Joi Sharp 2nd Interview

Summary

The conversation explores devotion, surrender, and spiritual development alongside the role of the nervous system in embodying awakening. It also examines how spiritual practice evolves through testing, self-understanding, inspiration, and increasing capacity to let go.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What is the role of devotion in spiritual awakening?
• How can surrender deepen spiritual practice?
• Why can spiritual progress become dry, stagnant, or self-centered?
• How does the nervous system affect spiritual transformation?
• Why do spiritual seekers encounter tests and challenges on the path?

Key takeaways

• Devotion is a deep valuing that gradually becomes surrender to a greater intelligence.
• Mature devotion shifts attention from personal awakening to becoming available for life to move through you.
• The nervous system is the vehicle through which spiritual transformation becomes embodied.
• Spiritual teachings can guide growth, but direct communion reaches beyond what words can express.
• Tests reveal whether we can let go rather than hide behind experiences, ideas, or security.
• A seeker may begin with self-centered motives, but those motives can mature through honest observation.
• Inspiration helps people continue discovering their deeper capacity.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve conducted over 430 of these by now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out the previous ones, just go to batgap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu, where you’ll see all the previous ones organized in several different ways.

This show consumes most of our time, Irene’s and mine, and it wouldn’t be possible to do this without the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So we really appreciate those who have been supporting it. If you feel inclined to do so, there’s a Donate button on every page of the website, batgap.com.

My guest today is my friend Joi Sharp. I interviewed Joi, golly, about six or seven years ago, and we felt it was sort of time for a repeat. Joi lives in Ridgway, Colorado, and I’ve been seeing Joi for nearly 20 years at Amma events—Mata Amritanandamayi events. I didn’t really know her at first, but then we’ve gotten to know each other over the years. Even since the interview, we’ve been having meals together and taking walks together and all, and I think we have a nice rapport. I have great respect for Joi, and I think that people are going to enjoy this interview.

I’m going to read a brief bio just to give you a sense of her background, in case you didn’t see the first interview with her, which I actually encourage you to watch if you like this one, because there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Joi was aware of the unseen magic of presence at a very early age. She remembers being more drawn to this mystery than anything else. This led her to delve into many traditions of spirituality.

After a spontaneous awakening at age 28, Joi spent two years on a blissful honeymoon of spirit before plunging into a deep period of emotional purging and healing. Among her healers were a powerful Lakota medicine man, with whom she traveled for two years, and a group of Yogananda disciples who had developed a powerful way of unlocking unconscious beliefs using kinesiology. She worked with them three times a week for two years.

During this period, the formless aspect of the Divine Mother appeared to Joi, and she began a very intense journey. Joi met Amma in 1993, and she realized that Amma was the same Mother who had captured her heart and soul. Joi spent nine years in Amma’s Indian ashram and then two years in Tiruvannamalai at Ramana’s ashram.

When Joi came home from India, she was completely exhausted, and her seeker drive fell away. She began sitting with Adyashanti, who helped her understand all that had taken place within her being. Joi began teaching in 2006 with Amma’s and Adya’s blessings.

Joi continues to be inspired and moved toward what life could be if we let go to our inner potential, which is the ultimate intelligence of all creation.

So how’d that go, Joi? Does that sound like you?

Joi: Yeah, yeah. That was really well done.

Rick: Good. Well, you wrote it.

Joi: Yeah.

Rick: I just read it.

Joi: That’s right.

Rick: And you also wrote a book, which I’ve been reading. It’s very well written and has a lot of good stuff in it. I have about four pages of notes here that I’ve excerpted from that book, which we’ll use as kind of main points to talk about.

Devotion and the nervous system

I think there are two things that I probably end up talking about a lot with you today that don’t get talked about a lot in these interviews, or in the spiritual traditions in general these days—the spiritual community. One is devotion, and another is the nervous system.

I think both are very important. Devotion, because I think the blossoming of that is a natural stage in people’s evolution, and sometimes nonduality comes across as rather dry. In fact, sometimes people in the nondual community criticize devotion as being dualistic.

And secondly, the nervous system, because it’s my understanding and experience that the nervous system is the instrument through which we live any of this. I mean, if we didn’t have a nervous system, a brain, the whole physical structure, and also its subtle components—there’s a subtle aspect in the nervous system—this would not be a living reality. So it’s an important consideration, a factor, and something that perhaps ought to be better understood.

Joi: Yeah, and this is part of—interestingly enough, it’s my devotion to her—the gift that she gave me was to really start to explore that nervous system and what the being, what the body, is experiencing through its devotion.

It’s a real amazing dance that the being starts to experience through being able to open to what it’s devoted to. So they’re very much tied into one another: the devotion aspect and the being, which includes the nervous system, the brain, the mind, and all these very, very fascinating functions that occur there.

There’s a lot going on there that we can really start to explore within our own being. So how do you want to start, Rick? Do you want to start just talking about the devotional aspect first?

Rick: It doesn’t matter, whatever comes to mind. I think this interview will be kind of a combination between me jogging your memory or your thought process with little points I’ve written down, and whatever we spontaneously talk about as we go along.

Joi: Okay.

Rick: We can do both. And, you know, as I always say to my guests, if you have something in mind and the point is not coming up, or I’m not asking the question, just come out with it, just like we would in a normal conversation.

Joi: Yeah, beautiful. You know, devotion—we’re evolving right now, and we’re going to go through different levels of our way, right? Devotion, for me, has been that. It keeps revealing a new way to relate to this devotional aspect that I’ve experienced pretty much my whole spiritual journey.

Devotion really is what we value. I mean, we can be devoted to really anything in life, anything that has deep value for us. And the value is something that’s already in our being; it’s already in place.

Some people are going to value their children, and some people are going to value being in service, whatever that looks like. For me, what showed up early in life was this presence, this God. I mean, it was like God was everywhere, and that became stronger and stronger.

And the value—of course, I didn’t know it at the time as something that I valued—but now, looking back, I can see that I really did. It was something that I continually tried to access. In the early days, I wanted it. I wanted it with an intense longing.

I thought it was maybe going to really help me. My mind interpreted that longing as having a certain outcome, that it was going to take me out into some other heaven, some other blissful place. But over time, that devotion has evolved.

Rick: Let me say a couple of things that I heard Maharishi say at least a hundred times and see what you think about them. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was my teacher for many years. One thing he often said was that devotion is a stage that can’t really begin to blossom significantly until the Self is realized, because he said, “Until you know who you are, how can you really know what anything else is?”

Once the Self is realized, there’s a foundation upon which profound appreciation of creation can really begin to blossom. He said that, prior to that, the attempt would be like a small pond trying to rise up in great tidal waves; it would only stir up the mud at the bottom. But when the Self has been established, then it’s like an ocean, and the ocean can rise up in great waves without stirring up the mud.

Once the Self is realized, there’s a foundation upon which profound appreciation of creation can really begin to blossom. He said that, prior to that, the attempt would be like a small pond trying to rise up in great tidal waves; it would only stir up the mud at the bottom. But when the Self has been established, then it’s like an ocean, and the ocean can rise up in great waves without stirring up the mud.

He spoke of devotion as being a natural consequence of—or actually almost synonymous with—the ability to appreciate profoundly.

Joi: No, no, that’s really beautiful, and I’ll be the first to admit that in those early years of devotion, it was pretty infantile. I like the way that he said how it stirs it up, because that’s also my experience.

Those initial stages of devotion really start to open us up to something other than our self. Just that aspect of openness is going to start to generate a more purifying energy because we’re getting out of our way. We’re starting to say, “Oh, this is what I want.” And you can feel that in your nervous system, right?

So here we are experiencing what’s happening in our being through opening up. And also, what you just shared about what Maharishi said—that we don’t really get to that true devotional place until we realize Self—I can honestly say now that I know what that feels like: that “Thy will be done” place, that complete availability for life to move through us as an instrument, right?

This is where we’re going, and I just love how this is starting to work together: instrument and devotion.

Devotion allows our being to be continually inspired.

Rick: Good. He also said that it may reach a climax in which appreciation is so profound that actual God consciousness dawns—appreciation of God and a direct, intimate, personal relationship with God.

He said it was like if there’s an artist who’s a really great artist, but nobody appreciates his work. He just kind of sits there and does his work. But if he keeps hearing that there’s this guy who lives in this town and really gets it—he really appreciates my work, he appreciates it as I appreciate it—then that artist would come to meet that man. The man wouldn’t even have to go to meet him; the artist would come to him, because he would want to meet someone who has such deep appreciation.

He said that’s kind of the way it is between the devotee and God when the appreciation has reached such a significant degree.

Joi: Yeah, and that’s going to get tested in a big, big way, right? And that’s the journey, right? That devotion to truth, or however we interpret our journey, is going to get tested again and again and again.

Our expectations about our journey, hope, and settled places that we’re going to want to hide or hang on to are all going to be tested. Because devotion is going to get us out of being wrapped up in ourselves and our life, our awakening and our enlightenment, and our need for a certain experience. That’s it.

And the more mature devotion becomes, it’s just not our life anymore, is it?

Rick: Right, it’s been surrendered.

Joi: It’s completely let go of. And as we open up to that which we devote ourselves to, surrender becomes the way.

Rick: I just want to make one final point before it slips my mind and have you respond to that. Finally, he said that there may come a stage in which the God-consciousness phase is shifting into unity, and there may be a feeling that one is losing devotion because there’s no longer the I-Thou relationship that there had been.

One might feel a little bit of chagrin, like, “What’s happening? Am I losing this?” But he often quoted Shankara as having said, “The intellect imagines duality for the sake of devotion.”

Shankara, Ramana, Papaji, and Nisargadatta—all of them were great bhaktas in addition to being great jnanis. They maintained this sort of I-Thou relationship with their chosen ideal, the object of their devotion, in order to continue to experience the sweetness of that.

Joi: And the sweetness—I just pray it never leaves because it is so sweet. It becomes something that has—we’re getting back to that place of value. That value touches our soul, it touches the depths of our being, and it invokes a sense of beauty. I mean, just to be able to offer oneself completely. There’s this abandonment, right, of pretty much everything.

But, like I say, we’re going to get tested about that. And so all these great sages, great realized beings, they didn’t want to let go of that. It was because it’s so valuable, it’s so sweet, it’s like a precious gift that God has given, right? I mean, when you really know it in your soul, to be able to let go that deeply, you realize how precious it is.

And again, it’s something that we’re going to be able to access—when to let go, and, like you say, we’re going to talk about that. But to be able to, right, and to keep finding our increasing capacity to do that, to love that much, to have that much value in what we’re devoting ourselves to. So this is beautiful, and I’m really glad that you brought this point up about all these great Jnanis loving that aspect of loving God.

Rick: Well, the way I see it is the heart is a faculty, it’s a component of what we are, just as the senses are faculties and the organs of action are faculties, and so on. And all of these different faculties tend to blossom rather than be lost or suppressed or something.

So it would stand to reason—I mean, I see awakening or enlightenment as a full blossoming of all the different components and aspects of our total being, right? And so it would stand to reason, it seems to me, that if there’s some awakening which is devoid of devotion, which is dry and not a lot of heart, then it’s a transitional stage; it’s not the final thing.

Joi: Right, and we have to be really careful. I mean, look at it: Are we doing this for me? Do I want this path for me? Do I want this awakening experience for me? That’s really what we get to see, because that’s probably where it’s going to start to dry up.

And that’s another good point, a whole other subject about why our journey is stalling, becoming stagnant, or becoming dry. There can be a few factors in there. But if we’re looking at this for myself, it can be a great place to come from, to start on the journey. But when we start to realize that this is what we’re trying to see through, to keep seeing through these subtle little places, subtle little agendas, that’s what’s going to keep this invigorated and inspired, and that’s one of the most important things.

Devotion allows our being to be continually inspired—such an important thing on our journey, right? That inspiration piece. Because I’ve heard over and over again from people, “Well, nothing’s changing,” and so on. And Adya talks about this too. He says, “A lot of people stop.” And why are they stopping? One of my first ideas might be because of not really tapping into a value, something that they value.

Rick: I think that also points to the importance of knowledge, because if you have a clear understanding of the path, if you have a clear vision of possibilities, then you’re not going to settle for anything less than the highest, if there even is a highest. I mean, it may just keep going forever, as far as I know, but you’re not going to jump to the conclusion that, “Oh, I’m done,” and get stuck.

And that’s why it’s useful to hear teachers and read scriptures and different sources of knowledge that perhaps exceed your present level of experience, but give you a sense of what others have actually achieved and experienced, so that you might hold out hope for attaining that yourself.

Joi: Yeah, and inspiration. We have these examples like Amma, and Amma is probably the most inspiring expression on the planet, as she shows us what we’re capable of, right? That’s it.

And to be able to kind of sense into our being, oftentimes I’ll ask people, I’ll say, “Do you sense that you’re capable of more than you’re experiencing?” And 100% of the time people will say, “Yes, I always sense I’m capable of more than what I’m experiencing.”

And so that’s coming from a deeper intelligence, right? That’s coming from a real, true place. And so we have to learn—I think, as a teacher, a teacher’s job is to be able to allow the student to find something within themselves that’s going to keep them going, right?

Questioning What We Think We Know

One of Adya’s best quotes is, “Questioning what we think we know,” because we’re our own best way of really seeing if we’re getting in the way of our journey, right? A teacher can say it, but a student has to be able to see it for themselves.

Rick: You may have noticed in Skype my little tagline is, “Whatever you think, it’s more than that.”

Joi: Mine’s similar. Mine says, “Go beyond yourself and you’ll find yourself.”

Rick: I think that self-realization is really the foundation for a significant development of devotion. What self-realization means, by definition, is that your experience of what you are has shifted from a limited me to an unlimited something. And so if the motivation is, “I’m doing this for me,” then perhaps that shift hasn’t taken place.

Joi: Perhaps it hasn’t, but we get to start to see that it’s not working, and this is a path in itself. “I’m doing it for me,” and it is. It’s a path for itself. And if it stays that tight and that limited without the devotional aspect of openness—which I will say again and again is essential on the journey—if it stays tight and I want it and I need to get it, it will eventually begin to fail.

And that’s a very valid path. It’s very valid because something is getting broken down in that it’s not getting what it wants; it’s not working. But maybe that path—there are so many infinite ways the journey expresses itself. One of the ways that I’ve seen it is maybe that me does get a little glimpse and immediately gets, “Oh, I’ve got it,” and it co-opts it, which a lot of people talk about.

But it will stay there, it will stay kind of stuck, and it loses the inspirational level—the bliss of being able to open and open and open and not need experience. So, you know, me wanting awakening is a valid path. It’s okay.

Rick: Yeah, it’s often very premature to say to people, “Just give up the search,” because they haven’t really—I mean, that’ll happen in its own sweet time, but it’s not something you just do abruptly.

Joi: Right, and a lot of times, that journey—the path to get it for itself—is kind of a setup, right? Because we see so much along our way. And as consciousness starts to become more aware of the self, the small self, the ego structure, what it wants, what it needs, it will be able to start to see, “Oh, I have been wanting this for myself.” And that alone can be a very, very deep, significant shift of consciousness. So who’s to say that it’s not valid?

Rick: Well, there are a lot of reasons why people start on the spiritual path, and it’s important to know that they’re all fine.

Joi: I mean, to get out of suffering because an ego doesn’t like itself.

Rick: Yeah, I used to give TM lectures and say, “This will help you sleep and lower your blood pressure.” Good enough reason to start.

Joi: Good enough reason to start. And so, you know, that’s great. Learning is happening, and consciousness is taking the being—wherever the being is, wherever the soul is—to start right where it is. And that’s beautiful, that’s perfect. It shouldn’t be any other way than that.

Rick: And then what leads to the next, like you were saying, and there are stages and shifts and tests. I mean, it’s just this ongoing journey.

Joi: Okay. You know, we have a lot of teachings available right now, and the nondual teaching that you are already that is a very enticing one. And when we have little shifts of consciousness that validate that teaching, it’s very important. These little validations are essential.

But a teaching is, in itself, limited—always. Anything we can put into words is limited. And the devotional path will take us very, very, very far beyond words and teachings. The real, direct experience of an intimate communion with God, with the Divine, through our being, is the ultimate satisfaction. That’s really what we’re looking for, right? This is what we’re here for.

But a teaching is, in itself, limited—always. Anything we can put into words is limited. And the devotional path will take us very, very, very far beyond words and teachings. The real, direct experience of an intimate communion with God, with the Divine, through our being, is the ultimate satisfaction. That’s really what we’re looking for, right? This is what we’re here for.

And the testing that our being goes through is like everything getting tested and primed, like a backpacking stove. We get it warmed up so our vehicle, our vessel, is worthy, like you said, of being a vessel for the Divine, of being a vehicle.

Rick: And not only worthy but capable.

Joi: Capable, yeah. Exactly. And so we’re discovering our capacity within this realm of devotion and letting go. Our being is discovering its capacity as it’s being primed. So that could be kind of like the testing, and the testing is going to be in this moment, like we’re going to be in these little crossroads. Am I choosing? Can I sense the invitation to let go? Or is the being not ready to let go, which is the capacity, right, being capable, and is it going to instead want to hide behind a teaching or an experience or just some idea or need for security, whatever it might be?

So this testing is really discovering the capacity. Is the being capable of letting go this much right now? And it’s such a beautiful, organic way of unfolding. The testing is part of that, and we get to see so that our being starts to recognize its own inherent capacity to let go. It’s our being that’s starting to realize its own capacity to be a vehicle for the Divine.

Rick: I want to be precise about our terms here. Our being is starting to recognize its capacity to be a vehicle for the Divine, you just said. So how do we define our being, that which is a vehicle? I think we’re talking about our whole makeup, including our nervous system.

Joi: Everything. It’s everything, right? And this being that we’ve known as ourselves our whole life, there’s something that’s stayed the same throughout all that, and that’s just our awareness of our locality, where we are. And then the being is everything that it is right now in this moment: all experiences, all fears. It’s the whole package, and our being is capable of undergoing radical transformation through its association with presence.

Our being is discovering its own capacity to let go of what it knows, previous stuff. Because the enlightened condition, from Amma’s definition, is something that’s always fresh and always new and never before. So in this moment our being has the capacity to move into something that it’s never before experienced. Our beings, our nervous systems, are capable of knowing that all the time: something new, something fresh, something never before.

Rick: And yet, perhaps something always the same in addition to always being new and fresh and never before.

Joi: It’s the clarity that’s moving through our being that can see that it’s right where it wants to be in this new, never-before place. Clarity is what we have access to in an increasingly clearer way.

Rick: There’s an interesting thing here, which is the sort of mind-body correlation, how they’re interrelated and connected and influence one another. I’ve had experiences where I’m sitting in meditation and all of a sudden my body will just convulse. If someone were watching me, they’d see me just sort of jump or something, and then there’s this huge sort of relaxation and expansion that takes place.

“When presence begins to open our being up, these knots within our system begin to loosen. As the field of consciousness, as presence, begins to awaken within us, these beliefs within our nervous system are awakened as well, back into the field. Loosening up the nervous system even more as we empty out of beliefs and fears, our nervous system is transformed, literally changing the way we see everything, changing our perceptions of life.”

And you talk about that in your book too: “When presence begins to open our being up, these knots within our system begin to loosen. As the field of consciousness, as presence, begins to awaken within us, these beliefs within our nervous system are awakened as well, back into the field. Loosening up the nervous system even more as we empty out of beliefs and fears, our nervous system is transformed, literally changing the way we see everything, changing our perceptions of life.”

And of course there’s actually research on this stuff. Rick Hanson and others talk about neuroplasticity, and there have been all sorts of studies with EEG and fMRI and so on showing that the brains of spiritual practitioners really transform over time, not overnight, but over years, to be completely different functioning entities than they were at the outset.

Joi: Beautiful, yeah. We all know what that feels like in our being when we’re experiencing a situation that’s scary. We feel contraction.

Rick: And also those knots are not just something felt in the moment. Let’s say you almost get hit by a car, and it creates this shock to the system. For years, for the rest of your life, you may be really skittish around intersections because of the impression that was made. There are people who are afraid of dogs. There are all the soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD. The nervous system gets imprinted by these stressful impressions and that gunks up the works, and those need to be unwound.

Joi: Yeah, and we’re carrying those through from who knows how long we’ve been carrying those knots through.

Rick: For lifetimes.

Joi: And we all know, for those of us that have been practitioners for a long time, when we’re sitting in meditation and as we’re dropping down, you can feel something in your nervous system sort of relinquish. It’s just like a relinquishing, and our being is starting to realize, “Oh, it can let go. Oh, it can let go.” The nervous system is discovering its own capacity to let go, to be opened as it’s being touched by presence.

We’re allowing something to take place. We’re getting out of the way. If we sit in meditation and we’re trying to have something, experience something, it’s never going to work. It requires this relinquishing of control.

Rick: The transformation that we’re talking about here is far too complex for the individual will to orchestrate. It would be like trying to orchestrate your digestion. You have to set up the conditions to allow nature to do its thing, which in this case might be a meditation or spiritual practice. But once you’ve done so, you don’t interfere, and it’ll take care of itself.

Joi: This is where that devotional aspect is going to really show up for us too, is getting out of the way enough and allowing something to happen that our mind doesn’t know. We can’t understand on any kind of level what’s happening, but we can sense it through our being, this beautiful sensing organ that senses presence, that senses the Divine.

That’s how we know we’re sitting in presence: because we sense it within ourself. It’s not something that’s happening outside of ourself. The field of consciousness, or presence, is using the nervous system deeply, not only to know itself but actually to open the being up more.

And this is going to calm—it feels good to the nervous system. It’s like the most healing thing that can happen to it. This is what real peace is. It’s when our being knows that it’s being completely molded and taken care of and transformed and shaped in a way that it can’t understand yet: always new.

Rick: From playing too much pickleball.

From playing too much pickleball, Irene says. Yeah, these days I see pickleballs flying at me while I’m meditating. It’s a very intense game.

And you have an interesting section in your book where you talk about sitting in Amma’s presence in her ashram and going through all this stuff—all these kriyas and fast breathing and sweating—and then finally coming out of it and opening your eyes and everybody’s staring at you, but there has been some kind of physiological catharsis taking place.

Joi: Sometimes presence is going to get very energetic. It’s going to really start to fire things up, and this is to inspire the system. I remember sitting in the ashram just being in this incredibly uncomfortable place of burning and angst. But who knows what really is happening within our nervous system? Those days, that’s what it did. It doesn’t do that anymore.

But I can still feel in my system when I sit—and I sit every day—when it kind of bumps up against something. That’s what happens when we become more sensitive. It’s like the field is bumping up against something, almost like it’s talking to the being, talking to the nervous system, because this is Divine intelligence.

It’s not necessary to focus on what the being is experiencing, although thoughts might show up in the form of situations and stories. Oftentimes we’re just being, and we’re allowing the field to come in and kind of have its way with us.

It almost starts to feel like presence is tinkering. I have felt it in my brain a lot. We have this brain, and it’s not being used a lot. It’s a very, very small percentage of it that’s being utilized. So can we allow presence to come in and start tinkering? Let it do what it wants. It knows how to work in there.

And this is something the being starts to recognize too, and it’s like, “Okay, yeah, I’m on board. I’m in total cooperation with what’s happening, whatever that might look like.”

Clarity, grace, and integration

Rick: We’re talking about actual physiological transformation. There’s been research on this with fMRIs and stuff showing that long-term meditators have rather different brains in terms of the way they function. Many people listening to this—you and I both have sat in meditation and felt stuff changing in the brain. You can feel stuff shifting and popping and moving and relaxing, tingles of energy, and all kinds of stuff going on in the physiology.

Joi: The deepest evolution is going to be through being, through the embodied being, which is the field within the being. That’s moving the being, because that is going to be able to know itself more intimately.

Rick: I was just going to read this little section from your notes here. This is what clarity is looking for, so that all parts of our being can be integrated, made conscious. Honesty leading to clarity. Clarity is that dynamic aspect of presence, the aspect that sees and heals with grace.

We want this instrument to be a clear vessel for the expression and manifestation of the Divine. We don’t want it to be muddied up and opaque, which is the opposite of clarity.

Joi: We can use terms like awareness or presence, but awareness is simply aware. Clarity evokes more of an attribute of that which sees, which can really be activated and accessed within our being.

Everybody has access to clarity. I sit with people, and people are trying to convince me that they don’t have it, but I can see that it’s happening within them. Clarity is something that’s able to recognize simply what’s going on in the being.

Rick: Would you agree that there are degrees of clarity, and it’s something that gets cultured over time and becomes more and more clear?

Joi: Absolutely. Clarity is something that is also evolving as it’s being used, being utilized, being accessed, like using a muscle.

Clarity has another component to it. It not only has the capacity to see and to be aware; it also has the capacity to relinquish, to use the being, to know itself. One of its most important essential capacities is grace, this capacity for transformation, for deep-seated change.

Grace isn’t something that allows us necessarily just to awaken. Grace is also something that shifts what’s not conscious within our being. As we start to become curious about a place that we feel within our nervous system, first we’re going to start out by being aware of it. Then, if clarity is strong enough, we’re going to be able to see it not only objectively but without judgment. And not dismiss it, not avoid it. Clarity does not dismiss or avoid, ever.

Clarity also has the capacity to enter into that which it sees. Because it doesn’t see with judgment, it has this capacity to integrate, to bring home, to include that which doesn’t know it’s God—those parts of our being.

Rick: As you say this, the guna model came to mind: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Those qualities are often defined with reference to clarity, tamas being very obscuring and dark and opposed to clarity, and rajas too in its own way—excitement, passion, turbulence, and so on—that obscures clarity.

They say that rajas destroys tamas and sattva destroys rajas. So there could, in some cases, be a progression through the predominance of those gunas in a person’s makeup. Sattva is associated with clarity, and there’s also that verse in the Bible about seeing through a glass darkly, but later on seeing clearly, through a clear glass. So there’s a component of purification of one’s nervous system and one’s being so as to have it be a clearer vessel.

Joi: The clearer we are using clarity—the more clarity is realized as self—we’re going to start to be able to use it. We’re going to start to realize our own capacity for clarity. When things arise within our being, within the nervous system, we’re not going to be like, “Okay, I got to sit with this, I got to deal with this.” We’re going to want to see it with our clarity.

Rick: Right then and there.

Joi: Right then and there. There’s no trying to work with it. We’re discovering within our being how to use our clarity, and to be that—not only just being able to see, but being able to go in and heal and integrate all parts of our being. This can start to happen with increasingly more efficiency.

And this grace that’s inherent within our clarity is that place the mind doesn’t really understand. I always kind of see it as something alchemical. If we can imagine the form and the formless, the formless being the clarity and the form being our being, our nervous system, all that the formless wants to do is go into the form and inform it of what’s true.

It does it by touching it, by encountering it, by entering into it in this very kind, nonjudging, compassionate way. Those places within our being that don’t know that they’re God are separate. But the minute that clarity goes in and starts to touch them, that integration process has already begun. It’s already starting to bring those aspects of our being home.

It isn’t a thing. Those parts of our being that feel separate are these neurological knots. There are functions within the nervous system that have been necessary to protect themselves, to be somebody in the relative world.

Rick: I think they have their counterparts in the subtle body. It’s not just something you find with an MRI or under a microscope. We do have subtle bodies as well as gross, and all of creation has a subtle realm, which is not material and which is actually inhabited by subtle beings.

But anyway, we as human beings traverse the whole range from gross to subtle and transcendent. Clarity, as I think you’re describing it, would want to continue to houseclean on all those levels until there is no occlusion anymore.

Joi: The subtle bodies are going to show up within the nervous system when their time comes, and this is how the being can recognize that they’re there.

Rick: And they’re being purified even if we’re not aware of them.

Joi: Yeah, and it’s not necessary that we know that we’re purifying them all the time. That’s why this openness is so essential continually on the path. It doesn’t matter how realized or how integrated we are when we’re being shaped. This is what’s happening now.

But the openness aspect and the devotion to it are really kicking in now. Our being knows this is where what I’m talking about on the journey can be experienced no matter where we are, working on the level of the nervous system.

But the deeper we go, that devotional aspect is going to be tested deeper and deeper and deeper. It’s going to be called forth until the being really knows that it doesn’t want to hang out in my life anymore. It only wants to be a vehicle for the Divine. It only wants to be shaped and made into that, to be worthy of service, whatever that might look like.

📚 The role of teachers and gurus

Rick: We’re both sitting here with pictures of Amma behind us.

Joi: I know, and we both get to see them.

Rick: There’s a common sentiment these days in the spiritual community that the guru phase has ended. Scott Kiloby just posted a video about that. A lot of people say that it’s an antiquated mode of teaching, that it’s no longer relevant, and so on.

I think that some people who say this are trying to function as teachers, and that’s what a guru is, so I’m not sure if there might be some inconsistency there. What would you have to say to someone who presented you with that objection?

Joi: It depends on the person and the situation. Everybody has their way, but here in the West, people have a kind of individualistic energy, whereas you go to India and it’s very tribal. The support system is extremely valued there. And here, you’ve got a lot of isolation.

For me, my relationship with Amma has also been in a process of evolution over the years, as it should be. It started out a certain way and it’s continually evolving, but through it all, it’s been a support system. That’s mainly what a teacher is: a support system.

A teacher isn’t here to teach you anything or to tell you what to do and how to do it. I think a lot of Westerners think in their minds that that’s what a teacher does.

When I grew up with Amma, I didn’t have any teachings. I had no teachings at all. So when I was undergoing this process, I had no idea what was going on, but I had openness. That’s the one thing that I had going for me, and that was very valuable.

It wasn’t until later, when I really sat with Adya, that my formal teaching period started, and that was so perfect. But getting back to Amma’s role in my journey, it’s the support system. As we need a support system, it will change over time what that support system is going to look like. But the support system allows us to start to see and access our own clarity.

This is what a teacher or a guru does. They’re here so we can access our own clarity. They don’t want us to be dependent upon them. That’s what a real teacher does.

Amma has continually pushed me back into myself, almost like, “Find out for yourself.” She never gave me a teaching that I could hide behind, hold on to, or believe in. Even in my early years, when I just wanted to be with Amma and be included in the group that traveled with her, I wanted, as a separate self, to have a place to land in Amma. But Amma never gave me a place to land. She continually took away things to land on.

This is, of course, the true definition of guru, which means “to remove,” right? To remove, to take away, continually removing places that the separate self is trying to land on. It comes from two Sanskrit roots that mean “darkness” and “light,” and so the guru is sort of removing darkness by adding the second element of light.

A real teacher does not create dependence; a real teacher helps you access your own clarity.

Joi: My experience was that she just kept taking away. That’s all I knew. But this is interesting because by taking away, we access our own light.

Rick: Yeah, it’s like taking filters off a light that’s keeping the room dark because there’s stuff there in the way.

Joi: So we’re almost being forced into it, and the dependency is not there. I went to Amma many years ago and asked her about my attachment to her form. At one point, I was very attached to her. I always wanted to be with her, but yet I wanted truth more.

She said, “It’s a vehicle. It’s a support system. The form is nothing but that. It gives you some sort of anchor while, literally, the rest of your world is being taken away, which is not an easy process to undergo. But you have something supporting you in that. It’s not something that the ego can hold on to; it’s something that the being can hold on to.”

Rick: There have been so many weird stories about things happening with teachers, and we get feedback from time to time about people we’ve interviewed—this or that person who’s doing things that we find troubling. Some people have given the whole field a bad name, and I think that’s part of the reason why some people are saying, “Let’s get rid of that whole model. It’s not working.”

Joi: I can only say to those people that I would look and see where that’s coming from. Where we’re going is into the autonomous condition, where we’re completely self-reliant. But I also know Amma is going to be with me for as long as I acknowledge that she’s here.

It’s still a support system. It’s still a means of inspiration because she’s saying, “You can do this too. You can be a very capable being.”

Rick: Any guru worth her salt or his salt doesn’t want dependency. Maybe there’s a stage at which it’s useful, like for the kitten to be with the mother. Ultimately, no guru worth their salt wants to have dependence around them eternally. There’s got to be a shift to self-sufficiency.

Joi: Yeah, because what’s true in us, which is the clarity, doesn’t want dependency. Clarity only wants more clarity.

People often say that I feel like a tuning fork when I work with them. That field that I’m sharing with the student or with the friend is setting itself up. It’s resonating with what we’re speaking about. That’s what I feel when I’m with Amma: that field we’re sharing is communicating with each other.

That’s the same when I work with people. The field is working with itself, within the student and within the teacher. The clarity is what allows that student to start to access things for themselves. That is what gives me satisfaction.

Dependence? No, that’s not going to work here, ever.

Rick: The tuning fork metaphor is a good one because you know how you can strike a tuning fork and then bring another one near it, and that second tuning fork will start to resonate because of the resonance of the first one.

This whole thing of transmission from a teacher—my understanding and experience is that it’s not that some energy is being sent like a ball of light from point A to point B, but that there is a sort of an attunement of the fields, so that your frequency and the frequency of the teacher begin to align more closely.

I’ve heard Amma use the example of a brightly burning log. If you put another log near it that’s not burning, that log will start to burn. None of those examples have anything to do with dependency or telling people how to live their lives. It’s really just a matter of affinity and resonance, getting on to a better wavelength by virtue of proximity to someone who’s on a good one.

Joi: If you really want the truth, your level of discernment is going to—you need to start using it, for sure. You’re going to start recognizing people who inspire you, and you’re going to want to hang around with people who inspire you.

Rick: And you’re going to recognize when something’s off.

Joi: I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of very clear people out there, and they’re not necessarily teachers, but the level of integrity is very obvious. Those are the beings who are being called forth.

It doesn’t mean that if people are wearing the hat of a teacher but they don’t have that level of integrity—and that ego structure still needs a place to land—being a teacher is a really great one. An ego structure that has found the teaching place to land is not likely to give that one up because that’s a really good one.

Rick: You mean if it’s an ego-motivated assumption of that role, as you’re saying?

Joi: Yeah.

Rick: And then it goes to their heads and things get really weird.

Joi: Yeah, it becomes extremely protected and needs to be maintained. Whereas a real teacher—and I even told you I struggle with that term—I don’t see myself as a teacher because I don’t necessarily teach. I talk, and it looks like I’m kind of teaching, but it’s the field that I’m feeling.

I can feel when a student is open and when they’re not. When a student is open, it feels like clarity kind of pouring itself into another. There’s an ease of access, you might say, and if it’s closed, there’s not any ease.

Rick: Maharishi had a good analogy for this. He said that a teacher, a true teacher, is like a reservoir. The reservoir doesn’t really do anything, but it’s up to the student to bring a pipe up to it. According to the circumference of the pipe will be the force of the flow of water. If it’s a really big pipe, a lot of water can flow, but it’s really up to the student to bring up an adequate pipe.

Joi: Amma says the same thing. It’s not up to the teacher; it’s up to the student to be receptive. If you don’t have receptivity and you only have your own ideas, then it’s going to be kind of difficult for a teacher to get in there. But, given time, maybe those ideas aren’t going to work for that student, and then they’ll say, “Okay, this isn’t working.” Some level of receptivity born from humility will start to happen.

Rick: Whether you have a teacher or not, whatever teacher you may or may not have, it’s important to do whatever you can to cultivate discernment and never to relinquish it. It’s an extremely valuable quality on the path for anybody, and I don’t think any really legitimate teacher would discourage that. On the contrary, they would encourage it.

Joi: When I lived in Sedona in the ’80s, there was a lot of New Age kind of stuff going on, and I could feel the discernment kick in. It was a lot of “no’s,” way, way, way more “no’s” than “yes.” I could see the people who were really working on themselves, and that was when I started hooking up with the disciples of Paramahansa Yogananda.

Autonomy and Discernment Beyond Conformity

It’s not about what everybody else is doing. You’ve got to tap into your own self, and it’s very important that we’re not following the sheep, because what your being needs is never going to look like everybody else’s. It’s always going to be different, and it’s going to keep going into places where nobody else is going, especially later.

Rick: I just saw a funny cartoon yesterday. It was a bunch of sheep standing around at a cocktail party, and one sheep was saying to the other, “This party is a disaster. Nobody knows where to stand, nobody knows what to do.” In the background there was a border collie at the door, and the other sheep says, “Oh, thank God, a border collie! He’ll get us organized!”

Joi: And there’s the dependence. You’re a sheep, you’re going to be dependent. That would be why we can’t call the dependent sheep faulty until they realize that they haven’t learned to stand up for themselves, they haven’t learned to access their own clarity, they’re still relying on the teacher or a teaching—or even an experience that they’ve had in the past—to tell them how to do it.

Why I say this is going to take us continually into places we’ve never been before is because it does. That’s that level of autonomy that is an extremely hard one. This isn’t easy—to keep using your own level of discernment about what you need. Because it’s going to take you beyond the sheep, way, way, way beyond the sheep.

Rick: Would you say that discernment is like a muscle which can get strengthened through use? And if so, what kind of exercises would you recommend for strengthening it?

Joi: Hopefully we’re able to access that in the beginning of our journey, rather than after we’ve gotten stuck in a sheep mentality or been brainwashed by teachings. The separate self will try to find places to land. Discernment is something that is on a level of intuition, which is a different place from where the separate self is operating.

We want to access that deeper knowing. That’s what we’re here to do. And that deeper knowing is what we need right now versus what we think we need, or what we want to need, or what’s going to give us a place of security and feeling safe.

Discernment often brings us into a place that doesn’t feel safe, but it’s also a deep knowing that this is what I need: I do need to let this go; I do need to stop following the pack and doing what everybody else is doing.

Discernment is also like, “Am I growing? Am I changing?” Or you could even call discernment a kind of level of honesty: “Am I really trying to feel safe in community, in sangha, in teachings, or am I ready to start to access this deeper place in myself that says, ‘This is what I need’?”

Rick: The Buddha said, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” I like that one.

Also, something I do is I give everybody the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time I take everything with a grain of salt. Everything is a scientific hypothesis. Every claim that every religion has ever made, or anything else, is something that could potentially be investigated if we have the means to do so. That doesn’t mean that I doubt everything.

That way, you’re not rigid, you’re not clinging, you don’t take things on blind faith, and you kind of stay open.

Joi: You don’t know until you do, right? I mean, really know. That’s the beautiful thing about not having a teaching, but yet having a very, very strong impulse to know for sure, for yourself.

I was fortunate to have that, and I was very driven at an early age. It’s like an inner GPS, which is going into a place that is about our own evolution, and it’s really left most teachings behind.

But when there is a direct encounter of self, it’s like you know it, and that’s that self-validation piece. Let it be your own experience, because if it’s a teaching and you’re believing it, the tendency is to make it rigid and dogmatic.

When you have your own experience, you don’t need to defend anything.

When you have your own experience, you don’t need to defend anything.

Rick: So many wars have been fought over that attitude, and people drive cars into crowds over that attitude. It’s an extreme degree of the tendency we all have to be cocksure of our own rightness and certainty.

There’s a beautiful little saying—I don’t know if it came from Ramana or Papaji. He said, “It’s free fall forever, but the good news is there’s no ground,” so you’re not going to go splat.

Joi: I saw somebody ask, “What are your favorite teachings from Jesus?” Mine is, “The Son of Man has no place to rest his head.”

Rick: “For the foxes have their dens and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.”

Joi: Everything that we can find to rest our head upon is getting taken away, and what is left is this glorious, self-validating Self. Not having a place to rest our head—that’s the freedom that really allows the field to have 100% access.

Rick: And paradoxically, that’s security.

Joi: Exactly. There’s a point in all of our journeys where we start to see, “Oh, this is the only thing I have to rely on.” It is a grace when we start to experience that all these things that we thought we needed are totally tenuous, ephemeral, and not real.

✨ Form, formlessness, and collective awakening

Rick: David in Grass Valley, California, asks, “Do you feel, in relation to clarity and form, that there is a third term of reference—a field within which the two interact, clarity and form—or are there just clarity and form?”

Joi: Form has those subtle beings, those subtle levels and realms of being, because form is anything that’s created. Form would be emotion and thought and feeling, and then the very gross levels of our blood and our bone. The formless is that which encounters. Clarity is getting to encounter form on all those different levels.

But we must also sense that both the form and the formless are the same field, and you can feel that within your being—that aliveness within your body.

Rick: You know that Buddhist saying, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”

Clarity doesn’t see form as something that’s not part of the same field. The field, or clarity, sees form, no matter where it is in its evolution, as that same field. It’s all the same field, so there are not two. And this is the very precise definition of nonduality: not two.

Joi: Clarity doesn’t see form as something that’s not part of the same field. The field, or clarity, sees form, no matter where it is in its evolution, as that same field. It’s all the same field, so there are not two. And this is the very precise definition of nonduality: not two.

Coming from clarity, it sees form as itself. It never sees it as separate, even though aspects of form experience themselves as separate. That would be the integration. It’s just bringing it all back in, so it’s conscious of itself.

Even those aspects of separation have a conscious field to them, don’t they? Just the thought “I,” “me”—it has a conscious field to it. It’s just not a clear conscious field. That integration is bringing that sameness all throughout its being.

Rick: Dave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, asks, “What is your growing edge in the unfolding as a yogi and as a teacher?”

Joi: I don’t have ideas about anything past this moment. My being only knows to open up to what’s here, so it can’t really formulate projections into where this might be going.

I don’t feel comfortable limiting it in any way. I don’t feel comfortable trying to put it into a box, perhaps labeling it “teacher.” I resonate more deeply with what’s possible for us, this deep sense of potential that my being, my brain, and my nervous system are activating.

What is possible for us as integrated beings? How can we move in this world and be of service? That’s all I know. There’s an extremely strong longing that really kicked in a couple of years ago, and it came from being like, “I just want to serve.”

To that, I can only say, “I can only open to what’s here, and this is deciding.” My mind can’t come up with anything because all of that is limiting to my being.

Rick: Although we can’t predict specifics, we can perhaps say more general things, such as, “I hope to have a greater capacity for love, or greater wisdom, or greater clarity.”

Joi: That’s kind of a given. The impulse that’s happening within being is that this is for peace, that this is, “May all beings be happy.” I don’t know what that looks like, but I can sense in my being that this is for the good of all.

I was sitting in Tiruvannamalai in Ramana’s meditation hall, having these three- or four-hour-long meditations, and somebody came up to me one day. She said, “Just remember, these flowers aren’t for you.” It was like an angel came. Ever since then, this isn’t for me; this is for the whole.

There is a deep longing to be used for that, and a deep healing—that it’s time for humanity to experience great healing. A lot is getting exposed right now. Aligning ourselves with what our soul really values is important. What an important time to talk about this. Where are we going as a collective? As fellow travelers, can we support each other in this?

Rick: Thich Nhat Hanh was the one who said, “The next Buddha may be the Sangha,” and that has a democratization connotation to it. The hierarchical, one-to-many kind of model might be shifting to one of many-to-many, which is kind of what the internet is.

Nonetheless, I still think there are, and will probably continue to be, very bright lights within that matrix around whom others may congregate, and that’s still a useful model or situation for those people.

Joi: For inspiration. Here we have people like Amma and Jesus who say, “You’re capable of doing this. You have this in you. You can do much greater works than this.”

Rick: He said, “Whatsoever great things I do, you too shall do, and even greater things.”

Joi: Those words are kind of like beacons for my being. Not that I’m going to go out and do great works, but just that inspiration—that impulse to keep going—and that’s what I think the bright lights are there for.

There’s also this resonance, this field that we were talking about, the tuning fork. That’s how teachings are going to start to be really integrated. The collective field—we’re going to start to feel it more in our being, using our body and our nervous system to recognize, “What doesn’t know the truth here? What isn’t integrated?”

We’ll start to pay attention rather than conceptualizing teachings, using our own being, because that’s where the field is. That’s where it’s happening.

Rick: I see big shifts taking place in society as expressions or manifestations of a shift in collective consciousness. By consciousness, I don’t just mean attitude or social perspectives. I mean something deeper than that.

What we in this audience would understand to be consciousness—the most fundamental field of all—is getting enlivened, and through its enlivenment, all kinds of dominoes are going to start falling and things are going to start shifting with much greater rapidity than they have so far.

Joi: I agree, because that’s what exposure does. That’s what clarity does. It has a purifying effect on form. We’re all part of it, and we start to recognize that.

The more clarity can start to wake itself up—and I think that’s my role as a teacher, and I will continue to do that. I really love working with people and watching them start to access that clarity within themselves. It’s extremely satisfying for me.

Ordinary life and integration

Rick: I’d say that this is a good time to be alive, especially if one has a spiritual bent. It’s a very opportune time for rapid evolution. There’s a wave, and you can catch that wave.

Joi: To be even more precise, it’s got to be to the exclusion of all other things.

Rick: That doesn’t mean you can’t have a family, have a job, and like to play tennis or pickleball. You don’t want to be fanatical. You’ve got to live a balanced life.

Joi: Not to the exclusion of other things, but to the exclusion of relying on other things. We’re not relying on the family to fulfill us, or relying on pickleball to give us a sense of satisfaction or dominance. I still have interests. I love to go hiking, and I love to be outside. I love dogs, and I love having conversations.

Rick: I wouldn’t say to you, “No, Joi, you should just sit there with your eyes closed and forget dogs and hiking.”

Joi: It’s not to the exclusion of other things, but to the exclusion of the belief that they’re going to give you something.

Rick: A nice aspect of it is that spiritual development actually enhances those other things. You enjoy dogs more and hiking more.

Joi: And you might get better at pickleball.

Rick: You do. Your reflexes are faster. We’ve actually done studies on that—faster reaction times with people who meditate.

Joi: There you have it.

Rick: I have one final little quote from your book that I think would be a nice note to end on. You said:

Our world is a beautiful place. It is not something we should dismiss as being only a dream.

Joi: I’ll comment on it because the experience of this that’s moving through our being—we all know this. There’s a deep desire to connect, and that’s often coming from truth, that true essence within our being. It’s looking for intimacy with itself, and it’s going to find it.

It has the capacity, the potential, to find it everywhere. This is coming back into the simple, ordinary place when it finds this intimacy with people it doesn’t know—the waitress who comes to the table, whoever, the dog down the street, whatever it might be.

There’s a sense of completion that happens in finding intimacy everywhere in the world. So this is our opportunity. This is it.

Rick: God is hiding in plain sight. The world is the Divine. That waitress who comes to your table is God in the form of a waitress.

Joi: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: That dog, that whatever. Beautiful. Well, thanks, Joi. This has been a marvelous couple of hours, and I will be putting up all the usual information for people to get in touch with you and find your website and all that stuff.

Go to batgap.com and you’ll see Joi’s page, and also the page for her previous interview, which you might wish to listen to. And I’ll probably see you in June, hopefully.

Joi: Yeah, hope so. And thank you so much. What a great time to actually share this, over the holidays, where just that sense of the sacred is a little closer.

Rick: I actually have my Christmas shirt on, but you can’t quite see it.

Joi: Thanks for wearing your Christmas shirt, Rick. So thanks to everybody who’s joining us with the questions. It was really, really fun.

Rick: This is an ongoing series of interviews. If you want to find out more, go to www.batgap.com. In addition to Joi’s interview, you’ll see all the other ones, a place to sign up for email notifications of new interviews, a link to the audio podcast if you prefer that to video, and a bunch of other stuff. Just poke around on the site and you’ll find what there is to offer.

Joi: Thanks, Rick.

Rick: See you again.

Joi: See you again. Happy Holidays.