Joi Sharp Interview

Summary

• Introduction: Joi Sharp lives in Ridgeway, Colorado.
• Spiritual Journey: Joi’s spiritual journey began at a young age.
• India Experience: Lived in India for nearly a decade, mostly in Amma’s ashram.
• Spiritual Teachers: Spent time with Pamela Wilson and Shanti Mayi.
• Awakening: Experienced a spontaneous awakening at age 28.
• Emotional Purging: Went through a deep period of emotional purging and healing.
• Devotion: Emphasized the importance of devotion and its evolution.
• Neuroplasticity: Discussed the transformation of the brain through neuroplasticity.
• Presence: Recognizing and associating with presence for radical transformation.
• Clarity: Using clarity to purify and heal.
• Subtle Beings: Mentioned the subtle beings within us.
• Relationship with Amma: Evolution of her relationship with Amma.
• Teachers and Dependency: The role of teachers and overcoming dependency.
• Discernment: Cultivating and strengthening the muscle of discernment.

Full interview, edited for readability

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Joi Sharp. Joi lives in Ridgeway, Colorado, which is a beautiful little town in southwestern Colorado, near Telluride and Ouray, where I’ve spent some time camping myself. And I met Joi in person recently at an Amma event, Amma, the Hugging Saint, here in Iowa. And I’ve seen you around over the years anyway at Amma events. You’re not, your face is familiar. So welcome Joi, thank you.

Joi: Hi Rick, thanks for inviting me.

Rick: Yeah. Someone actually recommended you. I think it might have been a friend of ours named Jill. I don’t know if you know Jill. Or maybe it was Radhika, I don’t know.

Joi: I think it was Radhika. She had mentioned this.

Rick: Yeah, I get these recommendations and I sort of prioritize these interviews based upon kind of a mixture of how many votes people get from various people recommending people, and also, just sort of a gut instinct. But I kind of got a good gut instinct when you came to my attention.

Joi: Well, that’s good. That’s good. We’re off to a good start then.

Rick: Yeah. And over the last, since I saw you last week ago, I’ve listened to a couple of your Satsang’s on audio. They’re about an hour and a half each. And for those listening, I should say that there’s a whole bunch of them on Joi’s website, which I’ll be linking to. And I was impressed. It always impresses me when people can just sit there and rap for an hour and not say the same thing twice, basically. I don’t know how people do it.

Joi: Yeah. Sometimes I wonder when it’s going to stop, but it just keeps on coming out.

Rick: Yeah, and then eventually, and I haven’t listened to all of them. Maybe if I had, I’d find you repeating yourself. But it all seemed pretty fresh and original and from the heart and enjoyable to listen to. So, I also, from listening to those and from reading your website, I gather that I got a sense of what your spiritual history is, so to speak. You lived in India for nearly a decade, mostly in Amma’s ashram, and also, in Tiruvannamalai. And you’ve also spent some time with, what’s her name, Pamela Wilson, whom I’ll be interviewing in a couple of months.

Joi: Yes, I saw that. And Adyshanti, whom I’ll also be interviewing. And he came here in April to Fairfield, so that was wonderful.

Joi: Yeah, that’s another nice connection.

Rick: Yeah. So, let’s fill in the gaps.

Joi: Okay.

Rick: That’s a brief sketch, but where would you like to start?

Joi: Wherever you want to start.

Rick: Well, like for instance, on your About page on your website, you talk about how when you’re a certain age, you got bitten by the spiritual bug and then that set you off on this whole, odyssey of searching and doing things. So, let’s start back there, but let’s fill it in a lot more.

Joi: Okay. Yeah, the spiritual bug bit me, very suddenly, quite unexpectedly. It was about 25 years ago, and previously I had led a life of …

Rick: When you were five, right?

Joi: Yeah, when I was five, thank you. I’m a little older than that. I was living in Tahoe City, in California.

Rick: You lived in nice places.

Joi: Yeah, I’ve lived in nice places. And up until that point, I had lived a pretty wild life, did what I wanted to do with very little discipline, and one day I was just done with that life. I went down by the river. I lived right on the Truckee River, like I said, and sat down and closed my eyes. I had no inclination before that moment to do that. And when that moment arrived, the timing was just right on, something in me let go, and I knew that what I had previously thought of myself was no longer relevant. It was a moment of incredible grace and quite surprising. It surprised me. That life, up to that point, was completely over, and a new life had begun, a new life of really, really devoting this life to knowing truth, to living truth, and to … I don’t know, it was a level of surrender that just came from within.

Rick: Had you read any books or anything about spiritual stuff, or was it totally an inner impulse?

Joi: It was a total inside job, no books. Previous to that I had interest in maybe the occult a little bit, tarot, astrology, when I was in high school. I used to do people’s charts for Christmas presents and things like that. But other than that, there was nothing, there was nothing at all. And this impulse that came, it came from a longing, it came from a deep longing to be connected, to know love. It was of the heart. I really wanted to know, I wanted to break the veil, I wanted to see the other side. And it was a longing to know, it came from my heart. They say that the true spiritual impulse comes from truth itself. That’s where it comes from. It doesn’t come from ego. Ego might come from behind that impulse. It might say, “Oh, I might get something out of this.” But a real true impulse comes from true nature itself. It comes from something that is just time to know, to know it. So that would be what happened. Yeah, so that was the moment.

Rick: Yeah, I think a lot of us had those moments. It’s sort of like you wonder what’s going on. A lot of people I’ve interviewed too, it’s like, were they blessed by an angel, or was it totally some kind of cosmic intelligence just bubbling up, or what? But there’s just this sort of sudden turnaround, or sudden knowing that, “Okay, what I’ve been doing isn’t working. Now I have a sense of what I need to do.”

Joi: Yeah, I think it’s happened for a lot of people. And maybe a lot of people are a little frightened by it. It catches them, because it’s asking for a shift. It’s asking for a redirection of life, and maybe a lot of people even dismiss it as something insubstantial or irrelevant, just a sort of fluke thing.

Rick: In my case, there was nowhere to go but up.

Joi: The tethers were cut, huh?

Rick: Yeah, it’s like, either turn around in the reverse direction or die.

Joi: Exactly, exactly. You don’t have a choice. It’s a choiceless moment, and it used to be your life, it’s no longer your life anymore, or the you that you used to be anyway.

Rick: So, what did you do then?

Joi: What did I do then? I pretty much broke off from all my friends. My friends no longer supported that which was living this. And I started to spend very long periods of time in the wilderness, solo trips, up to 8 to 10 days a trip. I just longed for the silence. I longed for no distraction, and it seemed to me that that deep connection that I was longing for was coming through in nature. The trees spoke to me. Fortunately, I was living in Lake Tahoe, and desolation wilderness was right outside my backyard, basically. Which was in the 70s and 80s, was a wonderful, wonderful place to be. It was very quiet still. So, I went there, and I wouldn’t see a soul. And I’d go off-trail, just so I could be that isolated. And I just started to connect, to connect with the essence that is everywhere and always. And that essence, because I was so open to it, and all the protection was gone. When you’re in nature, you just drop it all. That connection, that communication was able to really establish itself.

Rick: Nice.

Joi: Yeah.

Rick: Can you elaborate on that experience a little bit? I have a sense of what you’re saying, and I love to hike in nature and all myself, but is there anything more you can say about that?

Joi: When we really stop and be present, that presence can be felt in the space around us, in the room. But it also can be experienced through objects, animate and inanimate, alive and seemingly unalive. The trees and rocks, things of nature, have an especially strong transmission. I don’t really know the why of it, but it seems to me that they’re almost there. Nature is almost there for us to connect to. It’s an aspect of the beloved, it’s a gift. And it’s a very, very direct way, at least it was for me, to get to know presence. And in doing so, because the protection was dropped here, when I was out in nature for those long periods of time, the presence that was in the trees and the rocks and the mountains, and the birds and the bugs was also able to see the presence that was here in this being.

Rick: And you.

Joi: And me, right. So, it was being recognized on both sides, which was exactly the same. It wasn’t one recognizing another, it was one recognizing itself. It was presence recognizing itself.

Rick: In all expressions?

Joi: In all expressions. And it became, it was extremely enjoyable for me. It was like all my years, I was actually wanting that and not knowing that. And to find it was very, very satisfying. And I called this my spiritual honeymoon because that’s exactly what it was. I was so high, and so deeply touched, I felt like I had found the answer to happiness, which I had, but there was a lot more to come that I didn’t know at the time. But this truth, this life, I wanted to experience that honeymoon, that extremely joyful period of knowing itself, before it started to settle into deeper places.

Rick: It’s interesting because you sort of implied that you had been doing drugs and stuff during your wilder days, and you seem to have made quite a sudden shift to really being clear, and tuning into a deep level of nature. In my case it took me quite a while to detox before I could really have the clarity to appreciate the kind of thing you’ve just been describing.

Joi: Yeah, I think that there was a detox of a different level after the opening, the shift. I think part of my experience with drugs, that wild part of my life, was really, now that I look back, it was, there was a drive within it that was, and I think a lot of people have this experience that wants to kind of break the veil. It wants to break through into something else. If I do more, maybe I’ll break through. If I get wilder, it will let go more. And it almost felt like there was some protection in that, that there was never any damage done. There was almost an innocence to it. It never caused any harm, never hurt anything or anyone. But for myself, there was a path. And when you reach a culmination of that path, you’re just done with it. And I’ve seen that happen, and I have embarked upon several journeys in this path, that when it reaches a culmination, it’s just done.

Rick: Yeah, you know it.

Joi: And you just know it, exactly.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. I kind of did the same thing, and I just knew it at a certain point, dropped all my friends, spent my days walking the dog down to the beach, and you know, that kind of thing.

Joi: And all your friends wonder what’s wrong with you.

Rick: Yeah, oh yeah, Ricky’s just off on some new trip, but that was it. Eventually you accumulate new friends who are more in tune.

Joi: Yeah, life brings them to you.

Rick: Yeah, so this joy in the wilderness phase, did that too reach a point at which you thought, “Oops, that’s done, now what?”

Joi: I don’t know if it reached a culmination, because it’s still here. I still enjoy that very, very much. But what happened first was, because of the experience of being close with nature, there arose a desire to kind of do ritual out there, which is not something I really relate to anymore, but at that point really served me, because what happened was a spontaneous prayer developed. And from the depths of my heart, I spoke to nature and brought it to a conscious level about what my intention was in this spiritual life. I spoke to God, to nature, to presence, from my heart, and gave myself to that. I think spontaneous prayer from the heart is one of the most powerful ways to get really, really clear about where you’re at. And because this prayer started, this resonance with Native American old tradition started to develop here. I really loved the old tradition of Native Americans, how they prayed to the Great Spirit and to give thanks and to relate to the interconnectedness of all things and all beings, and all relations, seeing them not as separate, but actually of the same. There’s some very, very high-level Native American medicine people that knew this, experienced this, and were able to tap into a very, very powerful way of using and harnessing the power within nature to do incredible healings and to draw the animals to them for food and sustenance, to work with the powers of the weather, all kinds of things.

Rick: So are you saying that a spontaneous prayer arose, a spontaneous kind of communion with God, and then you sought to find a little bit more of a structured channel for that, and so, you turned to Native American spirituality in order to give an expression to that spontaneous prayer?

Joi: Yeah, I was doing ritual by myself.

Rick: Just making it up, kind of?

Joi: Yeah, making it up, it just came from within. I just seemed to know how to do it. There’s definitely some strong past life there. And I was doing some traveling’s at that point. I was ending up going to the Southwest and going into the ancient sites and doing ritual there, because there’s definitely a lot of old presence in there, going into the Kivas. I was on a trip in Arizona. Somebody crashed into the side of my truck, and I had to put it into the shop, and I was going to be stuck in Sedona for three weeks, which wasn’t a bad place to be stuck in the It was there that I met my first formal teacher, a Native American medicine man from the Lakota Sioux tribe. It was – I don’t want to get too into it – but it was a very, very powerful healing experience for about two years. It shook my world. It started that detox, and there was some sort of clearing that needed to be done, some sort of healing that needed to happen with this specific way and this specific person. And once again, I went through that journey, and when it was done, when it was resolved, or finished, it was over.

Rick: Can you give us just a couple of highlights from that before we move on? What sort of healing, how your world was shaken, what sort of changes you went through during those two years?

Joi: Yeah, you want the grit, okay.

Rick: Just a little bit.

Joi: It was, it’s kind of a story. When I got to Sedona, right after I put the truck in the shop, I met some people and I was sort of staying with them. And I hadn’t met really anybody, but I was driving down the road and all of a sudden this intense stress and grief and overwhelming emotion started to come up. Until that point, I had not experienced anything so terrifying. I went back to the house where I was staying in and I went into this room and shut the door. And there was no furniture in the room; it was empty. And this terror came up and this overwhelming grief was actually the underlying emotion. Just waves and waves and waves of it started to come in and I just sort of let go of it and it opened a doorway. And I had what’s called a total past life recall, where I actually relived a moment in a past life, and it was a Native American moment. It was one where I had lost pretty much all my loved ones and was experiencing tremendous grief. And this person that I had met later was part of that experience, although I hadn’t met him yet. I’m getting kind of ahead of myself here. The person that I had rented the room from happened to be this kind of psychic person, which I was never really too into before, and she told me that somebody was coming to Sedona to help me with this process. And lo and behold, about three days later I went into this Iwipi ceremony, which is a very, very sacred ceremony of the Lakota Sioux tribe, where they call in the ancient spirits and this man, I’m not going to use his name right now, but he was the facilitator, the medicine man of this ceremony. And he led it, and it was a tremendous experience. There was a lot of healing. And then I went away, not thinking anything of it, and a couple days later I get this phone call from this medicine man, and he is inviting me to his house to have dinner with his family. And this was the medicine man who was part of that past life, who had appeared to help me resolve that specific past life. It goes even deeper and more terrifying than that, and I don’t really want to get into it too much.

Rick: That’s okay, I won’t force you to.

Joi: Yeah, that’s okay. But it was so spontaneous, and it was so full of grace, and it was so powerful, I couldn’t have ever planned on doing it myself. It just happened.

Rick: Yeah, that to me is one of the biggest things that jumps out from it, is the way these things are orchestrated. Your truck getting hit was no accident, and meeting these people and going to this place and all that stuff. And it always fascinates me when I hear those kinds of things, because it makes you wonder about the intelligence that is the puppeteer in all these sorts of events in our lives.

Joi: Right, yeah, yeah. That part of my life I look back and the things that I experienced, were things you would read about in books. I got to see the ancient beings come into the room and take up sacred objects and fly through the room. I got to see the medicine man put fire in his mouth and sing these songs.

Rick: Carlos Castaneda.

Joi: Yes, exactly. It was very, very, very powerful. And to experience that, I’m very, very grateful. But I could see that it was something that was coming from the truth itself. It had its own wisdom. And to trust that and to keep seeing it happening is really the source of faith, I think.

Rick: Yeah, in other words, it was such far-out stuff that it took a certain amount of faith to even hang in there and keep doing it, right?

Joi: Yeah, yeah, it was tough. It was tough. Native American peoples really don’t like young white women hanging around. Not too much. The medicine man didn’t have a problem with it, but the rest of them, they just didn’t like it too much.

Rick: Well, they must get a lot of wannabes, who sort of come around and want to do the thing, but they’re not really in that culture.

Joi: Right, yeah.

Rick: All right, so after a couple of years of that, you reached another kind of transition point.

Joi: Yeah. The interest then took a radical turn to more of the Eastern philosophies of really wanting to know what the enlightened ones said. I wanted to know really where it was coming from, and I really wanted to hear it from Masters that knew the truth, in a language that maybe I could understand.

Rick: Like Malayalam.

Joi: Yeah, Malayalam! What? But it wasn’t until a couple of years after that that I met Amma, and actually, about that time, right after the Native American experience, I started to get very ill. I had a very, very strong, healthy, vibrant image of myself that needed to get broken down, I guess, due to the fact of that spiritual honeymoon that I was given, and spending all that time outside, I was very vibrant and healthy and in shape. Well, that didn’t last very long. I got sick, I got very, very ill, to the point of I had to spend many, many months in bed. And as soon as I’d get better, and I’ve heard this happening to other people, I’d get up and try to be healthy again, and try to go out backpacking and that kind of thing, and I just, I was so weak. And it got to the point where my body didn’t want to take in hardly any kinds of food. The ability to ingest food became very, very simple, very, very small amounts. And I went to …

Rick: Similar thing happened to Adyashanti. He kept trying to go out and bicycle race, and he kept getting knocked back into bed again.

Joi: Yeah, and it was very, very difficult when you have a very strong image of yourself as being very healthy, the physicalness. And I went to the doctor, and the doctor… spent lots of money just trying to fix myself, and that trying to fix myself wasn’t going to happen. Something was getting broken down. No matter what I did, it wasn’t going to work. So, what it did is it elicited a level of surrender. That’s all that could happen. That surrender, when there is true spontaneous surrender happening, it has a very, very powerful way of opening up the heart. And because that prayer was already here, it opened up the heart more, and that’s all I could do, was let go and pray. And something started to be born within that, which was a true longing, a true longing for the beloved. I wanted that, because nothing else was going to work. I could see that. The wisdom within knew that. And so, when you’re pretty incapacitated, I would go from the bathtub to the bed, maybe to the floor, there’s not a whole lot more to do. I mean, you can’t. All there is left to do is to let go. So, I think that that was really when more of the devotional aspect of my experience, really was born. Different beings I started to connect with, Paramahansa Yogananda, at that time I was initiated into Kriya Yoga from one of his direct disciples, but I don’t know how long that lasted, that Kriya Yoga. It didn’t really seem like a very, very strong way for me. The devotional aspect was stronger, it was a little more real, it was a little more closer to the bone for me. It was at that point where the feminine aspect, the mother, started to kind of come into my awareness. And while I laid there, helpless as a baby, weak as a baby, I could feel her holding me, comforting me.

Rick: Kind of the Divine Feminine, not any particular human manifestation of it, but just the Divine Feminine.

Joi: Well, the first one that I connected with, because it was the only one I knew, was Mother Mary, because she was just the only one, I really knew of, I didn’t know of any others. But she became more than that embodiment or that incarnation, she became mother, just mother, the feminine, just being held by mother. My mother had passed away just about the time when I had that first shift, when I was 28 years old. And my father had left a number of years before that, and so this parent, this Divine parent was a comfort, and it was very useful to connect with that, to let go, too, in a way, into something else. And I think this was the beginning of really opening up to the Divine in the mother. That lasted for a few years.

Rick: Were you sick all that time, or was your health coming back?

Joi: It was coming in and out, it would kind of do that thing of, I’d be sick for a few months and then I’d try to get better, and I’d get sick, and then I’d just get better. It was gradually getting less, because that image was getting whittled away, it was definitely getting reduced, and this open heartedness was becoming more the prominent experience. It was taking over. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what was happening. And to kind of take a few shortcuts, there were a number of other teachers that I started to read about and to connect with, Eastern teachers.

Rick: Women?

Joi: Not so much, actually. Yogananda was one, just because he was actually another incarnation of the Divine Mothe

Rick: he really connected with mother. Ramakrishna Paramahansa, also another beloved of the mother. But also at the same time, I was reading, I started to pick up the Vedas and the Upanishads and the scriptures, the Atma Bodha, that talked about the truth of the essence, what the Eastern philosophies call the self. And so that was starting to fill in the spaces that were being opened up. And then my beloved dog died, which was like my only family. You’re a dog person, you know what they’re like, they’re children.

Rick: Got one sitting under my desk right here.

Joi: Hello. That left a big hole in my life. Oh, and there was a time also, I should mention this. This was a very important time in my life. At that time, when I was still sick, I was working with a group called Clear Light, and they were in Sedona. Oh, by the way, I ended up staying in Sedona. I stayed there. I didn’t …

Rick: Oh, you moved there?

Joi: I just stayed there. And I was working with a group called Clear Light, and we would meet, and they were all old, older. I shouldn’t say old, for all those people that are listening to this.

Rick: Our age.

Joi: Oh, our elder, than me at 30 years old. I was 30 years old. Some of them were direct disciples of Paramahansa, very, very experienced people on the path, and they had developed this emotional releasing technique called Clear Light. We would meet three times a week for three hours a session, and they would use kinesiology to unlock these unconscious stories. It was very, very powerful.

Rick: Is that muscle testing? Is that what you …?

Joi: Exactly, it was muscle testing, and they would use this muscle testing to get into stories that we have locked in about ourselves and about life, and it would just trigger emotional release. And so, at that point I got really comfortable with emotion. It was very … because I would lay on the floor for hours going through this emotional release technique, and it was a very, very gritty time for me, because nobody else was laying on the floor for hours!

Rick: Always the extremist, right?

Joi: Yeah, yeah. So that went on for about two years, and I guess another culmination happened there.

Rick: Just out of curiosity, this is a mundane question, but how do you support yourself during all this? Just sort of doing little odd jobs?

Joi: Oh yeah, I was…

Rick: Waiting tables or whatever?

Joi: Yes, yes.

Rick: That kind of stuff?

Joi: Yeah, I did whatever I could. I worked in bookstores, waited tables. I’ve done everything – landscaping, gardening, delivering phone books, taking care of Alzheimer’s, working in kitchens. I’ve never really had a skill, never had a career. I’ve just done whatever came my way and opened up, and that’s been fine. I’ve never felt the need to be somebody. It was just whatever, just to keep life going.

Rick: Yeah, right, basic stuff. So anyway, you were in Sedona, you did the clearing thing, the kinesiology.

Joi: Yeah, and then the dog died. I had heard people talk about Amma, Ammaji, and what a wonderful being of light she was. And knowing that she was an embodiment of mother, it piqued my interest. But I wasn’t looking for a teacher, because I had this heart connection with the mother that was so real and so intimate, and had been there through all this processing, through all this unfoldment, and through all this loss. I couldn’t imagine meeting the mother in the form. There was a part of me that didn’t think I could survive it. My love for the mother was so huge.

Rick: You mean you were afraid that if you met an embodiment of it, that it would blow your circuits?

Joi: Yeah, exactly. I didn’t think I could handle it.

Rick: So you kind of acknowledged that she was an embodiment of it, but you were trepidatious about actually meeting her in the flesh.

Joi: Well, and it was almost as if I didn’t believe she was an embodiment. I didn’t believe she was the mother. It was a part of me, because I thought I knew the mother through my heart.

Rick: Right, and how could any embodied being really embody that?

Joi: Right, exactly. So anyway, my dog died. There was a big hole in my life, and I thought I would go and visit my grandmother, who lived in California. And I saw on a flyer that Amma was going to be in California right when I was going to be there, and her center was very, very close to where my grandmother lived, coincidentally.

Rick: In San Ramon?

Joi: San Ramon, yeah, my grandmother lived in San Rafael. And so, I was taking a trip to see my grandma and this teacher from India, this saint, that I at that time had no connection with, but I was really longing for some spiritual nourishment. I was needing to be in the presence.

Rick: What year are we at now?

Joi: 1993.

Rick: Okay, good.

Joi: So I arrived at San Ramon. Nobody was there. There were maybe three cars in the parking lot, and it was in between the evening and the morning program. And one of the brahmacharis was there from India, and he is Shri Swami now. He is in orange now, but back then he was in yellow. He was opening a gate and he turned to me and he gave me the most beatific smile, just a warm welcome.

Rick: Was it Amrita?

Joi: No, it was Shri Swami. He is a little guy with a big beard, and he smiles a lot.

Rick: Who plays the flute, that guy?

Joi: Yes, yes, that guy.

Rick: Okay, yeah, he is cool.

Joi: He is beautiful.

Rick: He is beaming, yeah, blissful dude.

Joi: He is just beaming. So, I drove in, just going, “Oh, I am so thankful to be there in that moment.” And I met some people in the parking lot, one woman, and she brought me in, and sat me down. And some more people came in, and Amma came in, and there is the chanting. And with Amma comes a fragrance, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself. It’s not necessarily a smell fragrance, an olfactory, but it’s a sensing fragrance, a sweetness. And she walks in, and that fragrance was something that I recognized from my heart connection with Mother. And it stopped me short, it was unexpected. And she walked in, and she sat down, just beaming at everybody. And I was right up front, and she never really looked at me. And she started to give darshan, and she is giving these incredibly long darshans to everybody back then, and just playing with them, almost cuddling with them, and playing with them, and really engaging. And so, my turn came to go have darshan, and she gave me a really short one, really short, didn’t look at me. And I just kind of got up and walked away and went back to my seat. And mind said, “Well, it’s my ego, she’s reducing my ego,” that kind of thing. And there was a number of days there, and every single time I’d go for my darshan, she’d give me these really short darshans, never looked in my direction. But yet, there was something going on, there was definitely something going on, and I found myself trying to talk myself out of wanting more. You know, have you ever experienced that?

Rick: Yeah, I think so.

Joi: Yeah! So, the programs at San Ramon were over, and she left, and she’s on the way to Santa Fe, and I decide to follow her to Santa Fe. And she comes walking into the hall, and she walks up to me, I’m sitting there, and she puts her hand on my head and she pushes down really hard, and she goes up and sits down.

Rick: With her palm or with like a finger?

Joi: Her whole hand, on the crown of my head, just pushed down. Didn’t look at me or anything. All of a sudden, I just felt like my whole universe just cracked, and all that trying not to want something more broke free, and all the longing that was in my heart for the beloved, for God, for truth, for mother, for union, for everything, just came to the surface like a tsunami. And it was such an upheaval. I had to leave the hall and I went out into the woods and just sat myself down in the trees and gave in to that and stayed out there for quite a while. And I came back in for the next program with her, and I went to get my darshan, and she held me for a very, very long time. And I knew that she had just kind of claimed me as something had happened. Then she left. She was only in Santa Fe for a short time. And I went up into the Pecos Wilderness in the hills above Santa Fe and did an overnight up there. I just sat up there in the hills and I knew I was going to sell my little Toyota truck and go to India. I just knew it. There was no question about it; that’s pretty much all the assets I had. So, I sold my truck, and I went to India the following fall.

Rick: Incidentally, let’s just interject here for a second. For those not familiar with Amma, the reason she is called the “Hugging Saint” – and you can find out more about her if you go to Amma.org – is that her way of giving darshan is to literally, physically hug people. And when I first heard about that it seemed sort of touchy-feely to me, it seemed sort of, “Isn’t that cute, she hugs people?” But there is nothing superficial about it. It is a method or a way of profound spiritual transmission, and really sort of deeply connecting with the person. That’s just what she does, so that’s what Joi has been referring to here.

Joi: So, do you want me to continue?

Rick: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I just wanted to say that in case … I mean, you and I are familiar with Amma, so we’re taking this for granted, but some people may never have really figured out or heard much about her, so they might not know quite what you’re referring to. But please continue.

Joi: Yeah, and just to elaborate on that, the darshan, very few masters have ever really given darshan through a touch.

Rick: Yeah, usually they’re very standoffish or maybe they want to hit you with a peacock feather or something.

Joi: Yeah, or a stick, or just a gaze, or just being in presence.

Rick: And some of them are very averse to being touched, you know, at all.

Joi: Yes, and I think Amma’s way of embracing allows us to let go, allows us to open up. Because a lot of people, even sitting in Satsang, to get somebody to open up, it’s not an easy process and this embrace, is something that every human being, we’re just wired to touch. It’s something that allows us to feel supported, and when we feel supported, we can let go. And it’s a very effective way of opening up people.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve seen big, tough football player types, go up and just come out of it sobbing like a baby.

Joi: Oh yes, I know, I know. The policemen, they go up, and yeah, I’ve seen all kinds go up to see Amma, it’s great. The years of India were, I just call it my period of intense deconditioning. When I first went to her, there was very little translation. It was all in Malayalam, and you didn’t understand anything she was talking about. So, the options of really connecting with Amma were either to try to get as close to her as possible, or really be present with her.

Rick: What’s the difference? I mean, be present whatever you were doing, even if you were off working in the kitchen, just have your attention on her, is that what you’re saying?

Joi: Yeah, or be receptive, open. There’s the opposite of trying to grasp her, physically close to her, which many people do, which is a wonderful experience as well. But to be able to receive that incredible transmission that Amma is always sharing, that I found to be, for myself, the most effective. There is a … the transmission of Amma is a silent one, but it’s an inside, it comes from the inside. We think it comes from her, but it’s actually coming from within our own heart; it’s activating that. It’s often said that the highest teaching is the silent teaching, and to learn how to receive that is really the invitation all the time for us, no matter if we’re in the presence of Amma, or the trees, or just ourselves sitting in the room, being open and receptive to what this moment is offering us. So that was … I did that all the time. I sat in Amma’s presence and just absorbed as much as I could. I wasn’t a savite; I’m not wired that way. There are …

Rick: Translate that.

Joi: Okay. Savites, there’s a lot of selfless service around Amma’s ashram. She says most people aren’t able to sit for eight to ten hours a day in contemplation. Most people need activity, and oftentimes, even when we’re going through a lot of “de-conditioning,” I call it, it’s helpful to just go participate or to engage in some activity, and there’s all kinds of work to be done. And we all had our own little jobs; I had lots of little jobs. I never did lots of work. I chopped vegetables and cleaned toilets and watered the plants in the yard. I did a lot of little jobs, but for the most part I was more of a contemplative, so I would either sit in Amma’s presence or sit on the roof and look out onto the ocean, which the ashram is right on the Arabian Sea. You could hear the crash of the waves, which is very, very nice. So, this period in India that I call a “de-conditioning,” if I could describe it, it’s not an easy place to be. Amma’s ashram back then, it was quite … what’s the word I’m looking for?

Rick: Austere.

Joi: Austere, thank you. We were very many to a room. The food was very simple.

Rick: Very spicy.

Joi: Very spicy, and not to mention the climate was very hot and very wet, and I’m used to more of a cool, dry climate. You had to wear all these clothes if you’re a woman, and back then it was very strict, too. There were also a lot more rules involved. But it kind of suited me, the discipline. I’d get up at four in the morning and go into the hall and do the morning chants and meditation. I liked that structure of a lifestyle; it suited me. But for the most part it was very hard because I was used to having a lot of my own space, not being so crowded. My roommates were always people that I wouldn’t have chosen to be my roommates. That was very, very difficult for me, and for most of the time there, the energy was … there’s a lot of shakti. And I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it around Amma, especially like the Devi Bhava, where you’re just trying to rest, and you’ve had two hours of sleep, and you know you need to sleep, but you can’t. You’re lying there and all under your skin is a vibration going on. That went on for about seven years for me.

Rick: I conk right out, but my wife is always … she can never sleep when she goes to Amma.

Joi: She does that, yeah. So that was going on for me, but I would come back every summer and work here in the West.

Rick: Make some money, renew your visa.

Joi: Exactly. That wasn’t an easy process either because when I would come back, I had no place to go. So oftentimes I found myself sleeping in storage lockers and in basements, in tents. Yeah, I was driven, I was obsessed. There was something in me that was quite insane going on.

Rick: During all this time, were you ever sort of attracted to get into a romantic relationship with anybody, or was that like, “Forget it, I’m on the fast track”?

Joi: That’s a good question. There wasn’t room for that, there just wasn’t space. There was some other process going on, and there just was no invitation at all. It was interesting to me because it wasn’t like I thought there wasn’t an idea that it shouldn’t be. I didn’t embrace the celibacy of a renunciate. I wasn’t a renunciate. I wasn’t even one of those formal renunciates that do that over there. I was actually termed a visitor because I wasn’t a resident or anything, because I would come and go. But when I was here, no, there was just no room for anything but what was needed at the moment.

Rick: Pedal to the metal.

Joi: Pedal to the metal, well said.

Rick: Okay.

Joi: Yeah.

Rick: Alright, so this went on for ten years and you’re going back and forth.

Joi: Yeah, it was about seven years and then a shift happened.

Rick: Okay.

Joi: And before that I had done all those North India tours. I think I did five of them.

Rick: Oh, those are brutal, I understand. Going on 24-hour bus rides and huge mobs.

Joi: Yeah, but also the blissful moments of swimming every day with Amma and singing.

Rick: Little roadside snacks and things.

Joi: Yeah, yeah. My favorite memories were during those moments, those breaks. But there was a shift after about seven years, and I didn’t know what was going on, Rick. I had no concept of what was happening. All I knew was that I was being driven. And I would meditate a lot. I was a meditator, and I would sit, and I would have these extraordinary, extraordinary experiences.

Rick: Would you do a technique that Amma had taught you, or your Kriya Yoga technique, or something that just came naturally, whatever, you just kind of made up your own thing?

Joi: It was something that I think had always been natural. It was something I had already known. And it was very easy for me to just sort of let go into this absorption.

Rick: And you say you had some extraordinary experiences with that?

Joi: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Like, for instance?

Joi: I mean, total oneness, total. Alot of times I would actually become the Divine Mother. My body, I would hold mudras and the body would shake, a lot of Shakti would be going on. This happened from pretty much the first year in India, but there was a part of me that knew that the experiences were irrelevant. They were inspiring; they were incredibly inspiring because they were so full of light. And when I was meditating, there was no more meditator, there was nobody doing anything, there was nobody having an experience. So, you might want to call them actually, in themselves, little subtle shifts of perception, because I could see that what was the small me didn’t really have a place in the perception of what was the perception of awareness.

Rick: Yeah, in other words, you sort of saw the ephemeral or insubstantial nature of the small me because the big me became so substantial that by contrast the small me was, nothing much to it.

Joi: Yeah, there wasn’t much to it. That small me didn’t really have a place in this whole path. It didn’t.

Rick: It wasn’t “hanging on for dear life.”

Joi: Yeah, and there would be a little bit of concern, but for the most part it wasn’t given much attention to. And I don’t know how that came about, I really don’t. There wasn’t any directive coming from Amma. I didn’t have that satsangi kind of “look at the small me”; it doesn’t really exist. But there was an experience of it, and so this deconditioning that was happening was a deconditioning of self, of the personal self, of what it wanted and what it needed, and what it thought life should be.

Rick: Yeah, and it really sounds very automatic in your case. It really sounds like you were basically being done, you know? You weren’t doing, and you weren’t saying, “Okay, now here’s the next step.” You were just sort of like, “Hold on,” I mean, not holding on, but just sort of being driven along through this process.

Joi: Yeah, and it was coming entirely from the inside. I had no idea what was going on, none. I was clueless, I was just trying to survive.

Rick: It was kind of like divine intelligence was just molding you somehow.

Joi: Yeah, yeah. And Amma always kind of describes what the master does, is, she’s like the master jeweler. She sees in the disciple or the student the perfect jewel, the potential, and she cuts

Rick: Cuts away all the other stuff.

Joi: With precision of a master jeweler, with absolute precision. She wants the ultimate brilliance. And some of the things that I would see happen around me, it was like, “Whoa!” It would be so bizarre, but so effective, so ruthless, but so effective.

Rick: Like what?

Joi: Oh!

Rick: I always like for instances, examples.

Joi: I can’t really think of anything right now.

Rick: Okay, maybe something will come to mind.

Joi: I’ll share some more with you, I’ll think of some later.

Rick: Okay. But you know, actually, it’s interesting to note here that just as you were being done, sort of, it’s not like some individuality was driving this process, you were just kind of rushing down the rapids. But then you were saying, “Oh, but what the master does,” but then the question arises, “Well, what the master is?” Because what is Amma? She’s not just this lady that was born there in Kerala and is doing her thing in her ashram, she’s sort of that Divine Intelligence also, the same thing that’s driving you from within is driving her, but maybe she’s a more powerful engine or something. Like, same electricity powers a little light here and a really bright spotlight there, but it’s the same electricity. But somehow if you get in the field of that bright spotlight, it’s much more intense.

Joi: Right, right, that’s it. There’re the thousand-watt light bulbs and then there’s the little tiny flashlights, or actually, there’s the little, tiny flashlights and there’s the lightning bolts.

Rick: Right, “Light that is one, though the lamps be many,” according to the line from the Incredible String Band.

Joi: Oh, yeah, yeah, and that’s what it is. There are just lights, many lights, the same.

Rick: But I think the interesting point to note here is that if you’re in a place like that, there’s a sort of a … the field, as it were, is so saturated, so intense, that this sort of evolutionary tendency that you’ve been describing as having guided your life from your early 20s is ramped up, you know? So, your circuitry is just flooded more and more and more with that divine energy, which affects much deeper and more profound changes, more readily, more rapidly. Would you agree with all that?

Joi: Yes, yes, and not to be able to understand it, allowed it … it wasn’t like I was trying to fit into any kind of concept, because love and surrender allows you to let go to the degree that it cannot be fit into any box. It’s going to be a free-for-all, whatever the intelligence deems appropriate, deems necessary.

Rick: Yeah, “Thy will be done.”

Joi: “Thy will be done,” exactly, exactly. And that is the beautiful … that’s the gift of devotion, I think, is “Thy will be done,” and it’s such -I have a very, very deep respect for both the non-dual Advaita perspective and the devotional, because they’re actually the same. There’s not a difference. My perspective changes continuously throughout the day of the two, but the devotional aspect allows us to really keep letting go to the degree that it’s being invited, that it’s being asked.

Rick: Somebody gave me a quote just yesterday from Amma. I think she said this recently, she said, “The biggest lesson we should learn from spirituality, is how to love and serve others as we would ourselves. This is real Advaita.”

Joi: Yeah, yes, because we don’t see a difference, do we? We don’t see a difference. And you know, in that shift that happened after the seven years was, “Okay, what am I? What really am I?” Why did that spontaneous questioning arise? Because it was just time. It was time to connect the two and to really see that, “Oh, this wanted to be revealed. It was just a time.”

Rick: So, prior to that seven-year point, that question hadn’t been really arising; you’d just been going along. But then somehow that became, it came to the fore.

Joi: Yeah, it came to the fore. There was still that interest in the non-dual perspective. I was still, my books, when I would read them, would kind of go between … I love the Atma Bodha, which is knowledge of self. It’s a little, tiny book about this big, and I would read that a lot. And I would just read little passages each evening and dwell on that. But there hadn’t been a real, direct, natural inquiry up until that point. And once again, a spontaneous invitation arose. I was in a little guest house in Chennai after landing in India. Amma was somewhere else in Europe or something, and I met this couple who were Amma devotees, and they had been spending a lot of time in Tiruvannamalai at Ramana Maharshi’s ashram. And they invited me to come along. They had a taxi paid for. And I thought, “That would be wonderful.” I was cooked. I just didn’t want to go to Amma’s ashram without her there, and I was ready for something else. And when I arrived at Ramana’s ashram, I didn’t have a reservation to stay at the ashram, which is a very small place, but they let me stay there. And immediately there was a very deep, deep connection with the energy of Ramana and the mountain and the people that were there. I felt like it was another place that felt very familiar to me. And I could see that I spent a lot of time in the meditation hall, and I could feel them almost like looking out for me there, because once again, all the experiences started happening. They pretty much would happen whenever I closed my eyes, but I would sit in that hall for hours in this place of no meditator, no one, and receiving this incredible grace of Ramana, Bhagwan. When Amma came back ….

Rick: Just reading a book about him last night.

Joi: And when Amma came back I went to her and I asked her if I should stay there, and she told me, “Yes, you go there.” And this is a very rare thing for Amma to give her a blessing to do that. She told most people, “Everything is here, you don’t need to go anywhere,” but she told me to go. And I had experienced some … there was a readiness to know self, and without a physical form of Ramana there, there are pictures everywhere, and there is the samadhi there, which they do the pujas on and people walk around, and there is the hill, but it is very much the transmission of the formless, of inquiry. The inquiry of Ramana didn’t work for me right away, the “What am I?” or “Who am I?” was his. It didn’t really work for me in those words. It actually came from a different place at first. It was more of a sensing presence within my own being, and just putting my attention there.

Rick: I think this “What am I?” or “Who am I?” thing is often taken very superficially anyway. It’s not like you’re supposed to just repeat those words; it’s a much deeper thing than that.

Joi: And a lot of people use inquiry to get … it’s almost as if what I see is they’ll use those questions to get out of their experience. Who is it that is experiencing this in a moment of identification, or a moment of uncomfortability, let’s say, even more so, uncomfortability? A lot of people use the inquiry to help them …

Rick: To escape?

Joi: Yeah, to move back into a more comfortable place, maybe a place of expansiveness or presence.

Rick: Detached, yeah.

Joi: But this spontaneous awareness of presence, of being, really wanted to be experienced in a place that didn’t have any distraction of form. It wanted to really be known. So, I spent two years at Ramana’s, and that was wonderful. And then Amma called me back.

Rick: Non-stop, or do you have like visa problems and you have to keep going home?

Joi: I did. I went home once, and when I would come back it would just be for a few desperate months of working.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, and then back to India.

Joi: Back.

Rick: Okay, so you spent a couple of years there and then Amma called you. Just out of the blue or were you sort of going over to Amma’s ashram now and then and touching base? Or were you completely out of sight, out of mind for two years?

Joi: No, I would go back periodically, but there were times when she would be in India in her ashram and I would be in Tiruvannamalai, and the mind was having trouble with that. It was kind of going, “Your master is over there.”

Rick: Yeah, “What are you doing here?”

Joi: And “You’re here, why?” But there was something that wasn’t moving over there, and it wasn’t going there. And I struggled with that a little bit. And then I went to see her in the Chennai. She has an ashram in Chennai and I went to see her there, which was only a few hours away from Ramanesa. I just knew, and the thought came in, “Oh, Amma wants me to come back,” and she looked at me with a beautiful smile. She does that. As soon as you know something, she’ll look at you and smile and affirm it. And I went back, and that last year, it was my last year with Amma, it was wonderful, because I was with her in a place of … but also having my own sense of presence, but also being with Amma. I knew something was coming to a close, but also, I knew that my time in India was coming to an end. I knew it. And it made me sad because I didn’t know what else to do after that. But that last year I went on a North India tour, Amma would look at me constantly, constantly, for about nine months.

Rick: And I heard you say that there was a time when she didn’t look at you for two years.

Joi: Yeah, I didn’t mention that. There was a period when she didn’t look at me for two years. That was tough, when I wanted her to look at me desperately. She didn’t give me much of anything.

Rick: So for nine months she looked at you constantly.

Joi: Yeah, yeah. And I knew that I was …

Rick: And what did you make of that? What was going on there?

Joi: It was almost like a sense that she was giving me myself. It was … and it was a sense that all that longing, it was very different. I couldn’t conjure it up, it wasn’t there.

Rick: You didn’t have longing at this point.

Joi: I didn’t have longing at this point.

Rick: It felt kind of full.

Joi: Yeah, it was a completely different experience. I was coming from myself. I was coming from myself. There was a sense of fullness more.

Rick: Yeah, incidentally I just want to say that people who haven’t actually lived with a master or been with a master might find this talk of, “Oh, she looked at me, she didn’t look at me,” all that kind of stuff. They might find that kind of funny, it’s like, “What’s the big deal?” But it means something for someone who is in a master-disciple relationship. It has significance and it’s not like a superficial high school kind of, “Oh, she looked at me, she didn’t look at me,” kind of thing. There’s some powerful stuff going on.

Joi: Yeah, and I would invite those people that would question that to imagine themselves sitting with their teachers in Satsang and not being looked at for two years.

Rick: Or never being called when you try to ask a question.

Joi: Right, or maybe dismissed, or maybe having their question dismissed, or kind of shunned, pushed aside, to see how that would feel to them. Because something in you is going to get shook up, right? Something in you is going to say, “Why aren’t they looking at me? They’re not giving me the respect and that kind of recognition that I deserve, that I should have. Who said?” And this brings up a lot, this not being looked at, not being even … I mean, sometimes not even a glimmer of a glance, and meanwhile you’re just in your own deconditioning, your own process, and nowhere else to go, no nice little Satsang-y place, right? You can’t escape that. You’re encountering yourself to the fullest degree, and that’s what a master does. He gives you the opportunity to encounter yourself and only yourself, not what your self wants. And that’s really the difference, because boy, it’s so easy to get in there in this experience of, “Oh, I’m that too, and I should be recognized as that.”

Rick: Yeah, so you went from all kinds of yearning and longing and seeking to a place of feeling full and not feeling that yearning and seeking anymore. Was there ever a clear demarcation or did it just sneak up on you? And did you feel like something was missing, like, “Why am I not yearning and seeking anymore?” Or did you realize that “Oh, this is good, this is what I’ve been moving toward?”

Joi: No, it wasn’t mature enough for me to feel that this is good. I knew I was on the right path, though. I knew that this was part of it. I was experiencing the other side of the coin.

Rick: Did you feel you were becoming lackadaisical or something, like, “Hey, where’s my old fire?” “I’m just too content here.”

Joi: No, because love was still very present. The love hadn’t left. Love was still very, very strong, very intense, and that’s what this being, I had experienced for so long. If that left, then I would be concerned. There was more of a sense of completion. Now there was something else. Another door was opening. It was time to come back to the West. The time with Amma was wonderful. She gave me a … I wasn’t burned out in any way; I should really say that. I never felt like I was burned out with India. I would love to go back and visit, I just haven’t in a long time, because I think it’s a remarkable place. But the sense of this wanted to know itself even more through living it. I didn’t know though what had really taken place here, and I think that now looking back, – and you always know by looking back in retrospect – I can see I needed to come here to understand what had taken place, because I still didn’t really know. And for us to really be on track, I feel the mind needs to understand a little bit of what’s taking place, because it actually starts to get on board; it actually starts to cooperate with the process.

Rick: I think you’re right. I think understanding has to supplement experience.

Joi: Yeah, yeah. And I didn’t have that at that point. I didn’t know what had happened. It wasn’t until I really started sitting with Adya that, “Oh!” He would say something to me and look at me, and it would go, “Click, click, oh, of course!” And I would see it, “Oh, of course!” And everything started to really fall into a … how do I put it? This is something that started to coordinate, work together, the mind and the presence.

Rick: What attracted you to Adya? And did you feel any sort of loyalty conflict or something? “Should I start running around with other teachers if I’m with my guru?” Was there any of that, or did you actually get explicit blessings to visit other teachers, or was that irrelevant?

Joi: Well, I sat with a couple of teachers first, before I met Adya. I liked it. I liked sitting in their presence. That was when the recognition, I could see that it was here, what they were talking about. There was, at that point, I didn’t know it, but there was really nobody here to say, “Oh, I’m awake,” or anything. It just doesn’t happen when it’s gone all the way through, like it did here. There was nobody that said, “Gosh, am I awake here?” There was nobody left to do that. So, but sitting in the presence, there was a recognition that, “Oh, there is something going on.” Then a sort of little series started to happen. One person asked me to give Satsang. I kind of laughed. I said, “There’s no way. I’m not going to do that.” I was still very much my own reclusive person. I wasn’t used to a lot of people.

Rick: And did you feel unqualified? Did you feel like, “Why should I get up in front of a group of people and start talking to them?”

Joi: Yeah, I didn’t know anything. What do I say? I had had no teachings. I had nothing taught, so what am I supposed to teach? There’s nothing here to teach. But meanwhile, this presence, when I would sit in the company of others, would be just this overflowing love and recognition.

Rick: So you’re kind of saying that you had awakened, but you hadn’t quite realized it, and it was not until you sat with some Western teachers that it kind of dawned on you that this had taken place. Is that what you just said?

Joi: Yeah, it’s not even, I wouldn’t even call it “I had awakened.”

Rick: Well, yeah, the terminology is very clunky.

Joi: That concept wasn’t here. It just wasn’t here. It was a silent recognition of presence. When I would sit in presence with Pamela or Neelam, there was a, like, “Oh, it’s the same thing. Oh, look at what they’re talking about.”

Rick: But of course, you had noticed that presence ever since your very initial thing, where you had gone down to the stream in Truckee and then gone off into the woods, the very same presence, right?

Joi: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: So, what’s the difference?

Joi: Because they were putting it to words, and I hadn’t heard it in words before coming from that. I never heard words, and so my mind was starting to kind of say, “Oh, I understand what they’re talking about.”

Rick: And would it be fair to say that it had matured in you or ripened or become the living of it, the experience of it had become much more full than it was in those very early years, through all this thing that you had been doing?

Joi: Yeah, I could say it was much deeper, but I don’t know if it was mature yet.

Rick: Okay, we’ll have to get to what we mean by “mature” here.

Joi: I think that the maturity, the understanding of what happened, I needed that first for the maturity to happen, and that needed to be through a very, very eloquent teaching.

Rick: Such as Adya’s.

Joi: Such as Adya’s. He’s helped me tremendously understand what happened here and what’s continually happened. Beautifully enough, the Satsang that comes through this is also teaching this to understand.

Rick: Yeah, in other words, you understand more as you teach it.

Joi: Yeah, very much, very much.

Rick: The teacher always learns more than the taught.

Joi: It’s wonderful, what a gift.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. So, you would say that, and I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’m just saying this in order for you to respond and correct me if I’m wrong: that presence is presence, but the depth to which it can be appreciated and the clarity with which it can be understood has a great range of possibility. Is that fair to say?

Joi: Yeah, thank you so much, this is so important. It has a great range. Awakening -and this is one of the things that I’m hearing Adya talk about – if it’s authentic, if it’s really authentic, it goes through the whole personal, so that there’s nobody here that has really any ideas about what it is. It’s a lived perspective, it’s not an experience. It’s something that goes through, to the point of, you see through the personal completely, right?

Rick: It’s the essence of all experience, as opposed to being an experience, correct? I mean, it’s that by which everything is experienced.

Joi: It is, it is, but it’s also the first step, isn’t it? It’s in its …

Rick: How do you get by that?

Joi: Well, it’s always something that we come back to, looking from this presence, from awareness. It’s always something we come back to. It’s very, very elementary.

Rick: Fundamental.

Joi: Fundamental, right. And so, even though it happened 23 years ago, it’s still happening right now. Only what’s happened is that from this presence, the inquiry is able to see very effectively, there’s still a structure in place, not much, but there’s still something of a self, a small self that maybe has fear, or maybe wants to hold on to something, or maybe has expectations. That doesn’t fall away completely, but from the perspective of awareness, we just see it as nothing but a structure.

Rick: Do you feel that if it were to fall away completely, you would actually be able to function as a human being?

Joi: I think we retain a little bit of it, but when we’re very, very rooted in this presence of being, it doesn’t fool us. And the ability to see it, of course we don’t see it until it’s here, meaning it’s in our experience. And the beautiful concept of the way to truth is through the illusion. This is so important for us to realize we’re not in a transcended state, we’re not in a place that we don’t ever experience the structure. We’re not in a place where the illusion doesn’t come in and we experience a moment of some holding, or some sort of resistance, or some sort of hope, anything like that, anything human. But that structure, that structure of self as it passes through, from awareness we can see it, and how much we want to see it. That’s how honest we are with ourselves. And to ask a question, “Is there any self here? Is there any holding here? Is there any resistance here? Is there any hope here, any expectation here?”

Rick: There are a couple of things which come to mind. One is that when I was trained as a teacher of TM, Maharishi gave a long lecture about what he called “leyshavidya,” which means “faint remains of ignorance.” And he said that it’s necessary to have some faint remains of ignorance in order to function, and you should never expect that that is going to completely disappear and that there won’t be some kind of remnants or human tendencies, that it’s just necessary as long as you are in a body. And another thing he said in a different lecture, which I was reminded of in the next thing, he said, was a phrase, I don’t know what the Sanskrit is, but “The world reveals Brahman.” In other words, the structure of the physical world is instrumental in revealing totality to us.

Joi: It’s true, I think it’s absolutely necessary. Without this structure, how would we know ourself? We almost need it; we need it to become more rooted in this awareness, this presence, and looking from awareness. We can’t see; we need the duality to experience the truth.

Rick: And stepping back to a much bigger picture, why did the universe apparently manifest to begin with? Who is this self-that’s getting to know itself through the instrumentality of this whole universe, and in us as an individual in this little expression of the universe?

Joi: Yeah, and why would it want to stay in some sort of transcendent state? I mean, to me, it’s boring. I love your title at the gas pump because it’s so true. We get to experience the rising prices of gasoline and the noisy refrigerator, which I turned off incidentally, and the plumber coming through the door, and the concern for the lighting with the web camera, but all these little things that are part of it. Because we get to use that, we get to use that to see, “Am I trying to control my experience in any way?” to try to get to some sort of enlightened one, whereas really the true experience of presence is in the middle of this human experience. If we’re trying to control it in any way, you know it’s not it, because that’s going to be actually the structure of the self, trying to control our experience.

Rick: I’m following you. You know what comes to mind is that when we keep saying “we” at this point, what I keep thinking of is, “Well really, if God is omnipresent, then there’s nothing but God, because if there’s any place where he doesn’t exist, then he’s not omnipresent.” And so that “we” that we keep referring to, that is the Divine Intelligence, speaking as me, speaking as you, living as the dog, the cat, the plumber. And so, all of this, this whole vast, complex, fascinating show is Krishna’s Leela, so to speak. It’s God playing in the diversity that he creates in order to have that entertainment. And sometimes it’s a pretty dark movie, it may be Auschwitz, but it’s not always butterflies and pussycats, but it’s part of the whole diversity, the complexity. I’m talking too long now. You should stop me.

Joi: No, you’re fine. No, I enjoy listening to you. I really do.

Rick: I do that sometimes. I get energized and I get carried away.

Joi: Now you know my dilemma. But the experience of it, when we speak, we’re speaking from experience. We know this is true. And when we’re in Satsang, the awareness that everybody is … there are equal amounts of this presence available to all of us. And to take that out into the world and to experience that everywhere, all the time, there are equal amounts of this grace, this presence, available to everything, to everyone to experience. It keeps everything kind of democratic, even. And there is no hierarchy, there is no more or less. It’s just, are we available for it? That is really the question.

Rick: Yeah. Maharshi used to say, “The reservoir is full, it just depends on how big of a hose you want to hook up to it, to draw from it.” Little drinking straw or a big fire hose?

Joi: Yeah, and I just watched myself, and am I limiting this experience in any way by trying to want anything out of it? Is this really a life coming from a limited perspective? We don’t know. We don’t know what’s on the other side of that hose. We don’t know what’s coming through the hose, do we? We don’t know the reservoir that’s back there, that’s coming through this, because that’s the life, that’s the life that’s coming through.

Rick: Yeah. I have an interesting question for you, this will change the direction slightly. You’re experiencing this fullness and contentment and living presence and teaching Satsang’s and all, and yet you just drove from Ridgeway down to Albuquerque, and then you drove all the way out to Iowa.

Joi: I did.

Rick: A two-day drive in order to spend two days with Amma, sitting in the front row with your eyes glued on her, and then two days’ drive back to Ridgeway. Now what would be the motivation for going through all that trouble and driving 2,000 miles if there’s already fullness and contentment?

Joi: Oh, isn’t that a beautiful question? I can’t answer that because I know, I know, “all I know” as I was called. When I went down to Albuquerque, which happened to be the only time I see her all year, it’s like my time to check in with my master, who will always be my master. I don’t ever want to lose that relationship. I can’t imagine that happening. Maybe it will, I don’t know. But anyway, so I go to Albuquerque, and it was four days of program. I went with my girlfriend, and we said, “Let’s just bring our camping gear, just in case.” We had an idea we might come; we just had an idea. Usually, I don’t go anywhere else on this whole seven-week tour, I only go to this one city. When we were done with Albuquerque, with the Devi Bhavan Albuquerque, we went back to the room and she came through the door, and I said, “I think we should go to Iowa.” She said, “I think we should go too.” There’s no..who’s to say why, but when I got there, I knew that there was some sort of something that wasn’t quite … she wasn’t done with me. There was definitely a very deep, more letting go happening here. Letting go is the name of the game. Sometimes we get to a point where there are a lot of ways that this can get hung up. There are lots of ways, there are a lot of places we can hold on for dear life, because we just do not see anything more possible, and that’s really where this goes. You get to a point where every speck of what you know, you think you know, is falling into this heart that is just unknown. When I … this is where I’ve been. Those last few specks of known, they get … the structure wants to hold on to something that’s unknown, right? So, to go … I know you’re here.

Rick: I’m listening, yeah.

Joi: I know.

Rick: I’m letting dogs in and out.

Joi: I know. When I go to see Amma, the love and the devotion that I have for her gives me the strength to let go of those last bits of known. I don’t think it would be possible without devotion, and it doesn’t mean you need to be devoted to a master or to something, but that devotion is going to get tested again and again, and again and again. Devotion to truth, devotion to what you know is true. If I … to go see Amma, that love and the devotion that is here for her gives me the strength to let go of those last knowns, and it’s not like the structure lets go of known; it’s the awareness lets go of the structure that’s holding on to the known. Does that make sense?

Rick: I think so. So, in other words, you’re saying that when you refer to “known,” you’re probably referring to sort of ingrained assumptions or ways of thinking and so on, that are conditioned and that are restricting you, perhaps even without your being aware that they’re doing so. And you’re saying that when you sit in Amma’s presence or focus on her for a couple of days or whatever, it helps to root those out, it brings them to light or loosens them up or purges them or some such thing?

Joi: Yeah, and it’s almost as if, Rick, it’s that transmission of Amma that is …

Rick: Just works its magic.

Joi: Works its magic. It is part of the unknown, it is part of the mystery. Why do they call it a mystery? But it brings something conscious that is also … there is a holding, and to align ourselves with that which … it’s like I know where I’m going, and where I’m going, this little speck of known can’t go.

Rick: So in other words, you have an intuitive sense of where you’re going, but the baggage that you’re carrying can’t be taken there.

Joi: Yeah, right, the luggage.

Rick: The airline only allows so many bags.

Joi: Yeah, and where you’re going it doesn’t allow any bags, actually. The eye of the needle doesn’t … there are not too many bags that can fit through an eye of the needle. And this known, you asked a question about what is it that is known. It can be anything. It can be like basic stuff, like I need money, or I need a place to live. It can be that when we don’t see past this moment, and you can’t imagine anything past this moment, it kind of puts you into a little bit of a predicament sometimes, because you can’t imagine what’s next.

Rick: Yeah, so I would regard those as assumptions, expectations, things like that. It’s not like you’re going to forget how to ride a bicycle, something you know, but things that imply not completely trusting in Divine guidance or in Presence or whatever, those are the kinds of things you’re talking about.

Joi: Yeah, yeah, and this letting go of the need to know.

Rick: Right, the need for certainty.

Joi: Yeah, the need for certainty, the need to know, the need to feel security. There really is not such a thing, but the need, the structure of self, it needs … the known is what the structure holds onto, and it thinks it needs to know. And without those needs it wouldn’t exist; it survives on holding.

Rick: In Zen they speak of “don’t-know mind,” you know? You’ve probably heard Adya use that phrase.

Joi: Yeah, and this don’t-know thing, it becomes basically what you are, an unknown presence, because it’s just being, it’s just … there’s no known, but there’s a sense, like you said, like an intuition that this is where it’s going. It’s going more into the unknown, it’s going so deep into the unknown that you could never have imagined it would go so deep into the unknown, because you could never have imagined that the unknown was so unknown.

Rick: Yeah, somebody quoted Nisargadatta as saying that the degree to which one is sort of comfortable with paradox and ambiguity is a good measure of one’s spiritual maturity.

Joi: Yeah, it does get tested to a great degree. I had no idea.

Rick: So what I kind of hear you saying, I mean, there are a lot of people these days who seem to speak of awakening as like an on-off switch. You’re awake, you’re not awake, one or the other. And you were referring to it, I’d say, more as a rheostat. You know what a rheostat is? It’s like those knobs you can turn, and the light gets brighter and brighter, instead of just an on-off switch. And because what you’re saying is, I know terminology is clunky, but there’s been a sort of an awake state for some time now, but there seems to be a continual deepening and enriching, or whatever. And if you were to contrast yourself with someone like Amma, in terms of degrees of awakening, it would seem to me that, yeah, sure, it’s the same presence, but wow, there’s an interesting example of how bright the bulb can get.

Joi: Yeah, and we have no idea how bright that bulb is. And that’s, she’s beyond even, I can’t even talk about it. She just seems to me to be the source of the universe. And the experiences that I have in her presence always simply amaze me, because they support you right where you’re at, but yet they draw it out of you to the degree that I have never experienced possible with anybody else. And you talked about this light getting brighter. Of course, there can still be a little bit of in-out. It gets brighter and it gets brighter.

Rick: Yeah, the shadow comes, yeah, sure.

Joi: But the maturing would be really the vacating of the structure. As the structure vacates this space, this vessel, or the known, which is the same thing, this presence, it’s like it moves forward, it moves forward so that it’s very conscious of itself as it’s living here. It knows itself. Whatever this is. And this is what …

Rick: So when you say, “The structure vacates this vessel,” what you’re referring to, I think, is that as long as the ego is intact, then the vessel is not as fit a reflector of that presence as it might be. Is that a way of putting it?

Joi: It seems more to me like it fills up the space.

Rick: It crowds out the presence.

Joi: Right, you know when you’re in identification and you’re just so convinced you’re right, or something? You’re so full of your shed, you’re so full of your known, what you think you know. There’s not a lot of space there then. There’s just what you think, your space, your vessel is filled with what the structure thinks it knows, the ego thinks it knows. I know, and this is right, and I know it. That’s filled.

Rick: And some people seem to think that they’re finding security in that. They think, “Well, if I can really figure this out and come up with a theory, and this is where that person is at, and this is where this is at, and so-and-so is wrong,” then there is a sort of a sense of, “Okay, well I’ve got my world intact, I’m secure.” But ironically, I think it’s quite the opposite, because you’re on shaky ground as long as you think that way.

Joi: Yeah, and I’m so glad that you as an interviewer are aware of that, because we can’t know where another person is at. It’s just not possible. Amma does, but to know another person’s experience and what they’re actually seeing, and what their presence is seeing from within themselves, right now I don’t know if I know that’s possible for myself, to know what another person is actually experiencing. All I know is what is happening here, and it’s my responsibility to see what’s happening here. Am I full of known, or is actually there a place of emptiness, so that this hose or this pipe can be clear and empty of known, so that this presence can move forward? One of the experiences that I had, and I think you’ll be interested in knowing this, when I was sitting with Amma – and I don’t usually like to share this, but this was really neat – when I was sitting with Amma, being this and looking out through eyes, I could feel Amma looking at me, and with her eyes pulling presence out even more through eyes. Really bizarre, it was very, very cool. She did that a few times.

Rick: Just here in Iowa, or previously?

Joi: Both in Iowa and Albuquerque, just this year though.

Rick: Cool. And I get the sense that this thing you keep talking about of removing the vestiges of the known, it’s not like it’s –just to make sure people understand what you’re saying – it’s not like you’re becoming a dummy in some sense, or that you’re becoming wishy-washy, like, “Oh, I don’t know anything, whatever, blah, blah.” I’m sure you have direction and purpose, and you can apply yourself with certainty when the situation calls for it, can you not?

Joi: Yeah, you become more conscious that you’re just being moved. You’re being moved by something that’s very, very intelligent. One of the reasons I still love to hike so much is, when I’m hiking, I really feel this. Maybe you’ve experienced this too, when you’ve experienced presence moving your body, picking up a glass of water, scratching your arm, moving your legs when you’re walking, talking, seeing. And the more conscious we are of being embodied, it’s not a dummy, it’s something that’s quite – I don’t even know what word to put to it – it’s something that’s so tangibly intelligent and wise and compassionate. It can’t go wrong; it won’t let you go wrong.

Rick: I think that what bothers some people is that they get the feeling that what you’re talking about is a loss of that which makes them special or unique or interesting as a person, that you’re going to become a sort of colorless sap, if you undergo the process you’re talking about. But my experience of people who are living that presence very fully is quite the opposite. I mean, Amma or Adya or you, or just anybody who is really living that fully, they become more interesting, more vibrant, more animated.

Joi: And just more authentic. To be special is something that’s imagined. When we try to be special, we imagine what being special is, and then we try to act the role, and it takes a lot of energy to maintain that, especially when we’re not feeling so special. That takes a lot of breaking down too, those sort of self-images. In the long run, they’re not very satisfying. And to be really honest, am I trying to conform to my idea of what awake is or what specialness is or what spiritual is? I’ve seen Amma act anything but spiritual. I’ve seen her be very, very rough, but it was needed. And it was just an act, and right underneath it was – I mean, it wasn’t an act as in a pretend, it was just presence playing a function in order to break somebody, crack them open. And then right after that is love and compassion.

Rick: Yeah, well, Christ in the temple overturning the money changers’ tables. He wasn’t being all blissy there. He was expressing anger and being pretty decisive.

Joi: Yeah, and sometimes this decisiveness, this ruthlessness is needed to crack us open. I experienced that.

Rick: Yeah, even our regular earthly mothers, just because we get spanked doesn’t mean they don’t love us.

Joi: Oh, well said. Exactly, exactly. And presence, or this vast, divine presence that is everywhere, always, only wants what’s best. It’s good, and it’s not about to hurt, but it knows what’s so efficient. When we really open up to it, it’s so efficient. It’s got the right formula down.

Rick: Well, if you’re a little kid and you get mud all over your face and your mother comes to scrub it off with a washcloth, you don’t like it. You squirm and you resist, and you cry, and you push her away and everything, but you’re going to be better off. I have the feeling that when you talk about stuff getting removed and all, it’s just tarnish. There’s nothing of value getting removed. In fact, that which is most valuable will actually show up a lot more brightly when the tarnish is removed.

Joi: Right, right. And if we come from presence, if we watch that, and what is it that’s resisting? And what is it that’s holding on? And what is it that doesn’t like it? If we come from presence and see that, we can really have some very, very profound inquiry going on. But if we stay in that place where we think we know what we need and what we think should happen, that’s delusion. And we have to be careful with this teaching. This teaching can be very, very effective, that you are that. It can also be very dangerous.

Rick: How so?

Joi: Because it’s so easy to own that concept. It’s so easy for the individual person to identify with presence, to identify with awakening. I’ve awakened.

Rick: And to assume therefore that the deal is done, I am complete, there’s nothing more to gain, and so on and so forth.

Joi: And to almost build up a new structure around that, almost a new parameter about what it expects.

Rick: Essentially, a lot of times when I interview people, I haven’t needed to do this with you because you’re saying it, but with a lot of people I bring in this point of, “Well, don’t you think there could be something more, some more progress, some greater clarity or depth or removal of inner hindrances and whatnot?” And a lot of them just have this on-off, black-white approach to awakening, and say, “No, I can’t imagine any more progress, this is it, there’s no one home.” I just wonder sometimes if such a person were somehow magically to step into the eyes of a Ramana Maharshi or an Amma or something, they might be a little bit startled by the contrast between the completeness that they thought they actually had, and what the potential is for a human to live.

Joi: I’m so grateful you say this, I’m really grateful. It’s a touchy subject because a lot of people, they want to think awakening is “it.”

Rick: It’s endemic in the whole Satsang movement.

Joi: It’s very endemic and they want it to be the final arrival, and then they want the recognition from it. And my experience was with Amma, she didn’t give a shit, she didn’t care. So what? You had an awakening, now we can get started. That’s the foot in the door, that’s the first step. From presence you can see things much clearer, so that’s the gift. I love how Adya says it, “Awakening is a freebie. You don’t need anything, it’s a gift. Once you learn to move from presence, then you can see the work that needs to be done.” And this is what he says as well, he says that really to dismantle the whole structure costs everything. The awakening is a freebie. To go the distance, to really embody this, is going to cost everything.

Rick: So it’s like the awakening is a prerequisite to the really significant dismantling.

Joi: Yeah, and I heard him say, and please forgive me if I’m wrong, I heard him say that his teacher, when he had his first awakening, also told him, “Now we can start.”

Rick: Yeah, I heard him say that too.

Joi: Yeah, and this is something that there is a maturing process that takes years, years. If somebody has had an awakening, it’s a very, very important, vital, essential step. The essential shift is so important, even if it happens for a glimpse. I’ve had people come to Satsang that have had these glimpses that were not ready for it. They weren’t ready, they were ready for the glimpse, but they weren’t ready to keep going with it, and so they just shut it down and went back with their life, and that was enough for them.

Rick: Yeah, for the time being.

Joi: For the time being, and that’s fine. There’s nobody that says, “Once you’ve had a glimpse, you should keep going.” It’s hard to say who is going to keep going and who is going to just sort of hang out in a nice place. When things get tough, they can pull out presence and look at it.

Rick: I think some people need a breather, some people need to just chill and be comfortable for a while. Everybody can’t do it the way you did it.

Joi: Oh, no.

Rick: It would be a pretty crazy world.

Joi: It would be crazy. Somebody has got to hold down the fort, and thank goodness that I had a couple of people hold down the fort.

Rick: Somebody has got to design webcams and create Skype.

Joi: And tell me how to work it. I always need somebody around to kind of give me a hand with these things, and there isn’t. And for myself even, I’ve had to check in with myself and say, “Look, everybody has got their own design, and where they go is fine.” I’ve seen some pretty crazy things. I had one student that, bless his heart, he was a little kind of bipolar, and he had a tremendous opening, and very deep, very abiding. And for him it was such a relief coming from where he came from. And so, we let him hang out there for a while, for about a year or so, and I just started to nudge him a little bit, “Okay, now you get to keep going.” And he wasn’t ready, and so he stopped coming to Satsang, and I had to let that go, because I cared for him. He was very close. And he ended up, about a year after that, having an accident, and he fell off- He had a climbing accident and he died. And it was almost as if the lifetime said, “Okay, this life is over, it’s done, this is where you’re going to stop, so next time we can resume.” Right? And I mean, this is an extreme case, but to me I found it, I was sad to lose him as a friend, but I found it very interesting.

Rick: I don’t think you’re implying that if he had kept going he wouldn’t have had the climbing accident, who knows, you know? It’s impossible, karma is unfathomable. There’s a verse in the Gita that you just said reminds me of, which is that “Because one can perform it, one’s own dharma, the lesser in merit, is better than the dharma of another. Better is death than one’s own dharma. Dharma of another brings danger.” And so, everybody is, I don’t know if everybody is in their dharma or not, but people are doing the best they can.

Joi: And that’s it. And it was funny because I was talking with a friend yesterday, and that’s what we do, we do the best we can. And there’s so much grace in that, you know? Just to talk about that makes my being happy, you know? It feels like, yes, exactly, look around, everybody is doing the best they can, right where they’re at. And it couldn’t be any different, and it keeps it very interesting too. It does.

Rick: Well, there’s about a million more questions I could ask you, because I never run out. I could sit here for the next, all afternoon and continue doing this.

Joi: Maybe we could get a break.

Rick: When we get to about the two-hour point I begin to think, “All right, we better wrap it up because people don’t have the same attention span listening to this as they might actually engage in it.”

Joi: Right, we’re just engaged in the conversation.

Rick: Right. But before we close, is there anything, whatsoever that you feel moved to say that we might not have touched upon?

Joi: No. It was pretty complete, I think. It was a nice conversation. j It was wonderful, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rick: Yeah, me too. It’s kind of good in a way that we didn’t get to do it when you were here in Iowa. That would have been fun too, but somehow this Skype thing works very well. In a way it almost works better than setting up a camera and doing it in person.

Joi: Once you get used to it, once you get used to not being in … you’re there, it’s almost like you’re more focused.

Rick: You are there.

Joi: You are there and you’re more focused, and this is all there is, this little box.

Rick: Yeah, exactly. Good. But then there’s … Yeah, so let me just wrap it up by saying to people who have been listening that you’ve been listening to an interview with Joi Sharp on this series we call Buddha at the Gas Pump, and there are different ways of listening to it or watching it, but if you go to batgap.com, which is an acronym for Buddha at the Gas Pump, you’ll see all these ways. You’ll see all the ones that have been done, and you can subscribe to an email newsletter to be notified of future ones. There’s a way of clicking to sign up for a podcast and so on and so forth. So do that. There’s also a page there, you’ll notice a link on the right where it says “Upcoming Interviews” and you’ll see who’s scheduled to be interviewed. And you can click there if you wish to recommend people. I often base who I interview on who’s recommended to me, so feel free to do that. So now you’ll see a link to Joi’s website there on BatGap, and if you go to her website, there’s a section where you can read things she’s written, and you can download hours of audios of Satsang’s that she has given.

Joi: For free.

Rick: For free. And they’re very good. As I mentioned in the beginning, I listened to a couple of them, so if you like listening to this sort of thing, I think you’ll enjoy listening to Joi’s Satsangs. So, thanks Joi.

Joi: Thanks Rick. I had a wonderful time.

Rick: Yeah. Well, we’ll see you next time we see you. Maybe we’ll make it down to Albuquerque next year.

Joi: Okay, good. I’ll see you next time too.

Rick: Alright, thanks.

Joi: Okay, Rick. Bye.

Rick: Bye. Bye. [Music]