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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Hale Dwoskin. Welcome Hale.
Hale Dwoskin: Welcome. Thanks for being doing this. It’s fun.
Rick Archer: Oh yeah, totally fun. I’ll just read a short written bio of hail and then you’ll get to know him a lot better during the interview. Hale is a New York Times best selling author of The Sedona Method, who is featured in the letting go movie, which I was just watching this morning until the cat escaped and I had to run around on my bicycle, find the cat I did in the neighbor’s garage.
Hale Dwoskin: How’d your neighbor like that?
Rick Archer: Neighbor didn’t know.
Hale Dwoskin: Oh boy, that’s probably good.
Rick Archer: He was the CEO and director of trade of training of the Sedona training associates, an organization that teaches courses based on the emotional releasing techniques inspired by his mentor, Lester Levinson. Hale is an international speaker and featured faculty member at SLN and the Omega Institute. He is also one of the 24 featured teachers of the book and movie phenomenon the secret, as well as a founding member of the transformational leadership council. Over three decades, he has been he has regularly been teaching the Sedona Method to individuals and corporations throughout the US and the UK, and leading coach trainings and advanced retreats since the early 1990s. I was gonna say 1900s, I don’t know. If it is miraculous when you were born, born in 1860, he is also the co author with Lester Levinson of happiness is free, and it’s easier than you think a five book series. So that’s good enough for a bio, and we’ll get to know hail more as we go through the interview. So I guess it would be most appropriate for us for you to give us a kind of a nutshell understanding of what the Sedona Method is, and then we can trace its history and your experience with it and all that stuff.
Hale Dwoskin: Oh, sure. Sure. Well, basically what the Sedona Method is, is a bridge. It’s a bridge between traditional self help, and even psychology and, and non duality. Most techniques, and most teachers think they have to choose one or the other. And one of the unique things about the Sedona Method is it shows you how to deal with the instrument, how to deal with the body, mind world, and at the same time to recognize the truth of who you are. And they’re not mutually exclusive. I’ve met many people who have had tastes of non duality. And they made me leading Satsang about it, but they’re wiser a mess. And I’ve met a lot of other people in the self help space who, like even some of my friends who in the secret were, they’re very sweet people, they’re very loving people, they’re in the top one percentile on the planet, but they’re ignoring non duality. They’re, they’re trying to just simply make a better dream. And then probably not even seeing it as a dream. So what the Sedona Method is, it’s a tool that shows you wherever you are, whether you’re whether you’re trying to make more money, or have a better relationship, or having more radiant health, or you really just want to find those last remaining tendencies or Vasanas that are pulling you back from that non dual experience. Because what I’ve noticed is that people who have a non dual experience don’t realize that, that it can be a living part of every moment experience, they, they have a non dual experience, and they they know it clearly enough so they can talk about it anytime they need to. But it’s not their living experience every moment. And the only reason for that is because there’s still unresolved in the East they call them Samskaras and Vasanas. Because they haven’t cooked all the seeds, and some of them see cooking happens naturally. But a lot of the seed cooking can be nurtured along and that’s exactly what the Sedona Method does. It’s a way to rapidly dissolve the seeds that prevent To, from knowing that, that you are all there is. And this is another thing that happens to is. And so whether your goal is a worldly goal, or whether your goal is a spiritual goal, the process is the same because the, the, the Samskaras and Vasanas have the same. Or another way of saying in the east, they call it the Gunas, the, the three gunas. There’s this South Saco, which everyone’s aspiring to rajas, US, which you can’t live without and function in the world. And there’s tamas which are inertia. And what happens with the Sedona Method is it helps you naturally and spontaneously dissolve. Thomas haven’t merged into rajas and dissolve rajas and have it merged into Samatha. And that all happens naturally, as you echo, you don’t have to try to make that happen. Unfortunate, unfortunately, often in the east, they try to force that they try to and the mind rebels, but if you naturally let go of the tamas and the rajas, the inertia and the compulsive doing this, then what’s left over is soft. And then you can actually go beyond that, too.
Rick Archer: That’s a great explanation. There’s a quote at the beginning of your DVD from Lao Tzu, he says to the mind, that is still the whole universe surrenders,
Hale Dwoskin: right.
Rick Archer: And I was great. And I’ve listened to hours of your talk and your your whole process that you’ve put people through. And I also listened to your interview with Terry Patton, on Beyond Awakening, and I was, I must say, impressed with the way in which you integrated the kind of the practical and the non dual, you know, the manifest and the unmanifest. Because, as you said, a lot of teachers kind of emphasize one to the exclusion of the other. Right. And, you know, I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and there, there are a number of them who will say, their whole emphasis is, you are not a person, there’s nobody home, there’s nothing to do, there’s you know, and that’s the whole focus, but you know, stick stick a pin in their leg, and they’re gonna somehow realize that there is a person there
Hale Dwoskin: not necessarily have to explain the problem is most people speak about non duality, are doing one of two things, they’re either speaking from the non dual space completely, in which case, of course, there is no person. And there’s no debate about that. Or they’re speaking from the place of knowing there is no person from a direct experience, but they haven’t dealt with the person. And unfortunately, there’s many more of those. And so it doesn’t ring true. Like for instance, disregard data could talk that way and get away with it. Ramana Maharshi can talk that way, get away with it. Because just their living presence is a continuous invitation to that non dual experience. Whereas with a lot of teach, and, and there are some teachers, that’s true, too, but with a lot of teachers, they, they experienced non duality when they’re in front of a room when they’re being invited to take on that mantle. And part of the reason they like doing it is because it invites them back into that non dual experience. But they’re avoiding their wives. They’re not dealing with wife. And it also creates I don’t remember the the the term for it, but they it creates the non dual speak, which is total craziness. Yeah, advisors speak they invite to speak. That’s right. That advisor speak is honestly it’s just total bullshit.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no, please pass the salt. Who wants the salt
Hale Dwoskin: It’s so silly. It’s just silliness. Because as long as there’s a body mind mechanism, there is still human experience. It’s just that when the more you’re surrendered, or the more there is no sense of of separate you. One, the West, they’re suffering. That’s why everyone wants that. But the the, the, the more the wife just happens naturally and spontaneously. And if it’s if you’re not experiencing that, then you’re experiencing conceptual non duality, which unfortunately is extremely prevalent right now. Tell me about it for both teachers, and also for the people who follow these teachers, because they’re, what they are is their western weapons. And my mentor I’ll talk about will remind me to talk about him. Where Western Levinson used to talk about how people try to skip rajas I try to skip activities. And they, they’re in tamas, they’re in apathy, grief and fear with a little bit of lost. And they’re trying to skip lust, anger, pride, courageousness, and jump into acceptance and peace. And they pretend they go around, pretending there and acceptance and peace. Whereas they’re only able to maintain that when the world is going exactly the way they want it to.
Rick Archer: I can’t quote it, oh, I’m sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say I can’t quote him verbatim. But there’s a couple of verses in the Gita pertaining to that where, you know, one of them is that a certain stage activity is the means. And then later on at another stage, silence is the means, right? But you don’t kind of jump to the final stage if you have some other things to transition through. And this thing about the conceptual thing, I actually moderated a forum out of the science and non duality conference about this as a Tibetan saying, which I’ve repeated a million times, which is Don’t mistake understanding for realization, don’t don’t mistake realization for liberation, and that this is such a prevalent tendency, in my experience, that people, you can get an intuitive sense of non duality. I mean, we’re, we’re fish swimming in that ocean. And so if you if you read a book or to listen to a couple of YouTube videos, yeah, I get it, you know, I feel that, but it’s not the full embodied experience of it. And a lot of people make the mistake of assuming that it is and begin sort of terrorizing the chat groups with their, with their knowledge, you know.
Hale Dwoskin: One of the things I’ve always stayed away from is
Rick Archer: chat groups.
Hale Dwoskin: Yes, I stay away from what I’ve stayed away from this has been a conscious decision, no matter how profound the non dual experience that’s happening here, I have never been willing to, and I probably will never be willing to take on the mantle of a teacher in that way, or do sattwa. Because there’s just there’s this just this unevenness that happens from that. I’d rather lead a seminar where we’re equals, and I’m just helping you, with whatever it is that’s appropriate for you in this moment, because it keeps us talking like human beings and acting like human beings. And there’s, in my experience, you need the direct experiential knowingness, but you also need to deal with the physical. And you kneel that the need to deal with the emotional, and you also need to deal with the energetics. And unfortunately, most of the people that I know of in the non dual space, are dealing just with the knowledge and even the ones who are fully genuine and that though acknowledges their living experience, that their audience is not getting it. Because they need everything in order to really function.
Rick Archer: As another You remind me of another verse in The Gita, where it says the wise did not delude the ignorant by speaking of the uninvolved nature of the self, duly engaging in action, they, you know, they, they set an example and they kind of there’s an old saying, the mango tree when it’s right, the branches been down. So it’s easy to easy to pick the fruit, you know, it’s not like the branches are way up there. So you know, it’s not like you’re speaking from some plateau on Hi, you’re, you’re providing something that meets people where they’re at?
Hale Dwoskin: Yeah, it’s, it’s just been part of, I guess, what my mission is, is to actually doesn’t feel like a person this is part of what I’ve been given to do is, is to continually dissolve these imaginary dualities that are that we find in our everyday experience. And also, again, back to the thing I said very early on via bridge, as opposed to just take a position and say, if you don’t agree with this position, you just have gotten it yet. That to me, that’s very, that’s prideful. And it’s, it causes people to just idolize you and think that they haven’t gotten something. So it was actually something again, and in my experience, part of I love this quote, and I can’t remember who I’m quoting. But the quote is the only day I think it’s Nisargadatta, or it’s Sarah, Bob, I can’t remember but the only did I think it may be cerebral, but the only difference between someone who’s realized, and someone who’s not is the one is realized, notice there’s no difference. That’s nice. Because wherever you’re seeing differences, that still the illusion, any sense of differentiation is the illusion that you need that in order to function in life. You can’t pretend to not there But at the same time, if if you’re creating the stratification even subtly in the way you’re presenting your message, then you’ve missed it from my perspective, miserable point. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I am a kind of a practice sort of guy myself and meditating for a long time. And I, there’s, there’s another theme in non dual circles of rejecting practice, because it implies it implies the presence of a practice or, and it only reinforces the notion of a practice, or, and so on and so forth. And so I, you know, I have a bias in favor of it, actually. And I admire someone like yourself, who has a practical method that can be offered to people, rather than just words or concepts or sitting in ones in the presence of the teacher, which isn’t always pot prep, very practical.
Hale Dwoskin: We live in a world where you can at YouTube, you can sit in their presence, but sorta, sorta,
Rick Archer: I mean, you don’t get the vibe quite.
Hale Dwoskin: It’s not as strong. Yeah, it’s definitely not strong. But the I struggle with that when I was still kind of seeking in that. Certain teachers would say that, and yes, it’s true for them. They no longer did a practice, but they neglect to say that they were doing practice
Rick Archer: for 30 years or something. Yeah, no.
Hale Dwoskin: So they even were doing practice when they when they had their first experience of the truth of who they were, it was in the middle of a practice.
Rick Archer: Yep.
Hale Dwoskin: So. So, again, what I say is, yes, of course, the it is an act of grace, that the completion is completely an act of grace. But in the Buddhist circles, they say, you can what is it? I don’t remember the exact quote, but basically, all practices designed to do Oh, they call it an accident.
Rick Archer: Well, yeah, I know what you’re saying.
Hale Dwoskin: But all practices designed to do is make you accent prone.
Rick Archer: Exactly. Right.
Hale Dwoskin: Well, in my experience, the Sedona Method is makes people more accident prone than what almost anything else I know, because it’s dealing with the exact thing that prevents you from living the experience, the Vasanas and Samskaras.
Rick Archer: Room with a banana peel rug. Right?
Hale Dwoskin: Right. Right, the non dual space is a room with a
Rick Archer: In other words, it’s an accident waiting to happen. It makes accidents very likely.
Hale Dwoskin: But it’s also it’s a room like this, that the non dual space, as long as there’s any sense of separation, the room is slightly tilted. And you can’t maintain the experience, because it’s still just an experience, it may be a profound experience. So if, if you’re, you’ve had profound experiences of non duality, you wonder why do I keep getting caught back up into the world, it’s, it’s only it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It doesn’t mean that what soar isn’t valid, it just means that the mind is not free of seeds, yet free of tendencies, free of some scars, you need to cook the seeds. And if you don’t cook the seeds, no matter how many profound experiences you have of non duality, you’re still going to find yourself getting sucked back into the illusion of the body mind world as being real.
Rick Archer: And perhaps we could say that correspondingly, something hasn’t changed in the nervous system in the brain to support that non dual. Yes, the two are correlated.
Hale Dwoskin: And I think that that’s also where practice comes in. It’s helping rewired your energy your your pranic system and your nervous system. So that it can actually maintain the non dual state.
Rick Archer: Neuroplasticity is there
Hale Dwoskin: a plus Yes. And also just energetics, the, the, the prana, or the energy is required for the for the mind to maintain that state. Otherwise it gets lost back into the world. So what happens is most people just go, hey, you know, you just need to listen to what I’m saying. Or, or, you know, just read my book or whatever, and you’ll get it. And if you don’t get it, that’s just your problem.
Rick Archer: Don’t follow a teacher but keep coming to my seminars. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we could, you know, there are Eastern traditions that have worked this out in great detail in terms of chakras and noddy’s and, you know, chi and prana, and all that stuff. And you know, I’m not qualified to go there. And then I think Western certain Western neurophysiologists are trying to understand it in in their terms and with their instruments. And there’s a lot of research being done on brain activity during non dual states and meditative states and stuff. So anyway, that’s a whole nother topic, but that says, but but it does emphasize the point that there’s something going on in the physiology that correlates with this experience that we’re all talking interested in.
Hale Dwoskin: Yes, yes, absolutely. And, and it’s, it’s, if we’re really interested in non duality, if we’re really interested in ending suffering, then we need to need to deal with the whole package. We can’t ignore the package or pretend the package isn’t there and keep tripping over it.
Rick Archer: I’m laughing because I, I’ve heard you refer to your birds. I hear one of those birds in the background
Hale Dwoskin: there. I’m in our home office. And the birds that are one landing up in my house.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I was interviewing this guy who used to be the bass player for the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And I had this noise that kept happening throughout the interview, I said, Can you shut the door? There’s some baby screaming in the other room. He said, No, that’s a bird. Rick, Rick Laird is his name, by the way, if anybody wants to listen to that interview. So so how does the Sedona Method Mazal start getting into it, how you present it very nicely as not merely some feel good thing or work through your problems thing, but as a viable method of, you know, attaining non dual realization? So what are the mechanics through which it could do that?
Hale Dwoskin: Well, let me take a step back this, I just want to make sure that everyone’s listening is clear about what the process is itself. Yeah. It’s basically a form of inquiry that deals with not just the I thought, but all all the Samskaras in Boston are seeing that you aren’t that. But in a very practical, experiential way. So that’s one way of describing and another way of describing is just simply that I like to use props for this. Just make sure this is closed, right on myself. Which I’ve known to do. So for the sake of this analogy, this pen represents our our, some scars or fasteners aren’t beliefs or attitudes are our anger, fear, frustration, everything that’s in between us and experiencing non duality, and also anything in between us and having our goals in life. And our hand represents our gut or our awareness. So those of you watching at home if your pick up an object, so you can do this with me, because it actually doing this sometimes it. Yeah, so be careful when I went in the next part, when you drop it, catch. Those of you at home, try to pick up something you’d be willing to drop without worrying about catching. So what we do in life is we don’t we are generally this is our relationship to every problem, we’re going like this. So grip the object really tightly with your hand, I mean really tightly until it starts to feel really uncomfortable. Now, this is what it feels like inside most of the time for all of us. As long as we’re identifying with that body mind mechanism of lower identifying with our suffering, we’re gripping it at the same time. So now relax your hand and open the open it and roll the hand around in your object around the object around your hand. Now is this object attached to your hand? Obviously not. But think about our relationship to everything that we don’t like. We actually feel as though it is us it’s even in our language. We don’t usually say I feel sad. We say I’m sad. We don’t usually say I feel angry, we say I’m angry. We don’t usually say even the things in the non dual space, we don’t usually say I’m feeling peaceful. We say I’m at peace, or actually that’s still okay. There’s still some sense of clarity there. But we think I’m enlightened. That’s a very common one. That’s an identification. So but remember, it’s all these identifications are attached to us as His head is attached to your hand. So you have a choice. You can do this now turn your head upside down. And then just reco open, just drop the object. So that is the choice that you can make any moment with anything that appears to be holding you back on any level. And that’s one way we teach a wedding go another way we teach a wedding go is if you if you live life oh But this cameras too small. But if you live life open, things don’t stick to you. So it’s kind of like going through life with your hand open as opposed to, if you go through life with your hand open, then things pass through your experience naturally, if they don’t stick, so we call that welcoming or allowing, in Zen, they call it they, they call it as possible, or mindfulness. But you can actually live life that way, we’re not clinging to what what’s being experienced in the moment, you’re just allowing light to flow naturally. And that’s, that’s another way of letting go. Another way of letting go is if you look at this object, and you look at it from the outside, it looks sour. But if you could magnify this enough, and this won’t be enough.
Rick Archer: Right
Hale Dwoskin: But if you could magnify it enough, the object would start to see seem less and less dense, because it’s mostly empty space.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Hale Dwoskin: And so what happens is, when the reason that our limitations appear real to us, is because we’re all living life on the surface, we don’t realize, especially internally, we’re living in a soap bubble. And you know how thin that is, the non dual space is both inside the bubble, and outside the bubble. So if you, what we tend to do though, is we try to stay on the surface of the bubble, and try to hold our whole life together. And but if you simply dive into the bubble, it pops because it has no substance. So we call that diving in. And then what you have in life, everything is long as there’s mind, there’s pairs of opposites, you cannot have mind without end is also out, up, down. There’s certain useful ones for just functioning in life. But the mind has added layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of conflicting of polarities of dualities, like right and wrong, and good and bad. Have to attend. And there’s so many. And the mind also tries to keep them separate, we have a pile over here of all the good stuff and a pile over here of all the stuff we think is bad. And we’re doing this, you know, I don’t want to, in a way, and it’s a juggling act, you know, we’re kind of
Rick Archer: pretty flexible. You must do yoga.
Hale Dwoskin: I do yoga. But I was born flexible. But anyway, the. But what happens is, if you welcome both sides, instead of again, people are willing to welcome peace. But if you also welcome disturbance, and peace, they dissolve each other. Because they’re polarities, they’re, they’re a continuum. So what we discovered is that if you are willing to welcome both that what you judge is good, and that what you judge his bad that which creates pleasure, and that was creates pain there, they they simply start to merge. And what’s left over is non duality. That’s what’s already here. So, so right in the wife when you’re experiencing some conflict, or you need to do is say, Well, what would be here if the conflict was already resolved. And so you’re welcome that and you’re welcome to conflict. A lot of times, we’ll go there, and we’ll try to substitute? Well, I’m just going to think about the positive and pretend but negative is going to go away. Yeah, well, that works. Not at all. That’s the biggest problem with positive thinking is you’re just, you’re, you’re just layering. You’re putting a happy face on top of your problem. And the problem doesn’t go away because of that. But if you welcome the problem and the solution, both they dissolve each other and you do what Einstein says you can your move to a new level to solve the problem from which is not the same level you created. And so that we call that holistic release, and then, sorry,
Rick Archer: okay, well, I could interject some comments or you could continue if you’d like
Hale Dwoskin: anytime you want to I again, I really don’t have a train of thought, okay, because because the I don’t think about what I’m going to say before I think it should have kind of like
Rick Archer: Ronald Reagan cartoon that depicted the Reagan end run it had some thought kind of going around the back of his brain and skipping the frontal cortex coming out of his mouth. But a few comments out What is the DD Vak? Have you heard this is very interesting that you’re talking about the insubstantiality of the physical, you know, if you took all 7 billion people in the world, and removed all the empty space that’s actually between all the subatomic particles and their bodies and whatnot, you’d end up with an object the size of a grain of rice. I didn’t hear that. That’s yeah. And even that object, if you go deeper, is just sort of strings and probabilities, you know, it’s virtual, ultimately. And I forget what else I was gonna save, it doesn’t matter. I probably said it before. But one question I have with regard to letting go of the pen, yes, I get the sense that I in listening to you do your thing, it’s obvious that you don’t let go of everything in one go. I mean, it takes a while later, it took, you know, decades and lifetimes to build it all up layer by layer, it’s gonna take a while to work back through the layers. Absolutely. So
Hale Dwoskin: let me finish the west of the fifth way of letting go and then tell you how they all interrelate. The fifth way of letting go is where we meet the non dual space is, we call it the fifth way. And it’s just basically active inquiry. And that is noticing that non duality that’s here. And now that’s already whole and complete. And also noticing that that sense of me is not there, you can’t find it. So the every one of the things, the other ways of letting go, involve varying degrees and believing that there’s someone there to let go. And so what I what we do in our seminars, but what I also help people learn how to do is you go back and forth, you deal with the layer you’re at now, if there’s an obvious polarity, you welcome the polarity and then there’s nothing if you were, if you are just cling to something you go, if you’re, if you find you’re just repelling, and you’re not really letting yourself feel you dive in. So whatever is appropriate in the moment, but you also less used to say you need to balance ego elimination, with non duality with being that which you are through study of scripture or, or hanging out with a truly wise teacher or, or just loving yourself or just being that non dual space. So you’d go back and forth, if you just do one, you can get into a completely artificial state of, of joyous escape. If you’re just focusing on that non dual space, you can actually live life. Especially if you live in a beautiful place, and you have don’t have a job and, and everything, everybody and your wife is always nice to you and all this other kind of stuff. You can spend periods where you’re you think you’re in this pure non dual space, but it’s just an escape. And on the other hand, you can get stuck. And I’ve seen this too, people get so obsessed with getting rid of the Vasanas and Samskaras. That this the tendencies and desires, they get so lost in that, that they forget the notes of space, and they start reinvent they start, they start doing this, you’re in a boat that sinking here’s here’s the boat, it’s sinking. Except it’s I don’t know how I’m going to do this. But with one hand, you’re with one hand you’re bailing. And the other hand you’re refilling the boat. So we’re going like this into our boat. We’re bailing with one hand, and we’re refilling it with the other hand. So what you need to do is this, be letting go with both hands. But so I always encourage people to balance any sense of working on the illusion of me with just resting as that which they already are.
Rick Archer: Another thing which is more rare, but which I sometimes get feedback from people this this one came in from a young woman over in Europe, she said that she when I was 18, I fell into the non dual state for four hours and my Kundalini awoken at the age of 23. One year ago, I went into the state of Samadhi Self Realization, which was such an enormous shift that I became dysfunctional and I still am, my identity disappeared into consciousness, like becoming a baby. scary not knowing how to survive physically. And she goes on and on. But people can shift into a state so radically, that they don’t know how to think don’t know how to talk, you know, I mean, Byron Katie was an example and Eckhart Tolle both they their shift was so sudden and abrupt and and anticipated that took took them years to learn how to function again,
Hale Dwoskin: right and that’s that’s not uncommon. When When there’s that radical shift, without without, without to things without all the without good process to support it, in other words, knowing how to deal with the world, both on a purely practical level, but also on the physical, emotional, energetic level. And see, it doesn’t invalidate that non dual experience that that they’re having. But it does make it really difficult to function in life. And so when the other thing is just simply lifestyle, you need to create a lifestyle that supports non duality.
Rick Archer: In other words, what kind of lifestyle would that be? Well,
Hale Dwoskin: more, I guess, more of a Sofic lifestyle. And certainly not a tomasik lifestyle. But again, simple things like, I guess, people are gonna hate this, but things like sex, drugs, and rock and roll to excess is not exactly conducive,
Rick Archer: right. But a little Hendrix every now and then.
Hale Dwoskin: Or just being absolutely obsessed with success, for instance, is, is great if you want success, but being absolutely obsessed with success, and wondering why you can’t meditate deeply, or you can’t experience non duality, it’s really obvious because there’s much more of that anger, anger, pride, courageousness than there is acceptance and peace. So
Rick Archer: they’re good addresses that stuff too. It says, you know, this yogo is not for him who sleeps too much or too little, who eats too much or too little, who, you know, just you kind of, and the Buddha, I guess, the Middle Way advocating balance, you know, you just don’t go overboard in any one direction, because, again, back to the physiology, you know, we got an instrument that we need to maintain if we want to live this non dual thing. And you can damage that influence instrument, any number of means,
Hale Dwoskin: right? Right. And it will just distract you. So you can, you can have these amazing non dual experiences. But if you don’t have practice to support it, on some level, some some sort of practice that just helps you ground it, support it. And you also aren’t creating a lifestyle that supports it, it’s really hard to maintain.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’ve been having a discussion with a friend of mine named Jerry about a lot of this stuff, because we keep coming across people who, again, have some sort of awakening, maybe a very profound one. But they they’re kind of in a stage of nothing ever happens, nothing to talk about nothing to think about nothing to do. And Jerry’s emphasis is that that’s kidding, maybe a preliminary stage, but eventually what the what the Hindus called brahman is considered to be the, they say the eater of everything, it’s all inclusive. So it includes it includes all the nitty gritty of life, all the granularity, you know, all the structure, the processes, this subjective character, of one’s life, everything. So you know, non dual is not just this kind of plain vanilla nothingness, it’s, it’s the whole full catastrophe to quote absorb from Zorba the Greek, you know, complete completely engulf though in wholeness rather than an old friend and a million fragments once.
Hale Dwoskin: This is the classic quote Before Enlightenment, chop, chop wood carry water after Enlightenment, chop. Wood carry water, but so many people out there right now are in the middle state. Where they’re in this new place that is, is almost becomes a way to avoid life.
Rick Archer: Yeah, water is an illusion. What is an illusion? Yeah, what is illusion was an illusion, there’s no one to chop, there’s no one to carry.
Hale Dwoskin: Yeah, right. And, and that’s not that’s why most of those people eventually kind of fall by either they get very sick, or because they’re not attending the instrument, or they kind of fall out of the state and don’t know what happened. Because it’s, it’s theirs. That’s part of why in the east, they have teachers and they emphasize that you need to have in order to really approach non duality, you need to have it we some Touchstone now, if you have ever good enough inner instrument that you can, you can actually get knowledge directly from the source. That’s great, but that’s not common. Most people need some in external support, not a dependent relationship, but external support, so that they are Are they can they know that this is just a stage for instance? I mean, so many people are out there are in just a stage, and there are many stages. And they think, Oh, now I got it. Oh, now I’ve got it now. Now I’ve got it. No, who is this? I have got it. Nobody, but but they still think that on a very subtle level, even though they in their, in their with their presenting to in life, they may not even talk about it. But that’s actually what they’re experiencing. That’s something that’s been accomplished.
Rick Archer: Do you know who Adyashanti is? Of course, yeah. Here’s one from him. Even now, with me, the mystery is just beginning, always still beginning? Yes. And yeah, he’s a guy that I would respect as being quite ripe, you know, quite far along. But, and I’ve used these quotes many times. But here’s one from St. Teresa of Avila. She said, the feeling remains that God is on the journey to in other words, who God himself. This is just a stage there’s Yes. More unfoldment.
Hale Dwoskin: Yeah, and, and I 100% agree with that, again, if it gets static, then then you’re, you’re like this against the wall. Now maybe a beautiful wall. It may be this beautiful, apparently non dual. But you’re still like this. And you’re missing everything else. So
Rick Archer: why do you think it is that people have a tendency to feel that they have arrived and there’s nothing more to unfold? Living?
Hale Dwoskin: It’s two, it’s two things. It’s, it’s the minds wanting, it was more than two, I’ll just start speaking. I said two, and I can see more than two. But the first thing is the mind is always looking to create a structure around whatever’s experienced, based on comparing it to the past, based on comparing it to what we’ve learned. And so and as long as there’s any sense of a me, not even. And also there’s levels of this to the in the east, the court asmita. Or a hyung, Cara. But a lot of times a hyung, Cara or the sense of sense, the I sense they have mostly disappeared for someone with a sense of aliveness is still there. That’s still an illusion. And so a lot of people get to this aliveness. And that’s it. That’s just the beginning.
Rick Archer: So that’s one And beneath that would be isness.
Hale Dwoskin: Right and adding meat that is no longer words. Even isness is still within a framework. So and that’s kind of the difficulty. Difficulty here is, is non duality. One of the things that Ramana did, one of his main ways of teaching was to say nothing at all. And people said he wouldn’t talk that’s not true, he would talk. But he always talked about silence is the highest teaching. And one of the things that I was worried about rester my mentors that he said the same thing, he said, the highest teachings on the silent teachings, because if you’re using words, it’s already a representation. And it doesn’t matter how good the words are. They’re still lies. They’re still conceptual. So so the people will confuse a sense of aliveness with the sense of with when there’s a much less sense of I am, but there’s still sense of aliveness. They’ll think they’re done. And, and the other thing that will happen is that they’ll they’ll have some of the symptoms of that they’ve heard from other people. And they think since they have no symptoms, maybe this is it. But if you’re if you’re working for this experience, that’s not it. So when people have awakening type experiences in my seminar, I say that’s nice. And then so and then we just continued it’s we absolutely make nothing out of it. Because it is nothing I mean it that if you make you make it significant, meaningful, important or anything like that, you immediately are putting it back in a box. You’re immediately putting all this artificial sense of definition around something that defies definition. So
Rick Archer: when audio Shanti first had his first major awakening, he actually heard a voice that said keep going
Hale Dwoskin: That’s great. And again, he’s he’s one of those people that has a nice access to that, to the direct teaching that comes through, often without words, but sometimes with words, but it’s not from an embodied teacher, maybe a disembodied teacher, but it’s not fair men party teacher.
Rick Archer: One impression that I got over and over again, as I was listening to your talks, is that what the Sedona Method if I, if I had to sum up the Sedona Method to see if you agree with this, I would say that it’s, it’s a way of learning to cooperate with nature’s intelligence, yes. You know, we kind of get in the way of what nature is able to accomplish much more effectively than we possibly could. And it’s, it’s a method of kind of allowing yourself to get out of the way, and let nature do its thing. Yeah, I
Hale Dwoskin: totally agree with that there’s most another wonderful analogy that you’ve probably heard before is life is kind of like a river. Right. And, and, but how most of us experience life is where we’re actually swimming against the current gripping one rock from another trying to pull ourselves out of the flow. And when you, the more you go, the more you just become the river, flowing around whatever appears to be an obstacle, and, and you’re always flowing towards the ocean. And River and ocean are the same. And another analogy, of course, is like the waves in the ocean. Again, in life, we we identify often with the wave. And we forget that both the wave and the ocean are just one. And in, what the method does is it helps you notice your Oceanus even when the wave is like. And it helps if you’ve really gotten lost in this, it helps you kind of step back and do whatever processes appropriate in the moment to, to, to relax again,
Rick Archer: as the ocean helps the wave to settle down
Hale Dwoskin: helps the wave wave to settle down. So funny in life, most of the time, where were the waves, which we try to outdo every other wave, but we forget that all the waves are going to end up at the shore and what happens to the waves when they end up at the shore. They’re gone. So we’re in a hurry to get to the, to our dissolution without even realizing it.
Rick Archer: He dies with the most toys wins. People, yeah. I thought that impression that kept coming to mind as I was listening to you was that, you know, speaking again, of nature’s intelligence, it seems, you know, that it’s natural. I mean, that as individual human beings, we embody certain tendencies that are present universally in nature. And one of those tendencies is It is natural for the universe to individuate you know, the after the Big Bang, I guess, we have this big amorphous field of something, and then it sort of accreted into stars eventually, you know, there was an individuation. And then the stars exploded, and then even more diversification and individuation took place. And now now we have people in salamanders and all kinds of specific things. And yet at the very same time, it’s so that would account for the getting lost in the in the minutiae of life getting getting overshadowed getting gripped aspect, but then at the very same time, it’s a natural for the reverse flow to take place to get back to universality. So it’s almost like the universe is on a grand scale is playing this game of specificity back to universality. And we as individual units are, you know, experiencing the same thing in our own lives?
Hale Dwoskin: Definitely. And, again, what we do though, is we resist the process,
Rick Archer: right? Perhaps that’s the individuation tendency, yes, still still holding on and not realizing
Hale Dwoskin: we want to take our individuality into non duality. And you can’t do that.
Rick Archer: Right? It doesn’t want to surrender,
Hale Dwoskin: right? The freedom or non duality or awakening, whatever you want to call it, I have yet to hear a word that that’s really accurate is from you. It’s not for
Rick Archer: you. So elaborate on that.
Hale Dwoskin: Well, the, to the degree that there’s no sense of a separate need to that degree, the non duality which is already here, is is is shining in plain view. The so but what we do on This on the path as we generally were trying to take me with us, so that we I can have an experience of oneness. I can have an awakening. And as soon as you say my awakening
Rick Archer: Now let’s say you’re the most,
Hale Dwoskin: okay? Just avoid you, if you sense your language and say there was an awakening, that’s still the same thing. So you change your language, that’s another thing I tell people is you should use in relating to people, if you’re using any kind of language that wouldn’t be understand by the checkout person at the supermarket, then then there’s a distortion. I tell people, please don’t. Don’t try to take the language that we use in here. Sometimes we have to use this kind of distorted language in a seminar to help you experience what’s beyond what we usually experienced. But don’t try to tell talk to your friends that way.
Rick Archer: No, and our supermarket every time you check out there, they’re trying to say, did you find everything? Okay. There’s all kinds of things I could do as well, you know, I wasn’t actually looking for everything. And really, there is no i and Yeah. Go ahead. I had a thought. But I lost it.
Hale Dwoskin: Oh, well, actually, I had a thought that I want to share is that it’s, it’s tangential. But the other thing is that there isn’t the movie analogy is a great analogy to explain what we’re experiencing. And again, it’s Remember, it’s just analogy. Again, people hear these analogies, and then they try to make literal sense out of the whole thing. Or they think that’s the truth. Oh, Goshen. Not really. But it’s just a teaching story.
Rick Archer: And every analogy has its limitations,
Hale Dwoskin: limitations, but the the being out one of the analogy that I like and explaining that is that, first of all, when you go to a movie, a regular movie, you don’t enjoy the movie, unless you identify with at least one character. If you don’t identify the character, there’s no drama. I saw a movie last night Epic. It’s a kids’ flick, and I usually why kids kids’ flicks, but this one, it wasn’t, didn’t quite make that you didn’t really buy it. 100%. So it was, even though it was beautiful to watch, and great special effects, and some really good animation job. It wasn’t avatar, where you really identify with the characters, and you really identified with the story. And so this movie that we’re experiencing now is the same way, this movie, The in order to hat for it to have high entertainment value, you would identify with one of the characters. And you also think that all the other characters are separate. And but it’s, it’s just a movie. So and you’ve probably heard the taking that analogy a little further, you’ve probably heard the movie analogy where you’re just the screen, right? Which is accurate. You’re just the screen. And But what you also forget, as you’re also the light. And the film in between is the Samskaras. And Boston’s what you’re experiencing life is an out picturing of all your past tendencies you’re experiencing the past all the time, you’re not actually experiencing what’s here.
Rick Archer: But if you went to a movie, and all you had was a screen and the light would no film, it would be you know, everybody would walk out. Right? There’d be no entertainment.
Hale Dwoskin: Absolutely So that’s part of the reason that we have this whole dance is because it has, it’s the way we stay engaged.
Rick Archer: It has entertainment value,
Hale Dwoskin: it has entertained has a high entertainment value.
Rick Archer: Lila,
Hale Dwoskin: right. Yes, we were exactly. And that’s also the in the East they talk about the the Maya, the Lila or Maya disappears for the one who’s seen the truth. But it stays there for everybody else. Well, that, again, it because it’s just the theory or analogy breaks down. And it’s really not important. The important thing is that you are at both the light and the screen. And the reason that sometimes there are all these things in your experience that that you’re getting lost in is one is because you’re identifying with the projection on the screen. And you don’t notice that when there’s an explosion in the in the movie, you don’t burn or when there’s flood you don’t get wet. That’s one level. But the other level is that’s all made up of the pictures are all made up of your tendency. So here’s some scars, your, your, your your desires. So if you need to deal with that, if you if you just try to pretend you’re the screen and pretend you’re the white, or maybe you even notice that you’re the light on the screen, and you’re not dealing with all the stuff in between. It’s still stays cloudy. And he still can forget, it’s easy to forget. But if you deal with the Samskaras and Vasanas, if you dissolve them, then it’s harder and harder to forget.
Rick Archer: Yeah. You said a little while ago, we’ll come back to more to dealing with the Samskaras and Vasanas. But several while ago that, you know, one is in the non dual experience to the extent that ahamkara or ego has has diminished or dissolved. But I mean, even if you’re the most non dual guy on the planet, and maybe you are I don’t know, but there have to be some. In Sanskrit there’s this term lesh avidya, faint remains of ignorance, it’s my understanding there would have to be some faint remains, at least in order for you to be functional. Otherwise, you’re just gonna lie down and starve to death or something.
Hale Dwoskin: where you are your devotees will feed you.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Which is in the case of Anandamayi Ma or Neem Karoli Baba. And they seem to be in that condition. Practically.
Hale Dwoskin: Yes, yes. So there are people in that condition. But yes, there are still what dissolves is your identification. But you’re still the package of, of the core Samskaras and Vasanas. That, that make up your that needs the court the prompt the prompt, I can’t rob the karma up the karma. The harmless from before it can be dissolved in the future, Carmen’s can be dissolved. But the calmer you’re actually living out.
Rick Archer: You’ll live it out. Yeah. But you can do so realizing clearly that you are that All the world’s a stage and all the men and women nearly merely players, you’re just a player in this and that you’re not really getting stabbed or burned or whatever.
Hale Dwoskin: And at the same time, you don’t you take care of the body. I mean, if someone’s about to stab you, you don’t just go Okay, stab me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s only an illusion anyway,
Hale Dwoskin: you step out of the way. Take the appropriate action.
Rick Archer: Now, one thing that I kept thinking of let’s shift gears a little bit, as I was listening to the thing is, Okay, what if Hale was sent to Connecticut to console and deal with the Sandy Hook parents, you know, sent sent to New Newtown? I mean, you’re not just going to say, a few days after that tragedy, can you just let it go? You might, but I mean, obviously, the grief is very sharp at that point.
Hale Dwoskin: But but the first step is to allow the, what happens is people very often, the grieving process gets very extended. Because people aren’t allowing themselves to feel what they’re feeling in the moment, they try to numb out, they numb out, they’ll, they’ll either suppress or they’ll escape, or they’ll express the emotion, but they won’t just, just just be with. So, and again, a lot of therapy is based on expressing, which is better, often and unnecessary step. But there’s a balancing coin, in the middle of those three, the suppression, that escape or the expression of balancing point right at the center, is just in allowing. So when I work with people who have are dealing with severe trauma, what you do is you start by just allowing for their experience. And, and know that there’s been let people know that their experience is okay. You’re not supposed to be experiencing anything different than what you are. It’s a natural experience. And then,
Rick Archer: so you wouldn’t dream of saying to them, oh, it’s just an illusion. And that’s, you know, children are not really dead. They weren’t really, they didn’t really exist to begin with. Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: that’s, that would be really insensitive.
Rick Archer: Get yourself punched in the nose or something.
Hale Dwoskin: Or worse. Or shot. “I have a gun too. ” But no what you do is you you deal with where people are at in the moment. So the, the movie has that triple welcoming process. That’s very good situation like that. So the first thing you do is you welcome what’s being experienced, the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs, the sadness, the memories, all of it. And then what you do is you welcome the all you’re wanting to fix it, to change it to control it to a random also wanting to pretend it didn’t happen. All the things we usually try to do with anything that we’ve labeled as some of us see welcome not to. And Justin, welcome in those two things is already relief first in welcoming what you’re experiencing this relief, because you’re usually fighting with it or thinking you should be over it or, or, or there’s so many beliefs about what’s correct. So that’s one level. So if you’re welcome, what you’re experiencing is already some relief, then if you welcome what all you what you’re you’re trying to modify your experience or fix or change it. There’s a tremendous relief in that. And then what you do is you also welcome the sense that it’s your experience, you don’t deny that. So any sense that it’s me, it’s about me, or it’s who I am you welcome that. Now, people often will say when I say Well, welcome, well, yeah, it feels like I said, Yeah, it does, that you just welcome that it feels like you that there’s this identification,
Rick Archer: now do people have adequate capacity to welcome the most severe things, or is it that you just, you know, nature guiding this process, you’re given as much as you can handle to welcome at any given time?
Hale Dwoskin: Yes, I don’t say welcoming is not forcing yourself to bring it all up.
Rick Archer: right? Because you might be like, just a little cup of water, which can’t take a shovel full of dirt, whereas an ocean could.
Hale Dwoskin: Right, exactly. So when you’re welcoming, you’re welcoming only what you’re experiencing in the moment.
Rick Archer: Okay.
Hale Dwoskin: And just in doing that, it gets less overwhelming.
Rick Archer: Because the thing itself dissolves or because your capacity grows, or both?
Hale Dwoskin: Both.
Rick Archer: Okay.
Hale Dwoskin: So in a situation like that, that would be one of the tools that I would use, because I, there was a man on my last retreat. He he was the first person to work on the retreat. And what he worked on is that he was severely abused. He was abused by his priests when he was a kid. And then what happened is he he told his dad about his family, and his dad beat him for 15 years. Plus, he didn’t believe Yikes. So he had two layers. Yeah. And then he had the sexual abuse. And then he had the abusive was his dad, because his dad just couldn’t accept that the priests would do something like that. So it must have been a story made up. And he got punished for 15 years. So you might think that might bring up just a little bit of trouble. Yeah, really. So we did just this triple welcoming process. And he was the very first person to work and in just 10 minutes, the the core of it dissolved.
Rick Archer: and didn’t resurface or re emerge.
Hale Dwoskin: They were they were aware that came after that. But they were less and less. And by the end of the retreat, his relationship with his wife had healed and a whole other, that’s part of the reason he knew we had a genuine wedding go was that there were all these compensations and results from holding on to this trauma, that all started to dissolve and sleeping better, he went through a whole litany of things that have changed. And, and so even with severe things like that, if you’re willing to start with where you’re at right now, and you’re willing to engage in the process, I’ve seen people do really miraculous things. I mean, really miraculous things
Rick Archer: nice. One thing I admired or appreciated in listening to your interview with Terry Patton was that you were very kind of ecumenical or eclectic, you just sort of, you know, saw the Sedona Method as one of many, many tools in the world that people can use to evolve and grow. And there was no sort of our way is the best way.
Hale Dwoskin: Kind of, I don’t even think that our way is a way. Yeah. And it may be the best way for you this moment. And then a year from now, it may no longer be the best way for you.
Rick Archer: Yeah that’s great.
Hale Dwoskin: And, and I think that people need to really follow their hearts when it comes to any kind of tool or any kind of teacher. If you’re, if you’re if you put the tool or the teacher first, then you’re missing the point. Right? The the what you always need to put first is, is this really supporting me? And, and, and with a teacher? Is is this teacher really? Am I feeling that peace, of love and that beingness that I am when I’m around them if I’m not feeling that, or if I only feel it around them and then every time I’m not around them, I’m there. They’re just good at producing that state in their presence. But that that state should not just be when you’re with them. It should be more and more the time that’s not happening. or if there’s a how do you describe this? if there’s
Rick Archer: this is Lila, this is the wayward cat.
Hale Dwoskin: The one that was in the neighbor’s garage.
Rick Archer: sorry for the interruption, but I thought you might like to meet her.
Hale Dwoskin: That’s great.
Rick Archer: So, um, so So you were saying about being around teachers? Yeah. If you lose the state, when you’re not with the teacher, then
Hale Dwoskin: again, there are many teachers who have been very good. They have a siddhi.
Rick Archer: Right? They can evoke a state in you.
Hale Dwoskin: Yeah. And so the other thing is how they treat you,
Rick Archer: right
Hale Dwoskin: If they treat you as complete equal, then you’re no, you’re in the right place. If they’re either putting you up, or you’re only they’ve chosen few can be here. Or they’re putting you down Someday, you’ll be as high as I am. Then you have to be cautious. The true teachers see you as the same as them. That’s part of what makes them such a powerful teacher. So
Rick Archer: which is not to say that some people aren’t more spiritually evolved than others? Obviously, yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: it’s, it’s obviously it’s a continuum, that and, and especially teachers from the east are going to have at least some trapping, they just can’t help it. It’s part of what
Rick Archer: culture
Hale Dwoskin: part of the culture, it’s more, it’s more thing to be more concerned about in the West, because it’s not part of our culture. So if it’s not part of a culture is something artificial, they’re even just as simple as that they’re always sitting up here, and you’re always sitting down here, then that it’s not required.
Rick Archer: Sometimes that’s necessary if you’re speaking to 300 people.
Hale Dwoskin: No I’m not talking about that, I mean, in a small room, in a big room, you have to have a stake, right? It’s just especially on voice five, six, when I stand in front of a room, then they start complaining, because they can’t see me. So I got to step up a step or two, so so that they can actually least see my face. Sure. But I’m not talking about that. There’s, there’s a difference. If there’s the if there’s a separating happening, right, higher hierarchy, then you know, there’s something going on. But also with any kind of tool, the tools, you should have a whole tool chest. And, and you should use the tool that’s appropriate for the moment. Now, some tools are more universe, versatile and some tools the West universal, but you still don’t want to use a hammer to screw to change your wiper. Yeah, that would just create a mess. But a lot of people do they think, Well, this is the best tool, so I have to use it for every job. Well, it was only good, the best tool when it’s the right tool.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I have a friend whom I’m sure you know, who became a TM teacher in Rishikesh in the 1960s. And she’s also a Sedona teacher. And you know, I was talking to her about it. She said, Yeah, well, meditation is wonderful. I’ve been doing all these years. I love it. It’s very powerful and effective. But there are certain things, you know, which I found that Sedona really gets to which meditation doesn’t seem to have been getting to. And, you know, so it’s part of her toolbox. And
Hale Dwoskin: yes, and again, and in my experience, meditation, combined with with releasing is amazing. So you don’t, again, follow what is actually helping you, right? It’s not helping you don’t keep doing it just because you’re you think you’re earning merit, or just something it’s going to work.
Rick Archer: Yeah, somebody asked Maharshi, one time, how many followers he had. And he said, I don’t have any followers, everyone follows their own benefits. So tell us a bit about your teacher, since we’re speaking of teachers, I know you’re, you know, had a very warm relationship with him for many years. And he was an amazing man, until it might be interesting to hear less of your story.
Hale Dwoskin: Oh, sure. I met Lester Levinson, the man who inspired this work back in 1976, at a at a seminar that I helped organize for another thing. Another thing I one of the things this lifetime, I’ve always really liked something. I just did 1,000% I didn’t just taste it. I did so years ago, before I did the Sedona Method. And within a weeks I was assisting trainings and I was a training supervisor, leading guest seminars. I was just gaga over it. And then all of a sudden I started to see that that was just brainwashing and programming and I got the hell out of there. But I had my way of doing it was to immerse myself. So I was immersed in this other thing and Western came as the guest of the seminar. leader. And he didn’t. It was a seminar that went over a year and people came and went. So I didn’t even really notice him that much in the seminar. But the seminar leader, myself and the other organizer went out to lunch with Westar. And I was blown away. He was the first teacher I had met. That was, I’ve been very fortunate to meet many others since then. But he was the first one I had met, who was no longer seeking.
Rick Archer: Why was he at a seminar, he was no longer seeking.
Hale Dwoskin: He was invited there because the man he didn’t come to seminar to take the seminar, he came to the seminar, because the man was trying to decide whether or not to introduce Lester, to the, to the his following. and Lester was trying to decide whether or not this guy was even worth it to have anything to do with it. So there was that was one of those types of things. It was like, alright, I’ll come see what you’re doing.
Rick Archer: Right.
Hale Dwoskin: And not because I need something but because i He was a guest just so that seminar leader, he could experience with the seminar leader.
Rick Archer: Sure. What was it about Lester that made you realize that he wasn’t seeking while you’re just having lunch with them?
Hale Dwoskin: i One is, I could feel as equanimity, the changelessness to is there was a profound peace. And at some level, there was also a sense of blissfulness. And then there was he wasn’t doing that. I’m up here thing. He was just an ordinary guy. And then there was just this just inner knowingness that happened and meeting him there was like, Oh, this guy really knows what he’s talking about. I need to find out what this is about. And I signed up for the seminar that the Sedona Method back then was taught over a two weekend seminar. And I immediately called the next day and signed up for it, and then invited a friend of mine to come with me because I was a little nervous. So I invited a female friend of mine, who was involved in the same group, one of the organizer types, and I said, Well, you come with me to this, I think you’ll like it. And I’ll even pay for it because she didn’t have money. And what happened during the seminars, I realized that I inwardly realized that this is what I came here to be involved in. I just new with Dan, and I’ve been involved in it ever since. But what when I met Western. There was first who he was, but then there was his story. And his story was really very interesting. His story was built back in 1952. He was sent home to die from a second coronary. She wants to come back in.
Rick Archer: Yeah. You can just keep talking. You’ll see me doing that. Letting the Dogs dogs and cats and cats.
Hale Dwoskin: So you’re, you’re the you’re the dog.
Rick Archer: Menagerie. Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: But at any rate, so.
Rick Archer: And he was sent back to die after a second coronary.
Hale Dwoskin: The doctors basically gave him a death sentence. And he was very successful. He was living on a penthouse apartment in Central Park South in Manhattan. And, and even back then that was that was an accomplishment. So he was he was financially successful. And he had at least two women who would propose to him didn’t happen that often back then. So he had, he had external love directed towards him. He had all the trappings of someone who should have been happy from a worldly perspective, except he was a physical and emotional basket case. He had post perforated ulcers and diverticulitis and join us several times a year and migraine headaches, and depression and he was just a mess. And he also had gone to therapy. He went to an associate of Freud, who after four years set him Western, I’m sorry, but some people just can’t. Which if they said that today with the lawsuit, but so he basically was a physical and emotional basket case, but he was a physicist engineer. So when he got this death sentence, firstly, went back to his library, and he had studied psychology, medicine, engineering, chemistry, he studied all the fields of man except metaphysics and spirituality, because he thought if he couldn’t prove it physically, it wasn’t real wasn’t true. So he went back to his library, and after a couple of he thought maybe he could find the answer to get himself out of this mess. And after about two days, he just or three days, he felt worse. And he dropped the whatever book he was reading said Western first smart man, you are stupid, stupid, stupid. So then he decided to go back to the web within himself. And that was a very fortunate decision. And he realized that if the knowledge was in books For him, he would have already found it. So it wasn’t in any of his pre word knowledge, any essence or whatever I’ve been looking for. And he realized, you know, I’ve been looking for happiness. And so we said, well, what is happiness? And he started exploring what is happiness. And the first thing he saw the first insight he had, was that happiness was a first level Happiness is when people went on left. And then he went, Well, no, that’s not it. I can remember times where I was loved, I still wasn’t happy, says that, well, maybe it’s when I’m in love being. And then when he saw that was one of the keys to happiness was when he was loving, he started going back to his life, and wherever he was wanting love, or not feeling love, started changing it to up. And he started feeling better and better and better. And then he also saw that he, he wanted to change everything in his life. And even the ends of movies, and how how things turned out. And so we started dissolving the wanting to change. And then he went deeper. And he saw that there was this fear of death. And instead of running from it, he just turned around, faced it. And after that process of kind of facing these things about himself, he entered this, the state of what he said was unbearable bliss. It was it was so
Rick Archer: it’s cool that he had the volition to be able to do all that, you know, a lot of people are more gripped, you know, but he seems like he was able to just turn on a dime everywhere he tried.
Hale Dwoskin: Well, I sure there was a process involved. I remember I’m, by the time I met him, it was let’s see 1976 This happened. And 52, 20
Rick Archer: Oh, longtime Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: 27 years later, the story had gotten distilled.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: so I have no idea how much of it is 100% accurate, because any story like this gets distilled.
Rick Archer: But he made enough progress in a short enough period of time that he didn’t die in two weeks, obviously,
Hale Dwoskin: obviously. So what happened is, he, when he was in this bliss state, he said there’s gotta be something beyond this. And he then he then kind of noticed he kind of stepped out of duality into non duality is how he described it or, and then there was just peace. And he that that’s what was left with him for two years, just the sense of peace, no matter what was going on around him. And I saw him in intense situations. And that doesn’t mean you have to still have a motion. Like I still am angry. But it would just dissolve since it was no longer needed for communication.
Rick Archer: Oh, you know what that reminds me of an analogy I wanted to throw in earlier than I forgot what it was, I think you might find it interesting. And you may have heard it, which is that this will get back to Lester. But this is from the eastern wisdom again, it said that someone who is very kind of carrying a lot of baggage is like stone, and you you make a line in stone it blonde can’t go very deep. But boy, it stays there for a long time once you make it. And then then take it the next day just like sand, you know, it’s easier to make a deeper line and it doesn’t stay as long as next stage is like water, you can easily make a deep line and water and it just immediately disappears. And finally, like air, you can pass your whole arm through air, but there’s no impression left. So this whole thing about you know, accumulating Vasanas and impressions and then releasing Boston. And we become eventually like Leicester as you’ve just described where we’re like air, we have the experiences and perhaps even more vividly and profoundly richly than we had when we were more like a stone. And yet there’s no lasting impression. It’s just like, passing through.
Hale Dwoskin: I haven’t heard that analogy before and it’s very accurate.
Rick Archer: You have my permission to use it.
Hale Dwoskin: Is it yours?
Rick Archer: No, no, it’s an it’s one of those old stories. You know, it’s an old teaching. Teaching analogy
Hale Dwoskin: recently I’ve been one of the things is I I like to keep exploring, because both inwardly it’s good to constant inward exploration. But I’m also open to other tools and techniques, not because I feel like I need them as so much but because I just want to really get the full picture.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: so I’ve been looking at more stuff from the east. And it’s why this stuff from the East has no author.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: It’s been around so long, or they have they make up this author who lived for 1000s of years. And they just attribute it all to him.
Rick Archer: Right
Hale Dwoskin: Unfortunately, it’s usually it’s rare. But that’s just that’s really inconsequential. But the the so it really you know, when we’re it’s nice if you know the person to quote them, but often the quote is way beyond a person.
Rick Archer: Yeah, stuff has been getting passed on for 1000s of years.
Hale Dwoskin: Yeah, it’s been and And
Rick Archer: but one thing to say of these things, sometimes people brush it off as Oh, yeah, you know, we need just a fresh knowledge for the West. But these guys have been at it for a long time. Like the Eskimos who have 32 words for snow, I’m told the Eskimo is a politically incorrect term, but you know what I mean? And it’s like they’ve they’ve nuanced the understanding of some of this stuff to such a fine degree that it’s fascinating to explore.
Hale Dwoskin: It is it’s fascinating, it’s worth nothing else just to understand your own process. But I, I think the the Eastern stuff is just as brilliant as the stuff that’s been discovered in the West. And, and a lot of it has 1000s, of years of, of science of experimentation, of report, which all this stuff that’s going on the west doesn’t have. And so you need both, I think you need the creativity and the openness that comes from, you know, just this exploration that’s happening in the West. And you also need to honor the roots, honor the traditions, where they have these traditions that go back 1000s of years to say i That’s all based on. Yeah, that’s, that’s craziness.
Rick Archer: Well, you know, that’s why it’s nice that with today’s communication and transportation, there’s a kind of a hybridization going on between the two in which the best of both worlds can emerge. And, you know, we can have something that’s systematic and scientific and so on. And yet has this sort of the depth of wisdom that the East has provided can provide.
Hale Dwoskin: It’s wonderful to have both. I think we’re very fortunate to live at this time, because
Rick Archer: yeah, And Lester it sounds like was conversant with Eastern stuff. You were quoting him earlier as referring to Vasanas. In what not,
Hale Dwoskin: Oh yeah, he, after he, again, this particular lifetime. Again, there’s two schools of thought in the non dual space about reincarnation. One is who’s going to reincarnate, which is obviously true. But at the same time, there are bundles of tendencies that not every baby is identical.
Rick Archer: Sure.
Hale Dwoskin: Even before you get to genetics, and, and environment, there’s just not the same. They they come we come in. It may just be a scoop of universal gunk that needs to be worked out. Or it may be that particular streams stay together for long periods of time, which I think is what happens.
Rick Archer: I think so too. And I think there’s an easy way of explaining it, which is that fine if you want to say the world is an illusion, then the illusory individuality reincarnates into new illusory bodies until it until it doesn’t. Yeah, but to say that reincarnation is impossible because there’s nobody to reincarnate. It’s like saying eating is impossible because there’s nobody to eat,
Hale Dwoskin: right. But most of those teachers are still eating.
Rick Archer: They are.
Hale Dwoskin: And again, that’s weird. In the East though, that there are plenty of teachers, I actually met a teacher. He wasn’t even really a teacher, they call it he was called an Avadudh. I’ve only been to India once.
Rick Archer: One of those naked sadhu kind of guys
Hale Dwoskin: yeah, he had dreadlocks that were that were longer than his body. He was living on a pile of Prasad, that was rotting. He, he had a smoked, a bede or two a day and had a cup of tea a day. And he’d been like that for 25 years. But being around him, it was like there wasn’t even any love. It was like standing at the edge of infinity. He since passed, but he was also in this interesting place in India. It was a place where they were it was fishing community. And there were a lot of Muslims and Hindus working in harmony together. And that hadn’t always been that way. But when he moved into that spot, they’d been working. They had been working in harmony. And they both both communities completely respected have in fact, the fisherman would occasionally be out fishing and they’d see him walking on the wall. When he occasionally went for a stroll, family built a temple to him across the street, which he never entered. He just they, they he just lived on his Pio facade and had very little awareness of the world. So it is possible to achieve for for the body mind to go into states where it doesn’t need to take care of it. But it’s but it’s it’s very rare for that to happen. Very rare, right? And it shouldn’t even be something that’s to aspire to the goal is the realization of knowingness. The truth of who you are and to live in an integrated world away in life with that truth.
Rick Archer: Yeah, most of us don’t aspire to sit on a pile of rotting fruit.
Hale Dwoskin: By the way. There was no smell. No. There was no his he hadn’t bathed in 25 years, but his body actually sparkled.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, I have this picture. Yogananda behind me it’s actually audio tapes of your Autobiography of a Yogi and that most of the people listening to this have probably read that book. But it’s full stories of, I think things like that. And, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss them as, you know, fanciful stories. There’s the anything’s possible.
Hale Dwoskin: Anything’s possible.
Rick Archer: But anyway, yeah, back to the Lester
Hale Dwoskin: analogy, which I really liked.
Rick Archer: Oh, sure,
Hale Dwoskin: what you find is that, that when you first start using the Sedona Method, you’re dealing with a water rock.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: just how it feels. And you feel, sometimes you feel like you are a rock,
Rick Archer: help I’m a rock,
Hale Dwoskin: right. And it’s very, very dense. But what happens is, as you do this process, you turn the rock into, into sand. And then you start melting the rock, or the sand, it would have been glass, but it’s not glass. And now it comes water, big turn, you turn the turn the sand into water, and then this then, then you evaporate the water. That’s basically what happens as you do this process. It naturally helps you dissolve these places inside of you, so that you become more and more transparent, more and more like air. And it and you also find that you naturally use this. You come in most people either to come to the method, they’re either in apathy, grief, or fear, with a little west where they’re in lust, anger, pride. courageousness. And what happens is the people in apathy, grief and fear with a little lust, start moving into anger, lust, anger, pride, courageousness, and the people and anger, pride courageousness. As they release that they start moving into acceptance and peace, and then towards the end, even that dissolves. So you, and that’s the equivalent to the Gunas, from the west or from the east. The tamas is apathy, grief, fear with a little bit of lust rajas as lust, anger, pride, courageousness. And then courageousness acceptance and peace is Safa. And when you’re 50%, that when you’re in the middle of courageousness, you’re 50%, selfless, and 50% Selfish, you’re 50% I can 50% I can’t 50% loving and 50% hating. So you have to be all the way up into into courage, which is the at that borderline between software and Rogers, we’re actually when you’re starting to get into pure rajas before you’re actually starting to tip the scales into a more constructive state. So what happens though, is the soft for though, you don’t have to this is one, it’s a gradual thing that happens in progression. But every time you use the process, you can be in tamas or rajas. And be in apathy, grief and fear of lust, anger, pride, courageousness. And you do the process. And in just minutes, you find yourself feeling acceptance and peace. So you get this immediate shift in consciousness, which is again, that really helps for Westerners.
Rick Archer: Yeah, they like the immediate,
Hale Dwoskin: very patient. Yeah, sure. 20 years from now, I’ll be more patient. So that doesn’t do me any good now, but with when you use the Sedona Method, you find that your wife also, you may still have lots of rocks, but you find that certain parts of your life have already turned to here.
Rick Archer: And in the presence of all that air to stretch the metaphor, the rocks tend to dissolve more readily. As opposed to when it’s all rock.
Hale Dwoskin: You can discern them. See the rocks now, people don’t always like that part. Because most of us live in so much denial that we don’t want to deal with the things that we’re denying. So part of the process too is you start to see your sense of limits your limitations much more clearly. You see the remaining rock more clearly. And that’s not always comfortable or pleasant, because most people want to pretend, you know, they hear about spirituality and they may want to put in a while I’m there. That’s interesting.
Rick Archer: I remember the one of the first times I sat in the close proximity of someone that I considered an enlightened person as a saint. I all of a sudden my I my weakness, my inner weakness became so vividly obvious to me in a way that it hadn’t been before. But in Conte somehow the contrast made it made it so clear, you know, and
Hale Dwoskin: it over. Absolutely. And that said, that’s a natural thing that happens. That’s part of the part of the benefit of being around someone who’s a little who’s more airy than you are. Is because if When two rocks meet, they just bump up against each other.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Hale Dwoskin: And it’s not a lot of fun. But when, when, when even when the rock meets sand, there’s still more room. You know, the, the rock maybe sometimes gets the way, maybe the sand sometimes gets the way, but there’s more room. But the more flowing, the more open you are, that that may make the people around you feel insecure at first. But it also sometimes makes them feel a lot more relaxed, because you’re not, you’re not trying to change them. You’re not trying to get to convince them about your point of view, you’re not trying to make them into something they’re not, you’re loving them as their as for their rocks, their sand, their water and their air, loving them for all of it. And you’re also loving them because what they are is beyond that. You’re not seeing them as just the bundle of tendencies, that bundle of
Rick Archer: seeing the full spectrum of what they are.
Hale Dwoskin: So so that is one of the benefits of knowing people who are maybe a little ahead of the game than you are. As long as you don’t put them up on a pedestal. There’s a learning that happens just in that enter into nonverbal interchange,
Rick Archer: there’s an osmosis that takes place.
Hale Dwoskin: Definitely.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, that’s what Ramana meant. I think when he said the greatest teaching is silence, you could just sit in his presence in that silence and, you know, it’s seeped into your pores, so to speak. So let’s get back to Lester a little bit more. So you spent, like decades commuting from New York to Sedona to take week long
Hale Dwoskin: Actually it wasn’t decades. Well, I met him in in 76. He moved to, to he was in New York at the time, I met him on 57th Street in Manhattan. And he used to do introductory lectures, or actually, he would sit in on them, someone else would usually do them. But they were done in an apartment on 57th Street. And so I did the process. And then I I immediately wanted to it was like everything else that ever done. I did the basic program in November of 1976. And they don’t have only had two other programs. They had an advanced program, which I did in January of 77. And then for awhile, they had an instructor program, which I did in February of, of 77. Right. And, and I started reading workshops in my living room. But I was only 22 years old, and I really was not ready. So that didn’t last i i started to help out of it that they’re at their apartment office and I started do some workshops at home and then then became mutually we mutually recognized that I needed to go out with this for a while before I got got so involved. And and then they started doing what they called intensives in Arizona in 81. And so from 81 to 87. I commuted from New York City to to Sedona four times a year, I missed they did for during a tenure period they did 40 I think I was at 38. And they were week long or nine day intensives where you really did this work intensively. But I loved it so much. I just it was my highest priority. And then in 87
Rick Archer: And during this whole 10 year period where you’re doing that, I mean, what sort of changes were you undergoing, you must have been going through a lot.
Hale Dwoskin: I every part of my life changed. Every single part by relationships got better. My health got better. Mice sense of happiness and joy and peace no matter what was going on around me just became more and more profound. I remember the first time ever, I actually started having experiences of non duality peace when it’s very young. But then I kind of forgot about that. And then got really lost in the whole preteen teenager years, and then into college. And then in college, I read Autobiography of a Yogi. And there is river by Edgar Cayce. And then like my whole life did a 180 and then I’ve been I’ve been at a rabid lover of truth ever since. And of course and then Western actually when I met him early 77 Wester gave me teachings of Ramana Maharshi and said this, this is the closest to what I teach is this eastern teacher so I would highly recommend you read this. So I’ve been a fan of Vermonters since 777 when Western introduced me to him, but so an ad set When I moved to Arizona, to try to help Wester with the organization is established in Arizona, and then I moved to Sedona in 89. For a couple years, then I moved back to Phoenix. And then somewhere, I think it was in 91 or two I, I went from attending retreats to weeding them. I can’t remember. But, so less it was still alive. And then in 94, he passed away. And in the early 90s, he gave all his teachings to me and told me, and I actually put him on this Sylwester what? What are you crazy? I’m just student why, why would you want me to take these teachings and he was absolutely insistent. I said, Well, why don’t we form a nonprofit and the nonprofit, no one wants you to personally hold the teaching. So he gave the teachings to me in the early 90s. And then, and he also said to me that they will evolve when I learned this, when I, when he gave me is just that first wave when dropping the other four ways of letting go all evolved from from just working with you. It’s what happens spontaneous.
Rick Archer: Would you say it’s evolving still?
Hale Dwoskin: Of course.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Hale Dwoskin: I’m going to be doing a retreat in. In about 10 days, people are coming from all over the world, actually, some people are going to be attending. Via remotely. We’re for the first time ever, we’re streaming
Rick Archer: teleprompter, televise it. Yeah.
Hale Dwoskin: And I, for the past few months, things have been coming to me, like, oh, well do this with them. Okay. And now, by the way, when those things come, I just put them aside. We’ll see. But when I show up in the room, if that’s needed,
Rick Archer: it comes. Yeah. And are there people, you know, who come to this thing now who’ve been doing it almost as long as you have are quite a few years, some.
Hale Dwoskin: Anrica James is one of the original Sedona Method instructors. And she stopped for a while, and I had her start instructing again, two or three years ago. And she took the basic program in in October 1976. And she is actually going to be assisting at this retreat. So there’s all varying degrees of people who get into it, stay for a while, go away, come back, or, or, you know, they stay, or it’s, you know, it’s
Rick Archer: all over them. Sure, as the spirit moves. And I heard you, I heard you say at one point that you’d like to get this videotape out to what 1% of the world’s population. Actually, you know, Marcia used to say that about TM 1%. But eventually he got back to square root of 1% would do. It he had physicist telling him that if you know I can a laser, only the square root of 1% of the lightwaves become coherent than all the others kind of, you know, fall into line. So maybe that can be a goal. Actually,
Hale Dwoskin: my goals for the Sedona Method have been falling away. The more non duality takes less I can hold on to even those goals. So I think it’s an amazing tool, and it’s helped hundreds of 1000s of people. But I feel like I’m just an instrument. So if it’s supposed to get out to a lot more people it will. And if it’s not a well, I want of my rajas to get it out,
Rick Archer: has been dissolved.
Hale Dwoskin: So it’s going to get out or Well,
Rick Archer: yeah, a few years from now, you might be just sitting on a Prasad heap smoking biddies, you know,
Hale Dwoskin: no idea. The truth is my wife now is so explicit, every moment that I trust that I’m being wed to what the appropriate both for this body mind and for the Sedona Method. And the other thing I did a couple of years ago, I for many years from Western dine in 9496, my wife and I started a company called Sedona training Associates, and it went through its rajasic phase and we were reaching again, when Western was alive, by the way, even from 1976. We actually started in 73. I met him in 76. But from 76 to 96, when, when or 94 when he gave me all the techniques. Instead you continue and actually even into while he was still alive. He died in 90. I’m sorry, getting 9194 He passed away. When he passed away. Only 7000 People have done the process. Since then, hundreds of 1000s of people have done it. And if it’s supposed to keep getting better goodwill, but about two years ago, I gave them the entire business operations to another organization. And I am still the figurehead and I still do the all the same, the seminars and the products and promotions and all that kind of stuff. I still help with all that. But I don’t have anything to do with the business, or its goals or any of that it’s somebody else. No. Okay.
Rick Archer: And is there is there? I mean, usually organizations, spiritual organizations, when they get to a certain size, there’s all kinds of craziness that happens, you know, Shazam, schisms within them? And, you know, conflicts and you know, the story. I mean, happens in almost every team in every every spiritual movement. Have you got have you guys gone through that kind of thing? Westar was
Hale Dwoskin: alive? Oh, did it? Oh, yeah. There was lawsuit. It was mostly people who sued him because they didn’t get Enlightenment. The good one, that’s a good one. And there was also the organization was not really run that well. So there was a whole bankruptcy. And they the people who were suing for not getting Enlightenment, ganged up and joined the people who were part of the bankruptcy and it was a mess. It was a complete mess. And it was an amazing growth experience for me, because I was in the middle of this whole thing. I was working as a volunteer for his organization, Sedona Institute. And they didn’t just sue him and the organization, they sued. Everyone involved. So here, I was a volunteer. And it was a $22 million lawsuit. Wow, I ended up in a bankruptcy. And, but here I was, I didn’t have anything.
Rick Archer: So what can I take can’t get blood from a stone, right.
Hale Dwoskin: But it was an amazing growth experience. It was, it was held for a couple of years. But by the time it started resolving itself, there was so much that had been just kind of ripped out of this body mind mechanism. It was like a quantum leap, even though it was very unpleasant. Well, that
Rick Archer: kind of reminds me of something that you mentioned, you know, in the recordings, and that I also experienced in life, which is just about everything becomes grist for the mill, you know, you can go through all kinds of intense stuff. But it’s actually if we, if we understand that we live in an intelligent universe, then this stuff doesn’t happen isn’t just happening capriciously, it’s happening, because there are lessons inherent in it. Oh,
Hale Dwoskin: absolutely. i My feeling is there is no accidents. Right? Right. And there are no mistakes. And that’s my, it’s my deep, knowing
Rick Archer: this, but everything’s an opportunity for growth.
Hale Dwoskin: And everything is an opportunity for growth, as long as you know, try to figure out what they are, what the opportunity is, it’s kind of funny. If you leave with your head, you try to figure out, well, what messages are they is this thing
Rick Archer: you just spent, they say karma is unfathomable.
Hale Dwoskin: completely unfair. So what we do in our seminars is I tell people reco of wanting to figure it out, if you if you really let that go, and you let go of the emotion, the thoughts, the feelings, the trauma, if there’s a lesson, it will reveal itself to you. You don’t have to go looking for it. One of the things that happens so much in self help, is people will hold on to suffering for years because they think they haven’t learned the lesson yet or they haven’t gotten the message. And that’s all unnecessary.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So there’s so many more things we could talk about. But some I was reached this point where we’re nearing two hours, I think, okay, we should. Yeah. Yeah. As Grougho said, time flies like an arrow fruit flies like a banana. But, you know, we still have a bit more time. And what I’m inclined to ask you is, you know, where do you see, I mean, you’ve already sort of described this and talking about how you deal with the organization and everything. But everybody has a, an extra horizon, you know, and they have a sort of, I mean, sure, we’re living in the now but there’s a sort of a sense as we go from day to day of what’s unfolding for us, you know, what, how the quality of the deepening that seems to be taking place. So could you describe that in your own life? And do you do you still specifically use the Sedona Method? Or has it become more subtle than that almost kind of an automatic way of functioning.
Hale Dwoskin: So there’s several things I’ll start with the West and work backwards. The Sedona Method has been so integrated into my experience that my tendency, when, when tendencies or issues or whatever, a rise in consciousness, which they still do, is most of it just releases by itself spontaneous? It’s all spontaneous. Yeah. So that’s one thing that’s happening
Rick Archer: a lot On Air,
Hale Dwoskin: right? It actually is like that a lot. There’s, there’s, I’m sure I still have a few stones that haven’t found out, I’m always actively working. And occasionally the sand gets in the works a little bit.
Rick Archer: Can you create new stones by looking? Or is it is that not a problem?
Hale Dwoskin: I don’t think you can create stones from working but you could certainly create water or sand.
Rick Archer: You can stir up something that doesn’t even need to be stirred up.
Hale Dwoskin: Probably. So most of my air, most of my life is there. And sometimes it’s humid air. And occasionally I’ll find a little sand or stone here.
Rick Archer: Phoenix says those big sandstorms,
Hale Dwoskin: right Haven have a name, I don’t remember what they’re called. Fortunately, Sedona is far enough away from Phoenix that most of those storms never affect us. Though it’s hot at the moment, it’s about 100 degrees going to be 100 degrees today, which is unusual for her usually, were 10 to 15 degrees cooler than Phoenix, but Phoenix is probably gonna be 115. So, so at all, occasionally pull out the process, if I just if I find a little sand, where the the air has gotten very humid, or, or I find a little pebble somewhere, I’ll take out the process and use it. And then the other thing that I’m doing at the moment is I’m really been spending a lot of focus on Ri and on, on integrating my energetic systems.
Rick Archer: How so
Hale Dwoskin: I just went through yoga and just honoring Shakti and things like that. So a lot of that has been happening spontaneously. And some of its been focused, where I’m doing practices that support that,
Rick Archer: did you get the sense that they were unintegrated in some way, and this moved us to integrate them interesting.
Hale Dwoskin: I didn’t even know there was an issue there. But I but I was attracted to some some information from the east that really helped open up a whole other world or hold a window for me to start exploring. So I’ve been exploring that window.
Rick Archer: And what I mentioned what it was, or would you rather not?
Hale Dwoskin: Well, the only reason I don’t want to is it’s one of these things that they can only handle a very small number of people. And I wouldn’t want to mention it in a public forum like this. Okay, although I just did now I’m going to be inundated. But what was it? What was it? But the bottom line is, it’s it’s something that that only about 20 people do it a year. Okay. So it’s really not wide open thing. And they take only very serious secrets. But anyway, but I just
Rick Archer: want to say in passing, I think it’s cool that you admit that there’s a lot of people who are heads of spiritual organizations that wouldn’t dream of admitting publicly that they’re actually doing some practice that they might find helpful other than the one they teach, you know, because it sort of implies that their teaching is deficient, if they’re doing something else.
Hale Dwoskin: The one thing I will say about them is they’re they’re incredibly supportive of this work, because they think it’s one as a credible preparation for the game. But also, there’s such a harmony between what we do and what they do that that’s how part of the reason I’m able to really focus on it is because it there’s, there’s a huge harmony there, and a lot of what they do happen spontaneously in my work. But it’s but for me, specifically, I needed something more focused, okay. And I’m not embarrassed to say that because it’s really improved my ability to share my work, just from being open to this other modality. Nice. So and So what my living experiences now is I in the background, there’s this sense of like the cosmic sound, I hear it all the time. I go between states of bliss and peace most of the time, then the non dual state is also here most of the time. And and I’m exploring that now. From a from a whole new perspective, not just using my set of tools, but a whole other set of tools. So it’s, and it’s my goal. There is a goal there. So we’ll go there. It’s interesting. It’s very few goals left in life, but there’s still one there and that my goal there is is twofold. One is to in the east, a court and nirvikalpa and so harsh. So most of the people who are the people in the non dual space here and especially in the United States, have experienced Neither, they’re not living. So Hush, they might think they are, but they’re not.
Rick Archer: And you’re referring to forms of Samadhi. Like adjectives to refer to face to face.
Hale Dwoskin: Basically, they’re varying degrees of Samadhi. So what I,
Rick Archer: which means even this of intellect, by the way, so Samadhi, even as in booty means intellect. Yes.
Hale Dwoskin: Yeah, it’s interesting. And again, what I’ve been teaching this for all these years is, is an amazing preparation for some money. So, so I’ve been going into Samadhi. And
Rick Archer: just sort of eyes closed spirit Samadhi. State, yes, yeah. And also eyes open. And while driving your car, right, or walking your dog or whatever, whatever. So
Hale Dwoskin: my goal is, is I’m not, again, so that Suraj has not been achieved. Ramana talks about the natural state where, where there were, there’s no longer even the ability to do any kind of process because there’s no one because there’s genuine no one’s a process. You don’t, you’re not just saying that. That is not been achieved. But it’s, it is my goal. Nice. And so there, and I, my other goal is to, is to keep working on this instrument, until it’s it is that way all the time. And then then see if I can bring that completely as an integrated as everything else I’ve been teaching. And I’ve been starting to do pieces of that. But and it’s already coming out in our in, in the seminars like the one we’ll be doing so. So
Rick Archer: So you’re saying if you achieve those goals personally, and you know, some people cringe when they hear that kind of terminology, achieving goals, oh my god. But if you if you achieve those goals, personally, then your natural inclination would be to incorporate them into what you teach so that others may
Hale Dwoskin: not incorporate so much. Because the teaching itself is integral. It’s interesting as I’ve been at, as I’ve been experiencing, Samadhi, more and more, it hasn’t really changed my teaching. It’s just where I’m teaching from. Right. So which essentially, that’s another validation for me that I must be must have been on the right path this past 35 years to be doing what I’m doing. But the So, and I couldn’t possibly teach these eastern teachings that I’ve been studying, because that would require a whole other lifetime of study. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not my toolkit. So what I intend to do is not integrate any of it. Okay. I also think that would be out of integrity. It’s not my lineage. But what what’s happening is it’s seeping into everything I do. And so I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens. And and again, the other thing that may happen from that I may reach a point where I stopped teaching. That’s a very real possibility. But so far, it’s only been deepening what I do with people.
Rick Archer: Nice. Well, I really appreciate your candor. It’s refreshing. I mean, a lot of teachers hold the cards really close to their chest, you know, and they wouldn’t, I’ve said this a minute ago, they wouldn’t admit that they’ve gone off to explore some other thing or that their experiences evolving. I know, it’s, there’s this kind of subtle tendency to maintain an image and I find it really endearing. You’re not,
Hale Dwoskin: again, why protect something that is real. If you, if it’s one of the things I say in my seminars is if it if you’re protecting something, it’s not real. So if you even think you have to protect this image as the teacher protecting an illusion, why protect it, let it dissolve it. And again, if it requires maintenance, Jerry stalking who, I don’t know if you know who he is, but years ago, he was very popular, he did NLP on himself intensively, and for a year and a half, he was in a very altered state, and then it all crashed his whole world crest around them, but he has some great quotes. And one of them is that reality requires no maintenance. Nice. Yeah. And that’s been my experience. If it’s real, it doesn’t require maintenance and also doesn’t require protection. If you’re protecting it, it’s not real.
Rick Archer: That’s good. So we close on that and you want to make some kind of closing thoughts or remarks. Oh,
Hale Dwoskin: the only thing I would just to say is just to come back to to something that’s very dear to my heart and which is that basically, the the message you’ve probably heard on this channel more than once is that you already are what you’re seeking. Yes. And, honestly, that’s my living experience that I’ve yet to meet someone that isn’t already hope that isn’t already completed, that isn’t already enough as they are. And just know that you can honor and women that but still also honor whatever your processes. So follow your heart when it comes to, to, to your to the to the teachers you interact with, follow your heart when it also comes to teachings. And don’t think because it has a form to it, it’s wrong or bad. Know that if it has a form for you, that’s what’s appropriate for you in this moment, there is no one right way for everyone. And so just let yourself be open to what your heart tells you is the next thing because in my experience, your intuitive knowingness or your heart never was. Your mind is why continuously, it doesn’t know anything else. It’s all a bunch of lies. But you’re and but your heart, your intuitive knowingness that that sense of clear reason, which in the East equal booty, when it’s clean, when it’s crystal, then it’s also a good representation. It’s not getting in the way. But the way most minds are the getting in the way all the time. But rather than follow your mind, follow your heart, that’s a good thing to do. And just know that the goal was possible. If you’re if you’re suffering anywhere in your wife, you don’t have to suffer. It’s not noble. You can be free of whatever your your, whatever your experience is suffering as you can be really be free of it, no matter what it is. And the goal of total freedom of living life, as love as peace as joy is attainable to you. Not just this, this body, mind your or the my interviewer, or all the other people you’ve watched here, don’t put any of us up on a pedestal. If we can do it, we’re not special. If we can do it, you can do it. And again, it’s been my experience through everything I’ve done for the past 35 years that it’s this is contagious, and it’s not special. So follow your heart and go for
Rick Archer: great stuff. Beautiful words, I think people are really going to enjoy hearing all this. So thanks, this has been wonderful. Let me make a few concluding remarks. I’ve been speaking with Hale Dwoskin, who is the primary teacher of the Sedona Method. And I’ll be linking to his website, where you’ll find plenty of information about how to learn more about the Sedona Method and get into it if you’d like there’s a book you can get. And there’s a CD DVD you can watch and all kinds of things. And so it’s always stuff, stuff. And it seems like you’ve structured it in a way that people can dip their toe in or they can just dive in headlong or any anywhere in between those, you know, you can sort of find a niche that works for you and, and take advantage of it. And this interview has been one in an ongoing series, you can find them all [email protected] Vat gap, which is an acronym for Buddha at the Gas Pump, but I left that I left the A and at the end gap rather than just up because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.
Hale Dwoskin: Unless you spoke Sanskrit, there be some sounds.
Rick Archer: So go to backup. And you’ll find all the interviews I’ve done. There’s an alphabetical list on the right hand side. And there’s a menu under other stuff where you can see them all listed chronologically. And there’s a few other things that I’d like to just run through. One is a chat group that springs up around each interview, and usually doesn’t stay on the topic of the interview. But I can’t bother to police it but feel free to participate in that. And there is a link to an audio podcast if you’d like to get this on your iPod and listen to while you’re commuting or something. There’s a Donate button, which I appreciate people clicking if they can there’s a link to an email signup things, you’ll be notified by email each time there’s a new interview. And also they’re under the also under the other stuff menu. There’s a volunteer opportunities link. And if you look at that page, there’s something I’m racking my brains with right now, which is trying to trying to get a web camcorder to work with Skype. And so if you have the sort of technical wherewithal to get into that kind of stuff, I could maybe use some help from somebody and put other things up on that page as they develop, for instance, is a team of people who are doing transcriptions and translations so that on YouTube, you can sort of see this in your native language. Somebody just did one in Polish So in any case, there’s all that there. And I think that about does it. So, thanks. Thank you. It’s really been fun talking to you. Likewise. Yeah. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching and we’ll see you next week.