Karen McPhee Interview

Rick:  Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is Karen McPhee. Welcome, Karen.

Karen: Nice to be here, Rick.

Rick: Yeah, we’ll introduce Karen in more detail in a minute. I just want to say in general that this is a show on which people who have had or are in the process of having spiritual awakening are interviewed. There have been over 300 of them now and if you’re new to this, go to batgap.com and you’ll see them all archived in various ways under the past interviews menu. These shows, if done on Skype, are also live streams that people can watch and send in questions that they would like me to ask. On the upcoming interviews page, there’s a form at the bottom that you can fill out to submit a question. And the whole thing is supported by appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you feel like helping to support it, there’s a Donate button there. So, I enjoyed preparing for Karen’s interview. She has had quite a life and is still having one and has been through an awful lot. And so this, I think this interview will turn out to be somewhat biographical, and is also just a lot of interesting knowledge that will come out which Karen has amassed as she’s gone through life. So with Karen, we can start pretty young. She said that, from a very young age, she could sense and see the invisible energetic dimension and had the awareness of presence in early childhood. Then you had, maybe you’d like to elaborate on that before I go on to the next one.

Karen: Well, there’s one scene that comes to mind where, it was really vivid, and I was very young, maybe three or four, and someone came up behind me, and I couldn’t hear them or see them. But I felt their presence and I knew what they were feeling, what they were thinking—and at the same time, just aware of this huge space of stillness in which it was all happening. So it was very vivid.

Rick: —Must have been for you to have remembered it.

Karen: It’s still here now. You know, don’t you find that? Those moments of timelessness I mean, they’re timeless. So it’s always available. But yeah.

Rick: Yeah, I had one when I was a really little kid. I must have been under three, where I was so convinced that I was actually able to fly around the house up and down the stairs and all that I remember having an argument with my mother, but yeah, “I fly, you know,” and she’s “No dear you don’t fly.” I can still remember the experience of actually zooming up the stairs and so on. So I must have been some kind of out of body thing or something.

Karen: Oh, that’s so cool. I love that. Great, and so true. I mean, when we’re in our energy body, or whatever you want to call it, we are flying, right?

Rick: Yeah. And you literally can, I believe, even do it in your physical one, if you’re evolved enough. Then, skipping quite a few years here, at the age of 16, you had a cancer diagnosis and that you count that as a significant milestone.

Karen:  It really was. Yeah, almost everything between the first experience we talked about is kind of a blur, really, but it stands out again, because I think I might have shared that with you. There was a moment, I don’t remember where it was in the process. It might have been, I don’t know if it’s before or after the surgery. Can’t remember. Anyway, bottom line, once …

Rick: You had surgery before the cancer?

Karen: Yeah.

Rick: Do you mind my asking what kind of cancer it was?

Karen: Thyroid. Yeah. So I remember when I got the call, the doctor said on the phone, “Hey, you’ve got cancer,” and it was like hey—the humanness, I was pretty shocked. I remember just passing the phone to my dad, but partway through there was this moment when I was standing outside in our driveway, actually, and everything just got perfectly still. And this knowing arose that this life was not going to be what I thought it was.

Rick: Yeah. It’s kind of unusual for a young girl to get thyroid cancer, isn’t it?

Karen: Probably not where we lived. It was, we didn’t live there long, but it was fairly, I don’t think common, but not as uncommon

Rick: As environmental toxins?

Karen: Yeah, probably, although there’s some propensity. I think my great-grandmother might have had something there and so genetic as well. But it was really interesting because I – you can always tell, in hindsight, that moment was the moment when awareness woke up and to some degree and I realized, okay, white picket fence, kids, whatever. That’s not what this is about. And somehow, I felt like I had been removed from normal life. And I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but it was just a vivid and clear space of awareness and knowing.

Rick: And that impression stayed with you, as the four year old impression also stayed, right?

Karen: Yeah, this one, though, I would say it was probably pretty covered over for a long time. I mean, it was there. But things became pretty turbulent for a while. And there was about a 10 year period after that of dealing with stuff. So yeah, but yeah.

Rick: I think I also heard you say you were raped at the age of 13 or something, right?

Karen: Yeah, I didn’t put that in the bio I sent you. I’ve purposely left a few things out that I didn’t necessarily want to talk about here. But hey, that’s okay. I just trust whatever happens is fine. Don’t worry, Rick. It’s fine. Yeah. I just, there is a little bit of consciousness of sometimes when we talk about things that can trigger trauma, but you know what, whatever happens, here is perfect. Yes. So that happened before, actually, the cancer.

Rick: Yeah. About three years before. It’s kind of—interesting is the wrong word. But there’s a number of people whom I’ve interviewed who have gone through that. And when I interviewed Joan Harrigan on Kundalini Vidya, one of the things she says can somehow catalyze or trigger a Kundalini awakening is some kind of severe trauma. Not that we would wish that upon anyone, but it can be the cause of jolting the Kundalini out of dormancy or something. Have you heard that?

Karen: I sure have. And I love that interview, by the way, it was great. You know, when and if you look at it sort of from the energetic the chakras, all the whole, which, I don’t claim to be an expert at, and we could say, was it really a coincidence that when the cancer happened here, because as part of that violation, I was choked. And of course, then there’s the thing about expression and whatever. So yeah.

Rick: Interesting. Okay, then in your early 20s, you tried psychotherapy, which started to create greater self-awareness. And then later in your 20s, someone gave you a book on meditation. Perhaps I should have paused after the first bit psychotherapy in case there’s anything you wanted to say about that?

Karen: Well, actually, you know, it’s just really useful. If you have a conscious practitioner, which I did, they can really help. I don’t know, a couple of ways—one is to help see through more of that fictional sense of self and encourage self-awareness. So yeah, actually, it was very helpful. You start to notice what was previously unconscious.

Rick: Yeah. And in general, it sounds like you were—I don’t know if you would have called yourself a seeker—but you were. I mean, you were like—the white picket fence wasn’t enough, as you said—and you were kind of like, looking for deeper meaning and resolution of stuff.

Karen: Oh, absolutely. That is common the whole way through. Yeah. And the other thing is that there was also a sort of darkness that had come on me when I was younger. I again, I didn’t write about this, but you could call it a depression or something, but there was like a darkness. And if it did, on one hand, you could say it was harmful, or helped suppress the expression of self. But on the other hand, it was another thing that was bringing me into this other awareness of—whoa, you know, just doing the things normal people do that’s not fulfilling and there was something again— I just felt separated from all of that. And that theme kept coming up over and over as well.

Rick: Yeah. As if you were kind of shrouded or…

Karen: Until, yeah—until around the time we’re—You know, there were those moments of clarity. But yes, there was something that was pushing. Looking back on it now, it seems like it was a sort of protracted dark night of the soul. Something was trying to come through the dark to the light. And so the dark actually had a purpose in that sense.

Rick: I think everything has a purpose.

Karen: No argument here. Yeah.

Rick: I mean, there’s no coincidence and no accident. Okay. So then somebody gave you a book on meditation. Do you remember what that book was?

Karen: I don’t remember what it was called. But it was someone who was related to Edgar Cayce, his partner. And she—yeah, but no, I’m sorry, I don’t remember what it’s called.

Rick: That’s okay. But somehow or other the book was adequate. I know, when I first started getting into meditation, I was reading books and trying this and that, and I just couldn’t get into it. But it sounds like you, actually, were able to just naturally get into a state of meditation.

Karen: Pretty much right away. Yeah. And it’s not like I became really devoted to the practice or anything, but I just knew this was important. Now, something else that happened right at the same time. I was in a situation that was rather challenging. And to get a little spooky here, the other thing that happened was I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I would feel, let’s say, someone touching my arm, and then I’d come fully awake. And I’d still be feeling it, and there’d be no person standing there. And later, I realized it was angels. And they started to communicate with me and give me some life guidance. So that kind of all happened around the same time.

Rick: Nice. I think I recall you saying that, either now or at times in your life, you have rather routinely perceived angels or other subtle beings. Is that correct?

Karen: Yes. And the work that I do now is very much part of it. Yeah, I just sort of lumped that all in to call it the other dimension just because it’s obviously more than one dimension, but just to sort of differentiate it from our normal consciousness. But yes.

Rick: I think it’s important, though—I mean, without getting all hung up on it and obsessed with it—because it’s like an analogy I thought of: if we wanted to sort of understand how big the Pacific Ocean is, for instance, we could imagine how far it is to Japan and how far it is up to Alaska and way down to Antarctica and all, we kind of get a sense of the surface area of the Pacific Ocean. But if we do that without considering how deep it is, it’s like we’ve just covered the most superficial aspect of it in a way—how deep it is and what it contains. And it’s sort of like that with talking about life. And there’s this vertical dimension, or this subtle dimension, which is just teeming with life and intelligence. And most people are completely unaware of it. Which—

Karen: I love that metaphor of the ocean, because it’s infinitely deep. And I love that—it’s beautiful. And, you know, ultimately, it’s all one, but the one is expressing, as you often say, as all of this, whether we can see it or not. So besides, I have no control over it. It’s always sort of been here, right? Most of the time, so yeah.

Rick: We’ll move on from this. But another analogy I think of is imagine if aliens landed on the White House lawn, what a big deal that would be, or the Prime Minister’s lawn or whatever you have in Canada. It’s like this huge news story because—wow—other beings exist besides the human. And yet here we are completely surrounded by a vast, teeming horde of subtle beings whom the vast majority of people don’t see and don’t even know exist. And they’re, they’re all around us. And that should be a big news story.

Karen: Yeah, well, actually, wasn’t that on the cover of “Life” or “Time” or something?

Rick: “Do Angels Exist?” or something?

Karen: Yeah. And suddenly, you know, 80% of the people believe in them or whatever. So maybe it’s more than we think.

Rick: Yeah. Anyway, that’s a bit of a sidelight. But it’s interesting to me. All right. So then you were watching PBS—you can see I did my homework. And you heard Deepak Chopra say, “Become aware of the one who is watching,” and you immediately popped out the back of your body and into the witness. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Karen: Essentially, because every time I share that with a group or whatever, usually somebody will have had the experience as well. So let’s do that again.

Rick: Okay.

Karen: Yeah. So he said, “Become aware of the one who is watching.” And here it is. Yeah. Nice.

Rick: Yeah. Now, in your case, when you had that shift, it never left you, but to play devil’s advocate, there are people who advocate and people who listen to them who try to—they make a conscious effort throughout the day, to be aware of the one who’s watching, be aware of the one who’s watching; and to me that speaks of a sort of manipulation that is kind of unnatural. I betcha that in your case, it’s not something you have had to do, ever since seeing that TV show with Deepak, it’s just something that has been kind of a natural feature of your way of functioning. Am I right?

Karen: Well, boy, this is, as you know, Rick, pretty challenging to talk about. And the way I look at it is, it really depends on what’s happening. You know, there’s no problem with getting completely immersed in whatever you’re focusing on, whatever your activity is, whatever trauma is coming up. So it’s not, but that’s always there. And there’s sort of a confidence in it over time. Right, that you don’t, it’s sort of like, you don’t have to keep checking, because it’s just there. It’s known.

Rick: Yeah, like breathing, or like, like being cleaner, because you took a shower in the morning, you know? I mean, yeah, it’s just there.

Karen: It’s just there. And so there’s not a seeking for it. And there is also a loving of it. So I still love to just be quiet, be silent, and sort of almost luxuriate, in that, you know, and it’s delicious.

Rick: Or another example would be like, being awake, and the ordinary waking state. I mean, you wake up in the morning, and you go through your day, and you don’t have to keep thinking, “I am awake, I’m awake, I’m not sleeping, I’m awake,” You know, it’s just you’re in the waking state. And it’s just the natural way you are until you go to sleep. So, to me that higher consciousness or witnessing or any of these things, should be that natural.

Karen: Well, and it is. All that ever happens is our attention goes elsewhere. So it’s pretty basic, really. Yeah, that’s my take on it, anyway.

Rick: And the reason I make the point of it is I think people can tie themselves up in knots, kind of manipulating their minds and trying to do two things at once. And, Oh, “Who am I? And yet I have to make this phone call,” And, you know, there’s like this sort of, it actually increases mental agitation sometimes if people go about it in a kind of an unnatural way. That’s my little pet peeve.

Karen: Yeah. And I think sometimes with practice, there’s almost like a period of sort of like a bridge, right? Where you have a realization, and there’s a period of sort of stabilizing or embodying it, let’s say, and so during that period, it can be awkward,

Rick: Fragile.

Karen: Or it seems like it has to be intentional, you have to—right? But that—we can talk about how true that is. But that’s the experience. And then it’s like, what’s that thing—I’ve learned this in coaching, but it’s in psychology too—sort of unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious… I forget how it goes. Until you get to the point where you’re like—when you’re learning to drive a standard.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: At first you have to think of all—your two feet and whatever. And then after a while, you can shift without thinking about it—shift gears, right?

Rick: That’s a good point. That’s a very good point.

Karen: It’s like that. So you do have to be intentional for a while often, depending on what’s happened. And then it becomes more natural.

Rick: Yeah, point well taken. I mean, sports are like that too. Like, if you’re learning to ski there—you have to, you might be taking lessons and you’re kind of paying attention to your technique and everything. And then after a while, it gets kind of—the muscle memory, you know—just kind of automatic and you don’t think about it much, you just spontaneously do it the right way.

Karen: Yeah, exactly. So why would it be any different? You know, because we’re sort of training the mind or whatever. So the same.

Rick: Yeah. And from what all we know about neuroplasticity, and so on, we are literally sculpting the brain and establishing new grooves, so to speak, in the way it functions.

Karen: Sure.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, good. Okay, so after your Deepak awakening, you said, everything began to accelerate, you began having spontaneous awakenings or insights that were quite transformative. Do you want to talk about a few of those?

Karen: Yeah, we’ll see what comes up. It was a long time ago. But yeah, it was a really intense period, I have to say, and a couple things happened. One is I met someone who became my partner who had been with a guru. And so up until that time, I was just going around not knowing what was happening to me. And he came along, so he was able to sort of put some context around what was happening. But he was also really very present and conscious. So that was probably supportive as well. But I remember one time in particular, a couple times, where it’s like reality just woke up. And I mean, the awareness of what’s actually happening here, sort of just became known for the first time, not just that background of awareness, but what’s happening here in the apparent world of form. And so one time, I was sitting in the backseat of a car and we’re driving down the road, and I just turned and looked beside me and suddenly really went into just unity consciousness and recognized the person beside me and I were one. That was beautiful. It was pure love. And then I noticed, I actually could see the full egoic structure operating—that they were so boxed in with their reality and identified. It was weird how I saw it. But I knew they were identified with their car—”This is me and mine,” and their body, and purposefully ignoring or denying their oneness with me and all of life. So it was the first time I actually saw the ego and how it works. And it was quite shocking. It was the first time I saw it externally. Then later, I would see it in myself. But yeah, it was like—wow!

Rick: Interesting. Yeah, I’m thinking of a poem right now whose—we’re ordinarily boxed up in the chinks of our cavern. I forget who wrote it. Anyway, you almost made it sound like that’s intentional, that one is kind of in one’s ego. “And here’s my car, and this is me.” But it’s something that one has to hold on to it to keep it going that way. And if you relaxed, it would go away.

Karen: Wow, that’s really neat. You picked up on that. And so it’s not—I would say it’s not conscious.

Rick: Right.

Karen: So on that level, we couldn’t say that person’s intentionally doing that. It’s just maybe, we’ll say, learned, right? How the Karen: Yeah. But there’s something there that knows it’s doing it, but we’re not conscious of it. That’s kind of what the experience was. Does that resonate, Rick?

Rick: It does. And if it were truly intentional, in a totally conscious way, then it should be something we should just be able to drop at a moment’s notice when it was pointed out to us or when we wanted to drop it. But obviously, that’s not people’s experience.

Karen: Exactly. It’s not conscious. And that’s why in these moments of illumination, that’s when it seemed the rest of the time,  I had never seen that before. Right. So yeah, it was just—there’s a teaching called “The Miracle of Love,” and the masters of that who have since passed over, they talk about it as “The Illusion.” I’m not an expert in their teaching, but that just popped into my mind. It’s like, we don’t know how we’re creating this sense of separation, because they talk about sort of a “mass illusion,” and then maybe a personal experience of that; or Joel Goldsmith talks about “The world-mind hypnosis.” So it’s a kind of hypnosis, but we’re not conscious of it. Neither would be someone who’s been hypnotized on stage or something, right—they wouldn’t be aware that they’re going around barking like a poodle or whatever it is.

Rick: I think, zooming out to a cosmic perspective—if we really take nonduality seriously, and if it’s really all one—if we are Gods sort of having a human experience, then it almost seems like consciousness intentionally shrouds itself in the process of interacting with itself in and thereby giving rise to the appearance of forms, and embodying itself in those forms. But it’s just part of the divine play.

Karen: Sounds good to me. So we’re just really talking about that place where, I mean, it’s one thing if there’s an underlying realization of oneness, and that this separation is an appearance. Obviously, that’s a very different experience than believing we’re separate, cut off from the source. So it’s sort of—maybe we could say there was—the word that just came to me was “corruption.” Not sure I like that, but maybe a “distortion” would be better, on top of whatever consciousness—and of course, yeah, if there is only God, what else—omnipresence, right? What else could there be? But a lot of teachings talk about how this distortion happens. And it limits our experience. So I don’t know.

Rick: Yeah, no, that’s good. There’s a Sanskrit word or phrase, “Prajnaparadha,” which means “mistake of the intellect,” and that at some kind of primordial initial emergence level, a mistake is made, and then that corruption, to use your word, gets sort of multiplied and magnified and more and more and more enmeshed in delusion as greater and greater apparent diversification happens. And then we have to retrace our steps eventually.

Karen: What you said—sure.

Rick: Okay, so you took Reiki classes and—

Karen: Okay, hold on. Wait. Yeah, sorry. Let’s go back for a second. So during that period, there were quite a few moments of that—just seeing through this sort of fictional part—this mind-made separation. And there was also this real increase in intensity going on. And seeking and looking for, you know, “What is this, and how does it become stable?” And I was introduced to a number of teachers and books and all of that. So it was a really potent time.

Rick: Yeah. What age range were you in then?

Karen: Early 30s, I guess—something like that.

Rick: And did you find that—well, you said you were in a relationship with this guy. I was going to ask, as a broader question, a little out of context of what we’re talking about right now, but whether you have found all this intensity and all this kind of evolutionary fervor to have been conducive or not conducive to relationships, you know, partnerships, and so on.

Karen: Wow, good question. It’s not what I thought you’re gonna ask—that’s funny. I thought you were gonna ask if it was conducive to awakening or whatever we want to call it.

Rick: It was definitely conducive to that, I would say, yeah.

Karen: Yeah.

Rick: Sometimes people find it hard to straddle both worlds, you know, the kind of pedal-to-the-metal awakening track with some semblance of normalcy in the world track.

Karen: Well, okay. And so in my case, I would say that this wasn’t a normal relationship. It was really all about the spiritual unfoldment, and that was really our common ground. There was love and all of that stuff, but no. And it was, I think, pretty clear that very soon anyway, after that, this was the priority.

Rick: Yeah. Do you mind my asking, and is it relevant, what guru that guy had been with?

Karen: Adi Da.

Rick: Oh, for some reason, I was thinking that.

Karen: Really? Are you picking up on the psychic realm there?

Rick: I don’t know why.

Karen: And also someone—I can’t remember his name off the top—but someone who was with Maharishi as well, because my partner had been to NYU and I think he got his degree there. And he was, he did all the siddhis and was an advanced practitioner, whatever you call that system.

Rick: Interesting. Yeah, there’s several people I’ve interviewed who were with Adi Da and yeah, he was a conundrum. But—

Karen: Oh, I agree. Yeah, definitely. I was never attracted there. But it was just—again, having been in that whole realm—it was helpful to me because he had the experience with Maharishi and Adi Da and this other fellow that he was with.

 

Rick: Okay, so then I was gonna start talking about the Reiki classes and the visitations from divine beings, which seemed to result from awakenings that the Reiki was triggering.

Karen: Yeah, how that ended up happening was I was staying with my parents for a while. And my dad brought this book home, called “Healing From the Inside Out” by Sheri Pearl. And he’d seen it at the library, and it was a young woman who had also been ill in her 20s. I don’t remember. I think her illness was cancer as well. But when I read it, it opened up this whole other thing about the path and she had been healed by a famous healer from England, whose name escapes me at the moment. And so that’s what sort of planted the seed that led to me apparently taking the healing training, Reiki, and whatever else. And so it was—it’s funny, a couple of times in the unfoldment, and this was one of them, I went to a public talk on Reiki, and I got up and I felt hands— there was nobody standing there, so we’re talking angelic or whatever—hands pushing me forward to go and talk to the teacher. And I just heard myself say, “Okay, I’m signing up.” So it was one of those things where I wasn’t driving that bus. And it just happened. And it turned out really great. Because with each level you study, there’s something called an attunement. And with each attunement, I had openings, awakenings—whatever you want to call them. And I had visitations from beings from other dimensions that were informing me about my path, and that this was part of it. And it was very pure, the energy and the experience, so I feel like it was significant somehow.

Rick: That’s the adventure some people are thinking now, “Gee, I wish I’d have visitations from beings from other dimensions who informed me about my path.” I have a friend who quite routinely sees all this subtle stuff, and he says that in any given situation, there are more subtle beings in a room than there are gross beings that each of us has, like, usually two or three of them in attendance that are kind of helping us in ways that he doesn’t fully understand, but that seems very important.

Karen: I would agree with that completely. And when we get to talking, when I started doing what I’m doing now, the room is pretty much packed when I’m doing a session, and it’s not something I invoke or anything, it just happens. And I agree with your friend. It’s not like it’s understood. It’s just, you know, it’s wonderful. And it’s helpful, and it’s a real privilege to be aware of it. I think we all are; it’s just, you know, it’s just tuning into that channel.

Rick: Yeah, I was communicating with a friend the other day, who is like myself, an old, ex-TM teacher. We used to do a ceremony of gratitude when we instructed people in TM, and we’d kind of recite the names of the tradition of Masters going back 1000s of years, from whom that teaching came. And she said, “Well, when you did that, didn’t you see them in the room?” And I said, “No, I didn’t. There was a profound feeling, but I didn’t see them in the room.” She said, “Well, you were invoking them, they all came.” So they’re all there on the other side, if we want to call it that, and they can be invoked and can intercede or have various influences.

Karen: Yes. And it’s wonderful actually—makes life very rich. So, when I started doing Reiki I didn’t realize that—I don’t know. I don’t have a belief system about this but as a useful metaphor, whether it’s true or not—is if we talked about past lives, maybe this was where it came in from—medicine you brought in from another life. But from pretty much the first time I did a treatment, this other vision opened up, and I could see people’s departed loved ones. One time, I was working on a pregnant woman and it was like watching the Discovery Channel. I suddenly was like watching this camera pan down the fetus and I saw the sex of the baby and the color of its hair and things that all proved true. So I’m like, I didn’t know—it was extraordinary, it was a time of great delight and wonder and like, “Wow, this is amazing!” So yeah.

Rick: That’s cool!

Karen: Yeah, that was cool!

Rick: We’re gonna get to a point in your story where all this goes away, at least for a while. So just tipping people off to that. But, you know, I mean, would you agree with this? Would you say that all this stuff is wonderful and interesting if it’s happening, but that it shouldn’t, people shouldn’t make it a goal to put that as their first priority to see this subtle stuff? If it happens as a side effect of a deeper shift that’s taking place then great.

Karen: I completely agree with that. Yeah. For me, it’s not something that we, as an apparent individual, want to be driving. We’re almost like recipients or instruments or whatever is more appropriate. So yeah, I never go looking for it. It’s just there. So just one more thing that comes to mind—I’m not sure if I put this in the notes—but that happened when I was doing Reiki—there were a couple things that caused a big turn in my life, one of which was, while doing a Reiki session, I went, first of all, I started to notice after a while that I was taking credit for it, so some ego was getting in there. So that was noticed. So that was kind of like, okay, red flag. But at the same time, paradoxically, what was also happening is this desire to serve, the selfless sense of selfless service was coming up and my heart was really breaking open. And I was feeling this incredible love for people when I was working on them. And this one session in particular—I think it might have been the last one I did. I just completely disappeared into love and, you know, being a divine instrument. It was just—there was nobody there. It was just love. And so that was like, okay, this is what’s important—not being a healer, or any of the rest of this. It’s about serving and it’s about love.

Rick: Love that! Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace—prayer of St. Francis.

Karen: That’s it, Rick! Amen to that. Absolutely! And that really almost erupted from my heart and had been building for a long time. And in this one particular session, it reached this intensity of wow—that’s all—and also, of course, a recognition of oneness.

Rick: Yeah. That’s beautiful. You know, I mean, again, if it’s all consciousness, then we are all instruments of the Divine. But the Divine is multi-phased and as Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” So it’s like it’s a blessing and, I think, a choice to a certain extent to put oneself in the service of the more positive qualities that the divine would like to infuse into the world. Of course, there also needs to be destructive qualities and so on, because it’s a world of polarities. But it’s kind of better to be on the white-hat team, in my opinion, as far as one’s own enjoyment is concerned.

Karen: Sure, I’ll second that motion.

Rick: Okay, so I like the way we’re doing this where I’m reading stuff, but you’re kind of interjecting, if there’s something that I’m leaving out or that your notes are leaving out. So your meditations were deepening, your spiritual search is intensifying, sitting four hours a day, and having many insights and releases. Nice quote from U.G. Krishnamurti came along, it touched you to the core. It was something about stopping short of nothing, but prior to full self-realization, and that all the experiences could be a distraction from that main goal.

Karen: Right. And so that sort of coincided with that experience I was just describing of breaking open into love and the desire to serve as—you know, the selflessness. At the same time, that quote came to me, and I had been sitting longer and longer each day and just going deeper and deeper into that inner reality. It was pretty blissful, as I’m sure you know. But those two things came together. And then it was like, I don’t know, it’s been a long time, but probably the experience was that I just completely lost interest in that other dimension. I think so many other teachings were saying, “This stuff is a distraction. Once there is self-realization, then you can do what you want.” And it just—the yearning was there anyway. And between that and that selfless service, that recognition of oneness, I just got—it’s almost like the search got really focused and amped up at that point.

Rick: Patanjali says that in the Yoga Sutras, he actually says that this involvement with celestial beings can be a distraction, or can be a stumbling block. You can get caught up in it, waylaid on your path.

Karen: Yeah, I think that’s true, and I’ve certainly seen it. And perhaps I had an advantage in the sense that I never went seeking for that; it just showed up. And I always saw it as an incredible gift or bonus. But the true seeking for enlightenment, or whatever we want to call it, that was the thing—that was primary. So it’s pretty easy to—but it’s interesting, because many years later, this will probably come up, but many years later, this curiosity started coming—”Okay, where did all that stuff go?” Because it was like everything withers from disuse.

Rick: That to which we give our attention grows strong. Down in New Orleans, when you buy something, they’ll throw something a little extra in the bag, and it’s called the lagniappe, and I always remember that word. But so all this flashy stuff is just a little something extra that might get thrown in the bag as we go along. But it’s not the main product that you’re going for.

Karen: That’s wonderful. I love that! That’s good.

Rick: Okay, so then, a major awakening happened through the breakup of that relationship that you referred to. Your heart broke open into a greater love and you fell into God-communion so powerful that repercussions of it echoed through the next 15 years. So everybody has been through breakups. And it’s something that people want to understand more and perhaps, would appreciate understanding the evolutionary significance of rather than seeing it as merely a trauma or heartbreak. So let’s talk about that a little bit.

Karen: Yeah, and please forgive me, because I don’t actually remember what happened in what order, so I might have it a little bit out of order. That doesn’t matter. Well, the first thing was that the relationship, on the human level, was very challenging. Spiritually it was great, but there were some issues—really big issues! And one of them was in the area of commitment, or lack thereof. And I see it very differently now. The commitment there was actually forgotten anyway. So to accuse the other of being uncommitted was a little questionable anyway, but for some reason, life is that—as you said, there’s only life—and so this intensity came. But I think part of it was because this man wasn’t just my partner; he was my mentor, my guru, my guide. There was so much more to it.

Rick: That could have been 100% the case, because you’ve got so much going on that you must have been his guide, to a very great extent, as well.

Karen: Well, how lovely for you to say, and perhaps that’s true. And we’d have to ask—and maybe we can patch him in later—but for me, at first, I was much younger and very new to the spiritual journey. So thank you, Rick. We can clarify that with—he’d been on the journey for what, 10-20 years, whatever. He was older than I.

Rick: In this lifetime.

Karen: In this lifetime. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, exactly right? In this lifetime! So there was sort of that position of the, you know, when you’ve got an artist and his protege, or whatever. That was an unbalanced footing that we were standing on because of that. And you’re absolutely right, it was really just an experiential or perception, but for sure, there was a lot going on here. So I’m sure that had an effect as well. And he certainly has told me that. However, on the human level, there was some old programming, or whatever playing and suddenly, I was like, “Okay, something needed to balance that sense of disempowerment from being in that uneven footing. So there was a breakup and there was incredible pain, partly because of how much more he was to me, he was also sort of a father figure, even though I have a great relationship with my father. Anyway, so it’s again, life used that and there was a real deep despair and breakdown, it was very intense. However, I just use that to go into God.

Rick: Yeah. I’m preparing to interview Andrew Harvey next weekend, and if you know, Andrew Harvey, but he’s a delightful person, but anyway, he talks about, he talks a lot about the breaking open of the heart, and he mentions how even certain saints have sort of prayed for their heart to be broken as much as possible. It’s like, “Lay it on me, Lord. I just wanted to break wide open so I can love you fully.”

Karen: That’s it, exactly! And of course, if you’re—I wasn’t consciously really on—I didn’t have a guru or whatever, guiding me. I had some help, but it wasn’t a conscious recognition that that’s what was happening. But that’s where it took me and that’s exactly, it’s the best thing ever when the heart breaks open. It’s just exquisite. Even the pain of it, can be exquisite. So I just went deeper and deeper into—oh, you’re chewing on something. Should I stop?

Rick: No. Yeah, mentally chewing on something. But you continue. I’m just thinking about a little devil’s advocate point here, but you finish your thought.

Karen: Okay, thank you. So there was this combination of exquisite pain and going deeper and deeper into God. So I was, let’s say, I’ll say praying, because I don’t know what other word to use. But a real, you know, God had become the complete center of my life anyway. So that’s where I turned with this pain and didn’t have a big enough view of it to go, “Oh, please take me into God and communion.” It was more like, “Please get me out of this pain.” But that’s what happened is— something—there was a deeper surrender. And there was actually—it even changed my outer form. There was more radiance and it was quite noticeable. And I just really fell into that space.

Rick: Nice. My devil’s advocate thought was just that the world is full of pain and so many tragic things have happened. I mean, we can itemize some of the more notorious of them—the Holocaust and school shootings, and Boko Haram kidnapping those girls, and just all kinds of horrible things that happen in the world all the time. And it may seem a little glib, to just say, “Oh, yes, trauma or tragedy breaks open your heart so you can love God more. Tell that to somebody whose children have just been shot or something. So how do you reconcile that? And also, how do you reconcile that along with the notion that God is omnipresent and merciful and that everything is ultimately in the best interests of our spiritual unfoldment? How does somebody who’s not open to the understanding or experience that tragedy is a gift in some sense, from God, deal with tragedy as compared with someone who like yourself who might be blessed with that understanding?

Karen: Okay, so first of all, let’s say this. Right now I’m just speaking from my own life experience. So that’s really good you interjected there. So I’m not making a blanket statement that everything harmful is for that purpose. Maybe I’ll say that later. But right now I’m just talking about what happened for me. So that’s the first thing. So thank you for interjecting there. I don’t know. . .

Rick: You had an advantage in a way, you see, because I mean here you had been on this spiritual path. And so it wasn’t just “Oh, my God! My boyfriend broke up with me.” It was more like, “Oh, this really hurts.” But like, “Okay, God.” Immediately the attention is still on in that profound direction that it had been directed.

Karen: I think we might chew on this one a few times, Rick, because right now, I’m sort of in that storyline, but I would say that it just about killed me, it was so painful. So I won’t, you know, really. So I’m not downplaying that or anybody else’s heartbreak. And we could—there’s a lot of ways to talk about this. You can say, anybody who has faith, who goes to church, who prays, maybe that can alleviate as well. So it’s a big topic that you’ve brought in. I think we need to take it in chunks.

Rick: And it does, actually, I mean, there was a shooting in Charleston, South Carolina a few months ago, where that guy was in the church and sat through a prayer meeting then shot everybody in the meeting. And it’s like, the very next day the relatives of those people were saying, “We forgive you, and we love you.” And I thought, “Man, how do they do that?” It was really very impressive.

Karen: Oh, no kidding. It’s stunning, really. It’s amazing! To me, it’s grace. And this whole thing is grace. So I don’t look at having had an advantage. I know what you’re saying. But for me, I of my own self could not have broken my heart open. It was Grace. It was Grace.

Rick: That’s a good point. You know, we don’t kind of intentionally put our feet to the fire. We withdraw them.  Yeah, interesting.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. And every moment of this has only been grace. There isn’t anybody who can take credit for it. So yeah.

Rick: So we’re gonna break that into chunks. You have another chunk?

Karen: No, I think, my sense is we’re gonna touch back on it a couple of times.

Rick: Okay, great, then we probably will. Then moving on a little bit— okay, so this interested me. You said you continued meditation and began to experience a painful contrast—total bliss while sitting but then losing it when you interacted with people and situations. And the reason that interested me is that that was never my experience. My experience was always more along the lines of the cloth and dye analogy, which you probably heard—where you dip a dye, dip a cloth in the dye, and then bleach it in the sun, and it loses its color over time in the sun, but a little bit remains.  Then you dip it again, then bleach it again, and a little bit more remains. And each time a little bit more remains. So for me, it was never a black and white, on-and-off kind of thing. The bliss of meditation carried over to a certain extent and naturally wore off but then kept getting recharged and just got more and more and more stable over time. So was that also your experience? Or was it really as black and white as you indicate here?

Karen: No, it was closer to what you’re talking about. I guess what I’m really referring to is that whole thing that there is no stone left unturned. And so whatever remaining neuroses, whatever limitations, patterns that were still operating in me, those were getting slammed. And that’s really what I’m talking about.

Rick: And it was kicking up the dust as those things unraveled.

Karen: Absolutely! And I was living with my partner at this particular time I’m talking about so I’d have my meditation room.  I go in the hallway and maybe he’d be grumpy, or maybe I—whatever, there’d be an interaction. And the reactions were still coming up. But the rest of time there was this incredible peace. And sure, it was there underneath, but there, just something was like, okay, the contrast between that reactionary behavior, between any of that and what reality was—this deeper reality—there was just, it created a friction, a tension. It was inviting something.

Rick: Yeah. Did you find that the deeper the surrender during meditation, the more effective the consciousness could be as a solvent for these pent up things that needed to be resolved?

Karen: Yes, I would say though, that up until this point, I was just sitting and dissolving, I don’t know how embodied it was. So what comes next is, and it feels to me like this is part of what was happening. But the blanket answer is yes, absolutely. There was just greater awareness at all times and less reactivity generally. So it was just those particular patterns that were still operating. But I guess what became known is that there, it needed to be more embodied. That’s really what I would say the bottom line was there.

Rick: Yeah. And the relationship was helping you embody it, or…

Karen: Only the hardest way. By this point, things were, yeah, not going that well. So yeah.

Rick: At the science and non duality conference, I’m going to moderate a discussion between Hameed Ali, Adyashanti, and Karen Johnson about nondual relationships, which in a way is sort of an oxymoron—dual relationships. But the embodiment word is all the rage these days, because I think a lot of people went through a phase of sort of hiding out in the nondual either conceptually or actually experientially, and then realizing that, “Wait a minute. I’m a human being and I have a life to live here and how do I integrate this?” And there seems to be, well, just the point we’ve been addressing, there seems to be this clash between the sort of the peace of the transcendent and the hurly burly of my actual life. So let’s talk about that more. What would you say to that?

Karen: I think part of it is just misunderstanding. There’s lots of—number one is that when I first started teaching, let’s jump ahead a little bit, the first thing I did was help people, I would guide people through being in this beautiful state, recognizing awareness with your eyes closed perfectly still. Then I’d say, “Okay, open your eyes, find it there. Stand up, find it there. Move around, find it there. Because it’s almost like the form can encourage that it’s the same thing with teaching. There’s somebody sitting in the chair and that lends itself to the idea that there’s an expert here. Same thing with meditation. You sit on that cushion or in that posture, and it can, if you’re not aware of it, bring up this unconscious idea that that’s where I have to be in order to be in that place. So it’s not true. But it needs to be seen that there is no special posture needed. I mean, it’s wonderful to put down deeper roots and put all your investment in that for a period each day–great, no problem. But as you say, it needs to bleed out, and it really does. Just kind of—a lot was going on in this particular thing, and it was creating this friction of, “Okay, I know this is real, and I feel it all the time,” and there’s still these intense reactions coming up. And there was just a need to embody it more. So I think that’s true for a lot of people. It’s not separate from us, it is us. But we need to know that.

Rick: I think people know what we mean by embodiment, but just in case it would be valuable why don’t you just define it in a nutshell?

Karen: Well, now it’s very simple for me. I literally mean—in the body.

Rick: What’s in the body?

Karen: You. What we are not just in some abstract sense of this beautiful awareness or stillness around us, but to know that is also within the very cells. And it’s like you’re walking it, it’s walking you. There’s no separation. So it’s not conceptual. It’s not special. It’s not exclusive. It’s not limited to certain circumstances and contexts. It’s Rick: And is there anything that one could or should do intentionally to embody the transcendent if they have access to the transcendent to integrate it? Or is it something that’s going to happen automatically, just through the process of living?

Karen: Well, both.

Rick: And is it by the same token, is it something one can retard by trying to hang on to the transcendent and to the exclusion of actual embodied life?

Karen: Well, I think you know that phrase I can’t remember who coined it—”spiritual bypassing.”

Rick: Yeah. Robert Augustus Masters talked about it and there was somebody before him who coined it. Yeah.

Karen: Yeah. So and I noticed and I think again, this is another thing that became conscious is meditation was, let’s say just for fun, 90% authentic and real and nourishing and 10% an escape from these things that were still troublesome. So to the degree it’s an escape, I would say there needs to be that degree of grounding. So what we’re trying to escape, there’s a lot of stuff, when we talk about the nondual, we can talk about this a bit more, but there’s a danger. Pamela Wilson, who is a friend who I love, I’m sure you do, too, she talks about things being from the nose up, or the nose down. And so we just have to make sure that, or be watchful, attentive to, if our realization is really up here. That’s when we won’t be experiencing it, as we’re walking through life, or aware that we are.

Rick: And as you know, Adyashanti talks about realization in the head, heart, and gut. And I think he would probably say that it tends to start in the head. Maybe it’s different for different people, but then it kind of moves down as they get more and more embodied and grounded.

Karen: I agree. Yeah, I agree. I’ve certainly had three major openings in those areas. So yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Rick: Were you about to say something?

Karen: Well, I was just going to, probably the next thing on the note there, so how this got resolved was the intensity. There was, again, there was a lot of fire here. I’m not sure I should put that in past tense or not. But the fire was really burning, like, “Okay, I need to know God no less than 100%.” My own efforts seemed to be creating more tension—again, that contrast, and it actually reached a breaking point. This isn’t logical, it’s just how it unfolded. And plus, I also can only remember so much of it. But just the highlight was…

Rick: What kind of efforts were creating more tension?

Karen: Well, as I’m sitting, so it was like, “I, the me that I thought I was, am doing everything I can.” I’m sitting four hours a day. I’m reading all these books, blah, blah, blah, and I’m still having these reactions to my partner. So despite my best efforts, it ain’t working. And this happened to me a couple of times, but this one was like, okay, something just broke as it tends to be fairly dramatic here. It was like, “This is it! I’m not doing one more minute of meditation until I can find something that’s stable, lasting, permanent, never comes and goes.” And it was a moment of deep surrender, the loss of all sense of self, breaking open into the divine. And then that was it. I stopped meditating that moment. That was it. Yeah.

Rick: I don’t know if that had to be the way of going about it. Because I don’t know if necessarily continuing to meditate, in any way, prevents you from arriving at that, which doesn’t come and go. But it’s the way you did it.

Karen: No, and I’m certainly not saying that. Again, this is just my so called my story. And I thank you, Rick, for clarifying that. I’m definitely not making a blanket statement. And by the way, I do still meditate, I do again, but I’m just talking about one of the dramatic moments where more of the ego death, more of the surrender, more of the recognition, “I of my own self can’t do this.” And it just was life used this intensity as a way to surrender. So that’s just what happened. It was a big moment.

Rick: And it must have been kind of interesting to see, after all those years of meditation, what would happen if you stopped doing it. I mean, what you lost, what you didn’t lose.

Karen: Yeah, and the thing is, that didn’t last very long because that we can, you know, not implying cause-and-effect, but we could say it was that, it was right after someone showed up at my house with a book, “The Power of Now.” And what got my attention is, first of all, I didn’t see the book at first. The friend was just talking about this man who spent two years on a park bench. And at that time, when I wasn’t meditating and I did just the minimal amount of work to function, like bare minimum, the rest of the time, I sat on a park bench by the river. So there was like this “Bing!”—like something knew there was a connection there. So it got my attention. Then he pulled the book out of his backpack and handed it to me. And I…

Rick: Reiki’d it.

Karen: Hey, I wish I thought of that, Rick. Too bad you weren’t there to whisper me a clue. No, I just touched it, and I just felt this [buzzing sound]. And by then I knew that meant this was something important.

And so I very rudely said, “See ya.”  I left the poor guy sitting there, drove over to the new age bookstore, got a copy, rushed out to my backyard under the apple tree and started to read it. But it was, that was very magical when you talk about that. But it was, I had found, just that surrender immediately led to this experience or this experience happened right after that. And it was the answer to what I was looking for.

Rick: Yeah, it’s kind of neat. I mean, I’ve actually interviewed people who were in a bookstore, and a certain book would actually literally fall off the shelf and land at their feet and then they pick it up and they open it up to a certain page and right there on that page is exactly what they needed to hear.

Karen: Don’t you love those stories?

Rick: It kind of harkens back to the little beings that are following us around. They’re probably helping to orchestrate these things.

Karen: No doubt, and thank you to all of them.

Rick: Because I actually, just as an aside, because you know, fun, intelligence and the Divine is omnipresent. But within that Omnipresence within the ocean, there are currents. And so there are impulses of intelligence within the ocean of intelligence and those impulses of intelligence are sentient beings who operate on one level or another and perform certain functions, such as pushing books off shelves, if necessary.

Karen: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Love that.

Rick: So you entered your Eckhart Tolle phase? And is that the way it’s pronounced—Tolly or Toll?

Karen: It’s actually neither. But I can’t do the true pronunciation but Tolly is better.  Something like Tolla. I can’t remember. I used to know. But it’s a long time ago.

Rick: German. And so you started writing letters to Eckhart, to his publishing company anyway, and some of them were shared with him.

Karen: Yeah, what was really cool is I read the introduction. And like probably lots of other people, something, just, my heart was just singing, with “Oh, my gosh, this is so beautiful,” and there was such resonance. And then as I read the book I was having these experiences of what the teaching was going to do and whatever. And so I was sharing them and some of them got passed on to Eckhart, so it was neat. But the main thing is I right away, contacted to see if there’s some way I could meet Eckhart in person. And it turned out he was coming to Calgary, where I lived, soon after that. So that was pretty cool.

Rick: Yeah. And tell the story about how you actually met him.

Karen: Yeah, it’s wonderful. I call it my Yogananda moment. So the first meeting of the day was, somebody had arranged a luncheon with a bunch of people and Eckhart was the guest speaker or whatever, and it was on a busy college campus. So we got there and parked and I was walking towards the door, and there’s all these people and students and teachers and whatever, and the people coming to the luncheon. And this man walked right up to me, one of however many people, and said, something like “I know for certain you must be Karen.” And they’ve never seen my picture or heard my voice or anything. And I had seen the picture in the book jacket, but it wasn’t until he said that, and I was looking at him, I realized, “Oh, it’s Eckhart.” So that was pretty special.

Rick: Yeah, that’s neat. Did he ever talk about that later on about how he knew it was you?

Karen: Oh, probably so I don’t remember.

Rick: Okay, so great. So later that day you had an opportunity to sit with him and a recognition happened in which your sense of boundaries dissolved. You knew yourself to be the whole universe. Want to elaborate on that?

Karen: Sure. My sense of it is that it was the first time that I sat with somebody who—there was nobody there. So there was absolutely no projections or expectations or, he didn’t want anything from me. And that, combined with his very spacious realization state of being, it just, there was a resonance. And yeah, I mean, it’s still, I can still feel it. It’s still rippling out into eternity.

Rick: Question about Eckhart, actually, since I may, or may not ever get a chance to interview him. He’s pretty reclusive. But he’s written several books, I think I’ve read them all. But he doesn’t talk about his own

breaking new ground, so to speak.

Karen: Well, all I can really tell you is from my own perception and experience, okay? What I can say is when I first met Eckhart he seemed almost transparent. He was so light. And the last time I spoke to him, which is a few years ago now, this would be maybe 10 years later, I don’t know. I was speaking to him and the difference to me was palpable. Okay, there’s the X-factor of how much more had it become embodied here, whatever, but I felt he had become so embodied compared to before. So I will say though, that I think with Eckhart the thing there is that he is, I don’t think he’d mind me saying, he’s very much an introvert, as am I, but he’s even more so. So that’s part of why he doesn’t share a lot about his experience. Plus, he doesn’t think that teachers are “the thing,” right, the important thing to focus on. He used to say that to us all the time. But in my experience of him, I feel like that state of presence is probably just the same, and it feels more grounded to me.

Rick: Yeah, I would agree the teacher isn’t the thing but I think it’s interesting when teachers and people do relate their experience because it helps to clarify the roadmap and helps people understand that there is this ongoing development and we begin to sort of flesh out the details of it. And as we hear more and more of these stories there tends to be a kind of an agreement or convergence between different people’s stories and you just kind of get a sense of how vast the whole thing is, which is, I think, helpful. I think the more as a spiritual community, in the greater sense, we can understand where we’re going, there’s less and less likelihood of thinking that we have arrived and that that’s all there is to it, which some people say they don’t like any talk of levels or progress or anything else. But the fact of the matter is speaking honestly and realistically, people keep progressing unless they get stuck.

Karen: Oh, you know, I completely agree with you. And if Eckhart ever wrote a true, if there was a biography or an autobiography that really—I’d be the first one to buy it. I would love to hear. You know, I only had a few snippets, in all the time I spent with him, just a few snippets about what happened in his unfolding and I would love to hear it. I always felt—well, after a while I felt—it was almost a disservice not to have that story shared. I totally agree with you, even though his was extraordinary, I suppose they all are. What was it like? There are a few things he shared that really had an impact on me. But I think this is something, I agree with you. I feel like ultimately there’s only one but it’s expressing as these unique individuals. And the more that we share, the more it serves everyone. And I also found, and I was guilty of this myself when I was, for a while I volunteered as an Eckhart’s secretary, and I noticed in myself there was this tendency, I had to really be conscious of trying to present that he was perfect. You know, this whole thing we do with gurus. And then we look at some of the great gurus and the stuff that was going on in the background there. So I’ve learned a lot since then. But yeah, there’s this thing, we want them to be perfect. And by ignoring their humaneness and what they go through, you’re right. It doesn’t serve, if you ask me.

Rick: Yeah, well, whenever I kind of imagined myself interviewing Eckhart this is the line it would take, and really sort of trying to grill him on all the stages of development that he’s undergone in the last 15 years or 20 years, or however long it’s been. So if that appeals to you Eckhart, call me. People would enjoy hearing it.

Karen: Well if I’m ever talking to him, I’ll put in a word.

Rick: Yeah, put in a word.

Karen: Yeah, I will, certainly.

Rick: And not to belabor the point, but I just really think that both in terms of what you just said and in terms of the fact that people are human and they still have their warts and whatnot but also in terms of just a pure spiritual unfoldment that takes place. The more we can hear accounts of it, the better we can understand. I mean, it’s like if only Lewis and Clark had gone across the US and back, we’d have a very rudimentary understanding of the topography of the US. But now it’s all been mapped out in such great detail. Every square inch is mapped with GPS and whatnot. So it could be that way with spirituality too that rather than have it be sort of this vague conjectural thing in many people’s minds with so many people defining the same terms differently and therefore not actually communicating. The whole thing could be really developed far more thoroughly in the culture and become really a part of our clear understanding, which I think would be tremendously helpful for the evolution of our civilization if not the survival of it.

Karen: Sure, and it’s part of why we have so many different systems too because, look at the—I can’t remember, it’s been a long time, so they say—what is it, the eight paths of yoga, depending on your dogma from yoga, right? So there’s bhakti and all that stuff, the intellect, the heart. So as long as it would be inclusive enough. But I agree with you and I feel like it’s funny that you said that what came to me because I feel like that will happen, and it is starting to happen. But I agree, I think the more we share, it’s just, I can understand why some teachers are reluctant to share that stuff because everybody’s experience is unique. But I tend to go more with your view if I’m hearing you right, which is the more examples we have, the more likely it is we’re going to find something that’s closer to what’s happening to us. And for myself, there’s no complaint about the way things unfolded. And I understand now, it sort of had to be the way it was, let’s say.  However, how much suffering could have been avoided had I had a guide at certain points or a teaching or whatever. So I’m with you on that one, Rick.

Rick: Yeah. And as long as we all understand that everyone’s experience is unique and that I am not going to experience everything Karen experiences, it’s still interesting to hear what Karen has experienced and what this person and that person and the other person has experienced. You just listen to enough of them and it’s very enriching. And it’s very helpful in a number of ways, again, without like, getting fixated on needing to experience something because somebody else did. It may not be that way for you.

Karen: Yeah, that’s a key point. Yeah.

Rick: Okay, so you really dove into Eckhart’s teaching and he eventually invited you to teach, which you began to do.

Karen: Yeah, and it was wonderful because it was never my intention. All I wanted to do was serve. It was that thing still unfolding of selfless service and oneness and love. And so that was really my motivation was, “Wow, this is the best thing I’ve come across so far because it’s so practical.” Like I used to say, it made presence portable—very, very practical; very, very grounded.

Rick: Did he invite many people to teach?

Karen: I don’t know.

Rick: Just a handful maybe?

Karen: Back then, one or two.

Rick: Okay. So you were one of those one or two?

Karen: Well, yeah. It’s probably, I’m sure it’s more than that, maybe. But at those early stages there were maybe two or three, not sure.

Rick: It wasn’t like an official organizational thing where the Eckhart Tolle movement, and I’m a representative of like a TM-teacher would be. It was more like, “I’m out here teaching and Eckhart has been my inspiration.” Was it that kind of thing?

Karen: Well, I think Eckhart in those early days wasn’t interested in having an organization because he could see what would happen with the egoic things that get involved there. But when we did, the day we met he did feel that there would be some sort of organization and I would be part of it. Like that was sort of just immediately recognized. So he invited me and gave me an endorsement and phoned people and asked them to come to my group. So it was really—but it wasn’t like a formal organization at that point. So yeah.

Rick: Okay. I think you were about to say something else and I interrupted you. Remember what that was?

Karen: Nope.

Rick: Okay, it doesn’t matter.

Karen: It’ll come back if it’s important. Now, it’s interesting though because I will just share this brief example or story about this. When I was volunteering as Eckhart’s personal assistant or secretary, whatever, I would get a list of people who had phoned and made inquiries, and I would contact them to see what they needed. And I’d make a big list on a yellow legal pad and take it over to Eckhart and he would sort of tune into each one and direct me what to do, book sessions or whatever. And one day, a woman phoned and while she was speaking to me this clear knowing came that I could help her. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t write it down. And I took the list later that day to Eckhart and she was X number down on the list. And when we got to her, as always, I’d say the person’s name and what was happening. He’d get completely still and then out of nowhere he said, “You can help her.”

Rick: That’s cool.

Karen: I know. And when things get validated like that, it’s pretty exciting and wonderful. So that’s how it started.

Rick: Yeah. It’s also cool because I mean to hear you describe that that’s what he did because it gives an example of the depth from which he’s functioning and the clarity of his intuition that he could just sort of, I mean if somebody read me a list like that I’d say, “I don’t know. Tell him to read this book or tell him to see that teacher,” but I don’t think there’d be a sort of a deep intuitive knowing of it necessarily. But I understand how that works and I’ve seen it in action many times. So it’s cool to hear that that’s the way he was functioning.

Karen: Yeah, it was wonderful to be around somebody who lived that way, definitely.

Rick: I also have heard him say that he doesn’t ever plan out his talks or anything. He just sort of stays in the moment and gets in the car, goes up on the stage, opens his mouth, and it just starts rolling out.

Karen: Well and that was a wonderful, let’s say, role model, for lack of a better word, example. He was modeling that so it was the same. I never planned anything. That would just arise out of the presence and you learn to trust it and rely on it. So he was very authentic in that. And yeah, he also didn’t, now it’s probably different now, but back in those days, he didn’t do any kind of advertising. It had to be organic word of mouth, people came naturally. So it was really a good example.

Rick: That was probably pre-Oprah, right?

Karen: Yes, it was.

Rick: Yeah. It kind of blew it open. Okay, so around this time the death of a loved one. Well, before that you said that you had your own unique view of things because you’re sharing from your own experience and it began to become clear that you needed to leave this path and move on; that this spiritual path was not going to take you all the way, it wasn’t going to work.

Karen: Okay, hang on. Those are two separate things. So the first one was, thank you. The first one was, again, I’m just reporting my experience and it’s not logical or anything. But this knowing began to arise in me that I had to move on. But mentally—no way. So when those intuitions started to come to me, I ignored them. Like, “I’m not leaving this guy. You kidding? This is it! I found where I belong!” And you know, how awesome to hang out with him. But life was relentless, as always, and it’s really, I suppose, benevolence, so I just, circumstances came that I ended up moving away. And yeah, so there was just a need for that for whatever reason. Now, I’m not implying that I just pitched that. I mean, obviously it’s still here, right? But in terms of my own unfolding and what was going to happen, something was changing. And there was some drama which I’m not going to get into here, but there was—stuff happened. So I went a different way.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of a crude example. But when you go from high school to college you don’t pitch High School. If you do, you’re not gonna do very well in college. It’s like you have that under your belt and okay, now there’s this, you know?

Karen: Yeah. Well said! I like that very much. Yes. So yeah, it was just time to go on to another thing, or whatever. And around that time, that was the Eckhart years, what was shared, so a bunch of things happened. But one was there was this clear knowing that this wasn’t my message. It was Eckhart’s, and it was perfect for what it was. But I was here for something else. And then a close relative died. And when that happened, I found myself encountering this chasm of darkness. Like holy shit, after all this time. Oops, sorry.

Rick: No, that’s alright. You can say that.

Karen: After all this time, here is this. Well, I thought it was gone.

Rick: Yeah. One would think especially with all philosophical understanding that nobody dies and all that jazz.

Karen: And yeah, no, and that’s the mystery of this, Rick. And it’s such a mystery. But it’s this thing—to me, it speaks again about embodiment, but whatever. And there’s also this thing of the things we go through—traumas, griefs, losses—that’s one thing. But it felt to me like the darkness I’d felt when I was young was there underneath. And there was something, and what would happen was, I felt like, for me, what became known was I encountered the core wound of the heart. I didn’t know what that was, but that’s what was revealed to me. So I spent a year or so sitting with it and it was like having a blizzard or a winter wasteland in my heart center. And I would sit with it, and it eventually was, let’s say, dissolved or healed or whatever. But again, consciousness used that because it was the recognition, again, doing this particular practice or whatever wasn’t going to take me all the way.

Rick: The “Waking Down” people use that phrase, core wound. I don’t know if you’re aware of that—Samuel Bonder and that whole group, but so when you sat with it for a year, was it sort of like you really had to marinate in some dark stuff and in order to process it and you knew that that’s what you were doing and you’re just kind of processing and processing and just suffering through it until it passed?

Karen: Pretty much it was conscious suffering. I would say that’s a good way to put it. But really it’s the same thing with things that happen and arise now. What it really was about was just feeling it. And so whatever had been avoided from what I was doing before had to be met. That’s all it really was.

Rick: Back in the early days, John Gray wrote a book called, “What You Feel, You Can Heal.” I think that was it, or “What You Can Feel, You Can Heal.” But basically that you have to feel it to heal it.

Karen: Yeah, I agree with that. And a lot of what we’re doing is we’re moving away from things. The primal mind, that survival mechanism tries to pull us away from discomfort. So it was just really meeting that and some other things happened at that time that were painful. It was a period of really getting grounded. And yeah, dealing with the humaneness, I would say.

Rick: And you kind of mentioned at this stage that you rejected all external authorities and just came to rely exclusively on internal guidance.

Karen: And that’s what I mean by the recognition that some so-called “external teaching” or method wasn’t going to take me all the way; that I had to come to the Satguru within, the internal guidance or authority.

Rick: Yeah. Have you kind of balanced that out? No, I mean, because there’s a lot of people around who are sort of into the “be your own guru” thing and just categorically reject external influence. What would you say to that?

Karen: No, no, it wasn’t like, it’s not like that and it wasn’t even really like that then. It was more, it wasn’t a rejection. It was a turning deeper within, knowing that the final—well, there’s no such thing as final in my opinion—but the depth of realization that was trying to happen, that was happening, I now needed to rely on, let’s say, the inner wisdom for that. It was that. Now there was a pendulum swing because it’s been a fairly dramatic unfolding. And for a little while, I was like, “Okay, I’m not going to do anything spiritual.” But in that balance, though, and my friends, I had a joke, if they came over to my house they couldn’t use the S-word (spiritual) for a while. So it was just this thing. And I took a corporate job and took coaching training and did all this really grounded, embodied stuff. But the really big, couple of next big realizations that happened came from within.

Rick: Yeah, I think it’s worth pointing out that even if you are involved with an external teacher, so to speak, such as Eckhart Tolle or somebody else, any actual realization that takes place is an internal process. And there’s a whole “pearls before swine” principle. But a great, great, great teacher could have a bunch of idiots around him, and nothing’s gonna be transmitted. So there has to be a certain depth and receptivity. It’s really incumbent upon the student. But another analogy is you could have a vast reservoir and according to the size of the pipe that you bring up to the reservoir, that much water will flow. So a drinking straw, no matter how vast the reservoir, isn’t going to allow that much transmission of water. A great big pipe will result in a gusher.

Karen: I totally agree. And to be really—language is funny—to be really, really precise takes more time. But I completely agree with you. And what I mean is, so thank you, Rick, this is excellent. What I mean to clarify that is, let me see if I can get a little closer to it, that there was a tendency, which I think is fairly common, to project to the external as being the source—the Savior. Honestly, I hate to admit this, but it’s true. It took me like, the day I met Eckhart he said, “You’re here to teach presence,” the very first day. Okay, but Rick, it took me 10 years to realize that because it was already here. So a little slow here, you know, I didn’t get it very fast. Even though he told me that directly, “It’s in you.” So this is sort of that thing that there’s a—Nisargadatta had this wonderful, I’m not sure if I can quite grasp it, but it’s something like, maybe enlightenment or awakening, whatever. You use the analogy of a fruit tree. The actual realization happens instantaneously. The fruit is ripe; it falls now. However, he said that something like that process of how it ripens, and how long that takes and what it needs, and how much sunlight and rain and all that, that’s a mystery that we don’t know. So that’s kind of what we’re pointing to here. So thank you for getting us back on that track. So what I noticed was a tendency to have everything. The authority was external, not internal. That’s the bottom line.

Rick: Yeah. And, I think it’s interesting when people shift from being externally oriented to a more internal reliance, there can be a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater and to sort of just reject the thing. But I think a more mature balance would be that one appreciates everything that one has derived from the external authority, but then fully internalizes it and substantiates it in one’s own experience.

Karen: Yeah, that’s the ideal. That’s the pattern. That’s the archetype. So then there’s just this question of, in my case, I was really far on the scale of having no sense of internal authority, but I totally agree with you. And it’s not like it was rejected. But there was, again, sometimes the fire is needed, so I needed to back away from looking to someone else to have my answer or whatever, realization and come within. But there were moments around this time, I bumped into my friend, Pamela Wilson.

Rick: We’ll start over in a second. I just want to throw in a note that, it seems like—just to get psychological on you for a moment.

Karen: Oh, goody!

Rick:  —which I’m totally unqualified to do, but it seems like you did have a little bit of a lifelong syndrome of looking to external authorities, and having a little bit of lack of confidence in your own authority. I mean, there was this relationship thing, that guy was sort of like, as much a guru as a partner, and perhaps other instances in your life had that.

Karen: I completely confess that, and I say thank you. That’s exactly what I’m saying. So in my case, there was a need to sort of rebel or reject it temporarily. And as a fiery way to really ensure that I came within. Somebody who’s more balanced—I think that’s really what my story is, is a confession of, Rick, like I said, neuroses and whatever. So whatever my own issues were, that’s, in some way, you could say, what determined the path. But thank you, I totally agree with that. And that’s why maybe there was such a swing here and a need to go within.

Rick: And probably these shifts in your life, various transitions you went through that we’ve been talking about, were really just the external symptoms of stages of maturation that you were going through internally. And when a certain stage of self-sufficiency had been reached, then there was a natural sloughing off of this or that external authority and standing more on your own feet.

Karen: Oh, I love that. Thank you. What a great insight. Yes, that’s really wonderful. Yeah, I agree.

Rick: —Out of the mouths of babes.

Karen: Wonderfully said! Bingo! Yes. It’s wonderful. You’re a great listener! I really appreciate that! That was good listening and good insight.

Rick: So Pamela, good old Pamela. I’m gonna be seeing Pamela in about 10 days at the science of nonduality conference.

Karen: Oh, I love her. So we both started teaching at the same time. And so I attended her satsang right from the beginning and loved it! She’s wonderful! So she’s always been a teacher, friend, mentor, big sister, whatever. But around this time, when I was going through that pendulum swing of rejecting the external authorities, I bumped into her and I’d stopped going to Satsang at this period. It was like, “Okay, I gotta get it within.” And she, you know, so insightful, right away just recognized that this was just part of the integration, avoiding that phase, sort of like the insight that you just had. And it really helped. There wasn’t enough openness to hear that and receive it, and so there was good clarification and it was helpful. Pamela was very, very helpful through this whole phase up until now, really insightful, and so gracious and generous and wise. So I adore her.

Rick: Yeah, she’s awesome. And for those listening, I interviewed Pamela quite a few years ago, and so you’ll find that on BATGAP and definitely should interview her again one of these days. She’s a good one. So can you explicitly, can you can actually, aside from our mutual admiration of Pamela, can you say more specifically how your interaction with her facilitated your process?

Karen: Well, that first one, that particular one was, it just made it more obvious. The consciousness became more focused on, “Okay, that’s what’s happening.” So then the pendulum stopped swinging.

Rick: Okay, what’s happening?”

Karen: This is just embodiment. This is just integration.

Rick: I see, I see.

Karen: Yeah, it just helped to light that up. I was just in my experience, but this made it more clear, the sort of theme of it. And then over the next few years, every time I sat with her, saw her, whatever, it would be a deeper invitation. Like, at one point, I had a dream about her. And she came to me and I wouldn’t call this a dream really, but it happened when I was asleep. But she said, “Join me in freedom.” And I was just about to go to one of her retreats. And so I got there and I went to see her and said, “Wow, you came to me in a dream. And you said, ”Join me in freedom.” And she said, “No. I said, ‘Join me in total freedom.’” And it was one of those moments, Rick, where something just responded and it was pretty special. Yeah, so she just really kept encouraging that deeper understanding, resting, and acceptance of that this unfoldment was happening.

Rick: Yeah, I think it’s interesting to point out that despite the fact that you had already been a spiritual teacher in your own right, you had the humility, if that’s the right word, and the sincerity to sit with another spiritual teacher to further your progress. You had no sort of sense that you were beyond the need of any kind of guidance or inspiration.

Karen: Pamela is a great model of that. She’ll sit with who she resonates with as well. And there’s all—Nisargadatta, again, he said something about, people tend to focus with him on the nondual part of what we traditionally call the nondual, of the no-self. And there’s all these passages where he talks about this exploration of, he said something like, I love this, I wish I could remember the exact quote, but something like, “The recognition of what we aren’t is finite. We come to the end of that inquiry because we see through it. But the investigation into what we are is infinite.” Love that!

Rick: I love that, too. I saw that recently. I don’t know if it was in the notes you sent me or what. Maybe not. Maybe it was in that thing you did with Gary Nixon. You did an interview.

Karen: Maybe.

Rick: Yeah, but that’s a great quote. That’s kind of one of my guiding principles.

Karen: Oh, it’s so wonderful. When we talk about that major realization I had, we’re about to talk about, that’s when that really came to me. But it’s like, so yeah, why not? You know, it’s, yeah.

Rick: Repeat that again. It’s so important. Just say it one more time.

Karen: Okay. Something like, “The investigation into the false, what we aren’t, is finite. We come to the end of that, because that’s a fictional self. It’s a finite object. However, the investigation, the experience, the unfolding into what we are, is infinite, because what we are is infinite.”

Rick: That’s great. And just to throw in a little thing about mathematics, and I’m not a mathematician, but I’ve heard this in lectures that in mathematics there are infinities and infinities and infinities. I mean, you can take infinity, and it’s big, it’s infinity. But then add one to it, or square it, multiply it times itself and so you have a bigger infinity. Yeah. So like, there’s no end. You could do that endlessly.

Karen: Yes, yes. And there’s a couple of people I really resonate with. And Pamela Wilson is, for years, that’s the only person I was drawn to sit with. And I typically go to her summer retreat every year. And it’s just a wonderful celebration. And always, you know, why not?

Rick: Who else do you resonate with?

Karen: Oh, gosh, right this moment, Isaac Shapiro.

Rick: Oh, yeah. Isaac is great.

Karen: He’s wonderful. He was just in Calgary and I happened to be talking to Pamela on the phone. And I said he was here, and she said, “Go,” and I was like, “Okay!” And I went and it was wonderful. Because he helps with, for me, it’s a really important piece of embodiment, which is getting the nervous system to relax and different ways to deal with trauma. And yeah, that’s an area of interest to me. So yeah, I think he’s wonderful. There are others, just their names aren’t coming to me right now—Susanna Murray, who you’ve interviewed.

Rick: Oh, yeah.  I’ll be seeing her in 10 days, too.

Karen: She’s lovely.

Rick: Yeah. That’s cool. Just a little Isaac Shapiro story: A couple years ago at the SAND conference, Zaya Benazzo interviewed him and I first encountered him at breakfast in the dining room. And I said, “Isaac, hi! It’s Rick Archer.” And he kind of looked. He put down his tray. And then he turned to me and just gave me this wonderful hug with full attention. He wasn’t going to do it with his tray in his hands or anything like that. Just like totally focused and great—it was like getting hugged by a big warm bear or something. And then he kind of hung around and came to a bunch of other stuff I was doing at the conference, interviewing this and that person participating in a group discussion. So I really, really liked Isaac a lot. Hope to see him again soon.

Karen: Wonderful. Yeah, he is so genuine. And yeah, I really, really appreciate him a lot. Yeah.

Rick: It’s nice. What we’re touching on right now is this sort of mutual admiration society of people who are peers in some respects, but who each have their own gifts, and whose gifts we may not have. And from whom we can derive benefit and then we’re never kind of beyond the point of enriching our own life, our own perspective by being with one of these other people.

Karen: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. It’s lovely to watch the different areas of specialty or focus or grace or gift or intelligence coming through. And, yeah, why not?

Rick: Yeah. It’s like doctors never stop going to conferences and all, where they can hear other specialists in their field say something that they might not know so much about. Okay, so let’s see. Where are we here in your notes?

Karen: Are we  getting close to the end?

Rick: Nah! It’s infinite!

Karen: [laughing]  You should get a little prize for that. It was very witty.

Rick: We’ll go on for another 20 minutes maybe, at most.

Karen: Okay. So, last couple of highlights, then I’ll string them together. At around this time, I just started to sit again, but just to sit.

Rick: In a meditative sense.

Karen: Yeah. I wasn’t teaching or doing anything but I just got this urge to sit. So one day soon after that I was sitting and just spontaneously Ramana’s inquiry came. And it came with “Who am I?” But then it changed form into “Who’s thinking?” And just in that moment there was a recognition that there is no thinker. And it hadn’t been seen that clearly before. I mean, there’s all kinds of big chunks of, you know, became like cheesecloth, but still. And so there was just this clarity. And thinking stopped for, I don’t know, two or three days, whatever it was. And so there was just this natural functioning without that interpreter or the middleman, I think Adyashanti called it. And so it was lovely. And when the first thought sort of flickered in, it was just okay. It realized it was just clear now, because it’s a potential danger of teachings like Eckhart’s. If people, we all do our own trip with this stuff, right? And a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people I talked to over the years, and I did it myself, you almost make thought into an enemy. And that’s a misunderstanding. And so I think in the background there might have been a little bit still of feeling that thought was inferior or whatever. And so when it came back in it was like, “Oh, how sweet. It’s like a bird moving through.” And so then there was just a deeper relaxation into thought after that. However, I had noticed after this, occasionally there would be what I would call, suffering would arise. And even though it was understood that that’s something psychological, whatever, sometimes it would still arise. So there was this growing recognition, “Okay, something’s been overlooked.” And so that, once again, that real intensity that had built several times that I’ve shared, and other times besides that, started to build again. I was like, “Okay, something’s cooking. Cool.” And this was a time when, again, it was just really clear. I’m not talking, it wasn’t even a rejection. It was just clarity. I’m not looking anywhere for the answer to this. I’ve tried all the greats. And here suffering is still arising. I gotta find the answer to this myself. It was just clear seeing. So a couple of things happened, and I don’t remember which order, but just to compress it in the interest of time.

Rick: And the suffering was some kind of emotional suffering, would we say?

Karen: Yeah. Psychological.

Rick: Psychological, Okay.

Karen: Yeah. The main thing, what I ended up seeing was, so there were two areas that were showing up—one was in illness. I had a few chronic illnesses that were still coming. And I didn’t, even though there’d been a lot of investigation and presence around them, there was still something there and I didn’t recognize what it was. So when I started to really get very intense with the inquiry I recognized, “Oh, there’s just a remaining sense of an identity in there.” The illness itself was given reality. So when the symptoms would come up, just very subtly, there’d be that sense of the history of this thing. And it would be projected into the future like this illness was an entity and that’s a form of identification. So I just clearly saw that. And so with a couple of illnesses, one in particular, when I was doing the inquiry, I saw that and the symptoms stopped on the spot and have never come back.

Rick: That’s neat!

Karen: Sorry?

Rick: That’s neat, I said.

Karen: Yeah. It was incredible. It was like, “Whoa! This is really powerful!” So there’s an awful lot of investigation into things at that time and after that. That was a big one. There was a second illness where that happened with, but in the interest of full disclosure, I did have an experimental treatment with that one. So you never know if maybe that finally kicked in. But on the spot, the thing itself was over. So it was two major areas, I was debilitated. I really couldn’t function for a few years. So it’s pretty strong.

Rick: It’s interesting to think you’re doing that for yourself. I assume you can think of examples, such as in the Bible, where Christ healed some leper or paralyzed person or something like that probably through the same principle but with such a profound degree of mastery to be able to do it with somebody else like that.

Karen: Absolutely! And of course, you have to know it here first. Yeah, so that’s the thing. And so right around that time, the other thing that was happening was what I came to see was there was suffering about suffering. There was just this little remaining sort of sense of one who was supposed to end suffering. And I didn’t recognize I’d taken that on. So anytime suffering arose, this little imaginary entity felt thwarted, “Oh, no! It’s coming again! I’ve failed.” So it was causing this angst, I guess. And it was also the sense that I’m supposed to, unconsciously, I had taken on, I was supposed to end suffering for all of humanity. So this is a big thing, right? So just sitting down, and I just got this real intensity. And I actually heard out loud, “That’s enough.” And I knew what it meant. It meant that’s enough of this! So I sat down and this intensity rose. “I’m not getting off this chair until I see through this.” And right away through the inquiry, just that sense, fictional sense of self, was seen through: “Oh, it’s just in the mind.” And then that whole sense of the mind-made self just sort of collapsed like a house of cards, kind of experience.

Rick: Interesting. And you said as a result of this, I think this is as a result of that, an enormous energy and aliveness arose that lasted for about 18 months.

Karen: Yeah. So, one way we could talk about that is perhaps the lifeforce that may have been, I mean, this is just a conceptual thing, but that had been trapped in sustaining that remaining sense of self was freed up. So I don’t know, Rick.

Rick: That’s a good point. I mean, I think a lot of life force is caught up in, you remember an hour ago, you were talking about how you looked at that person in the car, and you could sense that they were trapped in the ego and what was implicit in the way you said that was the tremendous amount of energy that is tied up in maintaining that structure and it’s a common report and observation of people who are highly liberated, deeply liberated, that there’s a tremendous outpouring of energy that just has—what’s the word? Intangible. [laughter] You know what I’m trying to say—dynamism, tremendous dynamism.

Karen: Yeah, it’s exciting. And I feel like part of it…

Rick: —indefatigable! I think that’s it!

Karen: That’s it! Well done! I wasn’t even gonna come to that. And I think part of the purpose of this is—I’ve seen this a lot of times with some of the teachers or masters or whatever, when you look at their life story there’s a period after they’ve had another realization and, this is just conceptual but just see if this resonates. It’s like, part of the purpose of that outpouring is so that it can go into the collective and touch, like a tuning fork, making that possible for others. And I did see some of that happening over that period because I shared some of this for a while with other people, did some sort of nondual pointing and whatever for a while. But yeah, it’s interesting because right away though, after a very brief period, life just took a left turn and just completely stopped. It’s interesting, a couple things happened. One, I didn’t recognize there’d still been a momentum to sort of like spiritual or seeking activities. And I didn’t notice till after this, I oftentimes use the analogy of, it’s like there was a generator that was plugged in and I didn’t know it was there and it was generating the seeking mechanisms all day long. And then with this recognition, it’s like the plug got pulled and that stuff stopped. I didn’t even notice. It’s after the fact. One day I was sitting and this sort of sense of boredom arose and I’m like “Boredom, I never have that. What’s this?” So when I looked it’s like, “Oh, I’m not doing all that spending eight hours a day meditating and reading books and all that. I’m just being.” And it was interesting. So right away though life was, I just started moving into going to school, taking courses, getting a job, sort of counterintuitive to what you think would happen, necessarily after that.

Rick: Well, it’s like that dyeing-the-cloth analogy I used a while back,  where there’s dipping and a bleaching and dipping and a bleaching. So your life seems to have gone through these cycles where you dive deep and then integrate.

Karen: Yes, that’s exactly what it is. It’s just funny because it seems like the traditional pattern is you just with each realization, you just go deeper into your teaching or whatever. But that’s never been my thing. I never started out to be a teacher. And so it kind of drops off and then comes back. Anyway, so it was definitely followed by a period of very intense integration.

Rick: Yeah, it’s funny, somebody emailed me a few days ago about this interview and said, “What is it with Karen? She’s a teacher, she’s not a teacher, she’s a teacher, she’s not a teacher.” But yeah, I think we’ve explained it.

Karen: There it is! And also, part of the process, because I never started out that way, but I did notice this, because there’s so many other things. I mean, as with, I’m sure, most of you guests, you could probably talk all day. But there’s one of the patterns that happened after—when you watch the intelligence, Rick, you know how it is. So the intelligence of one of the things that happened by pulling me away from being part of Eckhart’s organization, or whatever, was it exposed something that I hadn’t seen. And that was just innocently, I never started to be a teacher. It happened organically. But behind the scenes, there was some identification that had arisen with the teacher role. So every one of these gaps just exposed something and it’s very intelligent and beneficent. It’s perfect. So in that particular case it’s like, “Oh,” and a couple of other times, I mean, I’d go through a shift and then I’d go back and sit in the chair and then be looking to see if there was any teacher present. And there wasn’t. And after, when I couldn’t find any, then it’s like teaching sort of fell away even more. But it’s not a thing for me, it’s just life, when something’s realized, it wants to be shared. But it’s not, I don’t, it’s not my main thing. It’s just incidental, almost.

Rick: Like we were saying in the beginning, we’re all instruments of the Divine, and it’s gratifying to the instrument and it’s beneficial to whomever the instrument influences to serve in that role. And we all have different roles to play. There are as many instruments as there are people.

Karen: Yes, I agree. And the other thing is that life was also, this whole thing was, who knows, because we’re not done yet. I mean, when I get to the end of life, if you’re still around, I can send you a note and say, “Hey, this is how it turned out.” But one of the things I’ve seen is there’s an intelligence to this unfolding and it’s brought me to another place, another way of, let’s say, serving or being with people that’s just more appropriate and authentic at this point. I always, not always, but the last few years, when I was performing a teaching function, there was this recognition of, now I’m not making a blanket statement, I’m talking about my experience, but there was a sense of everything, whatever that is here, is there also. But when this one sits in the chair, it creates the separation. And I really, really invited people to look beyond that and try different formats. But I noticed there was almost like, it reinforced that sense of, “There’s something here that you don’t have and because I’m sitting in the chair I’m going to give it to you.” So there was part of me just being really aware of that. And with some teachers it’s not an issue, it really doesn’t matter. But here there was just this—there’s something about empowerment that really is the underlying theme of whoever I’m serving, or that function is being performed. It’s like there’s a real desire for empowerment and the way that it works best here, right now, is more one-on-one. But so there’s this other thing, too, that was taking me out of that traditional teacher format. It worked for a while, maybe it will happen again, but it’s not my primary thing. It’s not my primary love. So life was also coming into a more appropriate form for my temperament or whatever.

Rick: Yeah, even one-on-one. It’s like, “Okay. I’m signing up to have a consultation with Karen.” It’s not, “She’s not signing up to have one with me. I’m signing up to have one with her.” You know, so this is still even there, there’s gonna be that potential imbalance in the roles perhaps, but I don’t know. Have you—we could probably talk about how you or how other teachers have dealt with this issue. But I also don’t have a problem with somebody having more to offer than the average person. I mean Ramana Maharshi, for instance, had something and it was appropriate that he was the guru in that ashram. But I think he also did things to humble himself like working in the kitchen and just kind of showing that despite his specialness he was an ordinary guy, in a way.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. And you know, there’s nothing wrong. And I’m perfectly happy to go and sit with, just sat with Isaac and he was in the chair. And with him, he’s really found this beautiful way of being so inclusive and it really works for me, same with Pamela. And yeah, I agree with you. And just for my own unfoldment, there’s just been periods where it just hasn’t felt right to sit in that format. That’s all. It’s really not a big deal.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, I totally understand. I was a TM-teacher for 25 years and that was quite a while ago and I don’t have any inclination to, nor do I feel at all qualified to be a teacher now. It’s just, I’m definitely in ongoing-student mode if we want to put it that way. Doing something that I’m good at and it’s appropriate for me to do, serving in the way I can serve.

Karen: That’s beautiful. I love that! That’s how I feel. It’s just however life is going to use these instruments. That’s gorgeous. And thank goodness you do what you do, Rick, because it’s such a service to the Sangha. It’s wonderful. So yay! Yeah!

Rick: Thanks.

Karen: I appreciate that, and I think to each their own. And there’s something that also Pamela helped me to see as well. The last time when it was just like, “No, you gotta stop this.” This intelligence was like, “Take down your website. Pull up your shingle.” You know, “Forget it.” And it was just again, this knowing that something new wanted to emerge and everything known had to dissolve. And I just happened to see Pamela around that time. And she’s–I didn’t say anything to her–and she said, “Yeah, things are—something new is trying to come through you and it won’t until you let this die.” So I did. And also something was revealed through that process that had been overlooked which was perfect, and once I saw that, everything changed. And it was this underlying little concept—innocent, heartfelt actually—overlooked belief, misunderstanding that had come along many years ago and had been unseen which was that the idea was my worth or value only comes through serving. And of course, it’s just through being, that’s our worth and value. So that was seen and that came to rest and then everything started to get going again. So this kind of died.

Rick: And one follows from the other because if you serve without adequately being, then what sort of service are you actually providing?

Karen: Sure, sure, absolutely. But again, this is a story of everything being brought to light that can be, that’s in any way obscuring or limiting the experience. And I think that’s the journey we’re all on. So that’s my story.

Rick: Yeah. And I love the way you’ve continued to refer to an intelligence which is kind of larger or wiser than ourselves which keeps guiding us. And we keep sort of being nudged or kicked or tickled or whatever to take what it—to benefit from what it’s trying to accomplish with us.

Karen: Yeah, you know, and it’s interesting, one other little tidbit here  that comes back to you, Rick, is a number of years ago, I don’t remember, we could look it up, I just, this inquiry started to arise, once there was a real stability and whatever this is, and there was this knowing that, “You know, all those other faculties, where are they?” There was a sort of sense that there was going to be a way that this all could come together, it was just an intuitive knowing, but I was just in the unknown and just sensing that coming. And then I got this intuition one day to turn on your show. And you happen to be interviewing Mercedes Kirkel. And when I heard her story I knew that was going to be a similar story for me; someone who had been with a teacher, had their awakening, and then their life took a very dramatic turn and started doing something kind of woo-woo you know, spiritual out there. And it was so—I’m grateful to you because I wouldn’t have found my way to her I’m sure, without that. But during the telling of her story, it goes back to what you said earlier, it’s like everything in me, just like when I touched “The Power of Now,” everything like [buzz sound] and I knew it was kind of a clue. So thank you for that.

Rick: Cool. I love hearing those little stories. And I’m sure for every one I hear, there are thousands that I don’t hear. But it’s kind of a joy to be—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once told me I was a connector and a collector. So I kind of like playing that connector role. And there’s a connection you just described that I wasn’t aware of, but it’s really fun kind of plugging people, unwittingly most of the time, into situations or opportunities or other people that are going to benefit them or facilitate their growth.

Karen: That’s a great thing about your show. So that’s kind of what ended up happening is that dimension just started to open up again. And I started just, again, I had an intuition and it was validated externally like some of the other stuff I’ve shared. And I just started to sit with people and man, it’s amazing to me every session. I’m like, “Wow,” I never know what to expect. It’s just the sense of oneness and love and whatever shows up. And watching what happens for people, it’s just love and gratitude is my experience. It’s wonderful.

Rick: Yeah. And in your notes here you say that in these sessions psychic information often comes that is helpful in healing, releasing or embracing life circumstances. Each session is unique and arises out of the field of oneness with no imposition of any teaching or formula. So it’s sort of like you came full circle with that psychic information thing. It’s kind of come back again but in a different context, a much more solid foundation.

Karen: Yeah, and it’s just whatever arises because there’s no filter or, like you said, there’s no imposition. This is another reason, it seems to me, that those times of teaching and the messages and whatever, why they’ve dissolved is because now there’s just nothing imposed, where before, through certain periods, for example with Eckhard’s teaching, I might be teaching the inner-body awareness or whatever, might do nondual pointing or whatever. Now there’s just nothing except what arises. And it’s always perfect for what that person needs at this point of their journey and their evolution. So talk about being an instrument, that’s exactly what it is. So everything to me feels like it all fit together—the seeing through the fictional self, there’s nobody here who needs to be a teacher or anything else. There’s just life, love, oneness, and it moves and touches. And sometimes it’s physical healing, sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s awakening, sometimes it’s embodiment, you know, clarification, it’s just whatever. So, it’s pretty cool.

Rick: That’s neat! You’ve become a spiritual jack of all trades.

Karen: Yeah, the other part of that is, master of none. But that’s the beauty, just to be so transparent and open and available. It’s a joy. And so the One shows up in an apparent other form, and these two—it’s communion. And it’s, I love it. It’s very wonderful.

Rick: So are you doing many of these sessions?

Karen: Yeah.

Rick: Like, people, obviously listening to this who want to have one, they just go to your website, karenmcphee.com, and find out how to do it.

Karen: Yes, I’m still working on my website. It’s fairly new but they can just email me and book a session. I do Skype sessions just about every day. And I also have a couple of beautiful, one is a crystal bookstore here in town, and another bookstore that also has crystals. So there’s some spiritual centers here locally that I go and do sessions at those and in my place, so yeah, and on the phone.

Rick: Most of the people who are watching this obviously aren’t going to be in Calgary, but they’ll want to Skype you if they want to do that.

Karen: Yeah, it’s amazing to me. Well, I’m sure you know, but Skype, it’s virtually the same as being there. It’s pretty cool. Yeah. So, yeah.

Rick: Great. Okay. Well, this has been wonderful! I think we’ve really covered it quite thoroughly. Are there any little lingering thoughts that you might want to bring out that you’re going to think of five minutes after we hang up?

Karen: Probably, but nothing comes to mind. I guess, except just the invitation for everyone to recognize, I mean, this is a journey. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a destination, it’s ever unfolding. And so gratitude to you, Rick, for having the opportunity to share and also being able to witness so many other people’s stories of their unfolding. I feel it’s really serving us all. And yeah, just, you know, hey, keep on truckin’ because life keeps unfolding and gets better and better and better. And as we come into our own inner authority and really embody this reality—life just comes into right alignment, and it’s pretty, pretty gorgeous.

Rick: There’s a saying that the goal is all along the path. So it’s not like we have to sort of pass over today for some glorious future. The future may be more glorious than today is, but there’s a lot of glory in the moment, which I’m sure is very Eckhart-like to say, you know?

Karen: It’s so true. I’m in love with life and even through the hardships, that has been a common theme here, loving that which is unfolding and all. And it’s pretty delicious even when it’s challenging. And it is, to me, it’s a love affair with the divine, with life. And yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Rick: Great. All right, well, let me make some wrap-up points. First of all, thanks to those who surmounted our technical difficulties and listened to the livestreaming version of this. It looks like there have been about 20 or 30 people on throughout the call. Sometimes it’s 50 to 80, but that’s when we’re doing it every week and there aren’t any glitches. So appreciate your diligence and tuning in to that. And nobody submitted questions but in the future, if you’re watching the livestream and you have a question, there’s a form at the bottom of the upcoming interviews page and you’re welcome to submit one. So this interview with Karen has been, as you probably know, one in an ongoing series. There have been well over 300 now. And if you’d like to check out the past ones, go to the past interviews menu on batgap.com, and you’ll see them categorized in four or five different ways. There is also the future interviews menu where you can see what’s coming up. And there’s an audio podcast of this, which almost as many people listen to as watch the video, so that people commuting and bike riding and whatnot are listening to it. So there’s a page where you can see the various options to sign up for that. There’s the donate button, as I mentioned, which makes it possible for us to do this. And from the outset my concept was to just make this freely available and grow it to the point where voluntary donations would make it self-supporting, and moving in that direction, so I appreciate that. And it enables people in very far-flung places to watch this who otherwise wouldn’t be able to if there were any kind of entry fee. And there’s an email signup thing. People have been saying, “Well, why no new interviews? Why no new interviews?”  But if you sign up for the—because we were on a vacation, we went to Vancouver. But if you sign up to be notified by email each time a new one is posted, you’ll just know within 24 hours after it’s posted. So feel free to do that. All right, well thanks for listening or watching and we will see you next week. The next one is Andrew Harvey, who, if you’re not familiar with him, it’s gonna be a total delight. He’s an amazing guy. I’ve been kind of tuned into him for at least 20 years and he’s a beautiful man. So, see you then.