218. Kristin Kirk Transcript - Buddha at the Gas Pump

Questions this interview answers

How can spiritual awakening occur without formal teachers or practices?
What is the role of fear and control in the process of spiritual awakening?
How do past lives and in-between lives influence spiritual development?
Can communication with plants, animals, and spirit guides be part of spiritual growth?
Is it possible to rapidly process and release karmic conditioning in the current era?

Key takeaways

Spiritual awakening can unfold naturally without prior study or formal practice.
Letting go of fear and the illusion of control is key to deeper spiritual transformation.
Awakening often happens in stages, affecting mind, heart, and body over time.
Direct experience is more important than spiritual jargon or accumulated knowledge.
Communication with plants, animals, and guides can arise as consciousness expands.
Current planetary changes may accelerate personal and collective spiritual evolution.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Kristin Kirk. Kristin lives in Western Massachusetts, and you’ll learn all about her in the next couple of hours.

Kristin and I did a three-hour interview yesterday, and I discovered at the end of it that her side of the audio hadn’t recorded. There was no way to retrieve it. So we both took that very philosophically, she more than I [laughs]. I spent a bunch of time here messing with equipment, and we believe we have it working now. But it’s good in a way because that was a dress rehearsal, in a sense, and I think today’s interview will be even more substantial and interesting for the listeners.

Kristin was brought to my attention a couple of months ago by a fellow who had attended a weekend seminar retreat that she had conducted up in Seattle, and he sent me a bunch of recordings. He was raving about her. I listened to a little bit, and what struck me immediately, and has been reinforced now in having had this conversation with Kristin, is that she speaks very genuinely from her own experience. She didn’t really have a spiritual teacher or practice prior to this spiritual unfoldment, which began to occur for her, and she hasn’t read a lot of spiritual books. In fact, I’ll bring out certain terms, and she’ll say, “I don’t know what that means,” but she does know what it means on the level of her experience.

I think people will find that refreshing as, a lot of times—and I am guilty of it more than anyone—people have a lot of jargon without enough direct experience to substantiate it.

Welcome back, Kristin.

Kristin: Thank you. It’s my pleasure.

Rick: We were just talking before the interview, and my wife, Irene, was also bringing up some points that I had been thinking of which was that I find that a lot of time when people have a kind of an innocent spiritual awakening that they hadn’t really worked on, or done practices for or anything else, they also had some stuff in early childhood which was sort of an indicator that this might happen a little bit later in life. Did you have anything going on in your childhood that you would consider significant in terms of any spiritual glimpses or experiences?

Kristin: There’s only one thing that comes to mind. I had different sort of psychic experiences, but those are really different than my experience of awakening. I remember when I was 13 I had an experience of—I don’t even quite know how to describe it actually—but it was a sort of knowing of myself. The only reference I had for it was Jesus. I was brought up Christian, and there was just this incredible enlightened quality. It’s only been in the last few years that that memory has come back because the quality of presence in myself sometimes has that reflection. It’s not sustained at that extreme, but it came forward when I was 13. It was both that quality as well as a knowledge that—and this is part of the metaphysical piece, too—every single place in consciousness can be experienced from a single point.

There was a third thing of knowing that there was an ability to move things without touching them.

Rick: Oh yeah?

Kristin: Yeah, and this I remembered after our interview yesterday. That was only the precursor and doing the healing work that I do where I’m experiencing thoughts and emotions and karma as stuff, as material, and being present with the moving of it, or the releasing or the transforming of it. That feels really similar to that 13-year-old experience of being able to move things.

Rick: Give us an example of something you might have moved when you were 13 without touching it.

Kristin: Oh, no, I didn’t move anything when I was 13. It was when I was 13 I just had this expanded experience of experiencing myself as a divine being. Again, all I had the reference for was Christ, was Jesus, and the awareness of a capacity to move things. So it wasn’t that anything happened after that moment. You just asked, “Were there any precursors,” and I would say there was only that, again, innocent 13-year-old experience that made no sense at the time. But when I started doing the healing work and started having the experience of feeling things move in that way without touching them, basically that jogged my memory to 13 and that level of… I don’t know what word to use, that quality of consciousness.

🕊️ Past Lives and Spiritual Evolution

Rick: Another thing that occurs to me—and this is pretty common in Eastern traditions—is that obviously you may have done a lot of work in previous lives. Like in the Gita, for instance, Arjuna asks Lord Krishna, “What happens if a person is on the path, and they don’t get enlightened, and they die,” and Krishna basically just says, “Well, they pick up where they left off” [laughs] roughly paraphrasing. And since you do have memories of past lives, not only yours, but you perceive them in people you’re working on, do you have any recollections of having been a spiritual practitioner in past lives?

Kristin: Sure, but a lot of the work happened in-between lives. There are all these different dimensions, and so there’s an awareness of applying myself. It’s almost more like in response to some of the density of the past lives, there was an impetus to evolve, and so that was done a lot through my in-between lives. There is a life I remember being a Tibetan Monk and using bowls. We had these bowls that we would do healing with, and I remember…

Rick: Bulls like male cows? Bulls?

Kristin: Oh, no, B-O-W-L.

Rick: Oh, bowls, I see [laughs].

Kristin: We call them singing bowls, and there were bowls that we had used to do healing work with people when they would come and visit the place where we were. So I remember that, but I haven’t had lots and lots of lives of spiritual practices. I mean there have been some, but again it feels like it’s been more in-between lives.

Rick: You don’t read a lot of spiritual books, but did you ever read Michael Newton’s book or books? He was this hypnotist that was hypnotizing people to go back to early childhood memories and stuff, and he had one in which the person kept going, and they started remembering all this stuff that happened between lives, and that became his specialty, and he interviewed thousands of people and hypnotized thousands of people to go back and chronicle the whole thing. He has it very well worked out.

So then in 2003 something started really opening up for you. You had become a Shiatsu practitioner and student, and somehow that triggered some kind of awakening?

Opening to Subtle Perceptions

Kristin: The next marker that I would name would be in 1990, 1991. I started having past life memory and communicating with spirit guides and hearing animals, doing telepathy with animals and hearing the spirits of plants, and again there was nothing that was done for that to happen. It just opened and started happening. So if I were to have any spiritual practice at that point it would have been just a deep, deep connection with what I would have called spirit at the time: deep reverence, love, respect, and trust that I was always listening to and then open to this magnificence of all these levels of communication and how much capacity we have as human beings that most people aren’t experiencing. So that feels like the next marker, and then I would say in 2003 there was more of the experience of an awakening.

Everything is conscious, and the more that we wake up to the truth of who we are, the more we’re not separate from everything.

Rick: I was going to say—just to put that in a historical context to corroborate it—it’s completely part of this sort of traditional spiritual literature, at least of India. The kinds of things you are describing are expected to happen in the course of one’s evolution. Patanjali talks about being able to communicate with animals, for instance, and remembering past lives. In the Yoga Sutras he discusses that. I have actually met someone in India, and there are many others, who communicate with plants so clearly that the plant tells them what it’s good for in terms of its medicinal value and so on. They can just walk through the forest, and it’s kind of like Alice in Wonderland. The plants are saying, “Eat me,” [laughs] for this particular reason.

Kristin: Exactly. That’s my experience, totally.

I was horseback riding—this was a few years ago—and there was this gorgeous mushroom that was on the side of the road, huge, and it was calling out for me to eat it. I know enough about mushrooms that—even though I believed the mushroom—I still wasn’t going to go and just eat the mushroom. When I was riding my horse on the way back, there was a woman who had pulled over on the side of the road and was harvesting this mushroom and said, “You know you can eat these” [laughs]. So for me in that moment there was a recognition too, of the mushroom in its own divine self wanting to be of service and wanting to be eaten, and whoever was willing to meet that, there was that satisfaction. The plant getting to serve the way it was wanting to.

Rick: Yeah, lest this all sound a little kooky to some people, and some people will take it in stride. In the course of this conversation we’re going to get into the mechanics of how the kinds of things you’re saying could be. I mean, how does a mushroom have the intelligence to call out to a passing horseback rider saying it wants to be eaten? We are going to discuss that sort of thing in the course of this conversation.

Kristin: Yeah, and I would say simply—and we can talk more about it later—everything is conscious. If everything is one and everything is divine, everything is conscious, and the more that we wake up to the truth of who were are, the more we’re not separate from everything. We are in communication with all of this exquisite manifestation that’s happening.

✨ The 2003 Awakening

Rick: Yeah, beautiful. So what happened in 2003?

Kristin: Yeah, so 2003 I had been in my Shiatsu practice for 10 or 12– I’m not quite sure how many years at that point, and there was this inner call to be doing a different kind of healing work. So the previous couple of years I had studied with two different shamans. I had flown to California to study with another woman. All of the things that I was studying were beautiful, and I didn’t study them long because it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. There was this inner knowing, and so one part of the catalyst in 2003 was inner surrendering to the truth that if something was going to come out it had to come out on the inside because it wasn’t being shown to me on the outside.

The other thing that happened at that same time was there was a sudden recognition that even though I had been deeply devoted to spirit my whole life—those are the words I would have used—even though I was deeply devoted, it was a quiet voice of spirit that I would listen to in the background, and then I would drive my car. You know, I was holding this steering wheel, and I realized that I was actually afraid—which was a shock to me—that if I trusted that divine voice so much then why would I be afraid and still be driving the way that I was. So it was just this recognition of being a hypocrite that if I truly trusted that voice with my life, which I did, then why was I letting the fear be in front? So it was an experiment, actually.

It was just—and in that innocence, you know, that we were speaking about earlier— total innocent curiosity of knowing that my whole life I knew what it was like to listen to spirit but have fear in front. I didn’t know what it would be like if I set the fear off to the side and let that small voice come forward. So it was the combination of those two things: knowing that this healing work was going to have to come from the inside because I wasn’t seeing it on the outside, and that inner experiment of setting the fear aside. So it was those two things together that shifted things, and it wasn’t an immediate shift. It was a couple months later with total resting in the unknown of what the product of the experiment would be. So there were a couple of months of sort of open wondering, not knowing.

My life has changed dramatically, and I’m totally loving my life, loving the expressions that are happening and the fullness and richness. Yeah, it’s like Alice in Wonderland basically.

Letting Go of Control and the Role of Fear

Rick: I think this experience of fear is somewhat universal when it comes to consciousness anyway. There’s a verse in the Upanishads where it says that certainly all fear is born of duality. So if you’re in a dualistic state, you’re kind of on thin ice, so to speak. That which you think yourself to be is, firstly, a very poor driver of the car because it doesn’t have universal intelligence, really. It’s just an individual expression, and it’s very tenuous. I mean, it can die; it can get hurt. All kinds of things can happen, but when—as was your experience—you kind of shift and let that little voice in the background take over in the driver’s seat, then what can go wrong?

Kristin: I’ll add that part of the fear was that I would lose control. I would lose control of my life, and my life would completely change. There would be nothing that I could do about it. That was exactly true, and it was perfect. It was totally perfect. My life has changed dramatically, and I’m totally loving my life, loving the expressions that are happening and the fullness and richness. Yeah, it’s like Alice in Wonderland basically. As you said, it’s like opening up to this magnificent truth that’s happening.

Rick: I think a lot of people can relate to that. It is this tussle, this control issue thing that I think a lot of people go through on the spiritual path where they’re called upon at a certain point to relinquish control which they have never really had anyway, but at least to relinquish the illusion of control. There’s even a bumper sticker, “Let go, and let God,” but it could be fearful for that which thinks it’s in control because it’s kind of a Jack and the Beanstalk thing. What would happen if I sold the cow for these magic beans? It’s a little bit of a leap into the unknown, don’t you think?

Kristin: Right, and it feels really important to also speak to the emptiness and the nothingness that’s present with all of it. Because before the awakening there was a magnitude of awesome experience, you know, in terms of communicating with plants and animals and being in the absolute wonder of this exquisite planet that we live on and that we participate in and along this awakening path. I hadn’t studied anything. I wasn’t on a particular path. There were realizations that were really surprising to me, and one of the first ones that was really shocking was from the experience of infinite I Am. It’s a singular—just singular—consciousness. The experience of that disappearing—and words are really tricky—but into an absolute nonexistence that can’t be experienced because it’s absolute empty. I mean empty is even too full of a word, and then the reappearance of the I Am.

That was a shock to me, and from there then layers of experiencing nothingness inseparably from all of this magnificence. So I’m just aware that the little bits of spiritual jargon that I’ve heard, you know, people having concern about getting lost in all the wonder. For me, nothing has been chased after or sought. It’s all just unfolded, and at this point all this amazing wonder is inseparable from an absolute, complete utter nothingness at the same time. It’s all happening at the same time.

Rick: I think you just answered a question that I was going to ask and that was, you know, back in the 90s and so on when you were having all these wonderful experiences I get the sense that you’re orientation was still Kristin having all these wonderful experiences, you know: little me experiencing this memory, or this plant talking to me, or this animal or whatever. Whereas what happened in 2003 is that a whole different dimension kind of opened up which was not just the little me. Kind of the universal ground of being became part of the range of your experience. Would that be a fair summary of what you just said?

Kristin: Not quite because the 2003 awakening was an initial awakening, so I can definitely speak to the 2003 on, but that would be longer than one sentence. Where prior to 2003 can be one sentence. There was definitely the sense of Kristin who was having all these experiences and with a sense of ownership and ego of building an experiential or a psychic skill set. So it was very, very different from the 2003 transition, you know, where things happened differently, but there was no concept of awakening. There was no thought of enlightenment or that possibility of being present. I don’t know; it just was not on my radar.

Rick: Just to kind of go at this bit more to make sure that I, and listeners, completely understand. Would it be fair to say that, although 2003 wasn’t a kind of a complete ripening of what has transpired since, it was a kind of a milestone or a watershed event in which the unfoldment of the kind of universal—again to use that word “universal”—ground of being began to take place, and the orientation—your orientation—began to shift from Kristin in the driver’s seat to something far more vast in the driver’s seat? It just wasn’t a night-and-day abrupt change but one that you can look back to at that time as the point at which the tables began to turn? Would that be fair? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but by saying something that can get you to bring it out more and get it more clear, you know.

Kristin: Right. Part of my hesitation to speak is that I see things in so much detail that when I start speaking on that level of complexity I just lose people, in my experience so far. So I’m just pausing in terms of how do I respond?

Rick: We have plenty of time to hash it out. So you can try to say something, and if I’m feeling lost I’ll try to pin you down a little more. Hopefully we can stitch it all together in a way that people can appreciate.

Kristin: So my experience is that there are different kinds of levels of awakening and that there can be mental awakenings or heart awakenings, body awakenings. As consciousness awakens there’s an integration that happens through all these levels of being. I would describe that now, looking back, as a certain aspect of mental awakening. There have been since then deeper, more expansive, more inclusive mental body awakenings, but it felt like that was an initial awakening. If I knew all the Tibetan Buddhism structures of things, or if I knew all the language, I could probably tell you which degree of whatever it was. So it wasn’t this mind-blowing awakening that shattered or altered my reality, but at the time not knowing the word “awakening,” that was a word I was using. I was sharing with friends like, “I had some sort of awakening.

I don’t know what happened.” So it was definitely the beginning, and that was when my healing work totally changed, and I started applying all that healing work to myself for which I was present in that process for hours and hours each day, bringing me through this whole process of just processing and releasing conditioning from this lifetime and other lifetimes, which wasn’t what was happening before that 2003 point. So there’s still a process that continued, but the focus of it and the intensity and the depth of it were entirely different. The experience of consciousness was continually altering during that whole process and for years after that, whereas before 2003 there wasn’t so much an altering of consciousness.

There are different kinds of levels of awakening and that there can be mental awakenings or heart awakenings, body awakenings. As consciousness awakens there’s an integration that happens through all these levels of being.

Rick: Well, first of all I really like the point of multiple awakenings because a lot of times when people say, “Well I had my awakening,” I think, “Well, which one?” I mean there are obviously going to continue to be degrees of awakening, if that’s how we want to use the word. If we want to use it in some sort of ultimate sense, fine. Maybe there’s just one, but maybe we should reserve “enlightenment” for that ultimate thing.

Secondly, you know what you’re saying is also corroborated by other teachers and traditions. For instance Adyashanti talks about awakening in the head, heart and gut as stages of awakening that he underwent, I believe.

Third—well you could comment on the things I just said—but also I would be interested in hearing more about that process you went through for hours and hours a day after this thing began to happen. I think you mentioned you were lying in bed for four hours a day going through all kinds of stuff. I don’t know, it might be interesting for people, and it might be of some value to have you describe that experience.

Kristin: Sure. I’ve spent so many hours of my life that way [laughs].

Rick: Were you also sick at this time? I know you had multiple chemical sensitivities, and then you had Lyme disease. Was that all happening at the same time?

Kristin: No, the chemical sensitivity was from—I can’t remember years. That was a seven-year thing that I went through and had completed just in time to get Lyme disease [laughing]. So my body was serving well, getting ready to deal with the next karmic lesson there. So I was more in the middle of the Lyme disease and finishing Lyme disease when this happened. So it was still present in the process for sure, but I wasn’t lying in bed during those times because I was sick and didn’t have energy. It was because the process was compelling.

Rick: Yeah, commanded your full attention.

Kristin: Right.

Rick: So what were you actually going through?

Kristin: My relationship with spirit guides that was present before the 2003 remains to this day, and there’s 24/7 communication accessibility. There’s that presence, and it feels like that’s been the gift for me in this lifetime. So although I haven’t had physical spiritual teachers, I’ve had 24/7 intensive support in every single process that’s been happening. So in these experiences of lying in bed, guides would come, and I would just start reliving past life experiences and being present with all the conditioning, all the thoughts and emotions and imbalances and where they were caught in the body and being present with the releasing of them. So that’s what I was doing in my office with people where that shift that wanted to happen. This knowing of this deeper healing work needed to come forward.

That was what started to come forward for my clients, and then it was what was happening with me much of the time.

Rick: I would say—and I say these kinds of things just to sort of anticipate listening questions—the relevance of this is that we all have these deep impressions, and they are not all from this lifetime. They have to be worked out, and maybe it doesn’t take a whole lifetime to work out all the impressions of a previous lifetime. Fortunately they can be worked out in maybe hours or days or something like that.

Kristin: Or minutes.

Rick: Or minutes, but nonetheless they have to be worked out. One metaphor for that might be that if you have a small container and you dump some mud in it, it’s hard to dissolve the mud. It muddies up all the water, but if you have a vast lake or an ocean dump the same amount of mud in, it gets dissolved. So when the container of consciousness becomes larger, so to speak, then you can work out in minutes something that might have taken a lifetime to accumulate, would you say?

Kristin: I think the way I sort of relate to it is that astrologically we’re at a really incredible point in creation and that the level of consciousness, the vibration, is shifting so dramatically that what would have taken a really long time to unfold karmically is being graced and gifted with this opportunity for high speed transformation. So it just seems that these are the times, which is why people are having these awakening experiences all over the place and in all sorts of different ways.

Rick: Do you think it’s being accelerated for everybody whether they like it or not or whether they know it or not?

Kristin: Yeah. My experience is the vibration of the planet is changing. So there’s this incredible opportunity, and people are still all in their own individual experience. So how that relates to people is going to be different. I mean there are some of my clients going through rapid high-speed awakening, and other people are dealing with their mother-in-law and finding childcare. It’s all equally beautiful. People are still in their own individual processes, but I think those that are ready or available– because of where they are in their own growth and evolution and where they are in terms of their own karmic templates. It’s different for each individual, but there’s an opportunity that’s present right now. It’s just kind of amazing.

Rick: I’ve sometimes had the notion that if the whole planet’s consciousness is shifting—which I believe it is also—a rising tide lifts all boats, as the conservative economists say, although it doesn’t in the field of economics. So everyone’s going to be subjected or exposed to this higher consciousness as it rises. Couldn’t that be experienced as rather difficult for people who haven’t been willingly or consciously developing their consciousness? In other words, if they’re really stuck in a lower consciousness way of being, as the planet awakens would they experience a lot of catastrophe, trauma or all kinds of rough stuff?

Kristin: I think where I want to go with that is the individual holding, that if someone is holding really tightly while, as you’re saying, the tide is rising, it is still a gift having this higher vibration come in. How one individual responds is their own freewill in a way. There are different levels that one could speak at. There’s the individual experience. There’s the collective consciousness of humanity. There are these different layers, and I don’t know if we’ll get into dimensions or not in this interview.

Rick: We better!

Kristin: Ok [laughing]. So it depends on what level we’re speaking about, but all of us have had the experience, I’m imagining, of having a hard day and then someone who really loves you comes up and says, “Oh, how you doing?” and in the midst of that love and that warmth, you start crying. Right. The thing that’s been held suddenly breaks open. We all have the opportunity to surrender in that breaking open or to continue to hold on and shut down. So I feel like what you’re talking about is people’s choices and that the gift is this larger and larger embrace and vibration of universal truth, consciousness coming forward in this strong way. It’s a gift, and people can respond and either allow themselves to feel or continue to hold on to their protections.

This actually brings me to this part about the masculine and feminine or the mental body and the emotional body. There’s been an experiential split so there is a sense of duality, and the healing is the unification of those. In order for that unification to happen, all the feeling that has been tucked away has to be felt. It has to be felt, and it can be felt in a nanosecond, or it can be felt in a long process.

For me, being in bed for this whole process in the mornings was feeling all these feelings and experiences from many lifetimes because they hadn’t been fully felt and processed. There was that separation of the heart and the mind, and with that: separation. I speak of myself in past lives, which can act in ways that are cruel because the feeling body isn’t fully integrated, so one can lead armies and kill people and all sorts of horrific things. So for me, part of that process was going through and experiencing every single thought and emotion that was in duality where there was pain and suffering and feeling them to completion in order for them to come into harmony and resolve. I also think that part of my experience has been because I’m doing this healing work with people. It’s been important, for whatever reason, for my system to be able to see the fine details.

So when I’m working with people, I’m also working at that fine detail with other people.

Rick: Interesting. Yeah, I was kind of reminded, as you were speaking of Christ’s statement on the cross, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” You know the people who were doing that were just numb to what they were doing. Today, we have people doing horrible things to dolphins, poachers in Africa and people—we know all the things. I don’t want to muddy up the waters by itemizing all the horrible things that are happening, but it all boils down to a blindness or a numbness, doesn’t it? At some point all that blind, numb behavior is going to have to be rectified or healed which will probably, for those people, mean bringing that feeling that they should have felt when they were actually doing that stuff and then healing it.

Kristin: I wouldn’t use the word, “should,” because it’s all perfect, and again I can only speak to my own experience. So I remember raping people. I remember being a man in a culture where women were—they were like camels. I remember that.

I can continue with this memory and sharing it, but I want to give an overarching perspective of the learning that’s happening and that having these memories for me has given me incredible compassion whereas I wouldn’t say, “should.” In that experience, with the level of consciousness that was present in the culture that the incarnation was happening in, with the karmic experiences in the lives prior to the individuals I met, the atrocities that happened from the people that I was meeting in that lifetime from the previous one, and then seeing the choices that were made, I have total understanding for how those choices happened, and the experience of the brutality. I’m not separate from that.

So even with all these atrocities that are happening on the planet, we can’t shift the darkness unless we meet it in ourselves and recognize that we’re not separate from that and come into absolute wholeness and balance on the inside. It’s from there that then we respond differently to what we’re perceiving in the world instead of contributing to it. If I’m judging those behaviors, I’m offering the vibration of judgment on the planet. So that there’s been a profound unfolding on the inside of remembering both raping people and being raped—I’m picking something. It’s graphic, some of the horrible things that happen, but knowing both sides of that has been how this unfolding has been happening, of needing to really be present with the absolute truth of all experience that’s happened here.

We can’t shift the darkness unless we meet it in ourselves and recognize that we’re not separate from that and come into absolute wholeness and balance on the inside.

Rick: That was a beautiful answer. Absolutely beautiful—

Kristin: Oh, let me add one thing. One of the other things in all of these experiences, all of these memories of lifetimes where just really painful imbalance is present, I’ve seen how in each of those lives the truth was still being sought. I had a life as a pirate [laughs] . I remember being a pirate out in the ocean, and there was a profound connection with freedom and nature and the stars and navigating with the waves, and sky, and the wood of the boat, and the strength of the wood in relation to the power of the wind. There’s deep spiritual experience that was being sought in the midst of the blindness of stealing other peoples’ money. In that total blindness, you know, or lifetimes of confiscating land. Another lifetime as a warrior of not recognizing my own beauty, and so there is a desire to take beauty.

So taking control of gorgeous land to somehow feel beauty because that sense of inner beauty was lost. So in all of these lifetimes there is the disconnect, forgetting the truth and then reaching for the truth so that separation of still reaching for beauty, reaching for freedom, reaching for these things and again in terms of my relating to people now who are making choices that might be easy to judge and see how much suffering is being created. I tend to notice what it is they are actually reaching for, “Oh, that person is reaching for innocence.” They are actually violating innocence, but they are reaching for innocence. So there’s a way of perceiving everything in terms of its own suffering and how it’s actively seeking the divine in ways that we can see is not the way it’s actually going to work.

Rick: That’s great. So would you say that, if we were to summarize, everybody’s doing the best they can, and that the very same drive which motivates the spiritual person to seek enlightenment is motivating the pirate, or the rapist, or the Genghis Kahn, or whoever is doing things is perhaps a much more immature expression of that when a person is violating nature or other people in order to fulfill that drive, but nonetheless it’s the same fundamental yearning for completeness within?

Kristin: Yeah, and I think maturity is a great word. You know that there’s a maturing that’s happening and that each individual expression’s experience of that maturing is different. So not everybody leads an army and kills people. You know past lives don’t necessarily mean there’s been, what we would consider, horrible things that have happened.

Historical Injustices and Compassionate Action

Rick: So when we think of particular historical injustices, do you admire – I imagine we all do – people like Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela as examples of people who were up against huge injustices and somehow dealt with them in a way that was loving and that was not hateful or judgmental in the sense that you’ve been suggesting is not constructive?

Kristin: I wouldn’t say it’s not constructive in that there’s still perfection happening, as horrifying as the experience can be, but in terms of when the human, even in the midst of the human condition, one accesses the deeper reality, and that comes through. It’s always what we’re all wanting, and political figures who do that offer that in a larger arena for more people to see and have that be a reflection for themselves in terms of what’s possible, and if that person can do that, what can I do? So maybe if it’s even only in relation to your neighbors where you see someone picking on someone else, as opposed to not saying anything, and thinking, Oh that’s not my business. Maybe something arises, and you come over and offer a warm, “Hello, how are you guys doing today?” You know what I mean?

There’s ways of—when all of us open to this truth inside and recognize that we’re not separate—showing up with each other. Our individualness becomes different and becomes far more compassionate and present.

Rick: I’m not sure I’m touching the essence of the point by using this example, but I just mentioned three men who approached social injustice with a peaceful method, and it proved to be very effective. Sometimes that’s not always possible. We couldn’t have sweet-talked Hitler out of doing what he was doing. It took a military response to stop him. So you know sometimes even physical violence is necessary, perhaps to meet violence.

Kristin: I think each situation has to be looked at individually because there’s so much detail happening in the midst of any single moment.

Unwinding Karma and Past Lives

Rick: Getting back to your experience. So you went through a period of years, maybe, where you were lying on the bed unwinding all this stuff. How long was that, and did that eventually just taper off and you felt like you cleared through most of it?

Kristin: There were some weeks I would just think, Really? This is my life? I mean I spent another 20 hours in bed this week? So it was years. I don’t know, maybe four or five, and there was a lot of that happening. Yes, it became less. It became—

Rick: Tapered off.

Kristin: Yeah, much less, and then it would be surprising revisiting a life that I had thought was fully cleared and seeing, “Oh, look, there’s another little thread in there.” Yeah, definitely it has tapered.

Rick: So how far back did you go? Were you going back thousands of years to Neanderthal lives and stuff like that?

Kristin: I did have a Neanderthal life [laughs], and it’s wild too. Like experiencing the level of consciousness that was present. It is just really different than where we are right now. In terms of the karmic unraveling, most of it was human lifetimes. I don’t know where to go with this, my experiences remembering multiple universes. So this universe that we’re in isn’t the first universe. There’s been multiple. I don’t know how far back, but in terms of the memory that was happening, the memory went really far back. In terms of the intensity of the karmic unraveling, that was all within human experience and then some in between lifetimes where I wasn’t human. I was just consciousness in between lifetimes. I don’t want to get into too much detail. It would start to get confusing.

Rick: Some people say that all of this is actually happening now. It’s simultaneous. Anita Moorjani, for instance, who had this near-death experience said that she experienced all of her other lifetimes, but they’re actually happening now because everything is happening now in just some other dimension of things.

Kristin: I would agree. You had asked this yesterday in terms of different benchmarks, and I didn’t know how to answer because there have been thousands. There are realizations that just have not stopped, and that was one of them from the shift of feeling past lives in a linear form to actually experiencing everything simultaneously, which leads also to a whole other level when one is present in the awareness of creation, and co-creating, and transforming. I experience evolution now in terms of a spiral. It’s a spiral of consciousness with all lifetimes transforming up this spiral of evolution altogether. So if I knew more physics—I can speak in physics terms to these different dimensions in different ways, but I experience all of these different levels of consciousness also as physics.

✨ Dimensions and Levels of Consciousness

Rick: Let’s talk about levels and dimensions more. Let’s dwell on that for a while. We’re both obviously not physicists, but we both have a little bit of grasp with layman’s terminology of it. So it might be helpful. You lead off, and I’ll ask some questions. What I’m looking for is a kind of—let’s paint out a roadmap of there being different levels, or dimensions, or strata of creation which we can incorporate within our experience and what the significance of that is for our whole spiritual development.

Kristin: Where I’d like to start is actually speaking about the seat of consciousness, the resting point of consciousness and psychic experiences for me in the past. That resting place of consciousness was the same, and all those spiritual experiences were experienced from that point, and in relation to the dimensions and awakening that resting place of consciousness shifts into different dimensional vibrations, different dimensional realities. So that’s how it’s relevant for me in terms of awakening and that when the shift—during my healing practice—when awareness would shift from one dimension to another, each of those were benchmarks and realizing that reality had just changed.

Rick: So a minute ago when you first introduced the term, “resting point of consciousness,” my interpretation of it was just sort of the ground state, simplest form of awareness: pure consciousness. Resting in that, one begins to explore various strata, but then you went on and I got the implication that you were saying that the resting point of consciousness itself shifts from level to level. You rest at different levels without there being a simultaneous resting in the foundation of all levels.

Kristin: My experience after the 2003 marker was that my awareness started opening through each of the different dimensions, and when it shifted to opening to another dimension higher it would rest there and then have free access to fluidly move through all the ones below it and then would have awakening experiences to dimensions above it, and then another shift would happen. Awareness would shift up to another dimension. There would be free-flowing consciousness all the way through to the lower ones, and then awakening experiences would happen with the ones above it until that integrated. Then another shift would happen.

Rick: I see. No, that’s much more clear. So if we use the example of school: You’re in the first grade, and you’re pretty much mastering that stuff. Maybe your brother is in the second grade. He shows you his textbooks, and you kind of get—not an understanding of it—but you don’t really grasp it fully until you’re in the second grade and focus on that. At that point you can go back and review the first-grade stuff any time. It’s a breeze. Your brother is in the third grade now, and that stuff is a little beyond you. You can get glimpses of it, but you don’t fully master that until you get to the third grade. When you’ve done so, you can go back to the second and first grades easily. So the farther you go, the more you can move around in previous states, but there’s always a kind of a leading edge, or a horizon, that you’re stepping into.

Kristin: Right, and the only difference I would say is that, as opposed to leaving one grade, there’s a simultaneous being present in all of them.

Rick: Yeah, it becomes part of your repertoire, so to speak.

Kristin: Yeah. It’s like awareness is present with thought because everything is happening simultaneously anyway. It’s all present here, so it’s just having conscious awareness through those different levels.

Rick: And so is there no end to it? Is it level after level after level, and there’s no end to the breakthroughs and the states of exploration?

Kristin: I have no idea. Again, I can only speak from my experience, and there’s awareness of absolute nothing that everything is arising out of. Yeah, there’s currently a transition—that feels like it’s happening for me—of awareness resting is nothing, and then all these different dimensions are an exquisite, outrageous, vibrating manifesting of reality all present at the same time. Even in the midst of that, there still are new things being realized. So realizations haven’t ended in my experience.

There’s a continual deepening and a continual discovery. It feels like there can be the experience of knowing oneself as nothing, that identification with the structures of the self-dissolve and let go to the awakeness of nothing, and having all those experiences, but the experiences don’t end.

Structures of Experience and Letting Go

Rick: That might not sound too alluring to some people, deepening into nothing, letting go of everything that you hold important. You know people might be thinking, Whoa, what about my children? What about my profession? I love these things. I’m sure that if they were to experience what you’re describing, they would think, Oh, this is better. I haven’t lost something; I’ve gained something. Am I right? What was your experience with that? Did you feel like you were—was there any pinch as certain things that you’ve held dear were let go of, or was it always met with a sense of joy and curiosity?

Kristin: There was a really deep trust that was already present initially in my life. As this process—in my bed—of meeting all of these horrific things, and then working with clients and seeing one identified experience after another always dissolving into something more exquisite, here was a deeper trust that, if anything had form, there was a deeper truth. So feeling a sense of purpose and feeling the subtle structures that went with it, there was an awareness of it being form, and so there was a deeper truth. So that’s just what has been happening here, and there’s been a desire for a deeper truth. It doesn’t mean that anything is better than anything else. Like the divine is divine no matter what.

Rick: But deeper truth is somehow desirable if one is seeking truth and wanting to. It seems to be the evolutionary direction to proceed to deeper and deeper and truths. I don’t know, the word “better” is a little bit limited, but still that’s been the trajectory of your life to move into deeper and deeper levels of truth.

Kristin: So there’s a freedom that comes, and my experience is then there’s a radiance that comes. So I find myself in situations, and the response is just really different than it was years ago where I’m just totally loving whatever is happening. You know or even the recording yesterday—

Rick: Yeah, I was thinking about that.

Kristin: You know, you called me up and said the recording didn’t happen and I said, “I know. Great. Ok, what do we do now?” It’s just being with the perfection of all of it.

Rick: I must say I think today’s interview is going a lot better than yesterday’s did, so it had its value [laughter].

Kristin: So that’s in terms of what is the value of being nothing. I mean, when the nothingness is present, and you’re not holding anything. You just are everything. I don’t know if it was today or yesterday, you had mentioned something about drinking the nectar in all places.

Rick: Oh, yes, enlightened beings drink infinite nectar from every particle of creation, something like that.

Kristin: So in that full surrendering, finding deeper and deeper layers where there’s identification that’s not personal, there’s still structures that have some identity and in that dissolving through they still exist, and functioning still happens, at least it has in my experience. There’s a freedom in what comes through is more infinite universal truth of love, and presence, and kindness, and joy, and compassion. That’s just been what’s been happening.

Rick: Let’s come back again to dimensions. We’ve alluded to dimensions a number of times, and the image always comes to mind when you say that of layers of water in a pond, like strata. In the Grand Canyon you see all of these strata going back millions of years. Your experience has been one of increasing familiarity with all these subtle strata over time as you’ve described the process. What have you discovered on these different layers or dimensions? What are they? What’s there?

Kristin: Well that’s a huge question.

Rick: Let’s take a big chunk of time on it.

Kristin: Well, it feels simpler to organize it through the healing sessions, where in the beginning one of the initial shifts was seeing that thoughts and emotions were substance and that, as a massage therapist and doing Chinese medicine and Shiatsu and working with meridians, I was already present with the energy in meridians and how those could move and transform. So, discovering that thoughts and emotions were substance and realizing they could move the same way energy could move through a meridian was shocking and amazing. The level of healing that could come was exciting to me at that time. I started seeing these pictures coming out of people’s bodies and seeing their situations that had happened when they were young in this lifetime, and where things got caught in the body, and being present with each of those and supporting the releasing of those.

It started out with mostly current lifetimes with people until I got comfortable with the process, and I said yesterday 99.99 percent validation. So, I was trusting the process. Then I started seeing little pictures come out behind those pictures with a little gold thread and then seeing past life material and doing the same kind of release work with people. So, I would get to see the impact of that in their current experience and seeing the relevancy of the releasing. There was a resting point in a particular place in my consciousness, but I started to see the different dimensions from there. After that I started working with multiple lifetimes at a time and seeing like 15 lifetimes working on a particular issue with somebody and could clear that whole thing. So again, still the vantage point was in the place and perceiving at the soul level.

Are you wanting to say something, or should I keep—

Rick: I’m always thinking as you’re talking, but I’ll just throw it out. So far your answer to the question of dimensions has been in terms of lifetimes, and the question comes to mind, “Well, where is all this information stored? Is it stored in the nervous system? Is it stored in some kind of Akashic record or subtle body-jiva kind of thing, or all of the above? There’s much more to unfold here, but that’s the question that’s come up so far.

Kristin: That’s great. When I was working in those ways, I was working with different dimensions and working with the mental dimension, or the mental body, the emotional body, the physical body, the etheric body and being present with the relationship between all of those. The illusion that people refer to—the illusion of our stories that are so believable—is the weaving of, or the convergence of, those different dimensional realities. So we have a thought, The dog is gonna bite me, and there’s an emotional response maybe of fear. Then the body responds to the thought and the emotion and produces adrenaline to run. The illusion, or this divine experience, happens from the weaving of all of these. When we get identified with any of it, the way that I was experiencing it was the identification itself creates a certain level of substance.

So when I was doing the healing work I was supporting the dissolving of the identification, which dissolves the substance. So in terms of the soul being covered in clouds or something for the divine light not being able to break through, the work is about dissolving those substantial clouds of misperception or of identified experience. By being present with them as different dimensions, I was able to meet the details more fully and support that resolving. So in terms of where is it stored, my experience is the soul contains the information of the mental, emotional, etheric, physical. Like it stores that information of all the lifetimes, but there’s also the physical body storing things as well. So when the clearing is happening there can be releasing happening through the mental. It has to release through all of them.

In terms of the larger perspective of awakening—the mental awakening, heart awakening, or body awakening—it’s all of those aspects coming into full resolution and letting go of all stories.

The illusion, or this divine experience, happens from the weaving of all of these. When we get identified with any of it, the way that I was experiencing it was the identification itself creates a certain level of substance.

🩺 Healing Work and Subtle Perception

Rick: Are most of the people you work with there in the Massachusetts area, or what percentage are and aren’t?

Kristin: I used to work much more in my office, and I’ve been doing a lot more phone sessions. So it’s maybe three-quarters phone sessions. So not everybody is in Massachusetts for sure.

Rick: Most aren’t.

Kristin: Yeah, so more than half.

Rick: Is there any reduction in efficacy if a person is just on the phone, or do you feel like it really doesn’t matter where they are or where you are?

Kristin: I actually shifted my office sessions to reflect the phone sessions because the phone sessions were stronger.

Rick: Really?

Kristin: Yeah, because I used to do the work with doing hands-on work, and the work was much more effective if I just dropped into these deeper subtle realities and worked from there. So in the beginning the phone sessions were much stronger. Now there is greater capacity for me to be present with physical attention in through all these layers at the same time so that office sessions have changed where I do hands-on work now, again supporting all the physical changes that happen for people through awakening. There’s no separation. The whole body is just this manifested truth of what’s happening in consciousness. So sometimes things can get stuck in the body, not because there’s a particular identified experience but because physicality it has held itself in a particular way for so many years. So the fascia or the bone or something needs some actual physical support to help that move.

My whole brain chemistry and physical body and posture, everything is just entirely different than it was, and it’s just been blowing open, as we know with everything else. So that’s the benefit of doing the office work, is being able to have hands-on access, but again I shifted in the beginning to not have my hands-on people because the phone work was stronger.

✨ Subtle Beings and Multi-Dimensional Awareness

Rick: In a previous conversation, you had mentioned that you had actually been in between lives as some sort of subtle being doing some kind of work or interceding on behalf of human beings, and now you’re doing it in a human body. It was kind of an interesting thing to have said. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Kristin: Sure. It’s just memory, so again all this past life stuff is also gone. The group of beings that I work with now in the healing work, I had worked with before as a group in between my lifetimes, and I actually was teaching. So this will satisfy you a little bit for other dimensional experiences. In other dimensions things appear with a thought. It’s slower to manifest down here, and so there would be energetic classrooms that would be created to then teach other guides how to do this healing work. So I worked with this group of beings, but there was also a subtlety of skill that was at a mature enough level to be teaching. I think that’s also why there is such a refined skill set that’s present right now; it’s from that in-between lifetimes.

You asked either today or yesterday were there past lives that lead me up to this, and it feels more that it was in-between lifetimes where a lot of this awareness was cultivated. In this lifetime I’m the one on the ground level.

Rick: I was thinking, as you were saying that, of what Kristin’s ordinary day is like, going to the grocery store and stuff like that. Are you walking through the store seeing all of this subtle stuff, and you go through the check-out line and glom onto the past lives of the checkout girl? Or does that all shut down in ordinary circumstances, and you’re just seeing the same ordinary world more or less that most people see? Not that everybody sees the same world. It’s completely different for everybody, but you know what I mean.

Kristin: I think for the most part, I’m just sort of experiencing love, just totally in love with the grocery store that has all this gorgeous food and appreciation that I can afford it and eat well, and loving the people I’m seeing, and the interactions they’re having, and looking at the food, and being in harmony with it, and resonating with what food is wanting to actually come home with me.

I think earlier on I would feel more of other people’s past life stuff when there was more of my releasing because with more conditioning I had more triggers. So I might see someone else’s past life because it was resonant or connected somehow with something that was clearing in me so that I would experience it more as irritation. I would be present with all that consciousness and experience it as irritation and then notice that I was feeling irritation, look at what I was irritated about, see that person’s past life, and then process what I needed to. That hasn’t happened for a long time. So I’m not actively looking at all that stuff. Sometimes things come forward, or if I see someone I recognize, “Oh my God, I know you!” from whenever. So it’s more awkward in terms of wanting to go hug somebody and knowing that that’s not really going to go over well.

Kauai, Sacred Sites, and Retreats

Kristin: I would think maybe a little bit about Kauai. You asked a while ago about these different benchmarks that have happened. Actually my horse died a few years ago, and there was this call to go travel. I went to Sedona and Kauai, and the power of the consciousness of the planet feels amplified there to me. I started doing a lot of travelling and just going and meditating in sacred sites where I was called to go, and that supported a continual deepening and breaking open in myself.

One of the last solo trips I did in Kauai, there was an exchange that happened, and it was just really clear that I needed to start being in Kauai to support people cracking open the way that Kauai supported that in me. I realized even though I knew how to facilitate that for myself that there was just an innate awareness of what was wanting to happen, that other people didn’t know how to do that. Just that. That’s what those retreats are that I do. The other thing that we didn’t really talk about was—

Rick: So let me just clarify that. So you’re saying that places like Kauai, maybe Sedona, are conducive to cracking open, as you put it, an awakening. So you can enable people to have a more kind of potent experience or taking a group of people to a place like that facilitates rapid evolution more so than if you were to just do it in a local retreat center. Therefore it’s worth making the trip aside from the fact that Kauai is a lovely place to visit.

Kristin: Yeah, and the same way that one might go to do a meditation retreat with a particular teacher because the particular teacher really helps facilitate that process, you could do that. You could go to Kauai by yourself and do that the same way of letting Kauai open you in that way, and then the value of doing the retreat is it’s both a person showing up to help support with also the support of Kauai. So it feels like it’s a two-for-one [laughs] and because of my communication with the land itself, it’s co-created. My consciousness is present with the island, and we’re not separate from each other. It’s created together.

Final Reflections and Closing

Ok, I think this might be a much larger thing that we can share at some other point, but there’s another whole body of information that’s been present for me through this awakening, and it’s the physical anatomy. It’s like the anatomy of consciousness. So when I’m teaching I’ll have different ways that I’m supporting people find the truth in themselves and sometimes working with the structures helps. So there’s a core flow of—what I call core flow of consciousness. I’m sure there are words for it in other languages, and I’ll work with that and support people falling back into that truth in themselves. Just a whole other topic of working with that core flow, the structures and the different dimensional bodies and their chakras in each of the dimensional bodies, and that as integration happens, awakening happens.

Integrating through all those levels there’s a lot of subtle detail that I could share about that.

Rick: Well that will be a teaser for the next interview.

Kristin: It’s a much bigger thing, but it somehow feels relevant in terms of some of the things that I offer that the mind can think, “Oh my goodness, that’s just a bunch of busy energetic anatomy distracting stuff going on,” and that’s not true for me, that all of that is used as a ground for awakening and supporting people to navigate through the subtle truths to open up to the deeper truth.

Rick: Nice, we’ll have more conversations like this over time, and when we do we can make sure that we’re covering fresh ground and not just rehashing the stuff we talked about today because I’m sure there are all kinds of packages of knowledge and experience that we can explore. So for now, though, let me conclude first of all by thanking you for doing this and for doing it twice in a row [laughs]. I think today’s worked out much better than yesterday’s. Yesterday was sort of a dress rehearsal. It’s funny when I went to meditate last night I really crashed and slept for a long time. I kind of felt like somehow doing this interview with you settled me down a lot or enabled me to unload a package of fatigue or impressions that was a little tenacious. So I feel much more settled and subtle today than I did yesterday. So it was good. Thanks.

Kristin: I thoroughly enjoyed both mornings.

Rick: Great.

I’ve been speaking with Kristin Kirk. I’ll be linking to her website as I always do, [posting] her page on Batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P. So you will be able to hop from there over to Kristin’s website. What is it, Krisinkirk.com?

Kristin: Yep.

Rick: Yeah, and Kristin is spelled, K-R-I-S-T-I-N. So when you go to her site you’ll see all the things she offers, and you’ll see that she charges money for some of these things. Don’t have a conniption fit like people sometimes do when I interview somebody, and they discover they have to pay $150 or whatever for a session. People have to support themselves. This is all you do, this sort of thing. You don’t go work at Burger King or anything.

Kristin: It came out of my massage practice, so I was just charging what I was charging for regular sessions.

Rick: And that’s what you charge now? Which is—

Kristin: It’s $100 an hour, so $150 for an hour-and-a-half.

Rick: And also you’re not offering free trips to Kauai. I’m sure people have to pay if they want to do that, and you take eight people, right?

Kristin: It’s actually six for the Kauai one. I also do ones that are larger; that’s just six days, more like a regular meditation retreat, which is available, but the deeper ones that are two weeks, well like 12 days, I keep to six people to have them be really intimate and potent.

Rick: Great, thanks for that.

Rick: Now in a more general sense in terms of Batgap.com. People listening to this, if they’ve never been there before will see a number of things. There’s an alphabetical list of all the people I’ve interviewed. There’s a chronological list, which at the moment is under the “Other Stuff” menu. There’s a discussion group where each interview has its own section, and people can get into discussing what was talked about in this interview.

I’d like to just make an appeal to those who participate in that to keep it cordial. A lot of times on the Internet people’s inhibitions drop when they have the anonymity of using some handle for their name, and they sometimes get a lot more snarky in discussion groups than they would in a personal conversation with somebody. I’d like to keep a more positive tone in that discussion group than it has sometimes degenerated into. So that’s a general caution there, and I might end up having to moderate or boot people if they can’t heed it.

There’s a donate button, which I appreciate people clicking if and when they can. It makes this whole thing possible. There’s a place to sign-up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted, and there is a link to an audio podcast. So you can subscribe to that and listen to these interviews on your iPad, or iPod, or iPhone while you’re driving. So, for that and more, visit Batgap.com.

Next week I’ll be speaking with Hameed Ali who goes by the penname A.H. Almaas, a very interesting guy. I’m sure people appreciate that. So thanks for listening or watching. Thank you very much again Kristin, and we will meet again.

Kristin: Thank you so much. It’s just been a total pleasure and delight. Thank you.

Rick: Alrighty, ‘til next time.

Kristin: Sounds good.

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