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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. I’ve done about 530 of them now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to bat gap comm bat gap, which is obviously an acronym for Buddha, the gas pump, and look under the past interviews menu where you’ll see all the previous ones organized in several different ways. This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it, and you would like to help support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. I guess today is Leonora will just go by her first name. She has a last name too, but we’re just gonna go by Leonora welcome in our
Leanora: Thank you. lovely to be here.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we’re Nora’s down in Ubud, Bali, which is in Indonesia. And so she’s down there, it’s summertime, it’s morning. I’m in Iowa, It’s six o’clock in the evening, and it’s we’re having a snowstorm, then it’s amazing, we can have this conversation. So let me tell you a little bit about Leonora Leonora founded embody truth in 2012 as a way to support an integral approach to awakening and enlightened an embodiment. The work is originally inspired through a personal awakening and culminates into a coherent and disposable map, helping others navigate the terrain. And a few minutes ago, I asked what Leonora what she meant by disposable again, we’re gonna get into that a minute, using a direct felt sense experience. A somatic meditation practice supports unification, integration and embodiment of all phenomena. Traumatic material identity essence back to stillness, Leonora provides one on one sessions for those awakening as well as online group programs for ongoing practice learning and support. Born in Africa, she has lived in seven countries, including London and California. I don’t know about London, but California considers itself a country a life of contrast from farm girl to corporate America, a variety of careers from it to cottage industry within a land based permaculture project in New Zealand for 25 years. And as I mentioned, she currently lives in Bali. So welcome again. Thanks, right, welcome. Now, I have a paragraph here, I could read that I pulled off your website where you say my own journey with healing began in 1991, with a spiritual emergence, and subsequently a variety of resulting health issues and so on and so forth. But rather than read that paragraph, maybe we should just start with your personal story. You know, it’s, I’m sure you could tell it in a coherent way, and might be more interesting than my reading about it.
Leanora: Okay, yeah. I think, you know, probably what’s valuable in the story is what I what I learned as a result of it and of course, when when something kind of mystical or strange happens to you have no idea about anything. So that was the case for me. But the the catalyst for for an awakening was an absolute giving up. It was, you know, I’ve tried Plan A through plan Zed, and, you know, not not really, you know, getting lots of results, but not really feeling satisfied or feeling authentic, perhaps, you know, and so, there was a place where, you know, the mind had nowhere, nowhere else to go. And I gave up, and it was quite a cathartic experience of giving up, you know, so I was crying and so on like that. And through this giving up, that the, the first thing that happened was I had this experience of emptiness. And the experience for me, came with like a deep knowing, like an instantaneous connection to a knowing of who I am, you know, to kind of an AHA sort of recognition of something I’ve never felt in my life but but still knew it. And the next piece of that journey was a very small quiet voice that I’d never heard before. That came out of me and it was my voice. It was my true voice and I hadn’t listened to her before I had no, I had no access to her. And basically, she said something along the lines of I want what she wanted, it was like a prayer. Like, I want a simple life close to nature. And I want to share it with someone. So at the time, I was sort of, you know, corporate woman in the rat race. And it wasn’t very satisfying, I had a lot of contrast in my life. So you know, I’d had upbringing in Africa on a farm, and I’d be, you know, this at the time this happened, I was in New Zealand, but I was still working in it. And so, you know, they’re probably what hadn’t been spaced to listen to that little voice or to find it, but the, the emptiness or the, the experience of that, and the knowing that came with it, kind of brought out this request. And, and it was, it was kind of like, integrated with divinity. It was like, the request was not an ego request, it was coming out of that, that emptiness and my expression of that emptiness. And basically what I asked for happens, the, my future partner arrived the next day. And, you know, within sort of a month or two, I quit my job and, and moved to a simple life close to nature. And I’d love to tell you I lived happily ever after, but I didn’t, you know, then then came all the stuff that was in the way of being that emptiness, orchestrated by divinity in my life. And so what what came out was the contrast of what was not that? Yeah,
Rick Archer: that’s very well put? Well, there’s a few things in what you said that we can unpack. One is this giving up thing? And yeah, that’s a kind of recurrent theme with people I know, I just Shanti sort of gave up before he had this big awakening. And, you know, there’s, there’s many examples where as long as the person there’s even in the Bhagavad Gita is I think we’re our June is saying, I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do that. He’s sort of very sort of adamant about what he’s gonna do. And then finally, he sees he sits down and just says, I give up, you know, basically, you tell me what to do, you know, to a Krishna and then then the whole teaching kind of unfolds, because he’s willing, you know, as long as one feels, one can fend for oneself and do for oneself, one isn’t very open receptacle for what could come in, or come through, or come out.
Leanora: Yeah, the giving, the giving up thing is a hallmark of required because, you know, we tend to us, most of us, in fact, I’d almost say, all of us at different levels, perhaps, you know, we’re perceiving and running our life through everything that we know. And, and, and some of that might be conscious, and some of that might be unconscious, you know, like, some of its hidden in your body, in the soma, but some of it you’re conscious of. And so the giving up is not just a giving up of what you’re conscious of, it’s like a giving up completely, it’s like, that everything I know everything, I believe everything, I think, is in the way, you know, so. But giving up is sort of required, but you know, they can be, they can be an awakening all of a sudden, to that, which which is was, you know, the catalyst with turning my life in a different direction. But there can be a practice of that, as well. You know, and I find with people that I work with that it’s inherently there in every meditation is there’s a Trier and a looker and, you know, something orchestrating a thing? And, you know, getting underneath that mental structure, you know, is where the, the the juice really is, and where it where alchemy can happen.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah, I’m glad you said that. Because some people might hear a say this and think, Alright, great giving up. I’ll do that. But then, you know, it’s, it’s not quite that simple, necessarily. And, yeah. I mean, sometimes people have to be sort of backed into a corner before they can do it. But as you say, it can also be undertaken in a systematic way and incrementally happen to Yeah,
Leanora: I think that’s valuable. I think there’s lots of ways that that it can happen. Like, being backed into a corner is, is a is a very common way. You know, it’s like, you know, your mind kind of goes, I’m broken. I don’t know what to do.
Rick Archer: I’m thinking of Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s basically one of their things is you hit bottom and then you realize I’m powerless. unless I have to resort to a higher power in order to, I can’t do it on my own.
Leanora: Yeah. Oh, that was Yeah, exactly, yeah. But there’s also, you know, I was kind of feel that there’s like, forces, there’s a force, which is, say, our ego or our mental structures and everything we know and believe. And that’s kind of based on like a survival and it’s based in time. It’s relativistic, it’s me, me and other me and my life, me and this and that. And then there’s another force, which is also inherently here all the time, which is the divinity or emptiness. And that force can inspire us. Yeah, you know, it can tap into an inspiration in our practice. So I find it valuable to, to kind of work in a balanced way with both those forces.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’m glad to hear you say that too, because some people seem to lean heavily on just sort of there being no sense of a personal self and really relinquish and we have no free will and relinquishing any sort of egoic control or sense. And, but I think there can be a both an arrangement where, at least that’s been my experience so far. I mean, maybe it’ll change but where the life is multi dimensional, and there’s, you know, there’s the wave, but there’s also the ocean, and that doesn’t have to be either, or,
Leanora: yeah, I’m very into and very into, and it’s, in fact, the, you know, the way that I practice is very about inclusive inclusivity. So it’s not, you know, because if you’re picking something, you’re excluding something, and therefore, there’s a relational dynamic in that, you know, of, I don’t want it or I want, I want this, but not that. But inclusivity is more like sort of unconditional love, you know, so even the bits that you don’t like, you open to, and when you do that, something transforms within you. So I like to say love is the way in love is the destination, you know, love is actually the process of connection.
Rick Archer: Yeah. What I experienced over the years was there was this sort of transition from, you know, just exclusively individual perspective and blocked into that, to, you know, a perfect, much more universal one. But as that transition progressed, there were periods of time, where I don’t know that there was a tendency to lean too far one way or the other, like to become passive and not be decisive and let just let anything happen, because I’m not trying to assert my individuality, for instance, or maybe to swing back from that to too much assertion. And it was kind of like learning to ride a bicycle or something, it took a while to get the balance and, and for the transition to progress to the, to the point where there was sort of no problem anymore. Can you relate to what I just said?
Leanora: Totally. One of the things that, that I mean, I call that polarity, and, you know, the Buddhists used to talk about them, it was nice, probably still do, let’s talk about the middle way. It’s like that balance point. Yeah. So, you know, when, when you work with, I think you have to experience both ends of the polarity to find the middle. And so what I found, you know, energetically when you work with, with polarities that if you integrate either one, it gets you closer to the other one, it gets you closer to the center. For example, if if you if you feel trapped, they in your life, and the polarity to that is I’d like to be free. So you can have the experience energetically in any moment by choice by inducement of trapped, you know, by drawing up a feeling of trapped or a story about being trapped. And you can also have an experience of what freedom might feel like, I mean, it’s not true freedom, it’s your conjured up view of freedom. But if you if you embody trapped fully, if you really fall into traps 100% Then it will actually take you to freedom and when you fully embody freedom, it will it will illuminate what’s what feels trapped in there, what’s, what’s not, what’s in the way of freedom will become illuminated. So, when when you do those things, it’s like those positions soften. And, you know, trapped and freedom or riding the bike becomes, you know, possible. Yeah. And you’re you’re, yeah, it’s a journey as as you’ve shared it’s, it’s really a journey of exploration of those two polarities.
Rick Archer: As you’re saying that couple of images came to mind one was of people who have been in prison and who have used that time to discover inner freedom and who, who became very free even though they were imprison, you know, inwardly. And, and also, you know, let’s say somebody like Jeffrey Epstein who had all the money in the world and private jets and his own island and all this stuff, but was very trapped by his, you know, his obsessive, narrow minded selfish tendencies and is, and then ended up paying the price for I don’t know if you’ve been following his story, but there, he’s just a case in point there are many people who were, you know, have all the money in the world and everything else and they’re miserable, you know, because they’re sort of trapped in something. They haven’t found this objective freedom.
Leanora: Yeah. In fact, they’re looking for it has got them trapped. Yeah, well, they’re
Rick Archer: looking in the wrong direction.
Leanora: Yeah, looking for love in all the wrong places. Exactly.
Rick Archer: Do you find that with your, we’ll get into what sort of meditation practice you do and advocate, but does it kind of allow for a kind of an alternation, alteration, you know, alternate, alternate, alternate, go back and forth alternation between sort of unbound unboundedness, and then back into the field of boundaries, and then unboundedness and back into the field of boundaries. And that going back and forth like that, in and of itself, cultures, the the mind and the nervous system to be able to integrate both together.
Leanora: Yeah, that’s a lovely description. Yeah, you know, one of the first elements is really creating a stability in the nervous system and resilience. And what I found is, it depends where somebody is, as to where where, you know, you start, you start where you are, obviously, the unboundedness can, is a polarity to the focus is, you know, the unbound versus kind of a polarity to a boundedness, or something contracted. And my favorite way of doing things is to help people cultivate the expansion, at the same time being able to hold the contraction. Yeah, when you do that, they resolve themselves. Like if you let them co-habit The field, and you don’t pick one or the other. You know, they that there’s an integration and a shift that happens, and it just happens on its own accord. But sometimes, depending on the person’s capacity, or training, or how they do things, you might flick from, you know, unboundedness to something smaller. Yeah, yeah. But if you, if you, if you can cultivate it, sometimes people just need to be guided into that as a possibility. And then it becomes part of the practice.
Rick Archer: Sometimes you also go through a period where it’s either or, like, I did this back mainly in the 80s, it was most intense, where I would feel free and unbounded, and blissful and smooth, and everything else. And then something would happen. I feel gripped. And I couldn’t wait to go to sleep that night to just get out of feeling gripped. And then and then maybe a day or two later, I’d be all free and unbounded again. So there was a sort of, yeah, vacillation back and forth. And then that eventually worked itself out.
Leanora: Yeah, I think I think that’s a really valid point. Or really, you know, it’s very fundamental to the work that I do. Because, you know, I know, in my own journey, like after I had that experience, I proceeded to have, you know, amazing states of unbounded consciousness. And they were pretty much always followed up with the contraction. Yeah. So it was like, there’s, there’s a dynamic at play here. And it’s very informative to how I’ve created my work. So it’s like when we’re contracted, you know, we have a sense of self that is excluding things and not feeling safe or whatever. And the safety comes from the unboundedness often or from that well, from connection, you know, but the consequences the nervous system has to recalibrate. Yeah. And so, you know, it’ll come back with the contraction again, and, you know, you have to learn to ride the waves of the ocean metaphor, you know, it’s like, if you go into reactivity, when you’re in a contraction, like, I don’t want it and it’s horrible, and I want to get out of it, then it’s going to contract even more. Whereas if you do this thing that I could, like, call it co-habit, where you where you cultivate a spaciousness or the unboundedness and the contraction to cohabit. They resolve quicker, it’s like having that of dancing from one polarity to another. It’s just holding them both.
Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah, good. It’s good. You mentioned the nervous system, because I think there is a neuro physiological component to this, or correlate. And there’s a thing in the sort of the Indian understanding of physiology I don’t know whether it’s higher VEDA or what are Tantra. something but that we actually, in some way have two nervous systems. And they alternate functions. And it’s actually correlated with the breath. That’s why people do alternating breath pranayama, because it sort of balances out these two nervous systems. And one of them, they that one rest, while the other is active, and then they switch. And that’s how, but ordinarily, that they’re not really culture to develop properly. But when they are, that’s how one can maintain absolute to a restful silence in the midst of the most dynamic activity. Because each, these two nervous systems are taking care of it. That doesn’t mean we have two spinal cords or brains, or I’m not saying that it’s on a subtler level.
Leanora: Yeah, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, it’s not
Rick Archer: even that it’s some some of their whole understanding they have but anyway, it’s just this kind of a side point. But there is neuro physiological component and, and because of that, we can’t expect to have the whole thing accomplished in day one, because it takes a while for the, for the physiology, you know, neuroplasticity, and all the physiology to, you know, purify and modify and learn to function in a new way.
Leanora: Absolutely, I mean, I think that’s highlighted in my awaken nning experience of you know, like, I mean, I used to read things years ago about people awakening, and you know, near death experiences and all sorts of things. And it always seemed like, something happened, and they were done. That’s how I would interpret it, you know, something happened, and they were done. Yeah, I was not having that experience. You know, it was like something happened, and everything that was not done, got illuminated. And actually, you know, I was quite ill. So I had this sort of wounded healer kind of element to my journey, which has taught me many, many things. So, you know, it is all about, in the end, what’s happening in our physiology and what’s happening in our body, and the body takes a little time to catch up. Sure.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I think that this notion of that some point being done is a notion that is important to dispel. Because I think that nobody’s ever done. And if you think that somebody is get to know them better, and and if, and if you’re expecting that there is this sort of goalposts, that you’re going to reach, then you’re always going to feel dissatisfied, because you’re never going to reach it. Now, you know, you may, and you may sort of undervalue what you actually have reached, because you’re expecting the sense of finality. But it’s not going to come. Go ahead and comment on that bit, I might have,
Leanora: well, very important, and just I wanted to totally agree with you. And what I want to add to that is that you can be done in this moment, like you can be in unified, ultimate state of consciousness in this moment, and then, you know, a siren goes off or a dog barks, and you can be undone. You know, you know, and you might get more and more masterful at staying in a potent or powerful place. But there is no done because if we’re one with everything with the whole universe, it’s like being in this relativistic existence of, of having a human body is not I don’t anything, I don’t even feel it’s done when you die. You know?
Rick Archer: I wouldn’t be surprised if Ramana Maharshi is working something out on some level? Who knows? Yeah, well, some people consider that heresy, but I just sort of feel like souls evolve forever, and maybe there’s the option of, you know, merging into the ocean and having no remnant of, of existence, individual existence whatsoever. We’ll, we’ll see what happens. But yeah,
Leanora: that excludes the human thing. And, you know, there’s this whole topic, which I’ve heard you speak eloquently about before, you know, bypass. Yes. You know, and so, you know, my, my thing and, you know, I did the bypass, I did the bypass big time, but, you know, it was not not it’s not complete, and, you know, outside of the discussion of there is no done but there’s there’s a calling to bring, you know, divinity into embodiment, like to to embody stillness or to embody divinity and become the unique expression of that in the moment. So this paradoxical sense of being, you know, anchored in the one at the same time being a unique expression of that one. Yeah. Without that being two places with that just being, you know, one place and so that embodiment you know, is to resolve the bypass. And I think a lot of the old non dual teachings were more about climbing the mountain and finding The I Am. And then, you know, being in a cave or sitting sitting with that, you know, it’s like I’m done. Yeah. Real test is the downward journey to bring that back into the body. And,
Rick Archer: yeah, um, you know, there’s a, another element to this, which is that one can feel, I mean, one can reach a state where there’s contentment, you know, pretty much perpetual 24/7, you know, deep, profound, profound peace of mind. You know, one could look at that and say, well, that must be done. I mean, but I think there’s still always room for growth. I mean, because we’re talking about sort of a deep absolute level of one’s life. But on a relative level, we have a heart, we have an intellect, we have senses, we have all these faculties that we use to navigate life. And is there any end to the refinement of those. And, you know, the, as that refinement progresses to the effectiveness with which we can live life, yeah, be of value to others,
Leanora: that, you know, I think if there was an end, it would be pretty boring, and you wouldn’t need to be here. So there is no end, I’ve given up with any kind of endpoint many, many years ago. But what what, what, what tends to shift when you move out of the state, or the mental structure that’s looking for a place to land, you know, looking for home looking for happiness, looking for whatever it’s looking for, when you move, when you see that structure and resolve that structure, then you move towards more being a unified being. And then you’re always just engaged in the moment, and the simplicity is beautiful, and there’s nowhere to go. But everything every moment is where you’re at, you know, you’re not so much entrenched in time with I’m here, and I don’t like it, and I need to be there. And so that, you know, the time dimension is really pulling us out of the moment, and putting us on this task. But if you look deeply at that task, there’s an identity or an eye, you know, a self sense of self, that is not okay with the moment that wants to be in a future moment.
Rick Archer: You know, you’re talking a bit earlier about if you’re, if you’re really one with the Divine, then there’s still the whole universe, I think he said something like that. And I would say that, you know, the universe itself, if we consider how it manifested and evolved over the billions of years, seems to have this evolutionary agenda, you know, there’s this greater and greater complexity and greater and greater evolution of forms, such as ourselves, who consider reef reflect upon what the whole thing is, and so on. And you could say, if you really attain oneness with the Divine, then you’re just one with that, with that, among other things with that feature of the Divine that is promoting the evolution of the cosmos. And so that promotion, you become, you know, pretty effective tool for that promotion. And that is never done, because obviously, the universe is a huge, definitely a work in progress.
Leanora: Yeah, I mean, when, when I’m listening to you, I’m thinking of this, you know, there’s something fundamental and unchanging. And then, and then there’s constant change. Yeah. You know, there’s, there’s something that isn’t moving, it’s still and is unchangeable, and fundamental and primal, primal already. And then there’s something that’s moving, you know, there’s activity, energetic activity, and so on. And so, and it’s different in every moment, the unchanging even in some respect is different, like, our deepest connection to stillness can go deeper and deeper. It’s like, what limits our connection to stillness is is the activity or the sense of I, you know, the sense of who I am, you know, is existence limits our access to non existence,
Rick Archer: or it moves them so, I mean, it can do so. We can develop, we, as we were saying earlier, we can do we can develop boundaries and boundless, boundless simultaneously and thereby for not be limited by the boundaries.
Leanora: Yeah, so I mean, the key that are saying there is that there’s no end point to that journey of discovery. Like once you’ve discovered the universe, let’s say that there was a finite thing called the universe, which you know, is debatable, then you might want to discover the metaverse. So it’s like, there are galaxies upon galaxies that we, you know, we have no connection to, and whether you’re going out in that expensive way, or whether you’re, you know, going down into the smallest particle or atom or froak photon, you know, whatever you’re looking at, in the smallest is also infinite. Yeah. So you have there this huge paradox. And you know, the mind doesn’t know what to do with that, you know, how can the smallest thing be the biggest thing? And how can the biggest thing be the you know?
Rick Archer: There’s this? Yeah. Well, the, you know, the, the totality of Brahman is said to be smaller than the smallest and bigger than the biggest unknown. Yeah, and Mahatama here, and, and that can become our experience. Yes. Okay, so let’s get back to your story a little bit. We’re kind of getting very philosophical here, which is fun. But it’s so it sounds like you had this sort of spiritual emergence in 91, you’re kind of up against the wall, and you surrendered and there was this big shift. That was there an initial sense of tremendous relief, when this big shift shift took place. Like you, you mentioned a little bit later, all this stuff started to come up, but did you get a respite from whatever was, you know, believing you? And you, you felt? Kind of to break breakthrough kind of thing?
Leanora: Yeah. Well, I it, it did two things that it showed me who I was, you know, in a deep level, and it destabilized who I thought I was. You know, so can I say that? Yes. And, like, on the one hand, yes. And the other thing was, you know, it was like, unplanned, conscious manifestation. So what I prayed for manifested quite quickly. Yeah. And, and that felt, you know, really valuable because it was like, as a soul or as a as a connection to divinity as a uniqueness. I asked for something. So it wasn’t like, Oh, I’d like a Mercedes. You know, it’s not like, it’s not a that kind of manifestation out of black. Yes, for some some meaningful stuff. I asked for something that was meaningful to me as a soul, and who I had been in touch with. And so, you know, what you asked for has to be meaningful to the soul. Otherwise, you’re going to get all the things that are in the way of you being yourself. Yeah. So what I found is that, you know, the task is really to become yourself, which is an integration and unification process between who you think you are, and who you really are. Yeah,
Rick Archer: so when you say to discover what you really are, is that something you could describe? Not really, not really, I didn’t think so. But it’s,
Leanora: it’s an it’s an, you know, the, I don’t really have a great description, but it’s like it felt whole, unified, complete, and home. Peaceful, you know, those kinds of qualities were part of it. But I think the inherent deep connection to it, you know, change the nervous system that the inherent cut, that even that tiny moment of connection changed me forever kind of thing, you know, in a very profound way.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure it did. One way of looking at it is that on the level of the nervous system, there’s a tremendous restfulness associated with an experience like that. And what does the nervous system do when it gets some rest? It starts to purify. You know, like when we sleep, we sleep at night, we have dreams, because there’s impressions coming out that have been lodged in the nervous system.
Leanora: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I was wondering you
Rick Archer: in your notes, or on your website, you say that you had this spiritual emergence, and then subsequently a variety of resulting health issues. You’re trying all kinds of healing methods, but you’re going through chronic fatigue, PTSD, multiple cancer, chemical sensitivities, neuralgia, migraine, allergies, and a whole host of other complaints. So it sounds like really kicked up a dust storm when you had this this breakthrough. Because I guess the nervous system had to completely restructure itself. Indeed,
Leanora: you know, for me, the the one of the things I started researching after that was near death experiences, because there was a resonance to that. And as an infant, about six months of age, I had a near death experience. That was quite painful. So it I didn’t know the relationships between things at that time and it took many years to kind of come to some conclusions that were not a place to get Start but a place to help, you know, guide me. And so the the, the, the pain or the situation of that early trauma was in my Soma, you know, was in my system. And you know, I studied trauma for many years, and I taught trauma healing and various other things, but it was not enough, you know, like, everything about my journey has called me to go deeper and deeper and deeper. And I study a place that I call the life death gateway, or I explore a place that I call the life de gateway. And, you know, I’ve been called there by my soul, or by the situations that happened to me, it’s like, on the one hand had this amazing touchstone of emptiness, you know, that which became a touchstone, which informed my journey and, you know, eventually became more embodied in me as I did the work. But, you know, there were these extreme polarities of this sort of divine state versus, you know, an incredible amount of trauma. And so, yeah, I actually found somebody in the middle of a neuralgia journey. Which is, you know, most people say, you can’t have neuralgia without a painkiller. And, you know, I, my guidance was not to use a painkiller. But my inner guidance had been knowing that that was not how to heal, you know, it was actually, you know, to get somewhere else. So I remember, I used to get, like, 50 hours of, you know, severe nerve pain in my face, and I ended up finding somebody in there. And then I cultivated that, and eventually, I stopped having neuralgia and migraines and, you know, post traumatic stress, anxiety, panic, all those symptoms, kind of, you know, left, but in some way I got attached to this place, where, you know, it was quiet and safe, peaceful and nice, you know, that’s the the bypass. You know,
Rick Archer: nothing wrong with being quiet, safe, peaceful, nice, but you were hiding out there and, and avoiding things, it sounds like,
Leanora: yeah, I felt, you know, okay, I found safe, I found God, I found safe. You know, I found joy. And you know, things were nice, and they were pleasant. And then somewhere along the process, the universe, got to blame somebody pull the rug out from underneath me. And I went on this journey of dropping any mastery I thought I had and learning to master vulnerability, which is that more of a journey of embodiment that coming, bringing, bringing what you found at the top of the mountain, bringing that into the body to resolve at a deeper level. So I think of light healing as a sort of spiraling, you know, you’ve got something going on right now. And you work with it, and you clear it and you think you’re done. But you’re not it comes and gets you again, and you just go to a deeper layer and a deeper level, and so on the ultimate level is embodiment of stillness. You know, so that’s the journey that I’ve been on. And that’s the journey that really shapes my work with other people.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Do people who work with you or approach you to find out about this stuff ever sort of get a little fearful that if they had some spiritual breakthrough, they might have this huge Pandora’s box open the way you did, and have all kinds of things happen to them? So anybody ever say that?
Leanora: Nobody said that to me. Yeah. But I think I remember in one of my groups some time ago, I said, I typed in a question, are you willing to become totally completely new? You know, just as something for them to consider, you know, and the common response that I got was, yes, but I’m scared. And that’s that. That’s that too. It’s like some part of you knows. You’ve got to let something go. And you’ve got to change the status quo. And another part goes, Yeah, but I’m scared. And that’s those two forces.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s an Indian story where this guy is living in a little hut. And somebody comes along and says, Hey, you’re the king. You belong in that palace over there. And he starts to leave to go to the palace, but anything’s Oh, my hut, I better go back. You know, it doesn’t feel safe out here. And who knows? If it’s really my palace, and, you know, all these doubts come up, so you scurries back to the hut.
Leanora: Yeah, and that’s, and that’s that comfort zone. You know, if you you know, for me, the surfing is how to ride that edge of the comfort zone. If you if you stay comfortable, the comfort zone tends to shrink on you and life gets smaller. If you go too far past the edge of the comfort zone, you can retrigger your trauma and get overwhelmed. So you know, it’s kind of a little it’s that little dance and knowing how to find your resources to help you whether it’s through your breath through Connect You know, through what you’ve cultivated in your practice, that can help you when you hit that go to fall on the edge of your comfort zone. And I find that the more people do that, that they become kind of more available to that edge and surfing that edge. So life becomes more adventurous or more exploratory. You know, because they’re not living so much in the fear and, and that they know, when something awful happens, you know, if they go too far over the edge, that it will pass that they just need time to integrate it go for a walk in the woods or whatever, you need to help the process. So yeah, it’s yeah, you know, it’s scary to the one that doesn’t want to change. But to the part of you that really knows I got to do something different. You know, it’s kind of like, Yeah, let’s do it, you know, so
Rick Archer: interesting. I have heard stories of people, you know, wanting to work out trauma, and all, I imagine this is true of conventional therapy, too. And then getting even more seriously traumatized, because of the way they go about it, or the way that the teacher who’s guiding them, guides them, that kind of thing.
Leanora: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That can happen. That can happen, you know, taking plant medicines, people can get re traumatized. You know, it’s like, it’s basically stuff that’s not integrated. Yeah, you know, you have to metabolize life in our body. And so if you get too much good or bad, you know, nice or not nice, not not that I’m judging either one, they’re both equally important. But, you know, it’s about integration. So, you know, whatever experience you have, you can talk about it, and it’s like in the past, but it’s only valuable when it’s integrated when your systems recalibrated from the wisdom that that integration gives you. And then that increases your capacity and your resilience, and then you can ride the comfort zone edge, you know, in a more skillful way.
Rick Archer: Have you ever done plant medicines? No, I’ve
Leanora: never felt called to do that. I’ve I’ve helped people who couldn’t integrate from their journeys. In that, and I think it’s a really good thing for people, you know, for some people, not for everyone. Yeah. And obviously having it’s like doing a session with me, or, you know, it’s like, what’s so valuable to I feel any journey, any sacred journey is what is your alignment and intention? You know, so people might have the wrong alignment, and then they’ll get, you know, some crazy experiences. And that can happen in a session, it’s like, you know, a few, you got to check, check in, what is my alignment? Who’s looking at this session? What’s really going on?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, you know, we were talking, excuse me, we were talking about over you went through after your initial awakening. And we, we didn’t quite say it explicitly. But, you know, we’re pretty much alluding to the idea that the nervous system and psyche can, you know, be a huge dump of all kinds of impressions, all kinds of garbage that is accumulated over who knows how long. And, you know, the, the sort of the safety first approach would be to just, you know, systematically at a pace that we can handle clean that stuff out. And a lot of times people really want the shortcut, you know, and so they go to Ayahuasca session or something without having even touched all that stuff. And they just, they hope that the plant can do it for them, or the DMT, or whatever it is. And there definitely have been all kinds of train wrecks as a result of that. I really don’t. Maybe someday it’ll be I don’t know, it’s too disciplined, I imagined to to expect there to be objective survey of the success rate. But it’s,
Leanora: I think it’s it’s subjective, based on who’s running the session. Yeah. What their skill level is, and what kind of space they’re creating, how sacred it is, how big their certain setting. Yeah, you’re going to do that choose who you’re going to do it with. Yeah, you know, take the time. And then if you’re going to do it, you know, you need to do some exploration about what’s motivating you. Because if the motivation isn’t sacred, then you know, you may not have as nice or an experience as you’d like, or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, I think there’s so many variables in there that but you know, in another picture, I’ve heard from people who’ve done you know, I did Ayahuasca journeys, and they’ve had quite a lot of transformation. Yep. Yeah. So it’s one of those things that everyone has to choose. If it resonates, it’s good. If it doesn’t,
Rick Archer: then I mean, there’s research at Johns Hopkins and NYU and other places with psilocybin and their people who are getting over chronic depression and alcoholism and all with you know, just one or two two psilocybin journeys. So So one of those things like we talked about the beginning about, you know, the diversity of, of all the things in creation, and we just can’t sort of polarize in into one way or another and say it has to be this way.
Leanora: Yeah. And it is, it can be like a kid in a candy store or, you know, I mean, we have the internet now we can find out anything and everything and we can learn, you know, so we have an outside research station, our computer that tap into a lot of information out there, and we have a lot of access to a lot of choices.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Interesting. Well, that’s kind of what I tried to provide with backcap is an access to a lot of choices. There’s a was a categorical index page under, under past interviews, where you can see all the categories of types of people I’ve spoken with. And, and the the sentiment behind this, the thought behind it is that, you know, it’s a vast, diverse universe, people themselves are diverse, and that there are you can say there has many paths to God as there are people. And obviously, there’s some groups and similarities, but everyone has their own journey. And, you know, one, one size does not fit all.
Leanora: Yeah, I agree with that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Let’s see reading on here. So you became a meditator, you said, did you sort of teach yourself? Did you learn some kind of practice or what?
Leanora: Yeah, so the, the new partner was a meditator. And he said, I think I think you should learn to meditate. And I was thinking along the same lines, and I learned to meditate from somebody in the neighborhood who was a Buddhist, and then I got pulled into Buddhism for a while, they may be about 15 years. So that style of meditation was Vipassana insight meditation. And I dabbled off in Tibetan Buddhism for a while, which offered me some other windows. And, and then, you know, I kept reaching limits that that people couldn’t, I didn’t get the right guidance for, let’s just say, right, or I wasn’t able to hear and it was like, you know, so I could go to a meditation and end up kind of unable to walk or something, you know, and the end the Teach, the teacher would, or you need a doctor. And I know, it only happens when I meditate. So this was actually a big clue about how the mind affects the body. And it’s also a big clue about preconscious trauma. So it’s like I couldn’t, I couldn’t say, you know, something happened in my childhood that that created that, that the root of the root of that stuff was preconscious. And it my conscious mind did not know about it. So that actually took me into a particular focus in regard to trauma healing, which is I what I was interested in, in the early days. And that particular focus was preconscious trauma. And there wasn’t a lot of this is 30 years ago, 25 years ago, there wasn’t a lot out there. And whatever was out there, I read and it also took me into, you know, exploring the shamanic tradition. And, you know, I went down various avenues. And I also became interested in what’s called developmental trauma. So, you know, when you have severe trauma, early on in the womb, at birth, you know, before the age of two, those kinds of things are harder to heal. And I had that kind of situation. And
Rick Archer: the roots of that start coming up in your practice,
Leanora: you don’t have any conscious memory, you know, like, I remember being on a retreat once, probably 25 years ago. And that two in the morning, being awake and experiencing what I would call pure terror. And like, there’s no sleep gonna happen here. So I went and sat in the meditation hall and I was sitting in the meditation hall in an experience of pure terror. And my body just burst out in chickenpox.
Rick Archer: Interesting, real chickenpox? Yeah, I
Leanora: had the chicken experience, which I, I hadn’t had as a child for some reason. So, you know, fortunately, there was a German doctor on on in the group there, that chickenpox, you know, and that was also the beginning of having neuralgia. So it was induced by meditation, or they became a lot of clues that when I meditate, it brings stuff up. Yeah. And what became an exploration some years ago was not just the trauma healing, which is the sort of top down you know, let’s look at and feel, you know, experience re experience what’s stored in the soma, but was also a bottom up approach is like, if I sit in stillness, yeah. What, what’s, what’s happening? So there became this sort of relativistic way of working with meditation. Exploring who’s who’s looking, you know, who’s experiencing this? What’s my perception about? And how do you see your perception when it’s entangled with your awareness? And how do you disentangle so that you can discern what’s pure awareness and what’s, you know, mental structures muddled in, and those mental structures are shaping us. From what what happened to us in the past, but if what happened to us in the past is preconscious, you don’t have the story. You can’t use the story to tap into it. You know, but it’s going to come at you in some form. Yeah, because it needs to resolve itself. So the system is always trying to recalibrate, to wholeness, that’s the force that we have within us. And so it’s a lot of my path is the feminine kind of water path of surrender. Devotional surrender, and yeah, so that’s, that kind of touches on
Rick Archer: I tend to get the impression that even that even though you’ve done a whole lot of different things, and explored a whole lot of different areas, that you never had one teacher that who knocked it out of the park, you know, who was sort of really a master, that if you’ve had to work a lot of stuff out on your own. And you’ve had helping hands and friends along the way, but never anybody who, you know, perhaps was, you know, an ultimate final type of teacher.
Leanora: I think that’s true. You know, my teacher at the moment is the inner experience, and has been for a long time, but there has been so many great teachers, you know, Buddhism served me to a point and then I needed to find more information because I kind of reached the edge of that. And, you know, add, add your shanties books were very, very, very valuable to me, I’d read a paragraph sometimes, and my whole system would recalibrate. So, you know, there’s been a lot of teachers life, of course, itself is the great teacher. Yeah, there’s, there’s been a lot of teachers, but I never felt, you know, I was sometimes drawn like to Taoism or something, and I thought, oh, that’s gonna take me 25 years to really understand that. You know, and, and it’s more mental stuff. And so I was very, you know, felt sense. In the moment kind of thing that really, all the teachings are here at the inside us really. And so at some point, I’ve I kind of stopped being so informed, I’m still informed by teachers, of course, you know, but they’re not my, they’re not my kind of go to I heart and my own system is my go to Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, it’s interesting. I mean, it’s interesting that you could read a paragraph by audio and have your whole system recalibrate, it seems like you there’s a couple of things. One is your inner guidance is really good. You know, it’s, it’s, I think, a lot of times people can be kind of, like, delusional about what’s guiding them and go off on all kinds of tangents, but it seems like yours has served you well. And, and it’s also, it’s also seems like your, your whole system is very amenable to change and evolution. Like, you know, a lot of people might, most people would read a paragraph by anybody, and that’s nice, but they wouldn’t, it wouldn’t trigger a big, you know, transformation or readjustment. But it seems like yours is your system is very fine tuned and able to kind of gain a lot of benefit from whatever you Yeah.
Leanora: So, yes, and, you know, I, I have had, you know, support from external sources, but like, I would always reach a limit. And ultimately, I was on this journey of, you know, like, I have to discover something that that, like, nobody knows how to help me with or something like that, you know, and at points of time, it might have felt like a curse. But it was also a gift, you know, because it had me constantly reaching towards resolution and having, you know, development, developmental trauma is like, there’s a lot of development that happens to the human body, you know, pre to age two. And so if that if you get trauma or significant trauma at that time, you know, that that development doesn’t happen, how it’s supposed to happen, because it gets derailed, and, you know, your consciousness might go out of the body and not be able to come back and, you know, so you know, there’s a task. I mean, I was involved, I don’t know 10 years ago with a special whole group of people who had mapped out different states of consciousness, it was called the Institute for the Study of peak states of consciousness. And I got involved with them, you know, so I did go down lots of different avenues looking, you know, but I had a thread, you know, which I want to be the best me, you know, so it was like, I had that thread and, and so I didn’t discard things easily. You know, but I would reach a point where it’s like, okay, I got that. Yeah, and, you know, one of the, one of the qualities of what happened to me, and what it severe trauma can do to people is a hyper vigilance. So, you know, your awareness, which is hidden, your perception, which is hidden for you has a hyper vigilant state that you’re blind to, you know, and that hyper vigilant state is like, wow, I can sense what’s going on 50 meters from me, you know, so it becomes really fine tune, but what’s driving it is the safety, you know, keeping safe kind of thing. And so, yeah, so you know, you’re very empathic, I was super empathic, you know, perhaps overly so it’s taken, it took many years to unwind. Empathy and stages, you know, from being like, I’d go out and somebody’s sore throat would end up in my body, you know, like, that is like a, it’s, it’s empathy, or the journey of empathy is this discernment of what’s mine and what’s not mine. Even though I know, at the deepest level, it’s all mine. Yeah. So there was lots of lots of pieces over, you know, I’ve been at this for 30 years, lots and lots of pieces of, you know, evolving to an embodied, connected kind of place. And I’m not done yet. You know, I’ve still got challenges that that keep me curious. But I just book you know, I remember that when I was sharing that the particular piece that I remember, which really shaped how I started meditating afterwards, he, you know, I been meditating. And I opened the book, and there was a paragraph about I can’t remember the words, of course, but it was about being open and curious. And that is that boundlessness and focus that is that sort of feminine receptivity and that masculine, you know, penetration, and it was like, I just thought I read it, I kind of close the book and I went into open and curious and both, you know, it was like, something major happens. And I thought, that’s really cool. That’s great. And it reoriented, thanks to Agia blessings, it reoriented how I proceeded from there, you know, it gave me something. So it wasn’t, you know, a six week workshop, it was literally a moment. That’s fascinating.
Rick Archer: Yeah, a couple of points you brought, one was about sort of being hyper vigilant, you know, and kind of like having to sort of be on guard all the time, because of having been traumatized reminded me of this guy that I see in the local Walmart, who obviously is a veteran, judging from the decals and things he wears on his clothing. And he comes into Walmart with this giant German Shepherd on a leash, which I guess is, you know, it’s allowed because it’s service dog for traumatized people, they can bring a service dog into stores and everything. And he has like a big hunting knife on his hip, which is, and there’s just five of him around him of the guy has really been traumatized. And he and he feels the world as a huge threat that he needs to sort of protect against. Yes, it’s sad, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of in the US of course, since we’ve been engaged in so many wars, there’s a lot of traumatized people who were either institutionalized there’s high sensitive, high case, incidence of suicides and and all this so on so many traumatized people walking around with all that bottled up. And there are some nice programs actually, where various kinds of meditation are being used to help people with this to PTSD and with with great effectiveness. So the side comment, but it’s worth mentioning. And perhaps anyone listening to this has PST, PTSD, they might, this might give them hope that, you know, proper kind of meditation practice can help to, you know, heal it.
Leanora: Yeah, very much. So, you know, and, and it’s a it’s a journey. I think, you know, with with traumatized like, the veteran is like, super traumatized and can’t live a really happy, healthy life. But in, in, in another level, we’re all traumatized. It’s just a degree. You know, we’re here. We’re here on earth school to, you know, discern who we are and who we’re not and we’re getting
Rick Archer: that’s pretty dramatic as one of StatSoft graphs points these days. Yeah.
Leanora: Yeah, I did some of his work too. And being born is traumatic, because, you know, I think that’s where the power over dynamic can get set in, you know, the, the energetic pattern of power and the the masculine power over the feminine because the feminine is on her back, which is a very vulnerable position she should be squatting perhaps, you know, whatever. And, you know, the, the, the, it’s considered a dangerous thing. So you’ve got all the hospital staff on alert, you know, and it’s like, it’s not a pleasant to welcome to planet earth kind of experience.
Rick Archer: The bright lights and somebody slaps you on the bottom? Yeah,
Leanora: yeah. And your your mother is like, got an epidural, so she can’t feel it, you know, and that affects the baby I do. A lot of my early work was actually navigating tuber. Because birth is one of those kinds of developmental events that really shapes who we become. And so, you know, I did a lot of I don’t do that kind of navigation, I just see what wants to unfold now. But in those days, when I was really focused on healing and preconscious healing, it was like, let’s go, you know, let’s go to birth and your own trauma. Yeah. Who my clients before rewire how how that experience was because it was traumatic. You know, you had the mother was became powerless and the drugs were put in. So she’s kind of like non compos mentors. And then then you’ve got the medical staff doing it to you, you know, taking the power away from that feminine that natural, you know, animals birth, we burn,
Rick Archer: or they do it. Although, you know, I mean, there’s pluses and minuses here, because a lot of people have that the incidence in certain cultures of people die in childbirth is very high. And yeah, you get into situations where you really want the surgeon to be there or whatever.
Leanora: Yeah, we don’t need to throw the baby out the bathwater.
Rick Archer: Appropriate. Yeah. One other thread that I wanted to tie up before I forget something you said a few minutes ago about how you, you went through a phase or maybe still are where you’re so empathic, that you could go into a crowd and pick up somebody’s sore throat from 30 feet away, or whatever? Do you feel that there has been a trend in your life towards being a kind of a washing machine where you can sort of process more collective trauma or collective stress that’s in the atmosphere? Without it clinging to you?
Leanora: Yeah, that’s, that’s a big question. And a good question. I think it’s about mastery over your empathy. You know, so in the early days, I didn’t have the mastery. So you know, going out would be like, or, you know, I’d have to come back and recover, you know, I might be on my back for half a day or whatever. And to recover, and, you know, the thing that turns things around, is that curiosity and, and, and, you know, yeah, wanting to want to know, you know, what’s, what’s, why is this happening to me? Or what’s, you know, what can I do about it? What, what’s, you know, and it became, you know, the empathy became. Now, I feel masterful in it, but it became an exploration of, you know, what am I responsible for? And what am I not responsible for? You know, so what I was doing is I was, I was being responsible for everything. Yeah. Yeah. And it has a toll and, and then also, this, there’s this sort of transference that can happen. So, you know, for example, if you’re kind of out in the universe, in a, in a sort of heavenly realm, but not in your body, then things happen in your body. And so, I remember when I first started working with some friends, you know, saying, Let me show you some things. And I would feel empathically, you know, lates, let’s say a pain in their body, and it would show up in my body, you know, like, my body was sort of a place that that’s how I observe it. Yeah. And so, you know, there was, I was doing that, and I would, I would just feel it and feel it, and it would go away, and then it would go away. And then, but my curiosity was, was that yours or mine? You know? Yeah, it only showed up when you came into into my room, you know, so Was it yours or mine? And then I got to a place where I felt, I didn’t really know the answer to that. But I felt that if it’s in my body, then it’s mine to work with. And so, then it became like, you know, that person is helping me find something that I’m conscious of, you know, so
Rick Archer: interesting. When you would work something out for somebody. It was almost it’s almost like a collaborative arrangement where perhaps both people had something worked out and you were the catalyst for it. Yeah, so
Leanora: you know, at the deepest level, it’s it’s ours.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I was gonna say that because if you think of it from a God’s eye view, nothing yours or mine, everything is
Leanora: back god. Yeah. And I had that view, you know, I was quite, I was quite, let’s say, entangled with that view in a good way and a bad way at the same time. So, you know, I was getting hit with things like that. And I had to disentangle from that view is like, I had to come from that kind of a god state into a separate little me state that could look after herself in the body, you know, and not caught everybody else’s stuff. Yeah. So. So it’s a process of discernment. And, you know, Now often, for example, if I’m in a session with somebody, and I know what’s happening for you, and I know, I’ve got a pain over here, and I go, and I don’t, then what I what I, what I do is, I know that that the person who’s perceiving is actually, you know, the perceiver is actually in a process of creating that pain, that there’s a entanglement between the experience and the experience in that person. Yeah, in that person. So it, it helps me redirect them, like you can focus on the pain and be willing to have it but it doesn’t clear. And the reason it doesn’t clear is because there’s a mental structure that’s attached to it. And you’ve got to actually kind of reverse your curiosity and find out who’s looking at it, you got to bring your attention to who’s perceiving.
Rick Archer: Exactly, and that the who that’s perceiving is fast. I mean, one thing that comes to mind when you say this, is that in your case, you were able to process all this stuff, because you had this experiential breakthrough, and you kind of became more oceanic, you could say, in your awareness. And yeah, to use that word. I mean, if, if I take this cup and try to dissolve a tablespoon full of mud in it, it’s, I wouldn’t want to drink it, that’s gonna really muddy up the water. But yeah, if I took a tablespoon of mud and dumped it in a swimming pool, or in an ocean, it would just the swimming pool or the ocean would be able to handle it. So, you know, it seems to me the best way to be able to resolve all these knots that are Yeah, is to is to have that unboundedness? Yeah,
Leanora: absolutely, absolutely accurately. For me, it’s like, there are levels of exploring perception. And one of the first levels or the first doorways that is really helpful is to is just to expand your connection. But instead of being in your head kind of looking at your body is actually to feel your wholeness. And allow that to be as big as it feels comfortable to be, it’s like you don’t have to define it. And just in doing that, the problem shrinks, like you said, you know, the mud doesn’t affect the ocean, it affects your cup. So you know, that, that puts your perception in this kind of bigger God state type view where the problems are less significant to you. Whereas if you’re a small, little ego looking at it, it’s a big problem. Yeah. So like, you can shift by working energetically that way. And then the other thing that you can do is come to love. So come to love is more like kind of, you know, notice the part of you that doesn’t want this mud. You know, and and notice your attitude or your alignment or your mood. You know, the things that are kind of generally hidden from you, because you’re so busy looking at the mud, you don’t realize that you’re trying to get rid of it. And that’s not loving.
Rick Archer: it overshadows you so you’re so overshadowed by it. You don’t even realize you’re stuck in it. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s very true. And you think of people who think it would be really good idea to rob a store or kill a person or do some terrible thing. You know, it’s like, like Jesus said, Forgive them father, they know not what they do. You get totally overshadowed and blinded and gripped by the Yeah, the inputs.
Leanora: And I think the the reality for all of us is that we have a lot of blind spots. It’s, you know, it’s like, but we can’t, we don’t know that we have blind spots. We’ve become dependent on believing stuff, you know? Yeah. Though, in some ways, like, how do I explore how can I see the blind spot, you know, and so there’s different ways that you can employ just to notice your mood or your attitude, you know, as an energy so dealing at that sort of source energetic level, it’s not not a mental contemplation level. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah. That’s, I’ve thought about this before. The tricky thing about Maya if we want to use that word, is that the first thing it does is blinds you to the fact that you are deluded? Yeah. Delusion is is diluting. Yeah, it is so strange. There’s this phrase again, in Sanskrit, that translates as The blinding darkness of ignorance.
Leanora: Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Okay, a question came in from someone here. This is from Vesna in Calgary, Canada. Currently, Jung described the healing power of the sacred when he stated, the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses, but rather with the approach to the numinous. The fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy. And in as much as you attain to the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology, even the every disease, even every disease takes on a numinous character. And then that was all quote from Jung. And then she says, it seems that beatitude is the cure and not the sifting through of emotions, thoughts, this question?
Leanora: Yeah, the complex question to be, you know, one has to look at what’s motivating you, you know, like, is, is the numinous in your attitude, a place to escape to so that I don’t have to deal with the emotional dross? And so that’s a bypass. Yeah. Or can I have that balance of, you know, allowing, and this is, the way that I like to work is it’s allowing the felt sense of emotions or sensations in the body, and so on. Yeah, and invoking stillness at the same time. It’s like contrasting. And when you do that kind of contrasting, you know, stillness is the numinous, it’s the ultimate place that you you’re surrendering, surrendering to, it’s also the origin point of you, it’s the origin point of your experience, it’s the origin point of your perceiver. You know, it’s the origin point of your body. So, you know, everything’s arising out of consciousness. So, you know, if we can surrender into that it, the stuff that isn’t true dies, you know, the lies that we’re telling ourselves the pain that we’ve got, because those are coming from a reality based in time. So they’re relativistic, whereas the numinous is in the present moment. But you know, you can go chasing the numinous. And then what’s really happening there is that you’re, you’ve got an escape plan from avoiding your, you know, darkness or whatever. So, you know, the answer to the question is different, depending on who’s asking it in that context, but it’s
Rick Archer: the question anyway, no one thought that popped in when you were saying that was that, you know, it’s okay, I guess, in a way that meditation is, can can be a refuge, or going inward can be a refuge. We just can’t hide out there all the time, obviously. And I’ve seen cases where people have tried to do that. Well, for instance, the Beatles wrote Dear Prudence, about prudence Pharaoh, who was staying in a room far too long meditating, and got really, you know, nutty, because she was overdoing it. And I’ve seen people, she, of course, was on a meditation course. But I’ve seen people do that in regular real life to where they just sort of go too much on the inward stroke and are afraid to or reluctant to engage in the outward stroke, because, you know, the world just, they, they sort of over sensitize themselves without proper integration in the world just seems too rough and gross and challenging to, to deal with.
Leanora: Yeah, I can relate to that, too, from my own journey. It’s, it’s, you know, when I’m sitting, meditating, I mean, I’m the queen of all I survey kind of thing. You know, it’s like, I’m in control. And when you go out, you know, there’s all this stuff that happens. And if you’re sensitive, it feels like 1000 times stronger, you
Rick Archer: want to stay in the closet. Yeah. But avoidance,
Leanora: it’s an avoidance and really, ultimately, what my stick in the ground is, is that were here to embody that stillness. So the meditation practice is life life is the meditation. Yeah, you know, you can you can do your practice on your pillow. And that, that gives you power and support and skill, and but you got to take it out, and you’ve got to live it. And so it’s like, you know, Can I Can I hold maintain my field and connection to it in Times Square, New York or something, you know, it’s like, it’s a practice, you know, so I do a lot of practices that are about living it. You know, being authentic, being authentic as you’re, as you’re out in the world. And be
Rick Archer: and I think, you know, playing on the word authentic, I think that, you know, it may be authentically inappropriate and necessary and undesirable for someone who if they go to, let’s say, heavy metal concerts, or hang out in bars, or, you know, do all kinds of other things some people like to do, they might, they might feel, it’s really not my thing. That doesn’t make them an escapist or someone who’s trying to hide from the world. It’s like You know, the various scriptures of different traditions emphasize the value of keeping the company of the wise and pure people, because it’s very conducive to growth. And the opposite can be very deleterious.
Leanora: Exactly. It’s a song about, you know, you might need to go to a heavy metal concert just to feel what it feels like to have your system disorganized. So,
Rick Archer: we’re actually, yeah, I actually really enjoy getting into intense situations once a while, like running through airports and stuff. They’re chaotic, just because the contract. Yeah, it shakes it up. And the contrast is fascinating. Between nothing, nothing’s happening. There’s absolute peace here. And yet there’s this crazy airport.
Leanora: Yeah, exactly. I think that’s so valuable. Because then, you know, do you do you survive? Or do you get go into overwhelm in that experience, you know, and I, I think that’s, you know, your mind can think I’m not going to do that, because I won’t like it. And then your comfort zone keeps shrinking, and you become a spiritual bypass, you know, because it is very, very seductive to have peace anytime you want. You know, and so you go, Oh, just, but you know, we’re here in this world, we’re all in it together. And it’s a mess. And, you know, it’s like, how do we get to a place where we can be loving action? Rather than love in reaction? Let’s be loving action. And, and that requires a resilient nervous system. And it requires, you know, practice. And it requires testing, you know, you take it for a test drive. Yeah. So, you know, you might not go to the heavy metal concert to start with you might go, you know, just to a big crowd at a classical music concert.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Start with Baroque. Yeah. Yeah,
Leanora: pushing the edges in such a way that, you know, I think we need safety. But I think we need growth, I think one without the other is dangerous.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s good. Balance the middle way, as you said earlier. There’s a question that came in from Wesley in Albuquerque. I resonate with your experiences, my awakening has emptied out the mind and open the heart. And as it moves down the body through deeper surrender, I come to this dense contracted energy in the stomach. There’s a lot of pain, fear and trauma in there. As I open to and continue to surrender, the energy, the energy opens, and at the bottom of it, the body stops, stops breathing, not intentionally. And just before blacking out, fear takes over and comes gasping back to life. And he thought, Oh, I could come in on that one. But you go ahead.
Leanora: Oh, that’s a big, that’s a big experience. Yeah. So. So it’s wonderful that you go into the pain, and you know that that takes you somewhere, and then it seems to take to a freeze, like the breath stops. Yeah. Like, that’s
Rick Archer: a Samadhi characteristic of Samadhi. When the breath stops,
Leanora: yeah. But it can also be characteristic of the freeze, you know, so that, that, you know, I don’t know if if the breath stopped while he was breathing in or out or between the breaths. So you know, the stop breath can be the Free State, it’s like a bike, too much fear, and you just stop. And it’s a little bit like a shock in the system, you know. So that’s one point. The other thing is what I found, as I got more and more involved in my own journey, was that what’s happening in the gut, you know, the gut brain, the intelligence of the gut, our instincts, our how we digest, not just food, but how we digest emotions, how we digest in life, is reflected in the mind, it’s reflected in the brain. And so I work very much with the polarity of masculine and feminine or mind and body, your head and gut. And so sometimes the, what’s happening, this is the blank spot, you know, there’s the blank spot is the perceiver. And the perceiver is also the creator. So if you’re doing this meditation, and you’ve got this thing in your gut, you kind of know that it’s not related to this moment, unless there’s a tiger in the room with you. It’s, it’s related to a past moment. So you know, what we’re doing as we go into it is where we’ve got to look at, in my way is that we look at these two elements of consciousness. One is the experience. And the other is the experiences. So the experience that tends to live, you know, somewhere around the eyes, or certainly in the head, sometimes out of the body can be soul loss or dissociation at that level. But that experience has a relational entanglement with the experience in the gut. And what we want to do is discern that so in the in another way of looking at it, it’s for me, it’s like The masculine always has an agenda. The dysfunctional masculine and the divine masculine Shiva, if you will, is, you know, able to be with the body with whatever’s happening, even death. Yeah. So what we’re doing there is we what I found is really valuable is rather than just working on the experience, at some point, when you felt everything one needs to look at, bring stillness in firstly, that stabilizes the nervous system, and contrast stillness to the experience in the guard. And then the other part is to, to bring awareness to what’s what’s in the head looking at it. Yeah, it’s very hard to explain this in words.
Rick Archer: But you offer practices, which help people do that, right?
Leanora: practices that help people to do that. And I guide people because it’s like, you know, you can write down the practice, and nobody knows what you’re talking about. So, you know, my maps and my guidance are often, you know, the first foray into that, and it took me many years, but I’ve been able to guide people into that in kind of shorter windows of time, which is very rewarding.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that brings up a good point, which is a lot of times personal instruction, is is really irreplaceable. You just can’t get it from a book in the way you can from an actual conscious person who can, you know, instruct you in the right way.
Leanora: Yeah, and yeah, I totally agree. Because, you know, what’s relevant in the moment, it might not be what the words on the book are saying, what’s relevant in the moment is what’s actually happening in the moment. And so if you have a guide, like for me, I’m empathically aware, so I can sense, you know, when somebody is connected, or when somebody is not connected, or if they’ve got a pain here, you know, some of the pain they can see somebody can’t see because they have blind spots, you know, so it’s really just like having a set of eyes, or an awareness that isn’t tainted by your egoic position, or your perceiver. You know, that’s kind of more clean. Yeah. That can help you illuminate what the obstacles are in your path and help you transform those obstacles by basically experiencing stillness in relationship to
Rick Archer: them. Yep. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, like a traffic cop is up on a higher thing. And he can see all the traffic coming from every direction. And he has a perspective that, you know, the, the person in each individual car doesn’t necessarily have.
Leanora: Yeah, and but I think what’s really important is like, as a guide, I don’t have an agenda. I don’t have a plan for sessions or even group group things. It’s like, I’m guided by what’s happening in the moment. Right, right. And so you know, the plans are always in the way, agendas are always in the way. So it’s really like, I feel like I’m listening to the person’s soul. Yeah. And their soul is guiding the journey.
Rick Archer: That’s nice. Yeah. And I imagine this is something you can turn on and off at will you don’t just go through this grocery store checkout line and get a whole read from the person’s soul.
Leanora: Yeah, yeah. No, I’m not into that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I’m just one little quick comment about fear. And the when, when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, I guess it was in the late 40s, early 50s. As he was approaching the speed of sound, there was a huge shaking in the plane, and he had just really hold on to the stick, or whatever they call it. And, but as soon as he broke through, it all got smooth. And you know, just and I’ve talked to so many people over the years who have kind of approached this threshold of the absolute we might call it or whatever, and encountered this, this fear that they had to somehow deal with their breakthrough in order if they might retreat from it, or they might actually get through it and then it’s it’s all peace on the other side, the fear is gone. And it’s sort of a there’s a kind of a fundamental fear that the Punisher I’d say all fear is born of duality. That’s a sort of a fundamental fear is from at that point where duality initially emerges. That we may have to traverse as we get into unity.
Leanora: Yeah, your description of is accurate and often I I’m working with somebody and they they’ll they’ll say, oh, there’s this big black empty spot in my chest. Yeah, go you know, part of what’s interesting is I’m separate from that spot. So I’m, I’m in a place of separation from it. And I’m looking at it and and you know, it doesn’t dawn on me that I can go in it or if I go near it, I might feel fear. But you know, many people if if the stability is in the field, you know, like I feel like in some ways about resonance like I’m holding a place that that is loving and safe. And so in that, in that, in that context, many people can go into that place and you know, everything dies there, you know, all the mental structures that are causing your suffering, they just can disappear there, you know, so it’s a very, very powerful plays, but there has to be a willingness, you know, it’s everybody’s choice. And some people it can take a while, you know, to get through that threshold, and other people will just jump in and go, it’s nice here, or I feel such really, yeah, you know, so it’s, um, you know, there isn’t a formula, it’s really what’s happening in the moment, and, you know, kind of what you know, is possible for people. And I, you know, if I’m working with somebody with a trauma, I don’t see them as a traumatized person, I see them as divinity. You know, and that helps direct them. You know, that helps create a pathway. So I don’t go into reaction, I don’t get engaged in the story, I don’t get lost in the drama. It’s like, I listen. But I’m listening. I’m listening. empathically. So when people are speaking, you know, emotions are coming through. And I’m feeling that in my felt sense, and that’s informing, you know, everything. And so it’s really firstly, just to get them out of the story and to connect, you know, is a valuable piece. Yeah, has to get deeper than the story what’s really going on in the emotional body and in the physical body and stuff.
Rick Archer: You’ve been doing this for quite a few years, do you feel that? Is it your observation that things are kind of heating up in the world in terms of people awakening and the the ease and rapidity with which people are going to work in and so on and so forth, you feel like the field is kind of getting more lively? And it’s, they say that saying a rising tide lifts all boats? Do you think that there’s the tide is rising?
Leanora: Yeah, you know, I hover in the center point of not knowing? And that’s a that’s a fair answer. I mean, I look at one view and go, you know, like, if you look at the personal journey of going through trauma and finding your true self, it’s the same thing on the external, it’s like a fractal of that, you know, so I can look at what’s going on and go, Oh, if people are awakening, people are awakening more easily, you know, amazing children are being born. And then at the same time, I can go, Oh, my God, autism rates are really high. And, and, you know, Mr. T, is going to start World War Three in a minute, and, you know, so they’re co arising, you know, and kind of has, it kind of has to be that way. It’s like, you know, we do have an increasing, we have to give up, you know, voting somebody in that we think is going to sort it all out for us right now. And we have to, we have to find our sovereignty or reclaim our power and, and reclaim community and not be in these little separate isolated fear induced, you know, like the whole system is, seems to me, I’m on my soapbox now. It’s like it seems to be to support generating more and more fear. Yeah. So it’s like, everybody can so easily get seduced and polarized into a position and then get really attached to that position. And that position is creating something. And, you know, it doesn’t actually resolve anything, it just like now you’ve got people that you’re in opposition to because you have a position that’s different. And then you have people that are feel like your tribe, because they have the same opinion as you. Yeah. You know, that we’ve been doing this for 1000s of years, it really doesn’t work, you know, the, we’re moving from this dualistic Piscean age to the Age of Aquarius. So, you know, let’s hope at a planetary cosmological level that we’re really being encouraged to come into a unification with ourselves and get out of this traumatic drama.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, the polarization is, seems to be greater than ever, at least here in the US, and politically and in society. I kind of wonder, it’s interesting to sort of, you know, you can’t really see the trends of history as as well as you’re living them as you can in retrospect, and it’ll be interesting to see where this all leads, I sort of feel like it’s a natural part of huge changes that are afoot. And it’s you mentioned, you know, possibly World War Three I mean, there’s also the climate change issue and, and yet these, you know, dire problems are counterbalance, or kind of counterbalanced with what appears to me to be some kind of goal Awakening, which I don’t think is coincidental. It’s somehow related, somehow Crick rising to meet the challenge, and it’ll be fascinating to see how it all works
Leanora: out. I think right at the beginning of this conversation, you talked about, you know, people come to awakening when their back is against the wall. Yeah. And, you know, like, we can be apathetic and complacent when, you know, we’ve got a little fence around our property, and the supermarket still provides us food. But, you know, if some, if that fence got knocked over, or the supermarket stopped providing food, you know, that would, you know, get us active, that would instantly move us out of apathy. Yeah. So, you know, the apathy is kind of like a disease of, you know, advanced civilization. You know, we we’ve lost touch with the land, we’ve lost touch with where food comes from, you know, and all those things. And I think, you know, I’m not saying we have to go back and be cave people, but I think that there’s an integration of, you know, heaven on earth, that is, you know, that balance point.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I forgot that I’m talking to somebody who did permaculture for 25 years and stuff like that, it’s definitely gonna be part of the future, if we have a future, it’s got to be.
Leanora: Yeah, and I think, you know, when there’s, I’m sure, in the US, the drama is bigger than how I listened to it here from Bali. But you know, when there’s these big dramas going on, they polarize us, and they consume us, and it’s like, going down a vortex, and we don’t always come out of it, you know, then there’s just the next drama. But I think, you know, that sort of loving action is like, if you look at that big drama, there’s like, not a lot that you can do, or maybe there is some depends on who you are. But what you can do is you can plant a garden, or you can, you know, you can do things, and it’s like the things that inspire me, as I see, you know, some dude in in India, who spent 20 years planting, you know, 5 million trees or something. Those are the things that are really inspiring, it’s like, you know, let let the cats and dogs, you know, kill each other. But let’s, you know, let’s take steps towards what we want. What do we want to create?
Rick Archer: Yeah. And also, we’re getting a little bit, I know, we’re jumping around a little bit here. But I think of examples like, you know, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Greta tunberg, for that matter, who just one person said, I’m just going to sit here and, you know, things have to change. And then it was like the crack in the in the dike or something that the whole thing just began to flood from the intention of that one person, they sort of served as an agent of, of change. So
Leanora: I think also, you know, what seems really, really obvious to me is that most people are looking outside themselves, you know, whether it’s at Greta or Donald Trump, or, you know, whatever we’re looking at, it’s outside. It’s like, the drama’s out there. But what’s really powerful and valuable is to meet, you know, the inside. Yeah. And, and that’s where the transformation and the shifts happen. It’s like, we’ve all got to, you know, take those steps. And collectively, as we individually do that, that changes the collective that influences the collective. And then then we don’t have to get polarized into, you know, something that’s just consuming our time consuming our energy, making us feel defeated, but rather that we’re you know, refocusing reframing, reclaiming our power and then doing what we can do in our own community. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Also, you’ve talked about how, you know, the waking up to the inner dimension, enabled you to deal with great trauma. I think that’s going to be a necessity more and more for people in the world to weather the storm that’s blowing and it will blow harder. That, you know, this, the anchor is that inner silence, and I think it’s going to be an essential feature for anyone’s life if they want to, you know, survive and be happy. Yeah.
Leanora: I agree. Absolutely. Agree.
Rick Archer: Yeah. The question came in from Greg in London, Greg is up late. It’s like 130 in the morning in London. Greg said, hi. I really resonate with Leonardo’s story and wanted to ask if you could please share some tips on the following these three points here, I’m going to read. We can take them one by one if you want. Yeah, that so first one, how can we be more embodied as opposed to being so much in the head?
Leanora: Right, write? Practice
Rick Archer: will help you practice practically. Let’s say people hear this as a great I want to do it. I should. Okay, I’ll practice what do I practice?
Leanora: So we practice feeling a connection to the felt sense of the whole body. That’s a good start and opening, you know, taking an attitude of openness, willingness, sincerity. So kind of aligning with what I would call, like a sacred connection. Yeah, that you feel that you’re going into a temple, your your system is your temple,
Rick Archer: this is something I try to do all the time all day long, or something you do in a meditative state. Maybe for
Leanora: it depends, if you’re just starting, or if you’ve quite skilled, you know, ultimately, you want to live there. Yeah, yeah. But you know, it’s baby steps often. So you’re, you’re recalibrating your nervous system as you go in that, and it’s like changing from the inside out, like everything that you do, ripples out through the whole system. So you know, the mind says, I’ve got this problem, I need to fix that first, then I’ve got that problem, I need to fix that, that this isn’t that this is more of a transfiguration, it’s like you’re connecting with a resource, which is your true self, that knows who you are knows why you’re here and knows what you should be doing. It’s already known. And so you’re just tapping into that vibration. Yeah. And that’s giving that vibration power. Yeah. And that’s giving you inspiration. So you’re still going to meet the dark side, because there’s a little person in there with a story that, you know, it’s not working for me, or I’ve tried everything, or I’m not good enough, or, you know, whatever the little story is, you’ve got to meet the storyteller. So part of part of the journey is to be willing to feel the experience fully, through a felt sense connection. Yeah, that takes you out of the mental level and into the energetic level, where everything is just vibration, and resonance. So when you’re there, though, your willingness to meet the experience will transform the experience. However, it works to a point because there’s a there’s an identity or a sense of self or position, that that where it usually blind to? Yeah, and we’re looking through those glasses. And those glasses are keeping us stuck. So at some point, we were exploring what we’re looking through, you know, what that blind, you know, we’re, we’re becoming unblind. We’re clearing our visual channels, if you will. So, you know, that’s, that’s the piece. And, you know, that, you know, there’s a lot that you might find, just in doing that, you know, you can just do that might take you some years before you feel like really masterful in that. Yeah, because how much trauma you have, like, some things are easy to be with. And some things are like overwhelm.
Rick Archer: Okay, good. And I would just remind people that, you know, if that little explanation she just gave, doesn’t seem adequate to get you on the path of doing this in a in a systematic way, then, you know, lino offers one on one and group sessions, and maybe that would get you anchored in some sort of practice. That could be, it could be more self sufficient with.
Leanora: I think, also, you know, that people if they do that, if they really do that, they get a result. And the result is encouraging for them to keep practicing. That’s
Rick Archer: a good point. I sometimes talk to people say, Well, I tried meditating, and it nothing happened, you know. And then for me, it was like, kaboom the first day. And so I’ve never had a problem doing it regularly, because the results are so great. So if you do try something, you don’t get any results, try something else, because something’s going to work for you.
Leanora: People that have a trauma, and you go, okay, just feel what’s in there. It’s like, I don’t want to feel that it’s horrible, right. But if you can love what’s in there, you know, love is the way and the destination, if you can open to it and allow it. It’s got gold and jewelry on the other side of it, you know, it’s kind of like, it’s you got to go through it. And I changed your relationship with it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And there is something to be said for intention and motivation. I mean, there’s a saying, I keep coming up with all these sayings. They say in India, one of them is, you know, if you take one step toward God, God takes 1000 steps toward you. Or sometimes it’s spoken of in terms of the guru. But I’ve seen I’ve, again, seen so many examples. So when people have the intention, just the sincere intention, sometimes it’s even a prayer. It’s like, Yeah, well, it was with you, right. You’re like, help me something’s got to change here. And then kaboom, you get results.
Leanora: Yeah. And there’s this acknowledgement. I don’t know, the way show me the way. You know, it’s the acknowledgement of giving up. I don’t know the way which is true, because you’ve never been there before. And then the invitation to be shown the way you know, and those two together from the place of sincerity, you know, a really powerful
Rick Archer: Yeah, a sincere entreaty like that is heard. And yeah, and one gets a response. Yeah. Okay. So, here’s Greg, second question, how to work with an artist. We’ve talked about a bunch of this already, but you know, maybe at some little thing, how to work with and uncover pre conscious, traumatic experiences.
Leanora: Okay, well, they’ll reveal themselves to you and you’re ready. And you know, they, they’re kind of here and they’re shaping the conscious experiences. So sometimes it doesn’t have to be this way, like you can go directly into the absolute or stillness or whatever accessibility you have to that quality, qualitative experience. And that will help. Yeah, that will help, that just helps recalibrate the system. And that’s like the endpoint, it’s the the endpoint of healing is to return to self capital S. So it’s like you’re inducing the endpoint by bringing it in to meet the trauma. Yeah. And the two, when they’re together, they kind of resolve things change, and they resolve themselves. But then another way of looking at it is that you’re conscious trauma is shaped out of your pre conscious trauma.
Rick Archer: Yeah, good point.
Leanora: Oh, you know, it’s, it can sometimes be done. Like I say, you can go directly there, you can invoke stillness and not need to know all the stories and all the trauma points along the way. And things will resolve energetically, and you’ll just be different. And you don’t know why. And that’s cool. Yeah, you don’t need a new story, you can just not have a story. Or you might track back. So it depends on the person and their capacity and their skill you might track back to, you know, what happened yesterday, when you had a drama with somebody. And if you feel into that experience, all the way to its root, you’re going to find the preconscious in between you and the root to the root being stillness. So you know, it’s it depends on whether you’re working in time, or whether you’re working in no time or some combination thereof. Yeah. So like, what, what I did in my own journey is I exhausted what I found it in trauma healing. And you know, that that whole technology or the technologies that are out there have improved and, you know, being fine tuned, and they’re, they’re really coming on board, and I really respect them. But my curiosity was, you know, I had 1000s and 1000s of traumas, you know, it was gonna take lifetimes to get through it. So, you know, my curiosity was like, What’s the origin? Where’s, where’s the, you know, how did this get created? Without my knowledge, you know, where did this come from, and it comes from one place, the root of all trauma is the leaving of self capital S. So the resolution of all trauma is the return to self. And I found it so much more powerful to have that as a stick in the ground, then pull me with all my traumas. Because that position of I’ve got a lot of traumas is keeping you stuck in I’ve got a lot of traumas.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s good point. So what you’re saying is that unless you get to the root, you could muddle around with a million different traumas all your life. But if you can get down to the very root of the mall, you can uproot them all in one, one shovel full perhaps.
Leanora: Yeah, so for me, what I found was that the biggest blind spot I had, because I apparently had a lot of trauma was that, you know, something’s wrong with me, and I need to heal it. That was my orientation. And that orientation perpetuated the problem. You know, so at some point, this is why, you know, turning things around and looking at who’s looking and looking at that person’s attitude, or orientation, or position or identity. Yeah. Once you start doing that, you collapse the thing that’s holding you in this position. Now, if you think you’ve got 10,000 traumas, then you’ve got 10,000. Yeah, you know, so if you could, if you could reorient your position to, I’m here to be me, that I’m here to fix myself, I’m here to be me. I’m here to share the gift that I am in the world. That that that has so much more power and it’s like what you were saying just before Rick is like, the power of the light or the power of that intention, you know, I was used this metaphor if you if you made the whole room dark, completely black, you couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t see your hands. And then you lit a match. This tiny little match can illuminate the room
Rick Archer: is funny, I was gonna use the same metaphor. I was thinking, Okay, I’m gonna say this as soon as you finish. You said it.
Leanora: Yeah. So we must be insane. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s a great metaphor. I mean, you can analyze the darkness and you can skips in there. 100 things you could stumble into and bang your shins on and there’s no end of problems as long as it’s dark in there. But you turn on the light, even a little natural candle and all of a sudden, okay, and there’s no darkness is somehow dispelled and See all these things I’m not going to bump into?
Leanora: Well that I use, I use that metaphor, because you know, the first kind of what I call soul initiation that is valuable for people is to move from the head to the heart. And I say, what you need to know is where the light switches and the light switch is more accessible in the heart, usually the head because the heads got all sorts of ideas in it. So if you go down into a dark room, or you end up in a dark place, depends on the person and their, their neurological wiring. But a lot of people have the capacity if they’ve done some practice to find the light switch and turn it on. And so you know, the light illuminates the shadow. So a lot of people get clingy about the light, I just want the light, I don’t want the shadow, you know, so that’s a relationship with the light, based on fear. Because if you, if you instead of the light being outside you, if you embody it, you no longer need to find it, it’s just there. So the other thing that the light does is it illuminates the shadows, you know, so it’s not about finding the light and clinging to it. But it’s about knowing that you are the light, knowing it like embodying the light, letting it be you taking the light, to stillness or your essence, so that it integrates so that you are the light. Yeah. And that is going to illuminate the shadow. And that goes back to this early part of the conversation between the openness and the contraction, you know, the openness goes like she’s open, let’s show it to, you know, and then all the stuff but that isn’t in alignment with that big expansive openness that you are will get revealed in that. Now most people give up before that happens. They go, Oh, this technique doesn’t work. I just want light. You know, I don’t want all that stuff, you know, so it’s not for sissies? You know, but it’s it is it’s really a worthy way to live your life.
Rick Archer: I think you may have just answered Greg’s third question, which was, oh, how to find and work with blind spots, this whole discussion of light? I mean, yeah,
Leanora: yeah, yeah. There’s actually an infinite number of ways to play. But what we’re trying to do is, you know, in a sort of pithy statement is what what what’s happened is that, who I think I am, is in meshed with awareness. So awareness is looking through this filter, and it sees what it sees. And what it sees is not true. So it’s like, I need to disentangle the filter of my perception from pure awareness. And so stillness is a doorway into that clarity, that stillness will illuminate what’s not still, basically and what’s the sense of I?
Rick Archer: Yeah, nice. You talk about you said, on your website, that foundational to all, the work that you do with embody truth is the practice of sovereignty, the felt sense of exploration of experience perception, with, with contrast, or stillness, if you refer to these three aspects as a triangulation and call it a trinity, so if that’s foundational to all the work you do, maybe we should talk about that a little bit. We already have, but maybe we should go. So we yeah, we’ve been talking about it.
Leanora: There’s the fundamental, unchanging reality, which has got many names, but none of them really describe it. So I like to call it the absolute. So, you know, that’s one of the elements. And that’s actually the origin point of all trauma, it’s also the origin point of the body, it’s the origin point of conscious awareness. So the other two elements are the experience, which equates to the feminine or the body and the experience, so which equates to the mind or the masculine. So, you know, you need the discernment, you need that triangulation. So I learned this the hard way, because I didn’t have the trait, you know, I got to Samadhi and I became Samadhi, or I became a spiritual, you know, kind of bypass from the body. And, you know, part of that was to do with developmental trauma, but, you know, eventually I had to discern, you know, what the difference was between the mind and the body, or the head and the belly. And, you know, the starting point I use is the heart because the heart consciousness is the light lives easily, it’s more easily accessible there. So, you know, for me, the sovereignty, I call it heart centered sovereignty is this connection to the whole of me and and through the it’s, it’s both a state of consciousness and a process and through the process of it, you become more and more sovereign and you become more and more clear about what’s you and what’s not you, you know, it’s kind of a willingness to own your experience. So for example, if I’m sovereign, and I’m listening to you, you know, I’m feeling the response in my system to what you say. Yeah, so if I get triggered by something, I’m feeling the trigger. And as you practice that you can resolve this trigger immediately, while you’re in conversation in the beginning, you take the trigger home, and you work on it. You know, because the, between the trigger, you know, the explosive, emotional energy, say, and the source, the absolute is a lot of things that shaped me that needs that need your time they need you to commune with them, they need to be loved by you. And so that distance between you and the absolute becomes smaller and smaller as you clear the stuff out of your field. So if you’re just starting, you know, you, you might not be able to do that while you’re sitting having a conversation with someone but you take it home, the practice would be to take it home, and work on it on your own at home, you know, where it’s safe and less disturbed by outer outer experiences.
Rick Archer: Good. Well put. Okay, let me see if in the notes I took, if there’s anything else that I want to be sure to cover with you. Here’s my sentence, Healing Trauma completely, and the resultant recalibration toward coherence is purely a return to a singularity of an undivided self like that. So I noted it down. And here’s another one, what makes this journey so worthwhile? Is that as we heal, we move toward our full potential. Yeah. How would you describe for potential? What do you think someone living their full potential would be? Like?
Leanora: I’ll let you know.
Well, you know,
Rick Archer: he moved somewhere, we’ve all moved somewhere in that direction. So I mean, yeah, what is the full potential of a human being?
Leanora: Well, firstly, I think there’s no attachment to any results, you know, so kind of a strange thing to, you know, try to get your words around, you know, like, what its full potential look like. But you know, so if there’s no attachment, there’s no I that’s in time that’s looking for an outcome. It’s like, I’m here in the moment. And if I am here in the moment, and, you know, there’s drama, people being polarized around me that just my presence can shift, you know, the environment. So I would say that full potential has a strong influence on the field. That when when you can hold connection to your true self and your stillness, you don’t need to know what to do what to do emerges out of you automatically as a response to, you know, the people around you, who are just expressions of you.
Rick Archer: I’ve been in the presence of people who, you know, would come into a room, and I didn’t even see, I wasn’t looking, I didn’t see them come into the room. But also, there was like, this wave of silence and coherence washed over me and I turned away, there they are.
Leanora: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think I think it’s that, you know, the full potential is that you you’re in service, you know, because you don’t have a separate i That’s was, which is the wounds, you know, that the, the separation is the wound, you know, the sense of separation is the wound. So in some way, we’re all wounded. And in another way, I just feel the alignment to becoming self is much more powerful than being engaged with being wounded. Yeah. And so if you, you know, as you do the practice, I feel you have more influence, you become more magnetic, you know, your field kind of supports other people in some magical unknowing way, just by presence.
Rick Archer: Yeah. There’s something you just said there won’t be to express it in the same words, but the, the engagement with self or the attunement to self is more, I would put in my words more charming or more alluring, then in engaging with trauma or or wounded Ness. Yeah, it’s sort of like so we kind of follow the, we can say the natural tendency of the mind to seek a field of greater happiness, and it sort of leads us effortlessly into self. And then then the wounding or the trauma can be worked out much more readily.
Leanora: Yeah. Yeah. Can be a bit different. If you’re super traumatized. You know, it’s not so easy to orient that way. Yeah. So you know, we have less access, you know, you would have less access to those kinds of reasons. sauces like some people really have can’t, you know, like I work? It’s so interesting. It’s like I was I’m always, you know, in a sort of living question that’s never answerable, but it’s like, you know, for example, how can I best serve you know, so it might be oh, you know, you need to do a lot of trauma, healing with people and, you know, focus focus on that. And then it’s like, but I can’t do that, because that excludes this bit, you know, and then now, I need to do this bit, but that excludes that bit. And so, in my journey, I’ve worked with people from a range, you know, from severely traumatized to semi enlightened, let’s say, you know, that have been meditating for 30 years and have a lot of capacity and, and that’s what’s informed me, because my polarity was that great, you know, it’s like I had that kind of emptiness, state of consciousness. At the same time, I had a lot of trauma in the body, you know, which actually shows you that awakeness has got nothing to do with trauma, you know, we still don’t clean up. So, you know, I think it’s just different to you can’t really, I think every time somebody asked me what I do I give them a different answer. Because it depends who’s asking
Rick Archer: would you say that there may be exceptions, but as a general rule, the human nervous system has much more capacity to heal itself of trauma than, than most people realize. Because most people, most people don’t heal it. So the norm seems to be that we’re stuck with it. But that theoretically, there could be something provided for, you know, the masses, which would enable millions of people to to be healed, it would thus heal a lot of trauma in the collective consciousness.
Leanora: I agree, I get I keep my finger on the pulse on things like that, because there isn’t a lot of amazing, you know, whether it’s technologies or therapies or whatever that are coming out that that are that that really understand, you know, even the even the traditional medical system has a field now called psycho neuro immunology. So instead of all those, you know, the psyche being separate from the neurology and the immune system being separate from you know, the rest of it, it’s, it’s getting, you know, they’re all in a co regulating kind of way with each other. And there are some books I’m trying to remember there was a guy called, there was Norman Doidge, he wrote a couple of books, one was like the brain, which changes itself and miraculous healing stories that he, you know, spent 10 or 15 years wandering around, researching these kinds of stories and, you know, researching different technologies that can help. So there’s a lot, you know, there’s, there’s the ancient wisdom, that’s helpful, there’s the modern new things that are helpful, but we’re starting to come into that kind of coherent place, you know, this is the bit that’s exciting. It’s like, that we have access to a lot, you know, if we could get the people that are trying to prevent us to get it. No, it could, it could just flourish, perhaps. So I think, you know, my advice to people is that there is a way for you, there really is a way for you. And the journey of discovering it is what’s going to give you your wisdom and compassion. And your way is unique. So you know, you can bounce from teacher to pillar to post. You can you can work on your physical body, your physical health, your mental health, your meditation, you can work with healers, you can work with whatever resonates to you. But it’s really your way, you know, that you are unique piece that is unfolding. And just opening to being shown away will really kind of bring some of those pieces towards you.
Rick Archer: That’s great. I should probably conclude it right there. Because I don’t know if I could state it any better. But I just want to maybe just to sort of emphasize your point that people should never feel discouraged because or feel that they are too broken to heal. Because there’s, as you used the word exciting a few minutes ago that it’s exciting. There’s so many opportunities now, so many interesting things bubbling up. And our means of communication are such, you know, the, as you said earlier, just a few clicks and we can find some nugget of information or knowledge that used to be squirreled away in a monastery and you had to study for 30 years before they would tell you about it. So yeah, so there’s just this really make hay while the sun shines kind of a time that we’re living in.
Leanora: And try to remember that it’s just one thought that defeats you. It’s just that one thought that defeats you, you know that thought that you know it you know, I’m broken beyond repair or the thought that I’ve tried everything and I’m going to you know, give up by all means that’s always a good step, but it’s always that You know, it’s that one thought that defeats or sets that one thought, and we believe it. And then we live in that belief. And so, you know, mix with each other, find your soulmates, you know, and do whatever enriches your journey and really trust that it’s there. It’s all I like to say, sometimes I’m guiding somebody, and I go, they can’t find the light, you know, they’ve got so many mental traumatize structures in the way and I go, you know, I can feel your light and the light is there, and it’s waiting for you, and it will wait for you forever. Interesting. Yeah. And, and sometimes that just turns something for people. You know, it’s I don’t have cat sayings, but it just came to me as a good one. You know, even though I’ve lost connection with the light, and I’ve lost connection with my true self, because of, you know, the traumas and what happened to my nervous system, the light is still there, and it will always wait for you. It is you.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Boy. So that’s a good note to end on. I think it just, it’s very encouraging and uplifting, and people should really, I mean, I hope people take it to heart, and whether they work with you or anybody else. There’s all kinds of opportunities out there to live a really fulfilling life. And if you’re feeling discouraged, just look a little bit more practice a little bit more, you’ll find, you know, seek and you shall find. Absolutely, yeah. So you want to kind of just summarize what it is that you do for people, how you how they could get in touch with you what what sort of things they will do, if they do get in touch with you. And so
Leanora: well, I think, you know, you can just look on my website, and it’s, it’s posted on shore, somewhere in the in the notes here,
Rick Archer: so I’ll be linking to it from your page on bat gap.
Leanora: Okay. So basically, you know, I really do like working one on one with people, because it’s the most potent way, you know, to to help. But my intention is always to help people be empowered and self reliance. So when people work with me, I give them practices, and I help them through the resistance to practice and creating a practice, that’s that dynamic, not a habit, you know, and all those kinds of things. So, you know, I like to set the scene that’s going to be the most powerful for each person, because it’s not really me that does anything, it’s you that does it, you know, so I’m just kind of like a mystical guide or something like that. And because I can’t work with 1000s of people, one on one, I’ve kind of clump people together in groups if they want to continue to work. And so I have a couple of online groups, I have one, start a new one starting, which is called heart centered sovereignty, which is a good place to start. And then I have one that that people have been working with me for a longer window of time, it’s an endless group, it’s a subscription. After you’ve done some work, and you kind of know the basics, you can come into that group. And that group is called cultivating grace. And so it’s about living it in your life. So it’s very engaged with the day to day and the day to day practice. And, you know, the big deep questions and people get exercises, and they work in dyads. And, you know, anything that can can help people in life in their journey towards being themselves.
Rick Archer: Sounds great. Well, thank you for all you do.
Leanora: Thank you, thank you for what you do, I think it’s really been a real pleasure to meet you, Rick, and to share this time with you.
Rick Archer: Likewise, I really enjoyed speaking with you. So, thanks to those who tuned in live. And to those who are watching this later, we really appreciate your participation. And, you know, hope that you benefit from all this. That’s the point of it. So I’ll just conclude in I’ve been speaking with Leonora, there’ll be a page on bat gap calm, dedicated to this interview and with the appropriate links and so on and descriptions and so just go there. And also that the link to that page is at the bottom of this video if you’re watching it on YouTube, and there’s also a Facebook discussion group about each interview and there’s a link to that with at the bottom in the description of each video on YouTube. And there’s some other things on bat gap a few explore the menus a little bit such as an email, mailing list and audio podcast and things like that. So just check them out and sign up if you’re interested. So, thanks for listening or watching and we will see you for the next one. Thankfully in our queue
