, the planet, with a natural kind of rhythms of light and dark and walking barefoot on the ground, I had this beautiful feeling of presence in my life that I always felt, shouldn’t be there, but I’ve never really felt was there. And that went on for quite a period of time. And then it came to pass that I started to need to do things in the world, I needed to have relationships in the world, I needed to do work in the world to support myself. And what I found is that all of that experience, all of that depth of presence, and gratitude and beauty, it didn’t necessarily translate into the the daily routine of life. And so, for me, it took some time, because I felt like I might be retrained something or a teacher or a teaching or even my own realization. But for me, what came to pass is, is that I decided I needed to get to work and resolve some of the stuff that was going on inside my human my humanity as Adria. And Hamid we’re talking about today. And so I went everywhere that my intuition sent me. And I got very lucky, and I didn’t get stuck or trapped and a lot of dead ends. And I found really useful ways to address the inner conflict, the judge, the hungry animal, the needy, baby, all of the aspects of myself, that were outstanding, and that were still coming up and driving things in my life. And so that’s what my life’s work has become is to share with people that share with other people, the methods and I said methods and practices. And I want to say something about practices here because practices are often equated with seeking. But I don’t see it that way. I don’t see practices as seeking. I see practices as an art. When Segovia practices the guitar, he’s not seeking, right? If you’re practicing the art of your life, that doesn’t mean you’re seeing Thinking means you’re cultivating something here, that means you’re cultivating a body of presence, you’re embodying presence, and it’s a cultivation of presence. So what I share with people is the way that they can most directly become in contact with themselves, and find their own guidance, through the difficult work of resolving the human patterns that our own, that are our families, and that are our ancestral heritage even.

Rick Archer: Incidentally, I don’t think, I think the word seeking has given too much of a bad rap. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeking, if you like seeking seek like a son of a gun. And the time will come when the seeking energy subsides and you feel like it’s more of an exploration and adventure than in some kind of desperate quest. But you know, there’s a strong sense of seeking, there’s nothing wrong with it. In my opinion, I don’t care what Papaji said.

T Jonathon Proctor: And just, you know, as a note, one of the one of the basic neural pathways in a human being is the seeking path. If you look into the neurobiology seeking is one of the primal neural pathways in the human body. So if you’re, if you’re rejecting that you might actually be rejecting something of your innate humanity.

Rick Archer: My teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, former teacher, always used to say the mind has a natural tendency to seek greater happiness, use the word seek. And, you know, it’s we can see it in our experience. Right now, we’re sitting here talking, some beautiful music starts playing in the corner, our attention is going to shift to it without effort, because the mind just continues to seek for greater happiness. Anyway.

Amoda Ma: This this question about whether practices support awakening, or hinder awakening is a is a real juicy one. And it’s, it’s also in some ways, a delicate conversation because it really depends. Almost on which side of the fence if there was a fence, there isn’t a fence, but if there was a fence, which side of the fence you’re on? And that’s the whole we can look at it like, if you could say before awakening, is there a role for practices to cleanse the vessel? Let’s say that to clear the mind body vehicle, do meditation practices, emotional, cathartic practices. psychotherapeutic practices, can they support the cleansing of the vessel so that awakeness can be more easily easily recognized, and stabilized, stabilized. So a little bit like polishing the sides of a diamond, if the sides of the diamond are covered in dust, which is the ancestral patterns and the conditioning, the family conditioning, social conditioning, or the personal conditioning, if they’re covered in dust than the light of awakeness, which is always present, but it can’t be fully recognized, or it can emanate through this particular body mind vehicle. So does it support awakening in that respect? Well, it can polish the sides of the mirror. But does it cause awakening? I don’t think that anything, we can’t say that anything really causes awakening. So the seeking, that perhaps is being referred to the danger in that is that if we seek to create awakening, or to cause this experience of awakening, or this idea of awakening, because it’s always an idea of awakening before it’s actually been realized, and therefore it’s not actually the way it is. It’s just a picture in the mind or an imagination. If we’re seeking to achieve some kind of picture of awakening through following certain practices, then the danger in that is that we’re seeking identity in those practices. And that simply reinforces the sense of self identity. And that’s where it becomes stuck. Yeah. And that’s when we say that, well practices are not relevant or not important. On the other hand, if those practices are seen, if you like, like, like a boat that takes you to the other shore, when the shore has been reached, to use that metaphor, then those practices naturally fall away. There’s the other side of that coin, which is that, as in your experience, tea, if awakening has been recognized, and all the qualities of being that come through that, like peace and blessing, always are realized. And then those contractive patterns re emerge as part of the personality vehicle, then it would be naive and arrogant, perhaps not to use those practices to support the cleansing of the vessel any further. So it’s not an easy answer is it’s kind of it depends which side of the coin you’re on puts using the practices intelligently. And honestly, that is the key points.

Rick Archer: We might ask. Does the wind cause the sun to shine? No, of course, the sun is always shining has always been shining. But the wind is really good at blowing the clouds away. And when the clouds are blown away, Holy mackerel the sun’s shining, I guess it always was, you know. So that’s my angle on practices.

Susanne Marie: My, my thought about practices is that if we’re following our innate intelligence, our own intuitive heart, that the practices that we’re needing to, to be following will reveal themselves. At times, it might be inquiry, you know, there might be a time where the mind is really seeking for clarity, and for understanding. And so then you’ll be drawn to the different methods of inquiry. And in other times the heart is wanting to, to be revealed. And you’ll be drawn to, to bhakti paths and such, then the body, the body in yoga, the body wants to open up and have veils be removed. And so I think that there’s a natural intelligence that can guide and that we can tune into, and we can learn to tune into. And so

T Jonathon Proctor: I think that’s, I think, in a sense, that’s what we’re doing here. I don’t want to speak for you. But I think what we’re doing here is we’re providing that kind of guidance toward your inner guidance, but we’re not these high holy, you know, spiritual gurus that are standing at a platform and you’re in a room with 10,000 people. We’re working one on one with people. We’re saying, what’s happening for you now? And how, how are you feeling stuck? What’s what’s getting in your way? What’s coming up in your life? Why is that? What’s needed, and speaking very directly, personally, to people cultivating a person cultivating a soul in this world, letting this beautiful soul emerge, like a, like an elegant flower emerging from the earth, right? It’s very organic. It’s very kind, very compassionate process.

Susanne Marie: And learning to cultivate that for oneself. I mean, really, the pointer is always back to ourselves, and being a light unto ourselves. And in the end, whether we’re drawn to practices, whether we’re drawn to working with different teachers, watching Buddha at the guests, whatever it is, in the end, it’s it’s our own inner selves that are guiding, and that’s the one to be focusing on, and to be listening to. That’s how I feel about it.

Rick Archer: To you, you mentioned that, you know, you went through an Eckhart Tolle phase after your awakening, where you were in, why that’s happening, where you weren’t too functional in the world, you know, you’re just experiencing a lot of bliss and clarity and so on. I’m just curious about the audience, if there are many people in the audience who had some kind of profound awakening, and more or less had to, you know, metaphorically sit on park benches for some time after that, where it made you somewhat dysfunctional in terms of the ability to hold down a job or anything like that show of hands on that point. Several Yeah. Okay. So the rest of you didn’t have any problem. I mean, you a lot of people say they’ve had some kind of significant awakening it just you No, just kind of like took it in stride and kept on going.

BRB Audience Member 1: My My experience was it was more of an opening, and a realization and a release. So it was an incredible release of this burden. But I was carrying Yeah. So there’s just heavy kind of mind thing, but I held it for years, suddenly just cracked, open, and the whole thing just fell apart, took a little processing time to deal with it in the world. But I didn’t have the experience of, you know, not being functional.

T Jonathon Proctor: I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t functional, I would say that it just didn’t make a lot of sense when I went to move into action. So I was still functional, but I was still functioning, when I’d function, I’d kind of go back to the old ways of functioning, because that that there wasn’t really a template for new functioning. The development wasn’t there yet.

Rick Archer: Well, I’ve definitely gone through some non functional periods. Obsessive, idiosyncratic, really, you know, certifiably nuts. But I put on a good face, you know, I could get up in front of a group and give a talk, I made me totally nuts right now for all, you know, putting on a good face, and it’s taken decades, for that it took decades, it’s probably still, it’s still happening ask my wife, but it, you know, there’s just been this continual reshuffling and purification and rearrangement and integration, which is, you know, made me a better human being, in many respects. And I don’t see it ever ending, as Adya was saying, tonight, it’s, you know, lifelong process.

Susanne Marie: Yeah, and first, there’s the, what was spoken to earlier by Adya and Hameed, you know, and it’s something that, that we as a panel really seem to be congruent on is that there’s first an emptying out process that happens, and letting go of identity, right, and letting go of the landmarks, that we’re used to the ways that we perceive the world, and the dropping away of all that. And that can be an ongoing, long process, you know, that can still be chunks of identity can still drop off, and suddenly it’s not there anymore, or, or inquiry will be used. And it’s purposely being used, because something is really not going on itself, and it knows that it’s wanting to be let go up. And so, so this, there’s this intelligence that’s moving, and that is guiding the whole process. And it’s like the sense of I is born, and then at some point and wants to be let go of, and that’s just the evolution of a human being in my healthy evolution of a human being, in my mind, and so it has a way of returning back to source back to essence back to its state of freedom, inherent freedom free of what it’s accumulated over a lifetime. And, and so that’s kind of like the emptying out phase. And there’s so many beautiful teachings out there that that support that. And then when it’s reached a point of stasis where it’s, it’s been stopped in the kind of like, in the beyond, beyond place where it doesn’t need to go any more beyond and and so suddenly, there’s this, that’s kind of like, where the place that people speak about the end of seeking occurs, there’s just there’s no more momentum to want to return back. It’s just this natural, you know, that it’s not there anymore, when that desire is gone, to want to return. And it’s this, it’s so that that whole seeking is actually intelligence, that’s life intelligence moving and knows exactly what it’s doing. And if we can put our trust in it in a way and just let it take us the momentum of it, itself and other that gap closing and it wants to know itself as that. And so that is the seeking, it’s like what am I, you know, so the this gap closes, and then when it’s done, it’s, there’s this pause, and some people stand up pause a while because it’s a really beautiful place to be. It’s, you know, this place of free of identity free of of our conditioning, oftentimes Time’s sometimes it’s for a nanosecond some, some people, as you know, ease into this, it’s not a sudden kind of collapse a big fireworks. And that’s some people I had kind of a big fireworks thing. And and then then there’s this beautiful natural reef re entry phase. And that’s that’s the the piece that we really are wanting to speak to here today with you all is that is the re entry phase of life back into itself. So that wakes up to itself. And then it has this natural intelligence that well what what am I the fullness of what I am what I am the full other 50%. So there’s the Beyond and then there’s everything else. And so then that beautiful paradox gets gets resolved. And that reentry it takes the shape of what was spoken to earlier by idea and made so beautifully. It goes into every area of our lives, it goes into saying yes, basically, it’s a big Yes. To everything back to a yes to even the conditioning. A Yes to even being a me. You know, that sense of me doesn’t doesn’t drop away. It doesn’t drop away completely, it gets thinner. But the sense of me is part of the whole. And so that yes, includes all aspects of itself. And and that’s the beautiful journey and embodiment.

Rick Archer: That’s an important point. I’m about to do want to say something.

Amoda Ma: No, I was just really going to support that in the sense that I find that in speaking with people in my groups and sessions. But that’s one of the main points of confusion that, you know, is there still a sense of me? Is there still a sense of AI is this still a sense of self. And many people, the majority of people, even if they’ve had an awakening experience, really still hold on to this idea that there’s no self. And they’ve created this fantasy that no self means that there’s no more bad feelings. There’s just this kind of pain free life. And I know it sounds very naive, but it’s actually what I encounter all the time, is still holding to some idea of this. And then stuff happens, the movement of life still comes through, and the feelings and the emotions and all the challenges that come with being a human being, and all the messiness that comes. And there’s a disappointment with that. And there’s a disillusionment with that. And even if it’s that subtle disillusion that it, it tends to separate again, that which has been recognized as a weakness, and this idea of self. So there’s still an inner division and inner conflict happening. And that seems to create much distress. And so the seeking starts again. And so it’s good to speak of this, that the self, the personality, the sense of I doesn’t just disappear completely. In my experience, how I’ve experienced that, and how I see it being experienced is that it’s not the self that dies, it’s not even the ego that dies, because as long as you’re alive in a body, you still need an ego. If we’re talking about ego as that which perceives inside from outside, yeah, if I couldn’t see what was in me and what was out here, I probably be psychotic, you know, or I probably be just a blubbering mess. You have to be able to maneuver in a three dimensional reality. And that has perceived boundaries perceived inside and outside. Now, that’s not the deepest truth of it. And that’s not the deepest recognition. But it is part of operating through form as form whilst we’re still alive. So I feel that the ego still exists. But what happens is that the sense of identity is not locked into the ego. So it’s not encapsulated in time and space, and in realization or liberation or awakeness. It’s like the sense of self identity becomes liberated from the prison of three dimensional reality. And in that liberation, it becomes non localized and localized. In other words, it’s becomes you could say it becomes one with everything. It’s not contained in me. But there is still a me. And so the perception of AI is very different to when it’s still locked in the prison of egoic identity, but it still operates. So it’s like the personality or the self, the mind, body vehicle becomes transparent, it becomes permeable. And so the experience of life is still very human, it’s still very ordinary. Pain is still experienced, if pain is part of direct reality, everything is experienced. In fact, it’s much more intimate, It’s exquisite, It’s exquisite. And it’s sensitive. response to what is it’s, it’s, it’s exquisite, and it’s agony, and it’s ecstasy. So in some way, it’s much, much deeper, much, much juicy. It’s much more alive and vibrant, everything is felt, and it’s full vibrancy. But the self isn’t locked into that it’s not stuck in that or it doesn’t stick to the self. So the self is experienced as permeable, everything passes through very quickly. And if there is a contraction, then maybe it gets stuck there for a while there’s some stickiness, but that if the light of awareness is is fully revealed, if you like that contraction can dissolve very easily and quickly. Yeah, in the light, everything is purified. So we think passes through, and everything is purified. Yeah. So there isn’t this dense boundary, there isn’t this rigid boundary of self. So yes, that’s on me. And it’s the same me. And it’s a very different me.

Rick Archer: One way of putting it is I have this glass of water, and there’s water in the glass. Now, if I take this water and put it into the ocean, there’s still water in the glass, but there’s also the ocean. And so you know, you don’t lose the sense that I am a person, you just gain a bigger context. I’m not only a person, I’m also this vastness, but I’m still a person.

Susanne Marie: And in the middle of the person, there’s nobody, right? So there’s, there’s, there’s person and no person, there’s experience, and there’s absence of experience. And they’re always one thing, they’re two sides of one coin. So there’s a person, there’s a reemergence of, there’s a person, there’s this sense of me, but in the middle of that there’s no me. There’s no There’s there’s nothing there in the center of anything. And so that’s why this light of awareness that Emoto speaking about. What it’s when its approach approaching, when it goes to work with conditioning with areas that are that are challenged. We’re having like a weather that we’re having like bad weather, when the when the when the sense of me is like, there’s like a hole in the middle. That’s what happens with awakening, there’s like a hole in the middle of everything. There’s the Born and the unborn, there’s, there’s there’s that, that kind of die before you die experience. And so there’s, there’s, there’s experience, and then there’s no experience happening simultaneously. And so, so when embodiment is happening, it’s not like you’re getting re identified necessarily. It’s that light of awareness out of Love Actually, is, is moving into areas of wanting to have those areas become whole, to know themselves as whole. Right. So it’s these places that have been denied. There’s pain, body things, there’s just confusion that gets accumulated. And so this light of awareness, it descends back down into the vehicle, and it’s making it it’s it’s, it’s falling in love with itself actually, with all of itself. And it does so without fear of losing itself. And the reason it’s not afraid is because it isn’t a center of identity any longer. It doesn’t believe that it can be lost. When a me that believes in itself is afraid of being lost. But when there’s no center to me, it’s the fear drops away. And so there’s this kind of courage that happens in this like You know, going into the unknown territory, and it really is, you know, so deeply intimate, so deeply intimate. And everything that’s getting cleared out here in yourself and oneself is then how you are seeing life on the outside. Right. So this purified vessel, this, this, this heart that starts to take over, is how you start to see all of life. And even the difficult things, right. So the things, the places that are difficult inside, and that are hard to connect to this, this, this kindness towards oneself begins to take place. And then this kindness starts to take place outside in the world, how we feel about things that are difficult and challenging.

T Jonathon Proctor: Sounds like you’re talking about the movement of compassion, or the descent of compassion into our, into our own person into our own self. Yeah.

Rick Archer: Did you ever did ever get what you’re saying? Does that make sense in terms of, you know, there’s a me and there’s not a me that you’re doing and you’re not doing that sounds contradictory or anything. Think is just one little simple way of helping you understand that maybe is that, you know, that we’re multi dimensional. And in reality, there is a vast range to our existence. And, you know, ordinarily, people are kind of locked within a fairly small portion of that range, in which they just perceive themselves to be an individual doing things, you know, very much in controls or, but then if that if the range of our conscious awareness expands, that comes to incorporate levels of our existence, which don’t fit that same narrow description, which are silent, which are not doing anything, which you know, and so one begins to have the experience of, hey, I’m really busy doing stuff. I’m not doing anything at all, all this stuff is going on, nothing is happening. You know, it seems kind of like it would be divisive in some way in one’s experience. But one comes to incorporate the paradox within one’s experience. And so it all just fits rather nicely. And that actually makes life much more smooth and easy. It doesn’t set up any kind of conflict.

Amoda Ma: It’s like there’s no ownership. There’s no ownership of the me. There’s no ownership of what happens. There’s no ownership of life.

Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s wave doesn’t own the ocean. Yeah.

Amoda Ma: And there’s a great freedom in that.

T Jonathon Proctor: I would say, though, that sometimes it does, sometimes we come back in and we’re very attached to something are very reactive about something or there’s some moment that just catches us and we really believe this moment. And it feels so real. And it feels like this is this is life or death, right. And so suddenly, we’re back in like life or death struggle over, you know, whether somebody put mayonnaise on our sandwich. So I think the freedom of flow between, you know, these expansive, beautiful blissful states, the states of stillness, the states of like, feeling contact and oneness with, with other beings and the rest of the rest of life on the planet, even a chair, those are beautiful states, but, but we tend to want to exclude the states where we’re like, maybe we’re feeling kind of hurt or small or wounded. We tend to exclude that that’s not part of our spirituality. What if, what if we were free enough to just feel wounded? What if we were free enough to be petty? What if we were free enough to be dumb? What, you know, what if we were just free enough to be whatever we happen to be in every moment

Susanne Marie: That’s the, to me the waking up, to hold to wholeness to unity, to just really deeply getting and it’s an ongoing understanding actually, that that takes place where you realize when realizes that you really are the hole, which means that you are the one that is upset. You are the one that is maybe confused. So the wholeness realizes that it is those things, that’s what’s happening. And so there’s, there’s within boundedness, there’s unboundedness it’s the same kind of thing, the paradox that takes place. And so there’s there’s this ability to see how micro one can really be. How absolutely involved when can be in experience, and how it’s really okay, that there’s no thing that’s going to be lost, because really that is containing the whole, the whole is the whole. So the whole already has everything in it. Right? So when there’s an understanding, when there’s a stepping back that happens, this kind of thing that we call awakening, where you step back from experience enough to realize that you are the space that everything is arising and when you when that is really known that you are the space, that everything is arising and there is this chance, this opportunity that you disagree, welcoming of entering into the rising.

Rick Archer: I didn’t understand part of what you just said. You just said that the whole gets upset or the whole is petty, or whatever you’re

Susanne Marie: Yeah, because the space itself is the whole it’s just this, this languaging the oneness,

Rick Archer: the oneness, the totality, the vastness

Susanne Marie: Right.

Rick Archer: Oh, the absolute

Susanne Marie: right. So within that everything that’s arising is part of it.

Rick Archer: Yeah,

Susanne Marie: everything that’s arising

Rick Archer:  the good, the bad and the ugly, whatever,

Susanne Marie: everything

Rick Archer: right.

Susanne Marie: Yeah. So So if if there’s pettiness, if there’s confusion, that’s the whole being petty, that’s the whole being confused.

Rick Archer: maybe not the totality of the whole, but some expression of pettiness coming up this this particular wave,

Susanne Marie: Within it.

Rick Archer: this is a petty wave coming up in the ocean, but doesn’t mean the whole ocean is petty.

Susanne Marie: Right.

Rick Archer: Okay.

Susanne Marie: But you know, just like what, you know, earlier what Adya and Hameed were saying that in every experience, there’s there That in itself right there, there’s absolute truths, right then what’s happening.

T Jonathon Proctor: I think this is the point this is to me, this is really one of the crux of the points of embodiment and what it truly means to be a human being, is to come back into realizing that every expression is truth. Some expressions are kind of veiled truth. So how when we when the pettiness arises, or when we’re bitter, or when we’re whatever the feeling, is there angry when that feeling arises, what’s the true nature of that? It’s not like one thing that I have a difficulty with, I’ve had the experience, but I think is is a step along the way is feeling like this vast, spacious awareness in which everything arises and dissolves. I’m saying, Be the vast awareness in which everything arises and dissolves and be in contact with everything that arises and dissolves in that everything that arises, is found to be none other than the truth and truth of reality, the truth of being so anger, what is anger? Oh, well, let’s check it out. Let’s investigate. Let’s get curious. Let’s find out the truth of our experiences. Find out the truth of our lives. What is it? Are we curious that we want and are we exploring? What is it about being here? Is it just about kind of getting through things until we die? Or is it about like, this life is incredibly precious beyond anything, it’s so incredibly precious. It’s so incredibly unlikely, these weird little for, you know, two arm to two leg people that kind of trot around, you know, in defiance of gravity in a certain sense with all the with all the important packaging up here, right? On this planet. We totally Defy. We’re particularly weird creatures. Isn’t it fucking cool? This is it. Like, let’s party you know, this is really it.

Rick Archer: Were you kind of saying just now that… the thought came to me.

Susanne Marie: What were you saying?

Rick Archer: Were you saying this now, don’t use the vastness as a refuge in which to hide from uncomfortable things?

T Jonathon Proctor: Well you can if you want to but if that’s working for you, but you know if there’s, if you kind of know in your heart, yeah, you know, I did have this experience of vastness. But now I am kind of using it to hide out in yu might as well just give up the game and tell the truth, the truth is going to come out eventually. You know, the truth is gonna come out eventually in your life. Why not just tell the truth now, why not just you know, take the painful pill,

Susanne Marie:  give it up,

T Jonathon Proctor: give it up, give up. You know, give up the games and just be a real human being right here with what exact exactly where you are with what you’re experiencing? This is what we have. This is our experience now.

Rick Archer: She was saying are you more or less saying you’re embracing your humaneness?

T Jonathon Proctor: I think I’m exactly saying that. Yeah.

Elyse Poppers 

Okay. So you are saying that the fear drops away as part of the experience that you experienced going from not having full awareness to having full awareness right. What did I understand

Susanne Marie: The fear of going into experience?

Elyse Poppers: You said fear and I understood it. Sort of like psychological fear existential fear. Ah, so that wouldn’t count necessarily. Is that the human experience that continues? You? Don’t? You don’t experience fear on that level?

Susanne Marie: No. So that’s a great question. Yeah.

Elyse Poppers: Where if there was a transitional period where you still were?

Susanne Marie: Yeah. Right. So in regards to fear, so fear is, to me, not a problem. And, and I’m, I’ve learned to become comfortable entering into fear, exploring fear. Because fear has a lot of different flavors to it, it’s never exactly the same flavor, we just put this umbrella word and call it fear. But at different times, it feels differently, right, in different parts of our body. And sometimes it’s really more mental. And sometimes it’s more of physical feeling. And so when I think that one of the ways to, to meet fear, to really be with fear, is to break it down to sensation, and to be with the sensation, and to allow it to be there, because actually, it has information. It’s, it’s everything that you’re feeling is actually part of wisdom. It’s not a mistake. So if we get close to it, and we really enter into it, then it it has something to share with you. And then right in the center of every feeling of every experience, there’s the emptiness is right there, the place that isn’t afraid, the place that is comfortable with the experience. And so that’s what I’m speaking to, it’s not like fear has completely disappeared. And it’s not even a goal of mine. You know how, in spiritual circles, we set up these, these paradigms, these ideas of what it’s supposed to look like to be free. And I think that it’s a setup oftentimes, because then we’re like, we’re neglecting our own humaneness, our own the things that are just naturally arising in our bodies. And then there’s intelligence, there sometimes fears because you’re entering into an unknown, a new, a new place, it could actually be something that’s kind of exciting. So just to allow yourself to walk towards and just rest with something as much as possible. Is, is kind of like the beginning for me, of how to meet something like fear. And then this, this beautiful connection can happen within a self connection. It’s not separate from you. There’s not like fear, and you you know, so it’s just one thing, and fear is a part of you. So you can feel that and make friends with it. So help. Sorry. That sounds hard. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s it is because it’s a she says it sounds scary, is because we’ve, we’ve been trained since we were little to turn away from uncomfortable feelings. Right? So So part of it is a retracement, it’s not like you have to wait for some kind of awakening experience in order to learn how to start meeting your inner experience yourself, your feelings. And so to turn towards things, and to to learn how to step towards them little by little, eventually embracing them. That is that certain type of intelligence that totally serves every step of the way, before during after awakening, you know, it’s all part of it. And it might sound hard, but it’s such a gift to yourself.

Rick Archer: Regarding fear, there’s this line in the Upanishad that goes certainly all fear is born of duality. And a lot of people report when they have a profound shift or awakening, that they go through this like sound barrier of fear, and you know, experiences, tense, almost, you know, terrifying fear, and then break through it and the fear dissipates. So would you say in your experience, or however you want to explain it, that awakening should eliminate fear to a great extent, because we’re no longer the source. have isolated vulnerable little thing without our without any kind of solid foundation, which does arise when when one is really established in, in being or in the self.

Susanne Marie: I did have like a three week period about two, three years ago, maybe it was three years ago, where I felt like there was an amplification of fear. Like it went from, like a two to like an eight, it was just really high. And I had no idea if and when it was going to ever end. And it was, it felt like it was personal fear, it felt like it was also a collective fear. And it had a tonality to it. And it was almost like, it felt like that didn’t even had a sound to it. It was intense. And it was almost like it was like what was in the background got brought to the foreground, and it was undoing itself. Yeah, it was like, burning itself out. And the way that it was burning itself out was by letting myself like surrender to it. Because I didn’t know how long it would be there. You know, it’s one of those things where you just like, eventually you start to learn that all of experience is God. And that one experience is not more God than another experience. So having this amplification of fear was like I just, you know, just sat with it burned in it. And then it dissipated. So yeah, I, I feel like that is true that a large part does go away. And then there’s this human thing that still happens, you know, with with certain types of fears that still arise.

Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, if you hung Ramana Maharshi from the Golden Gate Bridge by his heels, I think there’d be some human drama going on and fear, you know, despite the fact that on some level, he’d probably be untouched by that experience.

T Jonathon Proctor: Are we getting? Are we doing reductive? Ramana Maharshi, everything now reduces the thing I see in this everything ultimately reduces back down to talking about

Susanne Marie: the thing about

Rick Archer: bringing up Hitler whenever Yeah.

Susanne Marie: One last thing I’ll say about fear, just in this conversation from my part, is that that fear, and all these different aspects of, of emotions, different things that come up, are not separate from God. So that when that kind of like when you stop seeing it as that is proof that you are not one with everything, that is proof that you’ve lost something or that God’s not here, that when that when that levels out, then fear is held in a completely different way, then it’s just sensation is just a current of energy, just like all energy flows through. Yeah,

Rick Archer: don’t be shy Amoda if you have anything to sayThere’s not much to add to that. I just want to, you know, the greatest fear is an existential fear, the fear that, that you are, to get to the root of it. Absolutely, alone, if you like, in the great totality of the universe, that you are separate from that it’s kind of like the core wound of separation. And it’s a kind of primordial separation as we come out of the womb, out of the oneness of the womb. And so it’s a universal human experience. And in my experience, when, when that particular texture of fear was turned towards, because the futility of escape from that which I’d spent most of my life turning away from in many different forms, when it was finally seen, there was no choice if you like, than to surrender to that. And that surrender meant that the self or the sense of self might, it’s unknown in that experience as you’re experiencing it, but it might well be annihilated. You know, the existential fear might be true in some way that I don’t exist, that I will be swallowed up into this black hole. And for me, it was when that was fully surrendered to that that particular root of fear was completely dissolved. And what emerged from that was initially a sense of oneness, I don’t particularly like that word because it means different things to different people. But it was a sense of there is no me there is only this. So some aspects of the psychological sense of self, felt like it died, there was a depth of self in that, and all that was experienced was God. And, for the first time in my life, I actually experienced it as God, that’s not a concept or a word, or it meant nothing to me before that other than the usual religious thing. So I experienced everything is God, and I am not separate from that. And for me, that was a real turning point. And that fear, if you like, which gave birth to, prior to that experience, gave birth to victim consciousness. Because if I am separate from anything, then I am a victim of that, when it doesn’t match my expectations of how it should be. And I saw how I had been a victim of everything, my own thoughts, my own feelings, my relationships, my own beliefs. And it’s almost like all of that just went into a black hole and just got sucked in. And there was nothing. And in that nothing, there was everything, and that was God. So God is nothing, God is everything. And I am that. And from that moment on, that victim consciousness completely has dissolved. And what was allowed in that was that every whisper or little tendril, of belief that had stood that had played itself out as a victim, just came up and got sucked into that hole, which was initially a black hole, but actually was light. So everything got dissolved in that. And that happened both immediately, as a almost nanosecond experience, but also then had a continual unfoldment that I call the maturation. And that maturation took a long time, like maybe seven, eight years, and it’s still going on. So for me, that was kind of like a, an immediate, very direct and sudden spontaneous dissolve moment of that existential fear. And then there was a kind of maturation of that that happened over a very long period of time.

T Jonathon Proctor: Nice.

Rick Archer: Your turn.

T Jonathon Proctor: I want I want to, I just want to thank you for sharing your experiences, because this is part of the beauty of awakening is that we all have these experiences, but one of the things that can happen is that we hear a beautiful experience like that, and then it becomes something we want to move towards, or something we need in our life or something that will fulfill us or a way that we will become ultimately enlightened. And just bringing it way back into the physical out of the metaphysical. You know, people depending on your traumatic history, depending on your your attachment history, people can have a chronically triggered fear system in their brain, their nervous system can be chronically triggered towards fear. And that regardless of whatever awakening experience you may have had, if that’s really in your body, that can be helped along and that can be worked with particularly a lot of the new trauma work that’s being done, that can be aided by certain practices, by certain certain kinds of interpersonal regulating experiences. So it’s important to understand that if we have a chronic condition of something, that we not immediately jump towards trying to find a metaphysical relief from that something, but also give to the possibility that we may just need to do certain regulating practices in our lives. That could be meditation, that could be you know, chi gong that could be working with the trauma therapist. This is you know, coming right back down into again into matter into the brain. The brain is continually growing and repairing we know that even now laid into life as you know, the brain plasticity. I think you had Rick Hansen on your did your show, didn’t you? So you know, you can watch. You want to hear a better dissertation about that watch his show with Rick Hansen.

Rick Archer: Neuroplasticity is the word, yeah.

T Jonathon Proctor: But let’s also take care of ourselves, let’s take care of ourselves and take care of our bodies. Let’s do what needs to be done. You know, you wake up and it’s like the, what is it chop wood, carry water, chop wood carry water, and you wake up and you chop wood carry water. So have a balance between seeing it is this inner guidance that you’re talking about a balance between seeing? When do I need to just take some steps and work with this on a very practical level? And when do I need to really stop and face the fact that this body won’t be here forever? The people I love won’t be here forever. This lifetime is limited. Every experience is limited. So there’s that back and forth is that that’s inconsistent with what you’re saying?

Amoda Ma: It’s all about honesty, isn’t it? Yeah, just being really honest with where you’re at, and really honest with what is your direct experience. And it really doesn’t matter. Ultimately, what is here, what matters is your capacity to fully be intimate with that to fully face it, to turn towards it, to sit inside it. And

T Jonathon Proctor: and what I feel, and what happened to me ultimately, is I realized I needed somebody to help me with that. And I went and found the people that would help me with the things that I needed help with, on the physical and on the metaphysical. And that what it does is in a sense, it optimizes your experience. So then, you know, you said burning, and there was a hell of a lot of burning going on in this body, there was a whole lot of burning that was happening for me. And there was a ton of uncomfortableness, there was a ton of kind of very difficult states and my orientation to it was just sit with this, just sit with this, just let it move through. But now I know there are more skillful ways of working with that. And I really encourage you to find whatever method you can to optimize your experience to help your experience along in this physical body.

Susanne Marie: I got a lot of nervous system support. before, during and after, sometimes I still go and get a cranial session or something, it’s just it’s a lot being in a body, it’s a lot being in a body now on this planet, and the nervous system can get overloaded. And especially when conditioning is coming up to be met. I totally agree with you, you know, I are all kinds of modalities out there that are can be supportive. And a flexible nervous system is contributes very, very much to how free we feel. Of course, freedom is is always here, but do you? Do you know that? Can you feel it? So having a flexible nervous system really is a great support.

T Jonathon Proctor: There’s a Dan Siegel phrase, he makes a lot of acronyms. And there’s an acronym and he calls it faces, it’s flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable, flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable. So that that gives you a kind of a feel of how our nervous system how an integrated nervous system how nervous system imbalance can be functioning.

Susanne Marie: So you’re wondering about what it’s like to be parenting. And my two teenagers, I have a boy and a girl, but from a place where there’s this was an empty emptiness. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s a great questions. So from the place of where there’s this sense of, of the me not being solid, right? Well, the rubber hits the road in every area of our lives. Really, you know? And, and parenting of Chris is a big one, especially with teenagers. Right. So there’s, it’s the, it’s the same kind of thing of what I was describing earlier is that there’s congruently simultaneous to perhaps difficulty there’s, there’s there’s freedom within it. And and it’s just that’s the way that I Pro I guess all of life is being approached. And so I I don’t have any kind of like limits within myself of what I’m not letting myself feel or experience or how much I care how much I worry, you know, with teenagers, they’re just they push all your buttons and they they’re there sometimes walking dangers right to themselves. So there’s there’s all that kind of like the body thing coming up instinctual drives or fears of losing, you know, the main fear would be losing one’s child during this time, that is kind of dangerous time, right? So it’s just, I think what it is, it’s awakeness learning how to be awake within all experience, and to be present to all experience, and to not flinch to like, even if there’s flinching, you know, to be with it, to be with it to be with their pain, because there’s just like bonding that happens with our children, where we, we feel so intimate with them, we know they are ourselves in such an intimate way. So there’s this like, survival instinct that can come up with another body, you know, so there’s just this increasing, I guess, ability or desire or willingness, probably willingness is probably the best word to be to remain open to experiencing whatever is being experienced, and to stay present with them in what they’re experiencing. So so they get to experience someone in their lives, who is willing to dive in with them into their, their reality, right, so I don’t go into any kind of denial of the reality, I don’t go into any kind of denial of their sense of being a me of taking things really seriously and things hurting, or their hearts being broken, or whatever it is they’re going through. So there’s a willingness to just like, be so present to that, as if it’s real, completely real. And on one level, it is right, we never would deny their experience. So there’s that there’s like this full diving into into experience with them. And then at the same time, we can only be we bring ourselves to everything that we do, we bring our state of boundless and our state of freedom to all to everything that we’re doing. So parenting from a place of being less bound inside of, of knowing that inherently, that we are free, and that there is no center. Even if there’s this whole vortex a whole hurricane, you know, like there’s a tsunami, right in the center is a hole. And that’s true for them as well, whether they know it or not. So there’s kind of like, I’m with you, I believe you completely I meet you there right now denying of experience. And I can’t help but bring what’s free to it. Does that help? Yeah.

Rick Archer: So he asked the panelists, you know, you’ve all experienced in awakened state, what brought you to the point where you felt that it was now time to teach or to start helping others? So his question is, do you find that teaching, or helping others is enhancing or detracting from your own journey? So answering any order that you feel?

Amoda Ma: It’s really, it’s really quite difficult to say, how it arose, or why it arose as an impulse. It’s almost impossible to pin it down. You know, whenever I try to pin it down, it’s kind of elusive as to say, well, that’s why or that’s the time or, you know, for this reason, or that reason, all I can say is that it arose. To me it was never a goal or an agenda. It arose. Because it did, its choiceless the impulse to speak arose, but I never had the intention to teach or to offer Satsang or anything like that. I had written a book. Following on from the so called experience, I mean, it’s not an experience to me, it’s not an experience that was experienced it was what I just described, about this existential falling into that and something dissolved in that. But I did write from that place. I wrote a book called How to find God in everything. Although there’s no how to, but it was really the invitation into welcoming God as everything and I didn’t know what to do with that book. Now I have had a lot of experience in working In personal transformation, so I have worked with people one on one on a more therapeutic level, although I’m not an official therapist, I have worked with people in emotional catharsis and breathwork and holding lots of groups, but in slightly different capacity. So I do have that role, if you like, as part of my experience. So I have facilitated, as I say, working with people to move through certain energetic blocks that had actually dissolved as a as a role and as a path in life. But I imagine, or I see that that experience will have been part of my life’s movement. So I can’t deny that. So it’s not like I just started teaching out of, you know, previous to that I was working in asmita, or something. No, it was part of my experience. But there was a very long gap where there was nothing happening. When I wrote the book, I didn’t know what to do with it, I had no agenda about teaching, I didn’t feel ready to speak about it, I didn’t know how to speak about it. And really for about, I can’t remember maybe four or five, six, even seven years, nothing much was happening, I really sat in the unknown, a lot of that was very, very uncomfortable, because a lot of my deeper beliefs of lack of self worth arose. And some deeper, perhaps ancestral condition, conditioning, deeper conditioning arose in that, but I had the willingness to just allow that to kind of reveal itself in time, I did a little bit of speaking about my book, but it was kind of in a different context. And it didn’t work for me, it was more public speaking. And I felt sort of squeezed into a particular role of being a motivational speaker, which just didn’t, wasn’t right. So I dropped everything. And in dropping it became a point about only two years ago, where I, the impulse moved in me again, and I was living in a very small town in England. So it wasn’t like there were there was much of a community to work with. But I simply hide a room and I sat in silence. And for the first time, I did not give a public talk or try to, I did not try to facilitate anyone’s energetic release, I did nothing, I just simply sat there in silence, with my eyes closed. And through some synchronicity, somebody that I’ve met in the local, Whole Foods store, who, who was A Course in Miracles teacher came along, and he brought a couple of friends. And we sat there in silence. And I just spoke from silence. But there was no agenda in teaching anything or even in helping anyone that didn’t occur. I can’t help anyone. So there was nothing and out of that, it, that particular impulse just kept on coming. And so that continued for months, and another year. And I found, at some point, after about seven or eight months, it was like, Oh, wow, this is Satsang. It just kind of revealed itself as that. And it’s almost like when it finally had a name, a name that I didn’t feel embarrassed of or out of alignment with. It just all fell into place in some way. And it’s like it was choiceless. From that point on, it just had its own momentum, and it still has its own momentum. And within that, there is no personal agenda in it. And if there is a whisper of an agenda of an outcome or a direction, it is so not comfortable. But it’s immediately just evaporates back into emptiness. And, and that’s it. So it feels like the the me in it. Which there isn’t me obviously, because I have to plan the schedule and organize things and communicate and whatever else needs to happen in the background. But the medianet is really not the doer. And I know that sounds like a cliche, but that is the experience of it. It is simply life happening through me as me. And in that sense. I’m its servant. And that’s both very humbling. And it’s also very graceful because it feels like it’s just a river of grace that’s flowing. And that’s what’s happening. And maybe one day something else will happen. I have no idea what direction it will go and it’s just happening. You know, when it stops happening, something else will happen. So,

Rick Archer: he’s asking again, I’m saying it for the recording, he’s asking you again does doing that enhance your personal evolution or whatever?

Amoda Ma: I suppose it does. But I don’t have that. I don’t even have that. perception of it. I don’t feel like it’s, I don’t I don’t I don’t see it as giving anything to me. It’s giving to itself. So there’s no sense of me feeling like, oh, this is teaching me something more or this is opening me even more or it’s adding to my life for its it probably is facilitating a deeper opening, but it doesn’t it doesn’t get perceived that way.

BRB Audience Member 1: So you don’t see it as a practice,

Amoda Ma: no, I don’t see it as a practice. There’s nobody practicing. I mean, yeah, there’s a kind of I don’t know, I guess. It’s, it’s like forging a sword in the fire. There’s a kind of forging of that sword in the actual just doing of it, I suppose. But that’s not how it’s seen. It’s not reflected on some as something that’s being added to, to this life.

Rick Archer: You guys want to answer his question? Also, should we move on to another question?

T Jonathon Proctor: I just say simple thing, a lot of stuff, like she said, but it’s an overflowing of the heart. And yet, it enhances, because that’s, that’s what’s happening. And that’s like, if you if your heart intention is, is to move with what’s true for you, you can’t help but develop, you can’t help but develop skills, you can’t help but but experience the joy of, of, you know, the interpersonal relationships that that happened. And and it can’t help but clarify, like you said, you know, maybe some of the other reasons why we want to be sitting in front of people and talking right. So there’s clarification and there’s development as SME was talking about earlier today.

Rick Archer: Me some questions at the moment. Okay. So one thing that I was talking about with a friend earlier that I think might be good, just throw out there, because a lot of people get tripped up by it. And that is that, you know, I know, in speaking terms, my own experience, I kind of started out with the feeling that this or that enlightened person must be perfect. In every respect. That was my conception of what Enlightenment was. And that pretty much any word that came out of their mouth was the gospel truth. Anything they did was kind of divinely inspired, even if it didn’t make sense to me. Or if it seemed kind of nutty in some way or something, I think, well, you know, I mean, you know, the cosmic intelligence is inscrutable and who might not understand it. And, you know, there’s so many stories of so many teachers ending up caught with their pants down literally. And many people have become seriously disillusioned. I mean, I know people just completely left the spiritual path because of this sort of thing, or others who just became really cynical and bitter, critical, negative, and so on. So I think this topic relates a great deal to embodiment because some of the teachers I’m referring to this, were blazingly bright in terms of, you know, their consciousness, really, you know, knock your socks off, walk into a room, and your whole awareness shifts in their presence. And yet, it’s discovered that behind the scenes, they were doing this, that or the other thing, and you know, Ken Wilber has talked a lot about this with his idea of lines of development, that you can be really fully like, highly developed along certain lines and rather stunted in others. And I kind of early on had the understanding that consciousness is tightly correlated with all the aspects of our personality and behavior and ethics and all those things. And I’ve since come to feel that the correlation is still there. But it’s like a big stretchy rubber band where there can be you know, things can get pretty far out of correlation. And there might be a little bit of a tug to the thing that’s out of correlation, but it can still stay way out of correlation for throughout a person’s life. They can be highly developed in their consciousness and yet kind of immature in another respect. So my understanding of embodiment if it if it’s really lived up to if when really achieved by argument would be to actually integrate all those various other aspects, and to not be way out of sync. And I think a lot of well known teachers have, you know, who had various behavioral problems that were referring to, never really had the opportunity to do that, because they were in a bubble. And very often explicitly prevented any kind of feedback, or criticism. And so they could kind of go for it more and more out there in terms of their, their behavior without any checks and balances. And I know, a lot of teachers, contemporary teachers that I respect, really appreciate the checks and balances and have people around them who will call them on their stuff. If if they start getting out of whack. Okay, I’m gonna repeat his question for the recording. So he was saying, what, what place does humility have in the put in embodiment for you? And the first part was the energy of humility. What would you say is humility? What would you say? Is humility, humility as a quality as an energy? Yeah, how would you define humility?

Francis Bennett 

That What place does that have in this process? This journey?

Rick Archer: Yeah, what is it? What is its importance or its role in this home journey, and, and particularly with reference to embodiment, and with reference to not getting in trouble because of being because of blind spots? You know, regardless of how highly evolved, we may become,

Francis Bennett 

it was inspired by what you were saying,

Rick Archer: yeah, yes. Inspired by what I was saying,

Susanne Marie: well, I’ll just begin by saying that the checks and balances that you were speaking about, you know, with having people around, well, they can be your friends, it can be your family, your spouse, but ultimately, it’s ourselves. So I think it comes down to telling ourselves the truth, and being vigilant inside to, to, to not moving when something arises to staying with it, just staying with an uncomfortableness that is arising and to, and to. I think that that is also a question of how deep one’s awakening is. Because the deeper that it’s gone into the embodiment process, there’s this understanding that everything is, is that everything is God. So there’s the desire to want to, to deceive oneself, or to deceive others, collapses. And, and one of the things that happens with awakening is the, there’s this, it’s the deep desire to want to be authentic, and be real, authentic and real to oneself and to others. And so it would be, to, to not be honest with where one is at. And truth is, it would just, it would feel so painful, it feels painful inside. So you wouldn’t want to do that to yourself. And it also has to do with that movement of love of self love, that love is it has a desire to, to be honest.

Rick Archer: That, to me sounds like an ideal, like that’s the way it should be. But I can think of examples where it really hasn’t been that way. And in spite of what appears to be a very profound degree of awakening. There’s still dishonesty and deception. I think

Susanne Marie: that comes with people wanting to create an identity out of being seen as something as a spiritual teacher that’s like people, you can lock yourself in place. And you know, it’s just it’s it’s think there’s a danger with with coming out as being a spiritual teacher.

Rick Archer: Particularly if you’re growing up in a culture which contains none of the elements that you end up confronting when you come to a different culture, as as has often happened with teachers coming to the west,

Susanne Marie: and you end and so awakeness is alive and breathing thing. It needs to be refreshed in every moment. And so if we’re boxing ourselves in with beliefs of how we’re supposed to act and be and look to others, then we’re not allowing that alive in freshness to be taking place within ourselves. So I’d much rather be myself and be my authentic self and and just know that that is? To me, that’s much more important than being seen as anything particular.

Amoda Ma: I totally back you up there I totally agree with that I think humility is, is absolutely central to the to embodiment. And yeah, if there isn’t that honesty, of telling the truth to oneself in what is here and what is being experienced as one’s own direct experience. If that’s not met without censorship, then there’s still a sense of self invested in something, there’s still a sense of self invested in, as you say, Susana, being seen as something and that’s one of the very subtle, but very powerful pitfalls of being a so called spiritual teacher. And, or being anything for that matter. And, in, in, in, in the capacity to meet everything. What is matte in that can be shame. And shame is one of the things that we really, really don’t want to face. And it’s kind of shames quite indefinable really, when you when you look at it, it’s like, what is it? What exactly is it? You know, this sense of not being right, the sense of being exposed the sense of being vulnerable, it’s a vulnerability. And I guess vulnerability and humility go together. Yeah, our capacity to be to be our capacity to be vulnerable. means that everything, or you know, everything, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, everything is revealed. And that is really the core of embodiment. embodiment happens naturally, as a byproduct of that, as a byproduct of being open and vulnerable to what is really here, even if it appears to be really distasteful and ugly.

Francis Bennett 

You’re saying like, it’s humility is kind of a standard and the truth is standing, authentic authenticity. And it’s interesting because Theresa of Avila said humility is truth.

Rick Archer: okay, he just said, Teresa of Avila said, humility is true, what they’re saying, which is what you guys are saying, Yeah,

T Jonathon Proctor: I’ll add one thing to that. This is such a lovely question. And it’s so important. And it’s actually it’s complex in a certain way. Because if you’re lucky enough, there’s a song that blind Boys of Alabama, sooner or later, God will cut you down. Sooner or later, God will cut you down. If you’re lucky enough, in your life, you’ve been cut down and cut down cut down every time that you inflate that you inflate the people that are allowed to inflate indefinitely, I think are the ones who you’re talking about or inflate like a tire that gets a bubble, you know, out of one side like that. So in that area, they’re just totally distorted. Right? So from my life and I don’t know about the rest of you up here, but every time every single time I have inflated cut in half and that’s that that’s a feel the intensity the visceral intensity of that as I’m talking about it, but man I feel the blessing of that, man I feel the total gratitude for that

Amoda Ma: yeah, that’s my experience too. And then beaten into submission and and it’s such a blessing. It’s such such a blessing

T Jonathon Proctor: and then you just don’t touch the fire you don’t want the fire you don’t you know, you don’t go there. As as much maybe

Susanne Marie: we learn

T Jonathon Proctor: you still do maybe buddy used to oh wait a minute. I sense that’s hot. That feels hot over there. I’m not going there.

Susanne Marie: That’s one of the good things is that we learn you know, through the pain.

T Jonathon Proctor: Yeah, start thinking is beautiful because yeah, what you’re saying I pain is our friend or pain. It’s our teacher and one of our greatest teachers.

Rick Archer: Any other thoughts you guys any questions from the audience or any thoughts on the stage? Okay, well, thank you. Hope this has been useful for people I guess it has been it wouldn’t have stuck stuck around Let me just conclude by since this is this will be on BatGap by saying that this is another, and a continuing series of interviews and panel discussions that are on batgap.com. We’re well into the 250 range now. So if you’re new to this, go to bat gap that gap.com and explore. There’s a past interviews menu item with a bunch of different categories under it. There’s a start discussion group or forum and each little episode has its own section in that forum, you’ll see a link to it on the episode on the page for this conversation. There’s an audio podcast with a link to that on every every page. There’s a Donate button. There’s a place to be notified by email each time a new interview or discussion is posted, and some other things. So thank you for listening or watching and I’ll probably be doing a few more things while I’m out here at the conference.