Katie Davis interview

Summary

Katie Davis describes a spontaneous awakening that revealed life as unfolding without a separate doer and brought an end to psychological suffering. The discussion explores self-inquiry, surrender, presence, spiritual experiences, and how practices can help reveal what is already present.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What can a spontaneous spiritual awakening feel like?
• How can someone recognize the awareness beneath thoughts, sensations, and personal identity?
• What is the role of surrender in spiritual awakening?
• Can spiritual practices help reveal the reality that is already present?
• How can a person integrate a profound awakening into ordinary life?

Key takeaways

• Awareness is present before thoughts, sensations, and personal identity arise.
• Awakening can happen spontaneously without formal spiritual practice or prior study.
• Seeing that life unfolds by itself can dissolve the sense of being a separate doer.
• Self-inquiry directs attention toward the feeling of I-ness and its underlying reality.
• Words and teachings point toward truth, but truth itself cannot be fully expressed in words.
• Presence and resonance can help quiet the mind and reveal what is already here.
• Practices may remove obscuring habits without creating awareness itself.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Katie Davis. Welcome, Katie.

Katie: Thank you, Rick.

Rick: My guest next week will be her husband, Sundance Burke, but today we’re going to talk with Katie. Katie has written a book called Awake Joy. I just finished it this morning. Very good book.

Katie’s story is a little bit unusual in that—and, of course, I’m going to let you tell it and not tell it myself—she had a spontaneous and irrevocable spiritual awakening without ever having really practiced any formal spiritual practices, nor studied with a teacher or anything like that. It just sort of happened.

But you say in your book that you had had a number of pretty profound spiritual experiences in your childhood and youth. So I was thinking it might be a good way to start if you could tell us the story of that awakening and perhaps precede that telling with a reference to some of these experiences you had as a child, leading up to this experience you had while actually teaching an aerobics class.

Katie: Sure. Relatively speaking, because it is just another story—and especially the young experiences that you’re speaking of, with the mental image of a three-year-old—in really awakening, it is about waking up out of that story as well.

Rick: Right, yeah. You know what? I get emails from people saying, “But I want to hear the story!” because everybody says the same thing otherwise, and it’s so fascinating to hear the circumstances of the life in which this awakening occurred.

And don’t worry, people aren’t going to identify with your particular story and feel like that’s the way it has to be, because if they listen to this show regularly, they’ve heard a hundred of them, and they’re all different.

Katie Davis’s Childhood Out-of-Body Experience

Katie: Thank you. Probably the first spiritual experience, if you will, that I had was as a three-year-old. I had an operation, and during the operation I rose up out of my body and was hovering on the ceiling. I heard that my body was all right and was suddenly whisked away down the rabbit hole, I guess you could call it.

It was very gleeful, that is the memory of it, with streams of light. Then I noticed a small light at first, which came closer and closer. I merged into it, and then everything was gone.

When I woke up from the surgery, I had this sense that somehow I had died. There was a tremendous fear of death, but it was soon forgotten. It also gave me a very clear understanding that I’m far more than the body.

It also gave me a very clear understanding that I’m far more than the body.

Rick: And you understood that as a three-year-old and remembered it?

Katie: I have a mental image of it. My mother said that when I was tiny—I don’t remember this—but she said I was always asking her when I became a girl. So there was some level of inquiry going on then.

Rick: I remember having an argument with my mother when I was a child, and I insisted that when I had been younger, I had actually been able to fly around the house, fly up and down the stairs, and stuff like that. She said, “No, dear, you never did that.” And I said, “I remember it. It was so clear!”

Katie: Probably—I don’t know if this is unusual—but I loved simply being as a child, whether sitting by my grandmother’s lake or on a sand dune.

If things would go wrong in the life situation, there was this sanctuary, if you will, that was just resting, being. In fact, when I first started sharing and someone asked for help, I had worked with this person for almost three months, and they said, “You’re always speaking of being. What do you mean by that?”

It seemed to me so normal throughout my life that it was really surprising that it is not accessible to everyone, consciously anyway. Let’s see. Perhaps—

Rick: In your book, you also mentioned that when you were young, a companion of yours had surgery and then ended up dying, and knew she was going to die on the day that she died. She told her mother that she was going to die that night, and she did.

In fact, not only that story, but perhaps several others that you’ll recollect, in retrospect, you saw them as having been perfectly instrumental in orchestrating the awakening that you eventually had.

Katie: Yes, that’s right. I wasn’t aware at the time that all of my life experiences were actually pointing to this. It’s probably true for everyone.

Rick: I was going to say, I think it’s true for all seven billion of us, although it certainly doesn’t always seem like it when you’re in the thick of it.

Katie: Yes, Sherry was my best friend, and she died. That was another confirmation that you’re certainly more than the body: to see her lifeless, and yet as life.

I guess there was an amazing experience as a teenager. I was a member of a Presbyterian youth group, and we went on a camping trip. There was a young woman who was an atheist, and the youth leader was trying to convince her, in a tent one evening with about six or eight of us there, to convert and to give away these attitudes and feelings that she had.

The conversation seemed to go on for hours. I just remember dropping my head face-down into the pillow and saying, “Just leave her alone.” Suddenly, there was this unbelievable stillness and peace that filled the tent.

We all sat up, very vibratory. There was glowing light, and I remember turning around to look behind me to see if there were headlights from a car. Then there was just complete stillness.

The youth minister asked her how she felt, and she was completely transformed. So I know now that that was actually an experience of who I am. Very quickly, however, in the youth group I became a story of a miracle, of experiencing the presence of God in a dual manner. And, of course, the ego went about its way, living the life of a teenager. It was long forgotten.

Rick: Do you think that your asking, with your face in the pillow, to leave her alone had somehow been a catalyst for the intervention of some Jesus or some higher being, or what do you think actually happened there?

Katie: I think stillness consciously arose for everyone there, spontaneously.

Rick: By virtue of your invoking it in some way? Were you instrumental, or was that just coincidental?

Katie: I think it was coincidental. Uncaused.

Rick: Yeah, it just happened. Although I suppose we can never really know any of these things for certain. It’s hard to assign causality to anything. As the Gita says, “Karma is unfathomable.”

✨ The awakening during aerobics

Katie: And, of course, then there were all the life-situation experiences of gymnastics and dance, having to have that level of concentration.

Rick: You were a cheerleader, right? That’s gymnastics also.

Katie: And as an aerobics instructor, I had aerobics studios for a while. There was an inward focus, a concentration on breathing that may have been something like observing thoughts, rather than observing thoughts directly. So that was another thing.

I went through rational emotive therapy for a while. Rational emotive therapy is self-observation and watching your thoughts and how they in fact cause your emotions. So that self-observation was already there, not with the purpose of awakening.

And then you want to know the awakening.

Rick: Yeah, but before you tell that, I was just going to say: in a sense, you did do practices. They weren’t consciously and explicitly intended to bring about an awakening, but you did all this physical stuff, which might be comparable in a way to yoga that someone might practice for the purpose of awakening.

You also did this rational emotive therapy, which had a certain influence on you. And as you say, all of life’s experiences are influential and ultimately bring about our awakening.

Katie: And they were so focused on the body.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, you were really tuned into it.

Katie: Really, really inside and feeling your body.

Rick: Which in itself is a spiritual practice in some circles, very explicitly, to do that.

Katie: So, in the aerobics studio that day, it was just another exercise class, music blaring and the rhythm, and everything went into slow motion. That wasn’t an unusual experience.

But suddenly there was an astounding sense that I was sensing some new dimension, if you will. It was extremely sacred, and suddenly I felt so deeply within the body and beyond it that all experience vanished.

Twelve Years of Detachment During Everyday Life

When consciousness reappeared, my body was somehow above me, still teaching aerobics. Actually, that detachment was a state that I was in for twelve years, where the life situation seemed almost like heat haze, if you will.

It was extremely sacred, and suddenly I felt so deeply within the body and beyond it that all experience vanished.

Rick: Ah, interesting. I read a quote from Nisargadatta just the other day, which I could call up on my computer if we wanted to, but he used that same phrase. He said that the relative world had become like a misty haze, and that the reality in which he lived—that’s not quite the way he put it—was rock hard, so much so that it made diamonds seem like butter.

Katie: It’s beautiful.

Rick: So I didn’t quite get it from your book, but when that experience happened to you, did the people in the aerobics class notice anything weird happening to you? Did you kind of zone out for a while and stop teaching, or did everything on the outside appear normal?

There was an immediate understanding that everything in this field of what I call “nature”—this physical space with all that can be contacted by the senses, where the body is—is happening completely by itself. And there wasn’t any recognition at all from anyone apparently outside.

Katie: There was an immediate understanding that everything in this field of what I call “nature”—this physical space with all that can be contacted by the senses, where the body is—is happening completely by itself. And there wasn’t any recognition at all from anyone apparently outside.

Rick: Okay, you just kept on jumping around and doing what you were doing. But it switched to automatic. You were just without any sort of individual volition at that point.

Katie: Right. I mean, really much like a dream when you’re dreaming at night, except a daytime dream that happens by itself. And there’s a great ease in that, actually.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, there must have been a contrast between having lived a life in which you thought yourself to be the doer of action, with all this responsibility associated with that, and then suddenly everything was happening by itself and you could just kick back and be the witness, right?

Katie: Exactly. But as a witness, that’s a reference point as well.

Rick: So that went on for twelve years, you say?

Katie: There was either formlessness or the world of form. Perhaps if I had had a teacher at that point, I would have recognized that there wasn’t a full integration of it.

Rick: Now, at that point, when that first happened, of course you had no real foundation or background for understanding what had happened to you, but it didn’t freak you out because it was enjoyable, right? You went home and lay in a field and looked at a flower, and the whole thing was delightful. So you didn’t know what it was, but whatever it was, it was nice.

Katie: The body was out there sensing and feeling in a manner that I had never experienced before, and yet it was distant, completely detached from form.

Rick: Right. From what was distant? The body or the witness?

Katie: The whole world of form, as well as the body.

Rick: The whole world of form and the body were detached from you, from the witness?

Katie: Right.

Rick: Right, right. I thought you were saying the body was detached from the world of form, but the body as part of the world of form was detached from the witness. I hope I’m not interrupting too much; I’m just kind of squeezing out little bits of information as we go along.

Now, of course, again, you didn’t know what was going on at that point, but it didn’t freak you out. And I say that again because there’s an interesting book by a woman named Suzanne Segal in which she had a shift like that. Even though she had actually been a meditation teacher, for some reason she didn’t put it into any kind of context of understanding, and she was terrified. There was all of a sudden this loss of personal identity, and she lived in a state of fear for ten years before she finally figured out what was going on and relaxed into it. But in your case, fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Katie: Yeah, it crushed the ego completely, and that was really the end of suffering. So it was amazing, really.

Rick: Yeah. Now, did you immediately run down to your local New Age bookstore and start trying to figure out what this was?

Searching for Language After Awakening

Katie: I didn’t know the words “New Age.” I didn’t know the word “enlightenment.” I had no intellectual reference whatsoever. Yes, I went to bookstores, and I couldn’t find anything. I went to a physical doctor and a psychiatrist and a psychologist and spiritual teachers, but I just explained what had happened and shared that, just like we’re dreaming at night, we can wake up from this daytime dream.

They raised their eyebrows a little bit, and the answers weren’t there. And I have to say that that was really good, that they weren’t, because the understanding and the integration were left to, I don’t know, happen by themselves, without concepts, without confirmation of “this is right” or “that is wrong.” It just was undeniable and incredibly beautiful.

Rick: These days, if something like that happens to somebody—and it is happening to people—they pretty easily and quickly find help.

Katie: There’s so much support right now.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, if they didn’t already know about it. Even Eckhart Tolle, of course, had a similar story, where his awakening was spontaneous, and then he spent quite some time filling in the gaps and getting integrated. But as you say, there’s much more support now, so you were kind of a pioneer in that sense.

✨ Finding language for awakening

But jumping ahead—and we won’t jump ahead too much; there’s still plenty to cover—in your book, you have it so carefully parsed out. There are four stages of surrender, and there’s all this great detail about the unfoldment, which obviously you’ve given a lot of thought. So, did you come up with this very detailed and comprehensive understanding pretty much on your own, or at a certain point did you begin resorting to—I know you studied with Eckhart for a while and were his office manager and stuff—did you resort to teachers at a certain point in order to fill in your understanding?

Katie: Eckhart wasn’t really my teacher. We met before The Power of Now, and he was a friend, a delightful friend. And I wasn’t a manager at his office. I did work in his offices and helped out. We were invited to travel on his first Power of Now tour, and it was really remarkable to see the numbers in the mainstream who were open to this teaching. So, did you ask me a question?

Rick: Yeah, just—well, the question was, your understanding is so detailed and so systematic and thorough, from what I gather from your book, with really fine distinctions between stages of surrender and stages of awakening and stages of the heart developing and all this, that I wonder whether you had completely cooked that up from your own experience, like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, or whether at a certain point you began reading all the books and seeing what the traditional spiritual teachings were.

Katie: Actually, working directly with people and sharing with people, and even writing the book itself, was an opportunity to organize it in a manner that was quite intuitive. The book really wrote itself in a way, and then, at the end, there were very intuitive, moving sections of the book, completely written without any thought or consideration of where they were landing.

But, actually, I used to be a high school teacher, so I was used to working with people, and a lot of teaching is listening and hearing where people are coming from, understanding how they are looking. And when I’m working with people, that’s the thing: Where are they looking from?

Rick: Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead.

So I was just going to ask, so all of the knowledge that you bring out in the book, pretty much, has been developed just through working with people? You never went back and filled in the gaps and studied with this teacher, or read a whole lot of books or anything else?

Katie: I’ve read every book that I could find, once I found out. I had an intellectual reference—enlightenment, self-realization, scriptures. I read everything that was available.

Rick: Okay, good. And put it in the context of your own experience, obviously.

Katie: Reading, to me, since the awakening, is more like a meditation rather than for information, and there are so many beautiful books. It’s just amazing, really.

Rick: Yeah. How is it like a meditation?

Katie: Well, you don’t need a reader in order to read. The eyes do just fine. And if you can just rest in the love of being—you know, love is really key—everything that’s required is there for you all the time, whether you’re reading a book.

I mean, all the words point to what is false. The truth really can’t be spoken. So, everything that you’re pointing to is pointing to a surrender of some sort.

Rick: So, if all the words that can be written or spoken are false, or are pointing to that which is false, why write or speak at all?

Katie: When I first started out at home, I did have just silence, and I really think that’s the most profound teaching there can be.

Rick: You would just sit with people in silence?

Katie: But there’s much that can be spoken. You can point to what needs to be surrendered. You see, you already are this ultimate reality. All that is required is already here, and you are that. You’re not a psychological sense of self that’s in the process of becoming something more, and so there’s the invitation, really, to stop.

And, of course, there are questions that can be spontaneously answered, which are always perfect. But if you can see it, if you can speak it, if there’s an object—or, for that matter, even a subject—it’s going to end up being surrendered.

And even the power of the frequency of pure beingness assists the mind, if you will, whatever you would like to call the mind. The thought process slows down, and perhaps it can be recognized what’s underneath, even right now.

Rick: Are you saying this primarily in the context of your role as a teacher, and when you’re sitting with someone, then the pure beingness in that atmosphere helps their mind to stop and recognize what’s already there? Is that what you’re really saying?

Katie: Yes, I think there’s a resonation that allows everything to slow down—a presence, if you will.

Rick: Sometimes the word “transmission” is used, but I sort of like the word “resonance” more because it implies more of an attunement rather than a transmission from point A to point B, like a kind of cosmic zapping process or something.

Katie: I cannot transmit to you who you already are. So, an analogy that I often use is that it helps part the clouds. On a cloudy day, the sun is always there. So, that’s a lot of what can be surrendered.

But most importantly, far more important, is: Who are you? At some point, attention needs to shift from the objects of thought, the object of the body, physical sensations, the senses, the subtle body, the causal body, the emotional body, and focus back on the one that’s aware right now.

If I were to ask you now, are you conscious right now?

Rick: Of course, yes.

Katie: And are you aware of being?

Rick: Yes.

Katie: Would you say that you are aware?

Rick: Yeah, but, you know, it’s sort of like—obviously, words trip us up a bit when we talk about this kind of thing because it’s not like I’m aware of being the way I’m aware of this wall, as if being were some object and then there could be an “I” separate from the object that’s aware of the being.

It’s more like, you know, you are that and you kind of rest in that or reside in that, and then it’s not even like that is aware of the monitor and headphones and Katie and somehow—because to say that even is, you know, the word “aware” becomes a verb, and it’s like being has some little faculties with which it does things, and that’s not the nature of it.

Katie: Exactly, and that is really why I have always focused on self-inquiry, on focusing on this feeling of “I-ness.”

Rick: Unfocusing on it, did you say?

Katie: Focusing.

Rick: Focusing on it, right, right.

Katie: On the feeling of “I-ness.”

Rick: Yeah, similar to Ramana Maharshi’s thing.

Katie: Exactly, it’s direct. “I” is far more than a thought, and it’s the “I” that transcends all the levels of consciousness. “I” is just the word; we realize where it’s pointing.

Rick: It’s funny, when you brought up that—I’m sorry, go ahead.

Katie: Excuse me, whereas if you are searching for awareness, let’s say, you’ve made awareness into an object.

Rick: Exactly, right.

Katie: Or if you are contemplating the heart dimension, you’ve made the heart dimension into an object. And there’s no problem in that; much can be observed. Watching your thoughts, of course, makes it so that you’re not so identified with them, so the thought process slows in the observation. But who is looking, and who is here now?

Rick: That’s not something you want me to answer, is it?

Katie: Sure.

Rick: Well, in the structure of my experience, which I’m quite sure is not even remotely as clear as your experience from having read your book, there are all these—it’s like a layer cake. There are all these dimensions that coexist nicely together, that are, in a sense, paradoxically unlike one another, but that get along just fine.

I mean, there’s the pure, silent being level, and there’s the body level, and a bunch of stuff in between. And having been a long-time meditation practitioner, I don’t think the being level is something that needs to be done in order to maintain. That would be divisive and manipulative in a way. You know, it’s just there, like breathing, or automatic, regardless of circumstances, whether hectic or peaceful.

Katie: So rather than—you were mentioning the layers there—is it, rather than focusing on any particular level, possible to be wide open and just allow all to be as it is, that essential beingness? Driving the car?

Rick: Yeah, sure. I mean, I’m not focusing on layers or trying to do anything while I’m driving the car, cutting the grass, working, talking to you, or anything else. It’s just a natural kind of state, you know, and it would be tedious and, I should think, unpleasant if one had to be on one’s toes all day long, doing something in order to maintain some sort of state.

Katie: Right, it’s very relaxed.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. It gets into your bones after a while, and it’s just automatic. And I don’t mean to imply that I’m some sort of enlightened person who is about to hit the lecture circuit or anything else. You know, this is not my role, but there—

Katie: There are no enlightened people.

Rick: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I am like Tony Parsons.

Katie: Really?

Rick: You know him?

Katie: Yes, I do, actually.

Rick: Yeah, you can’t say a thing like that to him without getting your fingers slapped. I want to loop back a little bit. What was I going to say? Feel free to interject if something comes to mind.

Oh, the thing about the sun—it’s funny because just when you used that analogy, before you used it, I was about to ask a question about that analogy, and then you came out with it. The thing I was going to say, it was sort of more of a statement-question, was just that the sun is always shining, as you said, and there is nothing that wind can do, for instance, to influence the way the sun shines. It just doesn’t. But wind can have an influence on clouds, which might be obscuring the sun for people.

So sometimes people say, “Well, there is nothing you can do, and all techniques are counterproductive,” and so on and so forth. But as Ramana Maharshi said, “It could take a thorn to remove a thorn,” and in the back of your book you do offer a dozen different little practices and meditations, which would be like the wind, to help thin the clouds a bit.

Katie: Yes, silent sitting or meditation are wonderful practices. They help a very scattered mind become concentrated with a single-pointed focus, and yet there is that reference point of the meditator who is trying to take maybe more time and experience to get somewhere, to be free of experience. It just can’t take more time to be free of time.

Rick: Yeah, it kind of depends on how you go about it, doesn’t it? Different practices—some practices could in fact reinforce the notion of individual identity locked into isolated boundaries, whereas others could relax it.

Katie: The thing about… What do you mean, “individual boundary”?

Rick: Well, as many teachers say, and I think as you have said in some places in your book, some sorts of practices could actually be self-defeating because they would augment or reinforce the notion of “I” as an isolated individual who must get something, whereas others would tend to diffuse that sense and relax it, enabling it to be relaxed and let go of.

Katie: Yes, the individual sense of self, that idea of selfhood, is what surrenders. You see through that. The beautiful body, in its given name, still has its function in the world of form, but you are free of that separation from this absolute that you are and this idea of being this tiny fraction that holds together all these attitudes, concepts, beliefs, and judgments.

Feeling the Body Outside Psychological Time

Maybe the first step, then, would be for people to realize that stepping out of time helps them to be completely aware of their body—like right now, just having the sense of being alive and sensing and feeling it. Maybe even being aware of how beautiful and delicate the air feels as it’s moving in and out of your nose, and just being still with that for a moment.

There are no thoughts. Even the “I” thought needs time, and it’s the attachment to the “I” thought as identity that takes you into suffering. So instead of trying to change the person and get better emotions and better thoughts, again we turn our attention back to just that instant of stepping out of time and attachment to the concept of “I”. We use “I” all day long to communicate. There’s no problem with that, but we don’t need to identify with or objectify ourselves in that manner, limiting ourselves to the body only.

Rick: Well, we don’t need to, but the vast majority of humanity does just that, without even knowing they’re doing that. I mean, that’s the way people are wired and the way they kind of grow up. It’s pretty unusual for someone to have happen to them what happened to you.

Katie: Well, it’s completely programmed and very much a habit, and habits are difficult to break.

Rick: And as you know, some habits are deeply ingrained and others very tenuous. In your case, I think somehow the programming and the habituation were tenuous and easily seen through at a certain point; it happened spontaneously. Whereas with other people, they could have a truckload of habits and conditioning weighing on their shoulders, and it’s pretty unlikely that it’s just going to go poof at any point without some sort of process to lighten the load.

Katie: Lighten the load is right. I mean, this ego, which is basically only the concept of I—just focus on that. We’ve been carrying that toy all the way through our lives, and yet in the beginning we were taught that. We point to the body, we say I, and assume that we are limited to the body.

And so, at some point, if you’re lucky, you just become curious—really curious—to find out who you are. Sometimes I see people when there’s a rising dispassion. It’s just sort of like they feel like they’re not so enthused with the life situation anymore. Usually, I can be pretty certain that they’re really coming close to at least a glimpse, because there is a turning away—not in denial. I have to say that quickly: Nothing is denied. But where is the attention? What are you attending to, and who is attending?

Become very curious about who you are, noticing how suffering happens, recognizing that it’s identification with I in time, and then judgment, and then your body contracts and you’re in a negative emotion. You are absolutely indestructible. This radiant love that you are never changes.

Become very curious about who you are, noticing how suffering happens, recognizing that it’s identification with I in time, and then judgment, and then your body contracts and you’re in a negative emotion. You are absolutely indestructible. This radiant love that you are never changes.

You are absolutely indestructible. This radiant love that you are never changes.

There can be many life circumstances or ego attacks, perhaps, that may be rude comments or road rage, whatever it is, but you’re clear and open. You only start suffering when you judge it. The ego state of consciousness is in a constant state of reaction, and that’s why there’s suffering.

Free of judgment, if you can just allow it to be as it is, it’s actually a gift to the person who’s being rude in our example, because all they can see is their own self. They see their own rudeness, perhaps. It’s almost like being transparent and open. You’re unaffected and free.

There is an acceptance, at least in this instant, that this moment is as it is. I mean, that’s just intelligent. It already is. And then there might be a response. See spontaneously how you’re moved. I mean, I’m not saying to stay in horrible circumstances and be abused or whatever the circumstance is, but I’m just talking about this instant and just allowing things to be as they are.

Rick: When is the last time that something like that happened to you? Somebody yelling at you in traffic or in a grocery store, being rude or something like that—can you recall an instance?

Katie: Yes.

Rick: Was there any tendency to recoil or contract or react, or was your reaction the same as it might have been if someone had come up in a friendly way, or you were looking at a sunset or something? Was there just complete dispassion?

Katie: There is a well of compassion that comes out of love, of recognizing the ego state of consciousness for what it is and allowing it to be.

Rick: So, “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”

Katie: Yeah, even forgiveness needs time.

Rick: So, instantaneous, spontaneous acceptance of the circumstances.

Katie: And we were in Europe to offer satsang, and we were traveling from Spain to Paris to catch a flight to our wonderful heart friends in Bristol. Our flight was, I don’t remember, maybe an hour late. And of course, when we got to Paris, we didn’t know whether we were going to miss the next flight, and so that could be a big problem, right? You have people waiting in London to pick you up.

But things just are as they are. There is such an ease in living. It’s so simple. Go to the ticket counter, exchange your tickets—it’s all happening by itself. We miss the connection. It’s just all of the anxiety and stress that we can be free of.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good example, and I’ve gone through similar things: “All right, I’m not going to make that connection. I might not even get anywhere tonight. Let’s see what happens.”

Katie: And then, even going back to the example of someone saying something rude to you, perhaps someone does react. Can you allow that same compassion to be there for yourself, the ego self?

Rick: If you react, you mean?

Katie: Yeah, just allowing that to be, and being aware of that. If you are aware of that and just allow it to be, it’s the observing that is the transformative power, without trying to change a single thing.

And compassion and understanding, rather than a spiritual ego that goes, “This is terrible. I know that I shouldn’t be in reaction. There I went again; I was lost in time.” Just stop.

Rick: Sometimes a lot of this stuff, though, gets into the description-versus-prescription situation, where a person like yourself can be describing the way they function and describing the way they deal with situations that come up. And it’s not necessarily how another person—an average person, necessarily—is going to function or deal.

So the person sort of hears this description and tries to take it as a prescription, and then tries to act in this compassionate, accepting way, and it’s just not coming naturally to them. So would you say, “Fake it until you make it,” or what would you say to this situation?

Katie: Find out who you are.

Rick: Yeah, and then it will be natural for you.

Katie: Allow your mate freedom to be who he or she is, and become very curious about yourself.

Rick: So then, if really finding out who you are…

Katie: There’s never a prescription.

Rick: Yeah. So finding out who you are is really the crux of the matter, and it’s going to take care of how you behave. Then what is the value in spending time describing how one would behave once one has found out who they are? What do you think? I mean, what is the utility of offering a description of how a person functions when everything is accepted without reaction or judgment, if that’s not how a person who hasn’t found out who they are is going to behave? Is it sort of offered as an inspiration to find out who you are, so that you’ll be able to deal with situations that way as well?

It’s an offer. I mean, it’s an invitation to discover that you can be free of these suffering states of consciousness. If you are free of time and the attachment to the I-thought as identity, it’s limited to the body. That’s the bottom line.

Katie: It’s an offer. I mean, it’s an invitation to discover that you can be free of these suffering states of consciousness. If you are free of time and the attachment to the I-thought as identity, it’s limited to the body. That’s the bottom line.

You know, in therapy, a lot of times people will tell many stories and try to improve that false sense of self. Allow it to be as it is and understand the mechanism of how it is operating. Watch it directly, rather than trying to change the life story. A life story is going to transform as you transform.

A perfect mirror, a perfect example might be if you were looking in your bathroom mirror and you wake up in the morning and your hair is a mess, you would never pick up your comb and try to comb your hair in the mirror.

Rick: Right. In other words, you wouldn’t comb the mirror; you’d comb your actual hair.

Katie: Yeah, so I guess that isn’t such a good analogy because I’m indicating that there’s something to do. I’m just saying, look in the right direction.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good one. Analogies always have their limitations.

Katie: Leave the image alone and find out who you are beyond the image, beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond your emotions. And then everything naturally transforms in that observation.

Rick: Yeah, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else shall be added unto thee.”

Katie: Thank you.

Rick: “Putting the horse before the cart.” The Gita says it too. There’s all this discussion between Krishna and Arjuna about how we’re going to deal with this situation: “I don’t want to fight,” and so on and so forth. And Krishna says, “Yogastha kuru karmani”—established in being, perform action. And then it will be spontaneously right.

Katie: Yes, and we’re always established in being.

Rick: But consciously, knowingly.

Katie: Right, and again, it’s, “What are you attending to? Where are you looking?” Yes, Arjuna is quite the story.

Personhood and integration

Rick: Yeah, it’s a very metaphorically interesting story. Here’s a question for you, and feel free to always tell me if I’m asking a question too soon and there’s something you want to say, because you’re a lot more settled than I am and I keep jumping in with questions when you probably are just pausing for breath.

Just as we have a body—there’s a body, it functions, and a brain that enables it to function marvelously—and there are eyes and senses. Now, when we start talking about senses, it gets a little bit more subtle because there’s a subtle aspect to the senses. And there’s an intellect, which again is intangible but is a function that decides and discriminates. And then there’s a mind, again intangible, which thinks thoughts and connects things, and so on and so forth.

Now, just as all those things are practical, functional faculties, which, if we wish to, we could boil down to nothingness, taking it all down either through understanding with physics or through spiritual understandings to the state of being, couldn’t it also be—and would you say—that there’s also the faculty of ego, or individual sense of self, which doesn’t completely become obliterated with awakening, but just sort of takes its rightful place and is seen as not running the show anymore, while still having a practical utility in living life? Would you agree with that?

Katie: I don’t find an ego.

Rick: Do you find an intellect or a mind, or any of those other things?

Katie: Well, what do we mean by mind? By mind, where that points, means the body, emotions, subtle energies, the idea of selfhood, mental images—which means memory, probably—cognition, and perception. And there’s someone that is aware of all that, and that’s who you are. So yes, your description was wonderful.

Like I said earlier, there’s this dimension, if you will, of nature. You mentioned the body and its sensing, and then there’s the field of attention, which is the mental space of time, perception, and cognition. And so there’s something prior to that. The investigation is pretty much sort of like—what’s the old analogy?—peeling an onion. Layer after layer is burned away and constantly reveals something deeper, and what remains is you.

Rick: Yeah, I understand that, but what I’m trying to get at is, just as you say, the essence of what you are is that which is aware of all these things that we just itemized, do you acknowledge or recognize, among the various relative faculties that we’ve just been discussing, aside from the essence of being pure consciousness, that there’s still a jiva or an individual sense?

I mean, if somebody comes in the room and says, “Hey, Katie,” and there are ten people in the room, Katie turns her head.

Katie: They still come home to the same house.

Rick: Yeah, right, and the IRS knows where you are.

Katie: All of those practical things, the practical knowledge, stay. And I guess you could call that conditioning: if someone calls my name, I practically know that this body’s name is Katie. You can call me “Mom,” and my head turns. You could call me any number of names, I guess—different roles that I play—and those are just roles.

It’s just that identity. I would like to stay pure, but I don’t want that to be misunderstood either, like some perfect being, which you actually are. The sense of identity—you realize that you’re not the ego, or maybe through investigation you realize that the ego is nothing more than the concept of “I” that is further attached to concepts, beliefs, and attitudes.

Rick: So I guess my question is, can there still be a concept of “I” but no longer have it predominate or entrap you? Just as if you want to call the intellect a concept or the body a concept, or the emotions a concept—all these other things that we live as human beings.

Because in spiritual circles it’s often said that one should or will obliterate the ego, destroy it, and so on, and I’m wondering whether that ever really happens, or whether there’s still some functional mechanism which we could describe as ego, but it just no longer is holding the reins. It just no longer has any sort of predominant role. It’s more like just one of our several faculties, and maybe a fundamental one.

Katie: You don’t need to destroy the ego, first of all. You need to discover whether there really is one.

Rick: And when that discovery is made, is there?

Katie: I guess the analogy that came to mind while you were sharing was that of a tree. Here where we’re living, there are these beautiful, tall evergreen trees. I’m the whole tree. What you see is maybe the branches and the trunk, and we could equate that, I suppose, to the ego, but I have these roots that you can’t see at all, and those roots run very deep, and beyond that there is this solid rock of the absolute. You couldn’t pin me down out of any of those.

The identity is—this isn’t quite right—first realized as the base only, and then integrated as the whole tree. So, the question about the role of the person: absolutely. We’re about being human as well, but the role of the ego—the second you identify, you’re in separation and you will step into struggle and conflict.

Rick: Well, that’s understood, but the analogy you gave of the tree is beautiful and it answers my question, basically. You’re the whole tree, from the tips of the top branches all the way down to the root, and including the ground.

Katie: The solid ground.

Rick: Yeah, and the key word is “identification,” because most people are just identified with that which is manifest and obvious, and are totally unaware, or largely unaware, of the deeper aspect.

So the essential question was: are any of the relative structures which we appear to have already utterly eliminated, or are they just placed in the rightful context, with a much deeper foundation that is where we reside? And then, as you say, there is this integration and embodiment with the whole package, but on the foundation of that rock-like basis.

Katie: Rather than giving a right or wrong answer to that, a yes or no, I would just encourage people to investigate and see what it is directly.

Rick: Yeah, good.

Katie: During the integration that occurs, you could pick up that heavy old ego and put it on like a sweater to wear, and you could further load yourself up with a few concepts and beliefs and carry them around with you. I mean, that is an option, or you can truly be free.

I guess there are preferences. When I go grocery shopping, I see the body naturally reaching out for certain foods and not others, and I honor that. I see it happening. I guess I also have certain vegetables that I prefer over others, but that seems to be a body thing rather than a belief or judgment. Did that answer your question, Rick?

Rick: Yeah, I think it helped. And obviously, if you had a hundred so-called enlightened people, and they all went to the same grocery store, none of them are going to come up with a shopping cart that has identical items in it. There are always going to be individual preferences for each.

Katie: But even there, allowing the body intelligence rather than a mental list of “this is good to eat and that is bad to eat”—this is what happens, even with planning. Planning is a good use of the mind, of thought; it’s very good at that. But even that we can let go, in the moment anyway.

Rick: Yeah, it has its function, but it’s one of those things that gets out of proportion in many people’s lives. So how about your own integration? I mean, you had this awakening in the exercise class, and was there a whole process going on for many years which you would describe as integration or embodiment, or whatever term is most meaningful to you?

Katie: Yes, the witness surrendered. There was no process to that; it just happened by itself. And I would say my body now is the appearance of the universe. How dramatic.

Rick: What do you mean by that?

Katie: Which includes the body named Katie, but is not limited to that.

Rick: Ah, so are you saying that the universe is my body, and this Katie thing that people address when they want to talk to—that’s just like a cell in the larger body?

Katie: Yes, that loves living and enjoys playing. You’re just not confined to that little boat anymore. It’s a very large playing field.

Rick: Although, in a funny way, it’s like there’s still some kind of location here. I mean, you see the world through Katie’s eyes. You don’t see the world through the eyes of the bird up in the tree, or do you?

Katie: Oh no, I see the eyes, see the bird, the mind interprets the image, and that happens. But who’s looking? Am I a body only, or is there this massive field of consciousness that is neither inside nor outside, that is completely available?

Even if the field of attention focuses down on threading a needle, let’s say, is the experience whole and complete? Probably. I just would like to say that the most beautiful thing is this sense of fulfillment and completion. There’s no longer anywhere to go, and yet there might be travel or no travel, or accomplishments or no accomplishments.

Rick: So in other words, you’re already fulfilled and complete regardless of what you do or don’t do, accomplish or don’t accomplish.

Katie: Exactly. Success, no success, report done on time, not done on time. Your friend comes, your friend leaves.

Rick: I think most people would understand that fulfillment is not contingent upon circumstances. And you talk about this quite a bit in your book too, that ultimately fulfillment is not derived from circumstances or outer things, and if it is—if that’s what you’re dependent upon—then you’re on pretty shaky ground because it’s always going to be going up and down. And for you, the whole orientation has shifted.

Katie: Oh, it’s such a tremendous change. Going back to the life story, speaking relatively again about that, I was an achiever, in constant motion, always had passions. I wasn’t aware of the fact that I was trying to complete myself through all of that becoming. And there isn’t any of that now. There’s not the idea that something can complete what’s already full.

Rick: Right, which is not to say you’re not still achieving things. You wrote a book, and I’m sure you do many things, but your fulfillment is not impacted one way or the other by doing or not doing these things.

Katie: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah, okay. So I’m interested again in—I know it’s kind of getting into story territory—but in your book you describe, it seems to me, numerous stages of realization, or stages of unfoldment, stages of surrender, and so on.

I presume that—well, you said earlier you’ve gotten a lot of this from just interacting with people that you have been talking to in the last 20 years—but it also presumably reflects your own experience of integration or unfoldment or embodiment, or whatever, since the realization. So is that something you could comment on a bit?

I mean, how you progressed through these various stages that you enumerated in the book, how the progression took place, what sort of challenges there may have been, or maybe it was all totally automatic. But lay out a road map, if you will.

Katie: Yeah, I guess I would equate the book to being just that: a road map. If you’ve gone from Seattle to Los Angeles, you might be able to help others find the turns along the way if they’re willing to be open and share where they’re presently located.

That wasn’t a progress map, and I don’t even mean it to be a teaching. I would think that it is more like a road map, that probably you’re going to come to Portland before you come to Mount Shasta, before you arrive in L.A., and that may not be the case. There could be plenty of detours along the way.

But everyone is going to experience being an ego person, body-mind-body, and somewhere along the way there’s going to be a shift into being a self-observer. Somewhere along the way there’s going to be a detachment, being the reference point of the witness, whether it’s witnessing the world of form or witnessing the heart dimension.

And so, that’s what the book is. It’s basically a road map, an energetic road map. If you read just for content, you’re missing perhaps the greatest gift of the book, as far as what we spoke of earlier about meditative reading.

And so, there wasn’t any progress here, as far as—I guess there was progress in thinking in the past, having the observation and being fully in the body and watching concentration develop as it did. But really, like I said earlier, it’s sharing with people and understanding where they’re looking from, and then asking through questioning to come up with their own answers.

People already know when it’s recognized. That’s why self-observation is so important. That which is looking is already “I.”

Rick: Now, for instance, you mentioned a little while ago that after 12 years the witness dropped away. So, that seems like a significant milestone on that road map. There were 12 years of witnessing, and then the witness dropped away, and that was probably 10 years ago that that happened, or eight years ago.

So, as a case in point—and there might be many others which you haven’t told us about yet—what does it mean that the witness was there for 12 years and then it dropped away? And what was the subjective experience with that shift?

Katie: Well, the witness is reflected being-consciousness-bliss, and so it might even be confused with the ultimate state. So, self-inquiry as the witness—I recommend continuing the inquiry. What can cause the witness to surrender? It all happens by itself, spontaneously, beyond space, beyond time, beyond causality.

This self-inquiry of being, this feeling of “I-ness,” I would say, is the way. It’s the direct way.

Rick: So you say the witness is a reflection of—I forget how you put it—of consciousness and bliss.

Katie: Of pure consciousness, being in bliss.

Rick: It’s a reflection, but it’s not the actual.

Katie: It’s not the absolute.

Rick: And so, it’s a reflection in what? What is reflecting it?

Katie: I don’t know.

Rick: And so, to be in that witness state for 12 years?

Katie: I would say—I often refer to the mind as a mirror that is reflecting, but really, as the witnessing consciousness, there is no mirror. You recognize consciousness, and yet it’s still a reflection; it’s not pure.

Rick: That’s interesting. So, the witness state would be like looking at your rear-view mirror and seeing the car. The car is there—you see the car—but you’re just seeing it sort of vicariously or tangentially, whereas the car starts to pass you and then you see the actual car directly, without any intermediation, without anything.

And so what you’re saying is—and I’m just stating it, and you can correct me if I’m not getting it right—in this witness state, which was there for you for 12 years, pure consciousness was appreciated, and the bliss of pure consciousness and so on was enjoyed or lived, but it was somewhat indirect or vicarious.

Katie: Well, there was still the appearance of objects.

Rick: Separate from pure consciousness.

Katie: There wasn’t any separation, but there was still the perception of objects, which means duality. There’s no problem with the objects; it’s the reference point of the witness, the subject. Without a subject, there are no objects, and all is pure consciousness.

Rick: So, during the witness stage, there was consciousness and then objects, and there was this separation or duality between them. Is that what you’re saying?

Katie: I just experienced them as objects rather than experiencing them as I am, as pure consciousness. In other words, there was the witness that would either be witnessing the empty or the full void, or witnessing the heart, or witnessing the world of form as objects.

Rick: Yeah, so there was that, and then there were trees and people and cars and all those things as objects. And then the witness dropped away, or that phase was—

Katie: And that’s what allowed the full integration, immediate integration.

Rick: Now it’s not just witness and trees and people and cars; it’s sort of all consciousness, right? Consciousness appearing as trees, consciousness appearing as cars, but it’s all consciousness.

Katie: And free of the labels. We use the labels for communication and for writing.

Rick: Sure, and for functioning in the world, like driving your car or something. You don’t sort of get on the lawn mower and try to go to the—

Katie: —grocery store and ask if you could have a little free, pure consciousness.

Rick: But nonetheless, the grocery store or whatever else, it’s all seen as consciousness. Yeah, okay, got it. And is that what you refer to as “unity consciousness”? You use that phrase in your book a lot.

Katie: Unity consciousness, as I use the term, is where there is a you and me that is merging as one, rather than transcendental—realizing this pure beingness that is appearing as Rick and Katie.

Rick: And that wouldn’t be the case in the witnessing stage, because there would be consciousness and then there would be external objects, and they are not recognized as one. But in unity consciousness, you are saying that you and I and everything else are all recognized as contained within one totality or wholeness or something.

Okay, I just try to repeat these things so as to make sure that we are on the same wavelength and understand what you are saying.

Katie: Right. Is it so important to really understand so much?

Rick: If we are having an interview, and if you have discussed these things in your book, then it was important to write them in the book.

Katie: Oh yes, and I love that conversation. I guess I would just caution about talking about it, which is our opportunity today, which is why we are here. But as far as anyone who may be listening, is it so important that you mentally understand? What is really important is that there is direct looking.

Rick: Absolutely, yeah.

Katie: And then there is natural knowing; there is recognition of what already is. But if you are talking about, well, in an instant, is the world real or unreal, and you want that answered, that answer would change depending upon who is looking.

Rick: Yeah, and depending upon who is listening to this, some things we are saying might be more germane to some people than others. Someone listening might have been in that witnessing stage for a decade, and so your description of phasing into the unity stage might be just what the doctor ordered, whereas for somebody else it might just be very far-fetched and theoretical.

Anything on your mind at this point?

Katie: Not a thing.

Rick: Okay, I just want to check. I want to make sure I am not stifling you by talking too much. So, are there any other things like that, with the proviso that understanding is not really going to cut it, that it has to be an experiential thing? Are there any other things like that, such as in the book you, for instance, discriminated or discerned between four different types of surrender?

Is there anything that we can break down for people that you feel might be relevant and interesting, in terms of this road map that we were talking about earlier?

Katie: I would say, again, if you want to speak directly about surrender, is that what the question is about?

Rick: Well, that’s a case in point, but that might be worth exploring, because I found that little bit in the book kind of interesting, where you had four different names for types or qualities of surrender. I thought, “Wow, I’ve never seen it broken down that way before.”

Katie: I guess the bottom line of that would be, to make it as simple as possible, that if it’s in movement and changing, it’s going to be surrendered. At the moment that you recognize that there is change, it can be released in the search for who you are.

The only thing certain about the ever-changing is the fact that you are changed. As a matter of fact, you wouldn’t even be able to see change if you weren’t already changeless.

The only thing certain about the ever-changing is the fact that you are changed. As a matter of fact, you wouldn’t even be able to see change if you weren’t already changeless.

So, the bottom line of surrender, rather than saying there are all these levels, perhaps, is that it’s just natural that you’re going to meet what is required for you to see. If you’re looking, you can trust the fact that everything that needs to be seen and then surrendered—or “let go of” might be a better term for it—is just gone. It surrenders by itself.

You don’t even need to say, “Should I let go of this? Should I not let go of this?” That’s the ego trying to control things. Just be in the looking.

Unconditional surrender is just—well, really, it’s unconditional love, allowing things to be just as they are.

Unequivocal Surrender of the Self

Unequivocal surrender is that you could just surrender your path to enlightenment, all your life situations, to someone who knows the way. I’d like to add there that it is very, very rare that someone would say, “Yes, I’ll surrender my problems and conflicts. I’ll surrender my search for enlightenment, and first and foremost, I’ll surrender myself.”

Everyone wants to get away from the problems and conflicts, but are you willing to surrender to your own self? Are you willing to look directly and see if that concept is true? That’s an unequivocal surrender.

Transcendental surrender is who you are as essence, who you are now. I see your kitty tail.

Rick: Yeah, here’s the tail, and here’s the kitty.

Katie: Oh, Zen Buddha.

Rick: Yeah, her name is Leela. You said a number of interesting things there, but the one about it’s very, very rare for one to surrender everything, including yourself or the concept of self. Usually one sees that or understands that in the context of a guru relationship, where you are with someone closely enough whom you can trust and then can surrender to that cosmic personality, which can shortcut the whole process.

Katie: Yes, and I’m one who says, “You are a soft guru. Allow your problems and conflicts to be. Are you willing to just surrender yourself?” This is the invitation. “I am within you, and I’m pointing only to you. What are you willing to surrender?”

“I want to get rid of my pain, but I don’t want to get rid of my pleasure. I want to get rid of my anger, but I don’t want to get rid of relative happiness.” That’s further out than the surrender that I’m speaking of. It’s taking a look at the subject.

Will you surrender to who you really are? Will you let go of that ego, that concept of “I” that’s limited to the body? And then find, of course, that you’re all of it—it’s completely integrated.

Rick: You’re on what? You’re on what is integrated? I missed the word there.

Katie: Even your own body, I might have said.

Rick: Oh, your own body, I see. Now, you deal with a lot of people, I presume, one-on-one and also sometimes in satsangs. How does what you’re saying work out in practical situations? To what extent do you find people are willing and able—especially able—to actually surrender? Is it really that volitional, or is it kind of more…?

Katie: It happens by itself.

Rick: Yeah. Is it something one can just decide to do, or not so much?

Katie: No, it’s in the absence of you.

Rick: Yeah. So often it’s described in a way, and you’ve just been describing it in a way, that makes it sound like, “Oh, well, I can just decide to do that and it will happen.”

Katie: If you can stop and be still and just let go, be this feeling of I-ness before it’s co-opted by the ego, all of the surrenders happen by themselves. And yes, in satsang there can be someone who is stunned, and the eyes become very large. And I haven’t done anything; there’s no one here to do anything. So grace has its role, maturity has its role, and yet it remains uncaused.

Rick: Resonance, as we were saying earlier.

Katie: At a beginning level, I’ve met with people individually, just as an experiment—someone who was not interested in self-realization but was having a problem in her life situation. I just experimented with the question, “Who am I?” After sitting together for a while, watching the breathing and looking directly within her, she opened her eyes, and her eyes grew wide. She said, “There is no one here.” And the next thing she said was, “What a relief.”

There is no one here. What a relief.

I’m not saying that even ten minutes from there she didn’t identify and pick up the baggage again, like we said at the beginning of our conversation. It has a great deal of momentum.

Rick: Deeply ingrained habit, yeah.

Katie: You watch maybe a wagon wheel that’s spinning. It has its momentum, and so you’re patient, you allow the spinning, and it finally stops on its own accord.

Patience, maturity, and allowing life

Rick: I think the key point here is that thousands of people listen to these interviews, and in the back of my mind I always have this sense of how much diversity of people there might be. I wouldn’t want anybody to get discouraged or misunderstand something, if possible—anything we can clarify.

I’ve had people say, “Oh, I’ve been at this for 30 years and it’s never happened to me, and it’s kind of discouraging.” But I think that, for me, the takeaway point from what you just said is that if there is this sincere intention and willingness to just embark on this, or to do whatever seems possible and appropriate in your circumstances, then it will bear fruit, and there will be a progression.

Even though you already are that, and it’s already there, and so on and so forth, there is nonetheless simultaneously a progression and an unfoldment if one has one’s attention and intention in that direction.

Katie: Yeah. I meet with people for the first time who have been on the path for 25 or 30 years, and they are perhaps the most difficult to suggest, “Can you stop? Can you stop all the trying? Can you stop the searching? Can you look to see what already is?”

Rick: Because they are so habituated to trying and searching.

Katie: Right, and they have such an investment.

Rick: It’s not as innocent as that other woman.

Katie: There is also much knowledge—all the books and satsangs and scriptures that they’ve read. It could even be, “Can you just innocently be here now and be aware as you are, and conscious in being?” It really is all quite simple.

Rick: When you meet—I’m sorry.

Katie: There are a great variety of life stories, but of course, that isn’t the essential. The essential is the being, and that’s this beautiful, radiant love that is appearing as all diversity.

Let’s call it distinction, allowing you to access beautiful talents and the beauty that your body naturally has from being born into form, but also being able to access a completely unconditioned intelligence that flows through as creativity.

So the difference is, if you’ve been on the path for 25 years, is it possible really to stop? It does anyway, if you have practiced long enough. The mind will finally give up. This is impossible to understand. “I’m going to let go, and I’m going to let go now. I’m going to stop trying to understand this.”

And that’s an amazing moment, because that’s when, we can call it joy, rushes in. There still may be some surrounding doubt, but at that point of maturity, you can see that it’s just mind activity and, really, it doesn’t matter. It can even be adorable in its attempt to reestablish itself.

And I guess the other thing is what I call forbearance—maybe just patience—not only with awakening. Who you are is already awake. Can you be patient? Is it okay for you to suffer? How deeply can you suffer? Can you really allow the suffering of the collective state of ego consciousness?

I mean, even for those who are free of the ego state, suffering may still be appearing, but there is no sufferer. I would probably ask, have you gone into that void that appears? I guess you could call that the experience of no experience. The mind might label it as nothingness. Are you willing to explore that—the pain that’s far deeper than your personal story as collective human beings?

How deeply are you willing to welcome it? And the one who is looking is the light. The miracle in that really is that if you can recognize directly that there is no night and realize that there is a heart in the deepest darkness, then truthfully, you are free.

You’re free of the fear. You’re free of the fear of death. You’re free of the fear of extinction. You’ve met death and you’ve realized what that is directly, which is realizing what’s never been born, and the fact that the ego state of consciousness is released and the body is here as long as it is.

The one who is looking is the light.

Rick: I like that. I like what you’re saying about patience. I start my day every day by looking at NASA’s latest picture of the day, which is usually some galaxy or a whole bunch of galaxies.

Katie: Amazing.

Rick: Yeah, and it kind of puts things in context, you know, and you realize that in the course of your lifetime, our galaxy doesn’t even rotate perceptibly. It would take 80,000 years just for light to go across it, so it does take that long.

Katie: It is. Oh, I was just going to say, it is so amazing. I mean, even in this moment, this Earth is traveling through space at, I think it was 600,000 miles an hour. Is that possible?

Rick: Yeah, something like that.

Katie: It must be 600, whatever.

Rick: No, no, no, no, no. The world is rotating at 1,000 miles an hour, or actually more, but also there’s the rotation of the galaxy and the movement of the galaxy, and we’re really whizzing around.

Katie: Right, and we don’t even notice. And so those pictures that you’re speaking of at the NASA website, I really enjoy them as well. I mean, what intelligence is this?

Rick: Yeah, exactly. And the point you made about patience—I mean, if you put your individual life in the context of that cosmic reality, for me it cultivates patience and forbearance, and a recognition of, like you were saying earlier, the universe is my body. But then there’s this little speck of Katie that people sort of relate to.

But your reference just now to the intelligence of the universe, that’s another topic that I think is fascinating, and I think you allude to it in your book here and there, when you’re describing scenes of viewing nature in Hawaii and so on—the play and display of Divine intelligence in everything, and how incomprehensibly profound and deep and vast that is.

Katie: And gentle.

Rick: And gentle, yeah. And violent, I mean, an asteroid could crash into our planet and we’d all be toast in a second.

Katie: Yeah, good point. It’s just being fully and completely where you are in every moment and not so fixated on the content. Perhaps appreciate the space around the content and realize that that massive space is arising within you and seems unfathomable, and you’re the source of it—which isn’t quite fully integrated, to say it in that manner—but that you are the source of all that universe that you’re looking through those telescopes, appearing.

And of course, you can’t know the absolute. It’s beyond perception; it’s beyond cognition. So this is why they say it’s indescribable—not that it is so incredibly beautiful, which it is, of course, as consciousness lives, but there is no second for the absolute. There’s no one to know it; there’s no one to perceive it. I am that.

Rick: Which may be why we have a universe, you know? “I am one, may I become many.” There’s no fun in loneliness.

Katie: Oh, I know. And how amazing we must truly be. As you said, look at the amazing child playing in the garden, or an asteroid hitting Earth, or the push and pull of the tides, the changing seasons. All of that is happening by itself.

So maybe that little teeny life situation could also be happening by itself. You don’t know when you were born, when your body was born, and you don’t know when you’ll die. Can you simply be present with what is?

And I don’t mean just sitting at a meditation altar, but are you free enough to spontaneously be moved to garden work, or being a survivalist, or an occupied protester, or spontaneously playing that activist role, teacher role, or mother role? Whatever the roles may be, consciously allowing it to live you.

That’s all said in a dual manner, and yet that’s the conversational use of words that are required to communicate. And in that, there’s such an ease to it all.

Rick: Yeah, and it’s interesting to put it in the context that we just have, because sometimes when we just speak of, “You are not the individuality; you are really being,” and so on, the terminology is somewhat abstract.

But if you think of it in terms of cosmology—we are essentially that intelligence which is permeating this entire universe and apparently giving rise to it—and then we think of the so-called individuality in the context of that, it’s like one of the trillion cells in our body.

Although here we have a body that is one of the trillion, or six billion, cells on the planet, so to speak—or seven billion. And now astronomers are saying that there are probably billions of habitable planets in our galaxy, and then there are billions of galaxies.

So remind oneself that, “I am that intelligence which is giving rise to all this, and this individuality, such as it is, is just a little pinprick aspect of that whole thing.”

Katie: Right, we want to hang on to that, and we want to hang on to that. We want some guarantee that the ground is going to be below us if we let go, or that if we really let life live itself as it is, then everything would fall into chaos.

And yet, we can see the beauty of how all is happening by itself. I mentioned the tides, you mentioned planets in the universe, and there are some collisions.

Rick: Yeah, there are collisions, yeah. But what was that beautiful place in the Bible? You’ve probably studied Christianity more than I have, but the lilies of the field, and even Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed as one of these.

And Jesus was talking about how—was that the same verse in which he said, if God takes care of these insignificant things, imagine how much He will take care of you? And I think that it is right up the alley of what you were saying about letting—or, to coin a cliché phrase—let go and let God. There is surrender into allowing that Divine Intelligence to run the show.

Katie: The image that came as you were speaking there was being in a rushing river and hanging on to a rock for dear life: “I will not let this river lead me to the ocean.” What would happen if you just stopped trying and let go?

What would happen if you just stopped trying and let go?

Rick: Or swimming upstream and not even hanging on to a rock, just trying to go in the opposite direction. Yeah, that’s beautiful. These metaphors help, I think, because they actually point to something real. They’re not just little ideas; they’re ways of actually talking about the reality of the situation.

I remember Nisargadatta saying, “With you, digestion is automatic and breathing is automatic.” And he said, “With me, everything that you see me saying and doing is just as automatic as digestion and breathing are for you.”

Katie: Exactly.

Rick: Alrighty, well, this is delightful. I find the more we talk, the more I settle into the point where I don’t feel like talking anymore.

Katie: Silence is good too.

Closing and resources

Rick: Is there anything else which comes to mind, which you feel you would like to cover or point out or say?

Katie: It doesn’t appear to be. We’re going to be in Asheville, North Carolina, in July—excuse me, the first week in June. We’re going to be in Silver Spring, Maryland, the second week in June, and then up in Toronto in the last week in July.

Rick: Yeah, July, August, that gathering.

Katie: Yeah, the last week in July, I believe it is.

Rick: And you probably have all that on your website, right, your schedule?

Katie:www.katiedavis.org.

Rick: And I’ll be linking to that also from batgap.com.

Katie: Thank you. I want to thank you for all that you supply the community. It’s a tremendous support for the Buddha at the Gas Pump community as well as for these so-called teachers. It’s great to share with you, and it’s just a wonderful service.

Rick: Well, thanks. It’s not as altruistic as it may seem because I just derive so much personal fulfillment from it that I really enjoy it a lot. So what I mean to say is, it’s not a sacrifice or a burden or any kind of toil and trouble by any means; it’s something that is very enriching for me. And it’s really enjoyable to kind of tune in each week, align myself with a different expression of this, read the books, listen to the recordings, and talk to the person. It sort of keeps enriching different facets of my own experience as I do that. So it’s kind of like a spiritual practice for me in and of itself.

Katie: It shines through; it’s beautiful.

Rick: Well, thanks. Let me make a couple of little concluding remarks. I’ve already made one, which is that you’ll see a link to Katie’s website on mine, batgap.com, and there will also be a link to the Amazon page where you can get her book.

And there are several other things you’ll find on batgap.com: a place to subscribe to an email notification so you’ll get an email each time a new interview is posted. There’s a discussion group that gets quite lively around each interview. There are like 700 posts now on the last interview I did. A lot of them are just little silly things—somebody posted a Frank Sinatra video that I noticed today—but for the most part, they become quite substantive also, so pretty good discussions get going there. So feel free to participate in that.

If you’re listening to this on YouTube and you’d like to be notified that way, just subscribe to the channel, and YouTube will email you when a new interview is posted. There’s also an audio podcast, so that if you like to listen to things while you’re commuting or doing chores or something, you can subscribe to the podcast and hear this in audio. So you’ll find a link to that on batgap.com.

So thank you, Katie.

Katie: You’re very welcome, Rick.

Rick: Yeah, and say hi to Sundance for me. I’ll be speaking with Katie’s husband, Sundance Burke, next week, and I’ll try to read his book this week. And until then, I thank those who have been watching or listening for doing so, and we’ll see you next time.

[Music]