Mike Jenkins Interview

Summary

Mike Jenkins describes awakening as a gradual series of shifts rather than a single finished event. He explores how openness, relationships, mortality, and ordinary challenges help integrate spiritual insight into daily life.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How does spiritual awakening unfold over time?
• How can awakening be integrated into ordinary relationships and daily life?
• How can we stop looking outside ourselves for a sense of completion?
• How can contemplating death support spiritual freedom?

Key takeaways

• Awakening can unfold through repeated shifts and ongoing integration.
• Difficult relationships reveal where inner freedom is still unstable.
• Desires become less chaotic when they are no longer expected to provide completion.
• Emotions can move through us without being held or turned into lasting suffering.
• Making peace with death can loosen identification with a fixed sense of self.
• Awakened living changes how we respond to life, not whether challenges arise.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump, or BatGap as people call it, is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. This is interview number 399. If you’d like to check out previous ones, go to BatGap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu, and you’ll find all the previous ones organized and categorized in various ways.

This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there’s a donate button on every page of the site. Today’s guest is Mike Jenkins. Hello, Mike.

Mike: Hello.

Rick: Mike is in the UK. He was trained as an actor and has worked in theaters in London and around the UK. He later worked as a performing arts teacher and customer services trainer, and now creates and manages websites to help people connect with their audience. But that’s not why I’m interviewing him.

He has written two stage plays, a growing collection of poetry, and is a good writer, by the way. I really liked your Dark Café story, which pertains to awakening and all. Maybe we’ll talk about that. He’s always been drawn to expressing his own perceptions and perspectives and exploring those of others through the creative arts.

Mike loves to talk, sing, walk, read, write, cook, eat, and sleep, not necessarily in that order, and to help others feel and know the deep joy, grace, and peace at the center of all life.

After many years of mental and emotional distress in his twenties and a diagnosis of cancer at the age of 29, Mike began an intense spiritual search that led him to teachings on non-duality that sparked a series of awakenings and set him on a journey to integrate those shifts into everyday life.

✨ Awakening as an unfolding process

So we’re going to talk about that. I particularly like that last sentence, the last part of the last sentence: A series of awakenings that set you on a journey to integrate those shifts into everyday life. Sometimes awakening is presented in such a way that it sounds like a black-and-white, cut-and-dried, on-and-off kind of thing: Oh, I awakened. I’m done. I’m finished.

In my experience, personally and observationally, it seems more like a series of awakenings is more appropriate terminology. Also, integrating those shifts into everyday life is huge and perhaps a lifelong undertaking.

Yeah, exactly, and that’s very much how I feel now. I’ll be honest, I didn’t initially feel that way. When the first experience occurred—the first effective awakening for me—it was powerful. It wasn’t one of these angelic or dramatic moments that some people describe, but it was powerful enough to make me feel, for a while at least, that the whole game of seeking to be something outside of myself and seeking completion outside of myself was over.

Mike: Yeah, exactly, and that’s very much how I feel now. I’ll be honest, I didn’t initially feel that way. When the first experience occurred—the first effective awakening for me—it was powerful. It wasn’t one of these angelic or dramatic moments that some people describe, but it was powerful enough to make me feel, for a while at least, that the whole game of seeking to be something outside of myself and seeking completion outside of myself was over.

Definitely, in the last couple of years, it’s become very clear to me that if you’re coming from a place of clear seeing—seeing things clearly, seeing things as if you’re awake, and certainly seeing things as if for the first time—there’s definitely a process of integrating that into ordinary life.

I seem to be surrounded by quite a lot of people who really aren’t interested in this journey. There are ordinary people in my ordinary life—family, friends, and coworkers—who might have some bit of interest in it. It’s quite a good marker, really, for those of us who do collect together and go to meetings and retreats, listen to teachers, and read experiences. It’s quite a good litmus test to be surrounded by those people.

I have a lot of them in my life who say, Oh, so where’s your awakening now? Is this what awakened living is like, then? You getting angry about something insignificant, like traffic, or these sorts of things?

Awakening as a Gradual Integration

So it’s definitely a process of integration for me. I say series of awakenings because, for me, it’s just been that way. I felt that very much early on. I began blogging about these experiences in 2010, and I spoke a lot then about my gut feeling, if you like, that for me awakening was a gradual thing, that it was gradually unfolding.

It felt very much like a structure of egocentricity, if you like, was this big building, this solid building. Initially, there was a collapse of part of it—some of the central structures. Through that initial waking up, they became destroyed. Some of the stronger elements were knocked out in that first event, that first awakening.

Then, over the years, over the following seven years, there’s just been this series of little, final collapses of that structure. I don’t really have any sense that the structure is completely gone, or know what bits of it are still standing. But it seems to me that, if I really want to get analytical about that, I just have to look at my life. I just have to look at the relationships I have and the way that things are different in my life as a result of that.

Rick: Yeah, Ram Dass said, If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.

Mike: Yeah, exactly. Or anyone who pushes your buttons.

Interestingly enough, it seems to me that the minute we really move into a space where we can handle more than we did before—because to me, I’ll often describe being in an awakened space, or awakening itself, as this infinite, endless capacity—in fact, that word seems to be coming to me a lot lately. Other people have used it: this capacity to allow and to hold all, this infinite openness, this open space that gives rise to everything.

Interestingly enough, my experience has been that if I remain open to that, very quickly things come into that space, almost to test it, almost to test the stability in that ground of being.

Some of my new friends that I’ve made over the past couple of years, interestingly enough, seem able to push those buttons in me that, in the past, I might not have been able to deal with as readily.

Interestingly enough, I’m thinking of one friend in particular. I’m not going to name any names, but this friend in particular—

Rick: He’ll know who he is.

Mike: She actually—[laughter]—spends quite a lot of time, in my opinion, residing in and exploring an open space. Interestingly enough, we seem to be almost like teachers for each other. We trigger each other and test that stability.

So, yeah, going to live with your family for a week—most definitely. I know I’m rambling on about this, but what I find interesting is that it seems to be those figures, the people who test us the most, when you’re establishing yourself in this awake space. It seems that life doesn’t hold back on sending those people to you, in whatever form.

Rick: Do you have children?

Mike: No, I have no children.

Rick: I was wondering because there are those little pictures on the wall behind you. I was wondering if those are pictures of little kids or something.

Mike: No, they’re postcards, actually, that people have sent me. They’re little cards—birthday cards and things.

Rick: I see. I was just thinking that children are also good little testers.

Mike: Absolutely. Obviously, if I had children come into my life, there’d be an acceptance of that, but I don’t feel that I’m in a place where I would willingly have children. I’m gay, and I’m in a same-sex relationship. Where I am at the moment, I don’t feel called to adopt or attempt to have children.

Rick: Right. I was just curious. It was just a case-in-point example, because kids are great button-pushers.

Mike: Oh, definitely. And animals sometimes.

Rick: Yeah, although less so. I think that’s why a lot of people really like animal relationships, because they’re not as complex as human beings.

Mike: No, definitely. It’s an interesting point, because, certainly for me, awakening is really most useful, I think, in relationship—in relationship to other people, but even in relationship to our environment, to the world, to other people, to animals, to ideas.

That certainly does seem to be where the rubber hits the road, where we walk our talk.

Rick: Yeah. On your openness point, there are a lot of synonyms we could use: pure consciousness, unbounded awareness, vastness, or openness. I think people know what we’re talking about.

But I often think of that as a kind of solvent, in a way, because whatever it is that happens when that sort of inner freedom dawns, it tends to begin to dissolve things that are calcified or rigidly set in one’s own makeup, perhaps, and in one’s larger world.

Then the waters can get muddied a bit as things are dissolving. You work those things out, and maybe there’s another expansion and then more dissolving of stuff. That cycle can continue even post-awakening. If we want to delineate or demarcate an awakening point, then post-awakening it seems to continue.

Mike: I agree. I have to agree. That’s how it’s been for me. You’re right. It’s a very good way of describing it.

When I think of things dissolving, I think of liquid. I think of an open, vast sort of space of liquid, and stuff comes into that, and it just dissolves much more easily, much quicker.

Life is life, isn’t it? There’s still going to be death, there’s still going to be suffering—what we might call suffering. There are still going to be things that we don’t like happening. It’s just that the way we process and deal with and respond to that is different from an awakened perspective.

So it’s my sense that, let’s just say we were able to click our fingers and the entire human race was living from an awakened space, the same way that Christ figures or Buddha figures were doing. I would imagine—this is just a guess; I have no way of knowing—that stuff would still come into those waters. It’s just that we’d be operating from a place that would deal with it much more skillfully and effectively, and deal with it in an awakened way.

Rick: Yeah. I think it’s very hypothetical to suggest, of course, that we could click our fingers and the whole world would awaken. But if that were to happen, I think that 99 percent of the suffering and troubles that exist in the world would dissolve very quickly, because most of them are man-made.

But there could always be an alien invasion or an asteroid strike or something like that that would threaten us all. [laughter]

Mike: Yeah, exactly. But interestingly enough, what would that be like, knowing that that threat could potentially be there? What would it be like if we weren’t living every day under the fear of that?

I think certainly for me, all through my life, there was a generally constant sense of unease and discomfort, either in the extreme form of anxiety—being very tense and upset with myself and how I was feeling—or, on the milder side, just a background sense of unease, a sense of something missing.

When I was much younger, that wasn’t very loud. I was thinking this morning about where I was, if we go back before I started writing the blog, back about eight or ten years. What seemed to happen before this big first awakening experience was that sense of something really missing in my life, although I just didn’t know what.

I’d tried to move from job to job. I’d attempted to find completion in relationships. Things that were bringing me pleasure, I would chase after, constantly seeking to have better things and nicer things and improve stuff.

Rick: Like everybody.

Mike: Yeah, like everybody, the sort of normal sense of acquiring in the world, or going out there and living in the world, and getting and wanting and doing and being. But in the last couple of years, there was just this intense—like the volume had been turned up really loud—of longing, with often no object in mind. It was like a state of perpetual feeling, like I was hungry and needing something, but actually never really knowing what it was. It was just feeling that sense of desire, if you like, or craving, or feeling of lack. So if anyone was to say, What is it that you want? I wouldn’t have known what to say. I just knew—well, actually, what I wanted was for that feeling to go away, that feeling of being empty, to die, which eventually did happen.

Rick: Yeah, well, that’s a stage of progress, I would say, because most people could answer that question. They would say, Well, if I only had a boyfriend, or a new car, or a better house, or a better job… They could actually put a label on what it is they think they want. You had apparently gotten to the point where you’d done all those things, and still there was that craving or longing or wanting. You began to realize that it was something more fundamental that maybe wasn’t going to get fulfilled externally, although you probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate it that way at the time.

Mike: No, no, exactly. How I feel now is that I still want things for comfort in life, and there are things that I go out into the world and seek to create or make happen. But I think, if I was to describe it, the shift has been that I don’t want them because I think they’re going to give me something I don’t already have.

Rick: It’s like icing on the cake.

Mike: Yeah, exactly. So that feels much better. In fact, in a way, it seems to make our efforts in the world—and certainly for me, it makes my efforts—just much more skillful, I guess, or just much more organized. I don’t know; I’m struggling for words, but just less chaotic.

When I was seeking to look for a new job, or write a play, or do something in my life, attract a partner or whatever, when it was coming from that place of desperation, I often wasn’t working well, which is, you know, a surprise.

Rick: Well, here’s an analogy that might help. Let’s say you’re penniless and somebody gives you ten dollars. It’s like, Whoa, ten dollars, fantastic. Or let’s say you hardly have a penny to your name and you lose ten dollars; it’s a tragedy. So your world really gets rocked up and down by little gains and losses.

But let’s say you’re a millionaire. Somebody gives you ten dollars: Hey, thanks, no big deal. Or you lose ten dollars: No big deal. So you have that baseline of wealth.

Little relative gains and losses are just like ripples on the surface of an ocean.

🛤️ Cancer and the beginning of a spiritual search

Rick: So when you discovered you had cancer, what kind of cancer, do you mind my asking?

Mike: It was mouth cancer, so it was on the floor of my mouth.

Rick: Really? Had you been smoking?

Mike: Yeah, since I was about 17.

Rick: That can cause it.

Mike: Yeah, they reckon it was a lifestyle cancer, so smoking. I didn’t drink—I wasn’t an alcoholic—but I drank a lot as a student in my twenties.

Rick: So did that freak you out pretty badly when you discovered you had it?

Mike: Yes, it did. I mean, it didn’t really freak me out to the degree that some of the mental and emotional distress freaked me out. In a way, I think that, as I’ve often mentioned before in my blog, that period was what I considered to be the beginning of a very conscious and intentional spiritual search.

So when I think back to that time, there was certainly an element of shock and, in a way, just letting go. Going along to the consultations, surrendering really, and letting the doctors take care of things.

And also, in that time, if I think back and place myself there again, there was certainly a sense of peace or quiet within me—emotionally, I’m really speaking, emotionally and mentally. There wasn’t a lot of mental noise at that time, and there was a generally peaceful feeling, which isn’t uncommon in people who have been given frightening diagnoses.

Rick: But this was pre-awakening, though.

Mike: Yeah, it was, really. The treatment for that went well. I had an operation that was twelve hours long. I had six weeks of radiotherapy, and during that six-week period, two sessions of chemotherapy. That was all I needed.

I went back for consultations every month for about five years, and each time they said, Well, you’re healing well. Nothing’s come back; there’s been no recurrence. Then, after five years, they gave me the all-clear.

In that period—in that five-year period—I would say my spiritual search began in earnest, and I was a rampant spiritual consumer in that sense. There was a lot of stuff I’d never come across.

I was brought up as a Catholic. I had an Irish mother, so it was a Catholic upbringing—not particularly strict, but I went to a Catholic school, so God was something that I was familiar with. But I still can’t quote the Bible. I’m not a great Bible scholar, and none of my family are.

But certainly, I began to meditate. I began to read quite widely in spiritual texts—not a great deal of classical spiritual texts, I’ll be honest. I followed some teachers on YouTube. I listened to audio tapes. I listened to Eckhart Tolle a lot for a couple of years and experienced some shifts through that.

Then, in my own life, that sort of recognition started to come about four years after the cancer.

Rick: Just for the sake of illustration, God forbid, if you were to get another cancer diagnosis now—recurrence, or whatever they call it—how do you think you would react? How would you contrast how you would probably react with how you felt the first time around?

Mike: That’s an interesting question. I have thought about that, and I do think about it. I don’t really know. I think probably I would have a different response now. Perhaps some of it would be similar. I don’t know.

Rick: I have a feeling you’d have more equanimity now, and kind of a broader perspective on the whole thing.

Mike: I certainly would feel that, but whether or not I’d still feel—I think I’d still feel some fear and some anxiety.

But I do feel, in a way, what was clear to me a few years after this is what really happened in that period: I made peace with my own death.

But I do feel, in a way, what was clear to me a few years after this is what really happened in that period: I made peace with my own death.

I contemplated death a lot in that period, and even now I’ll still go back to it. I think it’s actually a very good practice. If people want to experience what it’s like to have a sense of no-self, they can sit and meditate and think about and contemplate their own death. In that meditation experience, some people can experience the falling away of a sense of self.

Rick: That’s how Ramana had his awakening.

Mike: Yeah, exactly.

Rick: He lay down on the ground and pretended he was dead. He even held his breath and caused a shift.

Mike: Yeah, and I think it can with a lot of people.

Rick: You often see those pictures of monks holding skulls and contemplating the ephemeral nature of life and so on.

Mike: Yes, yeah. There’s something quite beautiful about that because our culture just doesn’t want to look at it. It really doesn’t want to deal with it because it doesn’t feel nice.

And I think, certainly for me now, I’m less judgmental, I guess, about what comes into my world, whether it’s internally—feelings in the body or thoughts or situations—or externally in my life. I’m less judgmental about it.

It’s not that I don’t make judgments, but I don’t mind so much what comes, because I feel more sure in the knowing that it will go as well, that everything has its death.

Everything comes and everything goes. And when you mentioned that awakened mind, if you like, or awakened Self, as being like this space where things dissolve and where things are healed and resolved, that’s, in a way, what it’s like. Stuff comes in, but it’s also free to go.

Rick: Or Eckhart Tolle, since you mentioned him, gives that example of the ducks on the pond getting into a little fight. They shake off their tail feathers, and a few seconds later they’re back to just being ducks.

Mike: Exactly, and you know what? It really is like that. That doesn’t mean to say it’s always easy for people to be around me, you know? I’m not special in that regard.

I mean, I know several of my friends who would never think of themselves as awakened and would never describe this sort of process in this way. But they might have a spat about something, and then it’s gone and it’s forgotten about. It’s had its moment. It’s resolved. It’s seen through, it’s passed on, and it’s returned to this space.

And that, in a way, you know—if anybody said to me, Oh, why would you talk about this? Why would you write about it?—one of the reasons is because that’s just such a wonderful approach to life.

If you can live life in a way where you can get to be all the things that you are, do all the things you do as a human being, but you don’t hold on to them and they’re not causing any dysfunction in you, then that’s freedom. We’re freely being as we are.

Rick: So how do you figure that, through all this and this cancer and—coughs, excuse me—how was it that spirituality came on your radar? I mean, because some people go through the kinds of things you’ve just described in their 20s and they continue to go through them in their 30s, 40s, 50s. So what do you think was it that got you onto spirituality?

Mike: I don’t know, really. I guess I’d always been interested in things that… I mean, certainly I was always interested in philosophy. I never studied it but, you know, I would kind of like to philosophize with friends. I’ve been interested in the bigger questions even as a young person.

I love poetry. I like to write poetry, and I read a lot of poetry as a young man. A lot of the plays that I was interested in as an actor—I didn’t always perform in the sorts of plays that I loved, but a lot of the plays that I was drawn to read and to go and watch often dealt with life’s big themes. So I guess there was always an openness to that kind of thing.

I think once I started to discover there were lots of spiritual writings and teachers talking about spirituality, but it wasn’t talking about religion, it wasn’t talking about some sort of prescriptive path, then that piqued my interest, really. I think certainly growing up and coming out as a gay man at the age I was, I was really quite anti-traditional organized religion, simply because, to my mind, it had done a great deal of harm to minorities in society, or sections of society, that just didn’t fit in with its normative view of things.

Rick: How old are you now?

Mike: I’m 40. I turned 40 a few—

Rick: So that was like 22 years ago, and obviously views on that were much less tolerant than they are now, although they still have a ways to go.

Mike: Indeed they have. And yes, they were less tolerant. Although, interestingly enough, in England in the 1990s, which is when I was a student and coming to terms with my sexuality and discovering who I was, things were generally a bit more relaxed here in England. But legislation hadn’t really come that far.

Sexuality and Gender in Spiritual Communities

I think during my teens, the age of consent was reduced from 21 to 18, I think, so equality wasn’t quite there until a few years later. But interestingly enough, we do still find this in, certainly not obviously in organized religion, but sometimes even in spiritual circles, a sense of maturity and deeper understanding around sex, sexual identity, sexual activity, orientation, gender identity—all those sorts of things—is still quite an uncomfortable topic for many of us.

Partly, I think that’s cultural. There are some cultures that are more reserved about the body and sex, you know. But yeah, I do think that, in a way, turned me off organized religion. Certainly the faith I’d been brought up in, the Catholic faith, had such a horrific and horrible record in terms of walking its own—walking the truth of its own teachings. Horrific abuse in the Catholic Church of children, and just in general.

Rick: Were you ever the victim of that in the Church?

Mike: No, no, no, no. I wasn’t, no, no, thankfully not. And I don’t really know anyone who has. But I mean, it was always in the papers, even in the—

And recently, even more so. I mean, I know—I think one problem with our modern, connected world is there’s so much news, constant rolling news, that it’s easy to miss a lot. And I certainly don’t sit with the TV or the radio on constantly or read every paper. But definitely, there are dozens and dozens of cases of historic—there are lots of inquiries and trials and investigations going on in the UK into historic instances of child abuse in the corridors of power and local authorities and all sorts.

So actually, I think, weirdly enough, coming out as a gay man at the age of 18—and I think this is similar for lots of people who are in some kind of minority; it doesn’t have to be around sexuality—but funnily enough, I think that we somehow seem to spend so much longer as an outsider, if you like, to the norms of society or to the majority, kind of always being on the outside somehow, that interestingly enough, I think in a way that gives some sort of grounding in a sense of freedom, if you like.

Rick: I think I know what you mean. I mean, that wasn’t my issue, but I was—well, a lot of kids are like this—but I was rebellious as a kid. It’s like I dropped out of high school. I would, on a whim, go and hit the road, stick my thumb out, and go to Boston or someplace, you know, without any money or plan or anything else, just trusting in whatever to work things out for me. So there was a certain following of one’s impulses, which, of course, can be very reckless at times.

Mike: And would have been frowned upon in lots of ways.

Rick: But, you know, I don’t know. So, just to wrap up what we were just talking about: we’re all aware of how horrible established religions have been, and in many respects still are, with regard to a number of things, but sexuality in particular—homosexuality. What do you think about the contemporary spiritual-but-not-religious scene, the non-dual scene, all the various teachers? Do you think that there’s a big improvement in attitudes and that, generally, people have more accepting, liberal perspectives?

Mike: Yes, I think, in a way, that the contemporary spiritual scene tends to attract a more liberal mindset, although not always. I think, for most people probably in the contemporary spiritual scene, whether it’s non-dual or slightly more New Age or whatever, sexual identity and sexual orientation and all that sort of thing is probably just a bit of a blind spot, you know. It’s something most people don’t think about.

Yes, I think people can experience problems around sex and sexual expression, whatever their orientation—gay, straight, bi, anywhere in between. But I think it seems to sit—for me, it seems that issues of sexual expression and just sexuality in general seem to sit under the surface in most scenes I’ve come across, whether it’s non-duality, Western non-duality teachers in London, or groups that meet for meditation and what have you.

Rick: Sit under the surface, meaning it’s just not discussed or dealt with?

Mike: Meaning, yeah, it’s just not discussed. Yeah, that’s my perception.

Rick: In a repressive sort of way, or because it’s just not relevant to what they’re saying?

Mike: I think maybe, for most, it’s because it’s not relevant, although you have to speak to individuals, I think, to get a sense of whether or not that was a repressive pushing down of things.

But certainly, I feel generally, if you paint a picture of the United Kingdom, the sort of English sensibility about it, there’s a real discomfort, I think, as a culture around sex and sexuality, although that’s changing every year, you know.

Rick: As a case in point, I mean, our friend Francis Bennett is undergoing a transition these days to being a woman, and she has just done a tour over there in the UK and other places in Europe. So how did that go in terms of audience reaction? Were people just sort of shrugging their shoulders and saying, Okay, fine, let’s get on with the satsang? Or was it an issue for a lot of people?

Mike: It wasn’t an issue at all.

Rick: Great.

Mike: You know, nicely enough. I mean, that’s not to say people probably don’t have questions—and people do, and were able to ask them.

And what was lovely for me, being involved with Francis in this recent tour, was to see how, really, it’s the communication of a truth, really. It seems that actually that’s the most powerful thing. And so while there may be some people who just find the concept—the idea that a person can be born into a body that doesn’t quite fit their identity, their sexual identity, their gender identity—it can seem alien or seem like some sort of confusion, actually, first of all, Francis spoke about it very, very well and gave people the opportunity to ask questions.

But in actual fact, certainly from my understanding of Francis, as I do, and spending a lot of time with her, it’s made the communication clearer for what she’s talking about. For me, that’s a wonderful thing because, having met Francis, one of the things that has happened in my life is that there’s been much more inclusion and less of a spiritual bypassing of the stuff that I just didn’t want to deal with, which often was personal, was often the stuff around personal history or personal characteristics, that I certainly, two or three years ago, probably would have rather just explained away as, Oh, just passing phenomena, or whatever.

Being awake, if you like, and returning to an awakened space just facilitates a much more honest dealing with this stuff we need to deal with—the stuff that comes up.

And stuff just does keep coming up, you know?

Rick: Yeah. So are you saying that Francis’s example kind of enabled you to deal with your own issues that might have been unconscious or subliminal to some extent—to sort of cure you of some degree of spiritual bypassing? Is that what you just said?

Mike: Certainly, Francis’s teaching. And I think now it’s really impossible to separate Francis’s teaching from Francis’s example of living in the world, which is why I find what she’s doing such an incredibly courageous thing: to be a living example of everything that she’s teaching, which is that the Absolute is appearing here as clear, open, unconditional love. And that includes—it transcends but also includes—the personal sense of self, which is the egoic self, the characteristics of self, including everything that we used to think of as our identity, and then saw that that wasn’t our identity in an initial awakening, is then welcomed again in the later stages.

For me, I had no real understanding of the structure of these things. What’s been nice for me, spending time with Francis and reading the things that she writes and the teachings, is that there’s a very clear anatomy of that journey of awakening, which I just didn’t come across before. I just hadn’t read it so scholarly.

And it seems to have made sense in my own experience: there’s this period where you sort of, you know, initially wake up out of this confusion of being attached to things that come and go in us, of being attached to feelings and thoughts and the past and all of that, into this clear space. But then that’s not the end of it, because you can’t sort of—in a way, I tried to cling to that probably a bit too long, that Witness-Conscious space or that space of the Absolute.

There is a sense of not really wanting—for me, not wanting—to come off of that mountain and into the mess of my life again.

Rick: It’s sort of like a refuge to just hang out there.

Mike: Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s not to say that I don’t really enjoy peace and silence. If I can go and find it, I will. I love silence now in a way that I just couldn’t handle when I was a young man.

I meet a lot of—I’ve got teenage nephews, and they just have to have noise the whole time. Having said that, in the last two years—and I say it’s related to meeting Francis, because that was two years ago—I think just by osmosis, helping with the website and having been close to that, it’s had that effect.

And certainly, most recently, her transition has made, if you like, our identities, with sexual identity and sexual orientation, much more of a talking topic, really, because you can’t—you know, it’s something that, in Francis’s life, you can’t sort of ignore. It’s a physical thing in front of you.

So it’s been incredible, really, to be around that.

Beyond labels and stereotypes

Rick: Since we’re on this topic, and since this is a topic that doesn’t get discussed that much on BatGap, let’s pursue it just a little bit more, because it’s interesting and it might be very helpful for a lot of people.

I mean, as a gay man who came out four, five, six years ago, who has had this spiritual orientation and is something of a spiritual teacher, what kind of assumptions or stereotypes or misconceptions or attitudes have you found prevalent and ingrained in people’s mentalities regarding the whole issue of sexuality and spirituality that you feel could use more enlightenment, more clarification, or straightening out?

Mike: Yeah, sure. Well, I think the main thing that comes to mind is an obsession with sex itself. One of the big assumptions, I guess—and this certainly happened in my life and to me long before any sort of interest in spirituality—was that, depending on your sexual orientation, people would meet me and they’d either realize, or they’d ask, or they’d know and see that I was gay, or I would tell them I was gay if they asked. And then there’s just this overly inappropriate fascination with that, meaning that some people think they can understand who you are because they know now that you’re gay.

Rick: As if that were all there is to you.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And frankly, the way I feel is that a lot of the gay community, if there even is such a thing anymore, have done a lot to—

Rick: Reinforce that?

Mike: Yes, that’s the word I’m looking for: reinforce that. I understand why. I’m certainly not having a go at the gay community for that. I mean, frankly, for so many years, gay people, transgendered people, LGBTQI—whatever the acronym we’re using these days is—really didn’t have anywhere to go where they could safely express themselves.

Rick: So they’re compensating, letting off steam, so to speak.

Mike: Exactly, or even just being in a space where it’s safe to do so, you know?

So that’s, I think, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for most people: that there’s this obsession with what people do with their bodies in a sexual manner or in sexual activity, and a huge number of assumptions about, first of all, whether that’s right or wrong, or natural or unnatural. Secondly, there’s the assumption that you can somehow make an assessment of someone based on their sexual orientation, which just doesn’t really happen among straight people.

Straight people could meet each other. A straight guy could meet another straight guy, and first of all, the conversation would never go, Oh, by the way, you must know I’m straight, unless one thinks you’re straight.

Rick: That’s funny.

Mike: And then the other one goes, Ah, I see, it all makes sense now. Straight. Of course, it makes sense—loves cars, loves cars, and loves football. Of course, he’s straight.

So when I tell people, Oh, I don’t really like a lot of West End musicals, or, Judy Garland’s okay, but it’s a bit boring, then you lose your gay credentials.

Rick: You could actually write a very funny skit of some sort. It kind of reminds me of that scene in The Birdcage where Nathan Lane and Robin Williams were in that café having breakfast, and Robin Williams was trying to teach Nathan Lane how to act straight. You could create a great skit. You should do this.

Mike: Yes, indeed.

But the interesting thing is, I think most—certainly, the deeper richness in going through that experience is more akin to what you were talking about, in the sense of feeling somewhat like an outsider, or somewhat otherly, to a lot of people. I think that’s much more common among all people. It’s just, on the surface, much more apparent as a gay man or woman, or LGBT person, because we’re constantly having to realize that.

For me, there were no role models, really, growing up. There was nobody that I could look at and go, Ah, right, okay, they’re like me.

Rick: We had Elton John, right?

Mike: Yeah, you had sort of entertainers who often aren’t the best role models. Also, for a very short time I taught in a school. I taught drama in a school.

Interestingly enough, it was an interesting experience for me because I had no real—I mean, I’d worked mostly as an actor, and I’d been around creative people, so that’s generally quite a liberal experience. I always used to say every artist, or creative artist, has to be blasphemous. I used to use that word and say that you can’t be worried about offending anybody if you’re creating great art.

But being in a school, in a community, was a completely different experience. I’d already spent a bit of time in the corporate world before that, so I was very well versed in being able to adopt a very professional attitude, which I did. But it was certainly very clear that we weren’t—I was not—allowed to tell the children that I was gay.

And although I never personally came across any severe prejudice directed at me, there was certainly this sense among parents, if you like, that, Well, it’s all right for Graham Norton on the television, or that entertainer who’s making a clown of himself. It’s fine for them to be gay, but I wouldn’t want a gay teacher or a gay doctor, or a gay—I wouldn’t want anyone dealing with my children.

And that’s another sort of difficulty because there’s this assumption that it’s a perversion or a dangerous thing, that we’re running around doing unmentionable things in the world.

Rick: I saw the cover of a Time magazine the other day, and I didn’t get a chance to read the article because I was just walking past it, but the whole cover story was something about how the whole concept of gender is, at least with the younger generation, really getting redefined. I don’t know if “blurred” would be the right word, but redefined.

Mike: Redefined? Yeah, and I’m just wondering, from a spiritual perspective—in terms of, you know, you alluded earlier to, if we could snap our fingers and the whole world would be enlightened—if we could snap our fingers and the whole world would be enlightened, what do you think the whole gender issue would look like in such a world?

I mean, in an ideal society, if there were such a thing composed of highly awake individuals, how would that contrast with what we have now?

Mike: I think there would be much more fluidity around it, much more openness and acceptance, and a sense of being unthreatened by the fluidity of gender identity and the fluidity of sexual orientation, sexual preference, or sexual desire.

I’ve never really met anyone—if I speak to somebody for long enough, providing they’re not completely closed—I can either sense or get a feel for, or they’ll tell me, that they’ve had sexual feelings for a person of the opposite sex. It doesn’t mean to say that they are confused about that.

I can look at a female form and find it beautiful, or even erotic or appealing in that way. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to go and live with a woman and marry a woman, and that that’s going to be my identity. I think gender identity and sexual orientation are, in my opinion, more fluid than we would like them to be.

So if I look within myself, I can find elements within me that are very, very feminine, and I can also find elements within me that are very, very masculine. And they’re in a dance; they’re not fixed.

There are times when what naturally calls out of me is a very strong, clear masculine sense of being in the world. Other times, what calls out of me, or what appears as me, or how I act, might be very feminine. But it might be a very strong, commanding, clear, wise feminine sense, you know?

So I think, actually, these binaries—I mean, I don’t know much about gender politics. I don’t read much about it, and there’s probably plenty of other people more qualified to talk about it. But my sense of it is that the world we’ve created, the society we’ve created for ourselves, is quite binary. It is black and white. It functions in that way.

It’s almost like it suits those who lead us as a population to have it that way. But anyway, that’s another topic. I think that probably all of these identities would be much more fluid, and actually there’d be no fear around that.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, if you buy into reincarnation theory, that whole understanding is that we’ve all been everything. We’ve been women, we’ve been men, we’ve been what? And we go from lifetime to lifetime and incarnate as what we need to be in order to learn our lessons, the next lessons we need to learn.

Mike: Yeah, and definitely, we can experience, just with our imagination, a lot of what that’s like now. I find that it only takes a little bit of time to intentionally sit with someone or something to see yourself in it or in that person.

I would imagine an enlightened race of beings would probably resolve conflicts that way. They would somehow meet that person, that entity, on the level of absolute reality first of all, recognize that the absolute reality in you is the same absolute reality in me, and that is our common inheritance, our common identity, our common primal sense of beingness.

Then, from that, resolve differences and learn to live alongside each other. It seems to be that, actually, when we really love something, we come to see ourselves in it, whether that’s a rock or a stone or another person. You actually meet that person on a deeper level, at the same time in form also. I guess meeting them in emptiness and then meeting them in form at the same time.

Rick: Yeah, I’m reminded of that Rumi quote about the field beyond right and wrong: I’ll meet you there.

Mike: Yes, yeah, exactly. It’s a beautiful, beautiful quote, and I think of that one often. In fact, I often write it on my blog at the end of things, and it’s so beautiful because, actually, in relationship, that—

Rick: You might as well tell us the quote, since you probably have it memorized.

Mike: I think probably, Out beyond our ideas of wrong, right and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. I’ve probably not done it justice.

Rick: That’s about it.

Mike: It’s a roundabout way, isn’t it? Yeah. So, I guess gender identity, sexual identity, orientation, all these things really are probably much more fluid than we’d like. It’s like with anything, isn’t it? We don’t really like it when things change too much because it threatens our sense of security if we don’t know what things are. But coming from this space, it doesn’t take much to just return and remind myself, Well, actually, I don’t really know what anything is. It’s not knowing. It facilitates this incredible capacity to accept, to deal with, to be open to, and to see things in a new way, which can be healthy and helpful.

Rick: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I think that the ability to not grasp at adamant certainties or conclusions about things. I mean, there’s often that don’t know mind phrase, and it’s not that one doesn’t know anything. We know all kinds of things, but it has to do with the rigidity or adamancy with which we think we know things.

Mike: Who actually does know anything with absolute certainty? Name me anything that you can know with absolute certainty.

Rick: Here’s a Bible quote for you, since you said you didn’t know any. Jesus said, Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Mike: Exactly. And, yeah, there are probably many others who would see that as well. So, for me, I think identity, if you like, is something that is played. It’s not ultimately who we are. But certainly, this is interesting, talking about sexual orientation. For me, it was very clear at the age of 18 that what the world thought was a gay man was not who I was.

I think that’s probably what I was clumsily trying to get at earlier by saying, If you don’t fit into something where you really know who you are because it’s confirmed all around you, you might get a sense of this freedom a bit earlier than others. It’s because I’ve never felt like any label has ever described who I am.

I used to say that, as a gay man, when I walked into a gay bar, I looked around and, first of all, I thought, Well, this is good because there are people here holding hands and it’s okay. They’re not going to get beaten up. But the second thought that came in straight after that was, I don’t feel like I relate on a really profound level to any of these people here. And I saw, on that very first night, some of the same prejudice from some gay men towards lesbians, and I just thought, How?

And obviously, we know how. But initially, as a young 18-year-old, I thought, How can you have gone through life—this was from older gay men towards younger lesbians—and then be so unaccepting or bitchy towards the lesbians in the bar? It wasn’t cruel. It was playful sort of bitching, but it wasn’t particularly nice for me.

I thought I’d come to somewhere where I could finally be free of all that judgment and stuff. And I just thought, How can you go through life being—that person will have gone through some prejudice—and then be so unaccepting or bitchy towards the lesbians in the bar? And I just thought, even at that age, I sort of realized you can’t really, you know, that’s just the way people are a lot of the time. Labels are for clothes, not people.

Integrating Transcendence into Everyday Life

In case anybody listening is wondering, at this point, what this has to do with awakening or spirituality and all that, I think it does. As we started out the interview by discussing, it’s one thing to realize one’s true nature, to have a taste of transcendence or unboundedness and whatnot. It’s another thing to integrate it into life, into the personality, into one’s behavior.

Rick: In case anybody listening is wondering, at this point, what this has to do with awakening or spirituality and all that, I think it does. As we started out the interview by discussing, it’s one thing to realize one’s true nature, to have a taste of transcendence or unboundedness and whatnot. It’s another thing to integrate it into life, into the personality, into one’s behavior.

And there are so many ingrained tendencies—I think they call them vasanas in Sanskrit—that are deeply etched in our psyches, in our nervous systems, and that stuff has to be worked out. What Mike and I are discussing here is one area of such tendencies, such vasanas, which is a big deal in our society these days. It’s a big cultural issue, a political issue, so it’s something that I think pretty much everybody has to come to terms with in one way or another, whether they like it or not.

Mike: Exactly, and it’s a big deal. You know, on the one level, I am not my sexuality. My sexual feelings and desires, that’s not who I am, just in the same way it’s not for any person.

Rick: Right. You’re not your body, you’re not any of these individual expressions. You’re bigger than that.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. And yet, on the other hand, for me to be able to sit here and talk to you, knowing that this is being broadcast and will be on YouTube and potentially seen by more people than normally see a video of mine, it’s a huge advance for me to talk about these things and not feel, within myself, any sense of shame or guilt or embarrassment. That’s a massive development in my life, you know? I always felt ashamed of myself in that way because I didn’t—well, that was being reflected back at me, you know?

People were not—

Rick: Yeah, people were making you feel that way.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Or they were certainly—it’s not so bad now, but there is a general view that’s still in lots of parts of society around the world. I mean, in Chechnya at the moment, there are horrific—

Rick: Oh, right, yeah. I signed some petition about that the other day.

Mike: Yeah, me too. Horrific acts of violence against people because of their sexuality. So we’re not, as a race, completely beyond it. But then we’re not beyond a lot of things.

I am going through a period of integrating all of that understanding into every part of my life.

So certainly for me, this is related to awakening and being in the world as an awakened being because awakening, contrary to what we might sometimes think at the beginning of our search for enlightenment or the beginning of our spiritual life, when we seek a different way, doesn’t rub out all of these difficult things, you know? It’s certainly not the—on one level, it’s winning, it’s living the greatest, most valuable prize of all. But it looks nothing like what we thought it might do at the beginning.

Waking up to life

Mike: One thing I’ve been expressing a lot lately, and this really seems to sum up where I am in terms of living a life that’s true to this essence of peace and joy and unconditional love within me—to be true to that—is that I am going through a period of integrating all of that understanding into every part of my life.

And one of the things that’s been really clear to me is that initially I began seeking spiritual awakening because I was suffering and I wanted to awaken from that. I wanted to wake up out of that and be free of it. And initially there was that temporary—maybe even for four years, I would say—I kept dwelling in that place of nonconceptual awareness, you know, whatever we call it.

And yet the journey wasn’t over, because now it’s taking that understanding and that experience of nonconceptual awareness, or witness consciousness, or clear no-self, and taking that understanding and experience into the world of my own life, into the personal life. So I feel very much now that I’m waking up to my life, not from it, which is wonderful.

Not everything about that—I mean, a lot of people will describe just dwelling in no-mind as a very dry, distant place. And yes, it is on some level, but for me—and I spent about two years in a different flat I was living in at the time—I was just in love with the cupboard door and really simple things, you know? And I can still find that now.

I can still go out into the world, just simply sit with something long enough, and experience its essence, you know, including people.

Rick: Yeah, a friend of mine, Susanna Marie, said that one time too. She just went through a phase where she would find herself sitting and staring at a rock or something like that, just sort of loving it and having this deep experience.

Mike: Yeah, which is lovely because, in a way, when you realize that that’s within you, that that’s what you are, that in a way what you are is gazing at what the rock is at the most elemental level, then you have this confidence. It certainly feels like that to me. You have this confidence in the world that, actually, nothing can take that away. Once you establish that, it’s like you can never really be bored or lonely.

I mean, you might have periods—I mean, of course, you’ll get times when I sit here and think, Oh, you know, I want to do something interesting.

Rick: Sure.

Mike: But if there really isn’t anything to do, you know, if I can’t, then just sort of sitting with that is a beautiful thing. It’s wonderful.

Rick: This kind of segues us into another thing I want to talk to you about, which is actually an elaboration of what we started with. And, you know, if anybody listening has more questions about the whole gender identity and sexual stuff that we’ve been talking about, feel free to send in a question and we’ll come back to it.

But last week or so, I was listening to a talk that Stephen Bodian gave at the Science and Nonduality Conference, and he was talking a lot about the contrast between the direct and progressive paths. I thought that would make a great panel discussion for the SAND Conference. And so I started chatting with Stephen about that, and I just submitted a proposal yesterday. Hopefully, we’ll have Rupert Spira and Robert Thurman involved too, although they haven’t been told yet.

The reason I think it’s interesting and relevant to what you and I are talking about is that it’s a perennial discussion. I mean, it’s been going back probably thousands of years, about direct realization versus this long, drawn-out path that one has to take in order to reach enlightenment.

And I think that it may be a false distinction, in the sense that one can, from the outset, have a clear glimpse of one’s true nature, but that doesn’t mean you’re finished. There can then be no end to the clarification and integration of that in one’s life. So, I don’t know. What are your thoughts on that?

Mike: Yeah, I agree with where you’re going with that, actually. Is it a question of a direct path or a progressive path? And I would say, well, both.

I think even if you take a direct path, you take a direct path to one’s awakening. Well, then, after you awaken, the progressive part comes in because you’ve still lived many years in the body. So that would be my feeling.

I know that perhaps the question isn’t necessarily asking that, that maybe you just take longer on the progressive path to gradually awaken. But I would say that even if you take the direct path, and the direct path is successful, and you awaken in a direct way very quickly, then there’s still the job of living an awakened life, which I think can only be progressive.

Even if you take the direct path, and the direct path is successful, and you awaken in a direct way very quickly, then there’s still the job of living an awakened life, which I think can only be progressive.

Rick: Yeah. Well, I wonder how many examples there actually are of people who just awaken just like that. I mean, there are people who read books that say you’re already enlightened, and they say, Oh, great, I’m already enlightened. Got that checked off my bucket list. But, you know, you wonder: if they were able to pop into Ramana Maharshi’s perspective suddenly and contrast it with theirs, would it really be the same? I don’t know.

Mike: Yeah, I think each expression of awakened living would be different, but I see what you’re saying. I think probably that no one really has an instant awakening. And even if they do, I mean, in a way every moment of awakening is out of time and is instant anyway because it’s occupying a timeless realm.

But I would say even those familiar stories that some of us may have heard about instant awakening, when you really read deeply into those, if the person has written a lot of books, if the teacher’s written a lot of books, or there’s a lot of material to look through, you probably find somewhere that—I’m thinking particularly of Eckhart Tolle. I listened to loads of talks of his, hours and hours’ worth, and you do hear him say, Well, after that initial awakening, there was a period of three or four years where I had to get used to living that way, get readjusted. It’s like wearing a new—you’re getting into a new skin, almost.

Rick: Yeah. Not only that, but even now, I bet you if you were to talk to him, which I hope to do one day, he would say, Yeah, I’m still growing. I’m still evolving. Adyashanti certainly does.

Actually, I heard from somebody who— I forget who it was—but they somehow knew Eckhart back in the day, before he had his awakening and became famous and everything. They said he was an ardent seeker. He was reading all kinds of stuff and practicing this and that. So I don’t know for sure, but I did hear that, and so it wasn’t completely out of the blue.

And then there’s always the issue—I happen to think, although some disagree with this—that these people who have these sudden, profound awakenings have something fructifying that they had actually built up to in a previous life.

Mike: I could see how that could be the case. Also, I would say, even if you leave the question of past lives to one side, we can be practicing in our lives without really thinking of it as practice.

Rick: That’s a good point.

Mike: For me, the constant dissatisfaction with the way life was was my main practice.

Sort of, if you like, suffering was my main practice, or dissatisfaction and feeling unfulfilled was my practice for many years, because that brought me, if you like, to the period where that was all I felt. It almost got so loud to the point where it would just zero everything else out.

Rick: Yeah. That’s a very good point. It created an intense yearning.

Mike: Yeah, exactly. So I’ve probably had several dark nights of the soul in that sense. I’ve had very many periods in my life where everything just seemed to have gone wrong, where everything went dark: no money, no job, no relationship, nowhere to live. On several occasions, I was in that situation. And it can only get so dark before the dawn starts to come.

Also, I do encourage people to practice in their lives. I’m not a great one for routine meditation, but that’s not really the point of it. The point is that I might take what I experience in meditation into a feeling of unease in the body. Or, if I have an argument with somebody, it’s actually using that, using a sense of just exploring the timeless or unconditional love in those instances, which is practice as well.

But what I was going to say is that I feel that a lot of people don’t think of themselves as practicing very much, but reading Facebook, commenting on spirituality blogs, talking about spirituality, watching YouTube videos—

Rick: Putting your attention on this stuff.

Mike: Exactly, exactly. It all amounts to, like you say, building up momentum, if you like, and a will and a desire and an intention to wake up, to see things a different way.

And I agree—sorry to go on—but I agree that, along with Adyashanti and probably Eckhart Tolle as well, and I know Francis thinks this way, my sense is that, yes, there may be a delineated period where you might say, Well, that’s when I began to wake up, but actually, from that point onwards—and I think even in the clearest, most enlightened, awakened being, if they’re still in a body, they’re still here on the planet in a body—then that just goes on.

It’s like awakened—actually, I think the subtitle of your website, Buddha at the Gas Pump, says it perfectly. It’s awakening people, you know?

Rick: Yeah. It used to be awakened, and then we changed it. I realized that was wrong.

Mike: Yeah, exactly, and that’s it. It’s like we awaken in every moment. It’s being awake every moment, and it just doesn’t end, you know? Possibly even on the metaphysical, nonphysical plane, it used to say.

Rick: Yeah, I tend to think that. I mean, it’s just an assumption, but I get that sense.

Why Spiritual Seeking Should Not Be Dismissed

Also, around this point, there’s a lot of times when the whole notion of seeking is poo-pooed: Oh, give up the search, stop being a seeker, and all that stuff. I think that does a disservice to people who are in that phase very strongly, who are yearning and aren’t satisfied and are looking for something. It’s like you can’t just stop looking. It’s like saying to a hungry man, Oh, give up the hunger. You actually have to fulfill it with something, and then it’s naturally going to drop off.

Mike: Yeah, I think so. I read a lot of those teachings and listened to a lot of teachers who counseled that, encouraged that, who suggested their teaching was, Stop seeking, or, See that actually what you’re looking for is the seeking itself.

I’ll be honest, a lot of that helped me. That was very helpful.

Rick: Yeah, there was a flip side to that argument.

Mike: However, it didn’t, for a number of years, stop me seeking. Seeking did stop of its own accord. It seems that it did drop away.

In fact, the biggest thing—I was just reflecting on what has been different in my life since then—is that I think the biggest, most noticeable thing for me is that this sense of feeling unfulfilled, this nagging background sense, that feeling of being dissatisfied or unfulfilled, is just not there anymore.

As I say, it’s easy for me to tell that because it was almost like that was at full volume before. I couldn’t rest for a minute. I was constantly, even if I was sitting still, thinking, I want something, I need something, I’ve got to do something. I never had any serious addiction to drugs, but it was like that within me. It was a sense of just not being able to rest.

That’s gone now. There’s a sense now of, Well, this is enough, you know? And I still do things.

Rick: And did it go because, at some point, you decided, Hey, I’m tired of seeking. I’m going to stop seeking? Or was it more that you somehow found some fulfillment, and then, almost in retrospect, you realized, Hey, I don’t have that seeking, craving thing going on anymore?

Mike: Yeah, yeah. It was really in the recognition that what I was looking for was already here.

Rick: Yeah.

Mike: That was huge. That really was the initial breaking away. Like I say, it felt like this big landmass of suffering, or what some might call the big element of self-structure, just fell away. That was upon the recognition of, Oh my goodness, it’s here.

It was like the whole time, the glasses-on-top-of-the-head thing, or that what I was looking for in everything—and I would say even in our worldly seeking. I might say I want to go out there and buy a new car or look for somewhere else to live. And that’s fine, to go and do those things. I have absolutely no problem with that, and I’d like to do some of those things.

But it’s like the essence of what I want—if I think about that, well, really I want those things so that I can feel something. I want to feel more satisfied, more fulfilled. I want to enjoy the comfort it might bring. But really, the essence of all of that is already available now.

What I was seeking through it just didn’t occur to me until some of the more modern nonduality teachers of nondual wisdom, if you like, Advaita Vedanta teachers that we see around, said that, pointed in that way: what you’re looking for is already here—and you are what you seek. That was a huge shift for me. I hadn’t considered that before.

What I was seeking through it just didn’t occur to me until some of the more modern nonduality teachers of nondual wisdom, if you like, Advaita Vedanta teachers that we see around, said that, pointed in that way: what you’re looking for is already here—and you are what you seek. That was a huge shift for me. I hadn’t considered that before.

The journey continues on a platform of fulfillment rather than a platform of emptiness.

Rick: Let me just make one quick point, and then I want to talk about what you just said. For me, a helpful way of phrasing it is to say that the seeking energy, or seeking tendency, gives rise to, or gives way to, just an ongoing sense of wonder and adventure and exploration, and words like that, where certainly the journey continues.

Mike: Yes.

Rick: But it continues on a platform of fulfillment rather than a platform of emptiness.

Mike: Yeah, exactly, or lack, absolutely.

Rick: Yeah.

Mike: I completely agree. So it’s almost like then, it’s not so much seeking anymore. It’s more just being in the world or creating.

Rick: Yeah, exploring, having fun in a way.

Mike: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Not seeking. I mean, the distinction for me was that now, if I’m seeking something, it’s to enjoy that in and of itself, not to find some sense of completion within it. What’s gone is the belief that I must have that thing, or I must do this or be that, to feel whole and complete and satisfied.

Rick: Yeah, because you already feel whole and complete and satisfied, regardless of whether or not you get that thing.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s what’s lovely: actually, then everything you do in the world is an expression of your wholeness and completeness and your beingness.

Rick: Yeah, very nicely put.

Mike: Yeah, it just feels so much better. [laughs]

Rick: I find it fascinating that you and many others experience such a radical shift just by hearing the teaching that what you’re seeking is what you are, that kind of talk. It’s almost like you were primed for that; you were ready for that. You’d gotten to a point.

Maybe if you’d heard it 20 years before, it wouldn’t have done the trick, but you had reached a point at which just that knowledge evoked a big reorientation in you.

Mike: Completely, and it did feel like that. I didn’t go to loads of meetings. I went a few times to hear Jeff Foster speak and sat with him in meetings for a few times, and maybe one or two others. But I watched a lot and read a lot, and it was like that.

Certainly, when I first read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle—the first time I picked it up, a friend had come to stay with me and she was reading it. I was intrigued and picked it up. It was like reading a foreign language; it made no sense to me. I was interested, and I thought, Hmm, what is it? But I just couldn’t follow it. It wasn’t making any sense.

Then, a couple of years later, actually while I was recovering from the cancer, I was now really spiritually interested in seeking these things and I’d heard about Eckhart Tolle. I thought, Ah, that’s that book that Laura was reading, and so I went and got it. It was just speaking my language then, and it was to do with that.

I think I probably was primed and ready. There was a willingness to hear and a willingness to see. The same thing happened with Tony Parsons, with Jeff Foster, and with a lot of those teachers sharing things. Ten years ago, seven years ago, really for me, was the first time I encountered a lot of that. It just suddenly felt like, This is just making total sense.

Rick: Well, part of the whole rationale of BatGap is just to throw out so many different voices that people can find something that resonates with them. Very often I’ll put out an interview and we’ll get feedback. One person will say, That’s the worst one you ever did, and another person will say, That’s the best one you ever did. It’s just different strokes for different folks.

Mike: Yeah, different flavors, and different things resonate at different times. There have been some expressions I came across seven years ago and I just thought, Oh, I just don’t get it at all. I don’t like the way it’s expressed. It doesn’t feel right to me. Then, five years later, you read it again and go, Oh, actually.

It’s the same with poetry or Shakespeare. Anything that’s got some ring of truth to it, some real depth, you come back to it later in life and it just goes deeper. It’s got layers and layers to it that unfold.

Rick: That’s very true. There are all kinds of books, like the Bhagavad Gita, or books like that, that you could read for the rest of your life, and they become a new book every time because there’s a deeper understanding that resonates. These books—a lot of this knowledge is crafted in such a way that it appeals to people at whatever level of experience they have.

Mike: Yeah, I agree. But it does seem to be that there needs to be a kind of readiness. I think that’s a good word: a readiness to hear these teachings or to hear what’s being pointed to, particularly in that sense.

Rick: That’s true. A lot of the traditional teachers have said that too—Shankara, Ramana. They don’t say one size fits all. If Ramana would say to somebody, You are that, and if they didn’t get it, then he’d say, Well, do self-inquiry. If they couldn’t relate to that, he’d say, Okay, well, do some service. Go work in the kitchen, feed the hungry.

There are different things that are appropriate or suitable to people at different stages of their development, and also to different types of people. One thing leads to the next.

Rick: So, in your own case, has it been primarily watching videos and reading and contemplating and thinking, or did you—and have you, and do you—engage in some sort of spiritual practice to any extent?

Mike: Yes, I did. I meditate now, still, a bit. I don’t have a timetable meditation practice, but I spend time in silence, sitting. Even seven years ago—in fact, from 2010 through about 2013—I was unemployed and wasn’t working, so I had a lot of time.

I wrote a lot and did reflective writing. I’ve always written a diary or a journal, but I was reflecting on self-inquiry processes and methods. I was reflecting on the teachings that I’d been listening to, and I was exploring existence within myself, sense perceptions, and experience.

So I guess I do a lot of different types of practice. They’re not perhaps all thought of as strict kinds of methodologies, but certainly I do spend time in the park or go out for a walk in nature mindfully, presently, and consciously, just being in a space without thinking.

That’s another incredible place for me to be, because when I first got the advice from Eckhart Tolle—Just stop thinking. That’s the key. Just stop thinking—

Rick: Eckhart Tolle said that?

Mike: Yeah, he did. It’s actually in some of the books.

Rick: Easier said than done.

Mike: Well, yeah, and I just thought, Whoa, there’s no way I can do that. I tried and tried, but interestingly enough, even before 2010, I was reading a lot from Eckhart Tolle and listening to his stuff.

Interestingly enough, with more practice, it did become easier. Whereas now I feel that when I don’t need to think, if I don’t need to think, it just seems to be quite quiet.

If there is thought going on, if there’s a momentum of thought going on, in a way, it’s more like I don’t really listen to it that much, unless I really think I need to.

Rick: Yeah, it’s like you don’t have three radio stations going in your head at the same time. It’s relatively quiet.

Mike: And I just don’t really take it all that seriously, unless it’s something quite serious. If I hear some commotion on the street and think, Oh, something’s going on in the street. Sounds like police cars and sirens. I should get out of here, I obviously take that seriously.

But I just generally don’t take anything too seriously that I think about. If I do, I’ll go away and decide to think about it: Okay, well, actually, I need to go away and contemplate this and think about it.

Rick: But this brings up an interesting point. I think that if we could describe the enlightened mind, it’s not a mind that’s utterly free of thoughts. It’s a mind that is efficient in its thinking, that thoughts occur as and when they are appropriate, and aside from that, the mind isn’t cluttered with a million other thoughts that aren’t appropriate.

This is tremendously conserving of energy. The thoughts we do think can be much more powerful, and the actions we take on those thoughts can be much more appropriate. We’re not scattering our energies in every direction.

Mike: Yes, exactly. It feels like you’re just less attached to the thoughts that come into the mind. They’re not—and I feel I make fewer conclusions about what I think.

In my twenties, I had real problems with mental health issues and emotional disturbances, and had some quite frightening experiences in my very early twenties around nervous breakdown and mental or emotional collapse-type experiences. They were terrifying because, on some level, I was believing what my mind was telling me.

There’s just less investment in that now. As a creative person—my mind’s always been quite creative—I can sit here and imagine a wonderful creative world and think about ideas and things, but then that’s allowed to just play and go its own way. So it’s not that the mind’s not capable of that; it’s just that it doesn’t really conclude too much more unless it’s asked to make a conclusion.

Rick: In other words, you don’t take your thoughts all that seriously. They happen, but it’s not like you’re totally convinced that you’re thinking it, therefore it must be true.

Mike: Yeah, exactly.

Rick: Which is what a lot of people do: I think such and such about Muslims, or about gay people, or about Republicans, or whatever; therefore, it must be true.

Mike: Yeah, definitely.

Interestingly enough, I’m challenged in that sense by the people around me—

Rick: Who are more certain of their opinions?

Mike: Yeah. Or if there’s something I really care about, I can seem to really stick to it for a while: I really want to do this. There are reasons I don’t want to do that today because we don’t have time to do that, and I want to go there. That’s what I want to do.

So it can seem like it’s really, really important to me, which in that moment it might be, and that might be why I’m going out for my version of things.

But really, when it comes down to it, there’s less concern over what the mind says about things.

✨ Awakening does not erase personality

Rick: We’re talking about how a more enlightened mind, for the sake of convenience, is less attached to its opinions and less adamant that my way or the highway, that kind of thing.

But on the other hand, that is not to say that such a person is going to just be wishy-washy—whatever goes, you know?

You can see many examples, if we want to take well-known examples, of people like Papaji, Ramana, or Nisargadatta, who had fiery determination when they set their mind on something and weren’t about to be swayed by others’ opinions. They said, This is the way I want it to be. This is the way it’s going to be.

On the other hand, they could just totally turn on a dime and go with whichever way the wind blew. So it’s a little unpredictable, but let’s not stereotype and say that it has to be this way or that way. Let’s not assume that you’re just going to be a pushover necessarily if you’re in this state.

Mike: Yeah, that’s a very good point to make, because I think that certainly I wanted more peace and a more relaxed experience of life when I began seeking to awaken.

But in actual fact, as I said earlier, awakening to my life, it’s very clear to me that there are some core aspects to my character or personality that haven’t dissolved in a puff of enlightened smoke. Actually, I’m glad they haven’t, because they provide a particular, unique flavor to who I am.

I think that’s a very interesting point: that maybe we become more determined in the things we care about from an awakened space, you know?

I think this idea that being, having an awake mind and body, and being awake in the world just means that you’re just, oh, just very passive, you know? Everything’s fine, it doesn’t matter, you know? [laughter]It’s all okay anyway, there’s nothing really happening, you know? There’s some peace to be had in that, and there’s some deep truth in that sort of perspective. But actually, I think sometimes coming from a more enlightened, more awake perspective almost always will bring out, will call out, the best in us.

Rick: So what I find and observe is that there’s a paradox here, where both of those things can live in one life at the same time. There can be this sort of laser-like focus on, determination to achieve a certain thing, and at the same time, this sort of surrender to God’s will.

And even on the very same point sometimes there can be the—what is that verse in the Gita? You have control over action alone, never over its fruits. So there can be the laser-like focus on achieving a certain thing but surrender to the fruits of that action, however they may turn out.

Mike: Yes, yeah, exactly. Which again is the freedom to create and to be, from that Space, because you’re not necessarily clinging doggedly to the outcome.

Rick: Yeah, that’s the key.

Mike: Yeah, and you’re even maybe not—you know, certainly I often feel like this—not totally invested in the idea that you’re wholly doing that yourself.

Rick: Right, absolutely, important point, because you’re not.

Mike: Whenever I’ve written anything that people go, Wow, that was a really good poem, or, How did you come up with that idea in that play? Or, How did you do that? I have to, if I’m really honest, go, I don’t really know. There’s an element of mystery to it, you know?

Because in actual fact, when you’re really writing well, most of what you’re doing is letting go and getting out of the way. There’s one writer who writes about the process of writing called Julia Cameron. She’s written The Artist’s Way, and probably some people have heard of her. She talks about it as taking dictation.

Rick: Yeah, very good.

Mike: When she gets out of the way, she just listens, and she’s more listening than writing—writing down what she hears, just writing down what’s coming through her. Then it’s really fun, it’s really playful, because it loses its seriousness. It’s not like, Well, yes, of course, I’m very clever because I wrote that, and, you know, the only way I could do that is because I’m incredibly creative and intelligent. Yes, aren’t I wonderful?[laughter] It’s just never felt right. It’s just, well, actually, I don’t really know. It’s a strange mystery.

Rick: Yeah, and that ties into the whole thing of no personal self and no sense of self and all. It’s like, you know—which again is one of those nuanced understandings, ideally, where sure, there’s some sense of a self but it’s not predominant, at least for me anyway and for many people. Like, what was it? Francis always says, Of course you’re a person. You’re just not only a person.

Mike: You’re not merely a person, you’re not just a person here, you’re the absolute appearing as the relative.

Rick: Yeah, so your relative personhood is serving as an instrument or a conduit or something, but there’s a much larger Intelligence that’s actually running the show.

Mike: Which is a completely different way of experiencing life compared to I’m only this little me. It’s just me here, you know. Nothing means anything. There’s no point in anything because life’s hard and uncomfortable and we’re all going to die. It’s completely different to just being nothing, where I’m just pure Consciousness, pure Being, there’s no one here, no self here, it’s all just an illusion, you know? Which on one level, it is, but it’s a relatively real illusion, you know?

Rick: Yeah, try telling that to your partner if he or she has a problem with something that you’re doing. Say, You’re just an illusion, there’s really no me doing that, so lighten up.[laughter]

Mike: It’s quite a quick way to lose a lot of friends, you know. You didn’t turn up; we had a meeting to drink the other day.Oh no, no, no, I was not really here.

Rick: There is no meeting. There was not.

Mike: Exactly. So, yeah, to me it just feels very much like part of a much larger and more enjoyable process, you know, that I really feel that at this point in my own journey, this is where the real juice and pith and zest of life is. It’s just in, you know, what’s it like? I constantly think now, well, you know, if I’m experiencing something, what’s it like to live in an awakened space with that? It’s just some different words to use, but, you know, if I feel anxious about something or bored or, you know, if there’s a problem in my life, a situation, a difficulty with somebody, a relationship problem, whatever, well, where’s my awakening now, then? What difference is that making?

Rick: Are you able to sort of shift into it a little bit more, fall back on the self, so to speak?

Mike: Yes, exactly. It’s always, you know, the solution now.

The solution is always at the root. The solution is always the same, and it might be that something resolves itself just because I spend a little bit of time just being. I might meditate for 20 minutes or just sit and write, sit and look at the trees, go and sit in the park and just look at the sky, or go and do something which is enjoyable yet doesn’t really require an awful lot of mental focus.

And some of these things can resolve, or even taking something into a practice of surrender. You know, Francis really teaches a lot about surrender, and that’s a huge part of integrating any kind of deep awakening, I think, is that you go through this process of allowing, accepting, letting things be.

And, you know, I can feel in my own being when I’m not doing that, because suddenly things become constricted and difficult, and things just aren’t working well. There’s less flow, you know, things aren’t flowing as well. And then you realize, Ah, okay, I’m obviously holding on to something.

Rick: Yeah, it’s kind of like riding a bicycle. There’s always a balance thing going on, and it becomes almost automatic after a while, as it does with riding a bicycle. You don’t have to think about it, but you’re still balancing, you’re still steering around potholes and correcting for things and this and that.

And what I mean by that analogy is just that there are a lot of things which do have to be dealt with, and you can’t just hide out in the transcendent. I remember I was driving along with my mother one time and the car broke down, and I just sat on the side of the road and opened a Shankara book and started reading. [laughs] This is back in the ’70s, and I wasn’t dealing with the situation. I can probably think of many other examples in my life like that.

So there are times to fall back into the absolute or into the more unbounded perspective, and you know things are going to work themselves out. And there are times to take action. I mean, to quote the Bhagavad Gita again, Arjuna at one point said to Krishna, Can’t I just live on alms and forget about this whole battle thing that you want me to do? And Krishna said, No, this is something you’re going to have to deal with, actually. But the way he put it was, Well, get established in being first and then perform action, and then from that foundation, you’ll do the right thing.

Creating from being

Mike: Yeah, exactly. And that is just such a great comfort when you know this on a certain level. Because for me, I knew this for a couple of years very much on the level of the mind, you know.

I think, this is just my opinion, but I think a lot of modern expressions of nonduality or modern expressions of spiritual teaching sometimes actually require quite a good intellect in order to follow the conceptual game of unraveling the mind with the mind, sort of using that thing. And so I had a good mind in that sense, to be able to conceptually follow these sometimes quite abstract expressions. And so definitely for a while there was this clarity and understanding in the mind about this and almost, if you like, an awakened mind.

But then there had to be some embodiment of that, and that’s really where this process of, like you say, balancing and surrendering and returning to and trusting it as well comes in. I feel that there comes a point when you know all of this stuff, if you’ve had a deep awakening, genuine insight into things, and that’s starting to become an abiding thing. Then I think there’s a sense that you know this through being it.

You just know it through the being of it.

You just know it through the being of it. And then that is, I think, what you’re talking about, that there’s this sense of you just adjusting and you’re doing that, like you say, from the perspective of being, the ground of being. And so that’s just such a comforting thing to me that I think, Oh, okay, if I feel I’m getting carried away or swept up—I keep thinking of this analogy of being swept up by the river of Stuff—I can just remind myself that actually, there’s an element of my beingness which is untouched by any of that, it’s sort of undisturbed, and it’s the capacity holding all of it. And then you go, Of course. Then it becomes easier, I think, and more skillful and more effective, even if part of that balancing is you’ve got to go out there into great battle with something or someone.

Rick: There’s a couple of stories which come to mind. One is from—I forget, these are both sort of Vedic things—but one is that it was said that when Brahma, the creator, first emerged from the unmanifest and he looked around, he was supposed to be the creator, but he couldn’t create, didn’t know what to do or how to do it. And the voice came to him to do tapas, or to go within, and so he kind of went within, in these stories, for eons. Then, from having drawn back like that, he was able to come out and create.

And there’s another saying which is, I think, from Krishna—people pardon me, please, for quoting all these Hindu things, but it’s kind of what I’m familiar with—where he says, Taking recourse to my own nature, I create again and again.

Mike: Absolutely.

Rick: So again, there’s a principle of taking recourse. It’s like drawing the arrow back on the bow and then shooting it forward. Taking recourse to my own nature, I create again and again.

Mike: And that’s beautiful, and that, I think, very nicely sums up what we’re talking about there. We’re drawing from being, if you like. God is creating out of Itself again and again and again for the sheer joy of it, for the thrill and the enjoyment of it, for the love of it, because It can.

That’s just such a completely different way of experiencing life compared to previously, where I felt life was happening to me. I couldn’t get ahead, things were just difficult, the way was always blocked, never satisfied and fulfilled, and just dreadfully unhappy and stressed and tense all the time.

Rick: And if that’s the way God operates, and if we’re made in the image of God—to throw another Bible quote at you—then we’re like a little miniature version of the principles I just explained. It works that way in us.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, exactly, which is the great good news. That’s what it is. When we look around the world, we’ve got all these ideas of God and what they’re telling us to do in this church and that church. Well, really, that’s just us having created God in our image.

Rick: Right.

Mike: The God who says you can’t do this and you can’t do that.

Rick: Not the other way around.

Mike: Yeah, exactly. There may be an inherent ethical approach and a morality that comes with being this free, creating force. I have no doubt in my mind about that, that there is an ethical nature to this beingness, this Brahma, or whatever we would call it. But not in the way of man’s idea of morality or ethics.

Rick: Right.

Mike: We do create it in our expressions of it, but I think it’s God-given in that sense.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. If I were to try to put that ethical nature that you just alluded to into words, it would be that there’s an evolutionary imperative to the universe, an evolutionary trajectory that might seem ruthless and cruel at times. But if you step back far enough and see the big picture, there’s this ever-evolving, ever-complexifying, ever-more-full expression of Divine Intelligence in the world, through the world.

Mike: Yeah, indeed. And whatever that ethical framework or essence is, it’s intelligent. Like you say, it’s a Divine Intelligence, which is very different, I think, often from the morality that human beings concern themselves with in terms of conflict and debate: this is right and that is wrong.

But there’s an almost unquestionable provenance, an unquestionable ring of truth about that ethical approach. In a way, it’s like, if we are this beingness, if we are the essence of God, if we are this open-hearted, clear, unconditional openness that we might call God, well, then it’s its own authority.

It’s almost like, well, in a way, that’s what informs your ethical approach in the world, or that’s what informs your relationships to other people. So, like you say, coming back again to—what was that quote about the book?

Rick:Taking recourse to my own nature, I create again and again.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. It’s like going back each time, returning to that essence of ourselves, reminding ourselves, remembering who we are, and then going out again in the world. It seems to me that, if you like, is the cycle of all of this, isn’t it? And it just goes on to deeper and deeper levels as a person’s life unfolds.

Rick: So, you give meetings around the UK and you do Skype consultations with people. What do you actually do with people in these meetings and consultations?

Mike: Well, I don’t really give many meetings in the UK.

Rick: Maybe you’d like to give more if you were invited.

Mike: Maybe, if I was invited to talk on something, I might. Initially, when I first started writing the blog, I was invited to give a few talks, and initially I felt that the role of teacher just wasn’t for me.

In hindsight, I realized there was an awful lot I still needed to integrate within myself in order to have any real confidence in teaching as such. But certainly, I will write my blog and talk to people via that and on Facebook. For a while, I was consulting with people via Skype. That’s still available. If people want to talk to me via Skype and discuss or ask questions or ask for guidance in this awakening journey, I will do that.

But for a number of years, I decided to step away from all of that and focus on living my own life, aside from putting myself out there as someone to talk about things and teach.

I get a sense that probably my own expression will naturally fall more into the creative field. I don’t know. But I like talking about this, and I certainly have a passion for assisting people who are perhaps already on this journey, just talking from my own experience and what works for me.

Rick: One thing you might enjoy doing is—and you have the technical skills to set this up on Zoom or whatever—just doing a little webinar once a month or something, where people can either join for free or you ask for a modest donation, voluntarily, and you just talk for a bit and then let people throw in their two cents. You could get a little discussion going with 15 or 20 people.

Mike: Yeah, indeed. I’m sure I would. Yeah, definitely.

Rick: Good.

Mike: Certainly, a good idea.

🎵 Poetry and closing reflections

Rick: Great. Well, thanks, Mike. Is there anything that comes to mind that we haven’t covered that you want to mention before we wrap it up?

Mike: I don’t think so, no. I was going to read one poem, actually.

Rick: Oh, please do.

Mike: It’s just difficult to know which one to choose, but I’ll choose this one because it’s one of my favorite ones. This is something I wrote probably about six months ago, maybe seven months ago. I often will write poetry expressing this sort of stuff. Sometimes it’s not always this stuff. This is called Gloriously I Am.

If you are here as the prickles in my skin and as the sensation of my own breath entering and leaving my body, and if you are here as the carpet and the sofa and the dwindling bottle of wine and the ticking or marching or bending of time, and if you are here as the memory of autumn beech leaves and of conkers and of my dear sweet friend Peter walking twin-like with me round and round the playing fields, and if you are here as the sound of these fingers tinkle-tapping their dance across the screen, and if you are here as the beautiful face I kiss and the beautiful hand I hold and the soft, sweet care of his heart, and if you are here as the ground on which I walk and the skin in which I’m in and the crazy, screwed-up, messed-up, wired-up mind that just does its own bloody thing, and if you are here as everything that could be named or not named or claimed or not claimed, as every thought, every memory, every movement, sound, taste, and smell, well, I am gloriously lost for words.

Rick: That’s great. That gives people a nice taste of your writing ability. You know, I’ve listened to another number of things in the last few days that you had written that were just really nice and enjoyable. I hope you keep writing.

Mike: Yes, same here.

Rick: So, thanks. I really appreciate it. It’s been a really enjoyable conversation for me, and hopefully for the listeners.

Mike: Hopefully, yeah. I really enjoyed it too. Thanks, Rick.

Rick: Sure. Let me make a few little wrap-up points. So, I’ve been speaking with Mike Jenkins. Those of you who are familiar with the show know everything that I’m about to say. Those of you who are new to it, I’ll just say a few things.

This is an ongoing series of interviews. If you’d like to be notified of future ones, go to batgap.com, and you’ll see a place to sign up to be notified by email when new ones are released. Or you could subscribe on YouTube, and YouTube will notify you when I put up new ones.

Explore the site there at BatGap. Look under the At-a-Glance menu, and you’ll see a summary of some of the things that are available. And the donate button is there, as I mentioned in the beginning, which enables us to devote all our time to this. So I really appreciate your attention, listening to or watching this. We will continue to schedule them and do this.

We’ve got them scheduled through late September now—not entirely every week, but some go that far out—and it’s a great honor and pleasure to be able to produce this series and to meet so many wonderful people. I’m the prime beneficiary of this. It’s my selfish little secret.

So, I really appreciate it, and it’s been great getting to know you, Mike. Perhaps we’ll meet in person one of these days.

Mike: Thank you. Yes, that would be nice. Definitely.

Rick: So, thanks to everybody who’s been listening or watching, and we’ll see you next time.

Mike: Thank you.