Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done hundreds of them now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to the past interviews menu on batgap.com, and you’ll see them all organized there 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 PayPal button on every page of the site, and there’s also a page, a donation page that suggests other ways of doing it if you don’t like PayPal. My guest today is Mayuri Morse. I’m just going to read her bio here, and then I’ve highlighted certain things in red in her bio that I want to loop back and discuss with her. So first I’ll just read it. Mayuri is a spiritual and energetic healer, counselor, and coach who specializes in supporting people with kundalini awakening and the embodiment of consciousness. Mayuri was psychic and naturally shamanic since early childhood. She began intensive spiritual practice in meditation and yoga as a teenager, which eventually heightened these abilities. She can see the process of kundalini shakti in someone’s system and has dedicated her gifts to healing others. In 2004, Mayuri began having deep insights into the nature of true self amidst a wild kundalini journey. Kundalini completed in 2009, leaving her with a profound shift in what she identified as her reference point and access to constantly increasing levels of awareness. Since then, she has explored what it means to continually integrate vast consciousness into a physical and energetic system that had suffered extensive trauma and previous acute PTSD. The journey of awakening continues to deepen and expand endlessly. The most priceless gift has been causeless joy. Mayuri’s special interest is in the intersection of trauma, kundalini awakening, and embodiment. Or maybe kundalini, awakening, and embodiment, that way. Trauma presents specific challenges to the capacity of the physical and energetic systems to absorb consciousness and expand in both functional and stable ways. Mayuri is passionate about supporting people who walk such paths and brings a sense of humor, safety, and compassion to the places we get stuck, because she has been in those places too and unfolded them into freedom. So, that’s it for starters. So let’s loop back, Mayuri. And the first thing I highlighted here was Mayuri was psychic and naturally shamanic since early childhood. So, how early and what do you mean by that?
Myree: Right. Well, in some ways, I think right from the get-go. I have even memories of my birth, which is a very unusual thing. I think very early on I was always very empathic, but from about the age of three or four, I lived on my grandparents’ farm and I had a pretty wild and free childhood in that way. I was really just allowed to roam and that allowed me to have sometimes an entire day just being out on the farm or out in nature. And I found myself just communicating with nature. I’d have to walk a kilometer to my little tiny primary school, and I would stop and have conversations with the rocks, and the rocks would communicate back very much in the way that the indigenous people around the world talk about the way nature communicates back. And thankfully, I never spoke to anyone about it. So, no one said, “Oh, Mary, you’re just making that up,” or “It’s a fantasy.” It was very real to me. In fact, my first memory of someone saying, “I love you,” actually came from the trees in our garden. I think I was feeling particularly sad on that day and it was just this sense of this collective message to me.
Rick: Nice. So, in terms of psychic, did you pick up on other people’s thoughts and feelings or anything like that?
Myree: Yeah. I think, yes, I used to be able to be very sensitive and empathic, and I also used to start to see things. For example, I remember once I was a real tomboy and I climbed up the top of a tree near the front of our yard on the farm, and I was just up there watching, and I remember someone walking up the path to the house, and I could see very clearly on this person that they had a big, what a healer today would call an entity, on their back. I could see the person was in a very strong negative mood and that this energy was, the energy that they were carrying on their back was actually contributing to and creating most of that mood and enjoying it. At the time, I remember thinking, “Why aren’t they aware that that is there?” I’m assuming that these are pretty much past life information and gifts that were just showing up in that way through my life. When I went to school, that sense of having to really focus and be more mainstream and consensus reality started to contain those gifts throughout my childhood until I left, but they were always there. When I look back, I can kind of reflect on them more. It was pretty challenging, too, being that sensitive and psychic in a very remote, rural, kind of tough farming community.
Rick: Yeah, that happens a lot of times with kids who are very sensitive. It sort of shuts down at a certain point. The people I talk to are usually people that I’m interviewing and it’s opened up again for them, but they usually went through a shutdown period, which kind of started in early adolescence and then maybe lasted through their teenage years.
Myree: Yeah, I found as soon as I got out of high school and I was free and I didn’t have that pressure, it all just ramped up very, very quickly. Yeah.
Rick: Good. Okay, so when did you first consciously, explicitly consider that there was such a thing as spirituality and that you might be interested in it?
Myree: I think I was always interested in it, even as a child.
Rick: You knew what it was?
Myree: Yeah, I knew what it was. I could feel it. I could sense it in nature. I was very aware of that sense of oneness. I think one of the most profound things that happened to me was actually when I was seven, I had a visitation from Buddha, and that sounds kind of strange.
Rick: From the Buddha?
Myree: Yeah, from Buddha. My life was very difficult.
Rick: Buddha is how they pronounced it in Australia, I guess.
Myree: Buddha, yes. I’m sorry, you’ll have to put up with my Australian lingo in this call. I’m trying to learn American, but I’ve got a ways to go.
Rick: Anyway, I’m sorry, go ahead. So you had this visitation?
Myree: Yes, it was a summer’s day and I was walking across this big hill on the farm that had this amazing view, so I was in a very spacious kind of way, just taking in the view, and I looked up into the sky and suddenly I noticed that there was a Tibetan-style Buddha in the sky with two attendants with rainbow lights behind him. I went immediately out of my body and up into the sky and had a conversation with Buddha. Even at seven, I knew that this was Buddha, and he actually got his attendants who were astrologers, and we got out scrolls and they were looking through astrology for me because they were looking for a way to make my life easier, actually. It was a choice point in my life where I could have made different choices. I chose to continue the path that I had chosen, which was a dedication to compassion. The message that I’m receiving is this is very hard, what you’ve chosen, and we can find something easier, like something that’s more of an out view, and in my staying true to that, I chose no. But often as an adult reflected back on that, I was like, “I think Buddha was right. Maybe I could have taken a different option.” And then when I was in my late 20s, I went to a …
Rick: Before you go on to that, let me just ask you, so you were seven, you had this experience, you went up into the sky and had this conversation. How long did it last and what happened to your physical body while that was going on? Would somebody have found you comatose by the side of the road?
Myree: No, the physical body just kind of paused, because when you’re outside of the body in that way, it’s very timeless, so while that seemed to take quite a long time in that dimensional experience, my physical body was really standing there, just being present with the experience.
Rick: So it might have just been a few seconds from the perspective of earth time.
Myree: Yes.
Rick: Okay, and you were about to say something about in your 20s, but in the process of continuing that, also tell us why has it been so hard? What’s been so hard?
Myree: It seems that I chose a life that gave me an opportunity to experience many, many kinds of suffering and trauma that started pretty much from the get-go. There was a lot of tragedy in my family and we were in survival mode pretty early as a result of those tragedies, and that exposed me to a lot of experiences that you maybe wouldn’t normally have in more of a stable environment. My father had a workplace injury where he was a teacher and there was those big speakers in the 70s above the blackboard, and one literally fell on his head when he was riding on the blackboard, and he had a coma and what would be today called an acquired brain injury. And then that quickly descended into mental health issues that were quite serious and being unable to work. And by the age of four, I was separated from every member of my family living on a farm. I’d experienced and witnessed a lot of very difficult things, including early childhood sexual trauma, and that sets you up for a lot of challenges and it sets you up for early childhood complex trauma.
Rick: Do you think that, well I suppose there are so many exceptions to this suggestion, but a lot of times people whom I’ve interviewed and met have experienced pretty serious trauma and often they correlate that with the fact that they’ve had this awakening as if it cracked them open or burned off their karma or something in preparation for the awakening that they eventually had. But then obviously there are millions of people in the world who are seriously traumatized that don’t have any sort of awakening. So do you have any comments on that?
Myree: Yes, I think in a way when you have that much pain it takes you very, very deep and it does open you up and it opens up your heart and opens your sensitivity and your compassion. And if you work with that trauma it gives you a really deep understanding of what it’s like to be human. My awareness is that much pain makes you a seeker. It makes you a seeker for some kind of solution because you want to find freedom and relief from that pain. And I find in my life that a lot of people that have had that much pain end up on a spiritual path because they’re looking for a way out.
Rick: It’s true, sometimes people will say that, gurus will say that, the angels don’t seek enlightenment because they are enjoying too much the way they are and where they live it’s nice. But the earth is, in fact it’s even sometimes said in the Vedic literature that Kali Yuga is conducive to enlightenment because life is so unsatisfactory in many ways that you seek something better and you realize that the outer world isn’t going to do it for you.
Myree: I’d agree with that, yes.
Rick: So, I understand from reading various things that you wrote in your bio and stuff that you learned Transcendental Meditation at a fairly early age. Was that one of the first things you learned in a formal way?
Myree: It was. I came home from Europe and when I was in Europe I won this scholarship at the end of my high school to spend nine months in Europe and in Egypt, which is where my family is from. When I was in Europe I had an acceleration of psychic experiences and what would probably be called past life recall. But I was 18, it was the late 80s, there was no internet, there wasn’t really any books. I really didn’t know what was going on for me. I think if I was born later and I could have just Googled on the internet some of the things that were happening to me, it would have been much easier. Instead, I had to find my way. So, when I came home from Egypt, I saw an advertisement for TM and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to try that out.” My mom was terrified I was going to join a cult.
Rick: You did.
Myree: I did. My first one. I found it really profound from the get-go. Also, terrifying because straight away I started to have very powerful visions that no one really could give me any reference for. If someone had just simply said to me, “Mari, it’s okay. A lotus and mud and all of these deep experiences and swirling is a very normal thing to have when you start doing a Vedic practice,” I would have been fine. But I kind of got scared straight pretty early on.
Rick: So, you’re having visions of a lotus and mud, did you say? Yeah, straight away I would have a vision, which is very classic.
Rick: It’s a common metaphor, actually.
Myree: Yeah, I would meditate and then during my day I’d have a vision of a lotus and the mud being stirred, that my meditation was stirring the mud, but I didn’t have an interpretation for that back in the day. I was a country girl from the sticks.
Rick: Yeah, I mean this brings up an interesting point, which is true of TM teachers, many of them, but also of all kinds of spiritual teachers, is very often students will have experiences which they haven’t had and sometimes don’t know quite what to make of. So, it’s a little bit hard to advise people if you haven’t had those experiences yourself. I mean, Maharishi’s catchphrase was always, “Something good is happening, don’t worry about it, just continue, take it easy. Safety first, don’t meditate too much and overdo it.” Did you kind of feel that, even though you didn’t understand some of this stuff, that it was something good was happening?
Myree: Yeah, I felt something good was happening and I felt like I was probably stirring up more than I had the capacity for at the same time. I was unaware of a lot of some of the early childhood trauma at that point in time, but as soon as I started meditating, it was already starting to unwind into some of those places in me that I didn’t actually have awareness of at that time. I would have loved to have Maharishi said me, “It’ll be right,” or “She’ll be right.” Yeah, that would have been awesome.
Rick: Well, we used to go on these long courses for months on end and doing long meditations pretty much all day long and stuff would really get stirred up. I mean, there were some casualties, so to speak, on these courses, but he would just say that over and over and over again, “Just take it easy, take it as it comes, something good is happening.” But, there have been so many cases where people have gotten into serious trouble with too much spiritual practice or too intense a practice and without enough integration and balance and stuff like that, so it’s not something to take lightly.
Myree: No, not at all. In fact, it can be very damaging to not have enough balance in your practice.
Rick: All right, so how long did you stick with that before discovering the next thing?
Myree: Probably a couple of years, but I didn’t stick with it very well because I was kind of scared at the same time. I started doing yoga very soon afterwards.
Rick: Oh, that’s good.
Myree: Yeah, hath yoga, and I yanga yoga, and that’s been pretty much a mainstay ever since, and I still do it every day. Then, in my early 20s, I started exploring Buddhism and Hinduism. I felt very cool, but I was looking for a form that I couldn’t find, like something that felt right for me. When I was 25, I went and did an 11-day Nivaratri ceremony. There was a Brahmin priest up from India in Melbourne, and I actually didn’t even really know what I was going to. I went every day. I loved it. I drank the chai, and I sat there. Obviously, he’s doing very powerful prayers and offerings all day, and so I think that was a massive purification to me. For about six months that included that experience, I had been hearing someone on the shuttle plane call my name just over and over again, “Mairi, Mairi.” I didn’t really know what to make of it, and then one day, about six months after this started, I was walking down the street in Fitzroy, Melbourne, and I saw a poster of Amma, and I stopped, and I looked at that poster, and I was like, “Oh, it’s you. You’re the one that’s calling me,” and the calling stopped. I had found my essential teacher.
Rick: Nice. You mentioned in your notes, yeah, there’s some interesting experiences and stories of Amma like that, connecting with people, sometimes even appearing visually and so on. In fact, Ramana does that even still, having dropped the body, he shows up in people’s bedrooms and stuff. Anyway, that’s a whole other story. But you mentioned in your notes that you lived in an ashram for a year. Was that Amma’s?
Myree: Yeah, that was Amma’s. It was in Melbourne. It was before. They have quite a big ashram now, but they rented this big house in the center of the Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, which is very interesting in and of itself. There was five of us living there, and it was a really great experience. I was like, “You’d have overall a very positive experience.” The thing that it gave me most is it gave me spiritual discipline, and I came to understand. It gave me a structure. It built something into me that I didn’t really have in this lifetime that has been very vital for me in what was to come and in the rest of my life.
Rick: Yeah.
Myree: Yeah.
Rick: So, when did the Kundalini awakening kick in?
Myree: In some ways, I feel like it was always there, just very light in the background, but not something that I would ever notice. I would say that when I was living in the ashram, there was a very big quickening, and doing that much meditation and spiritual practice and just living 24/7 in that environment. I also broke my foot about three weeks after I moved in, so I actually couldn’t leave. So, I was in that environment. I was really grounded in it. The thing that started to happen when I was in there was that the siddhis, my psychic gifts, started to rarify and wake up.
Rick: Okay, so you used the word “siddhis.” I want to make sure people heard that and understood it. So, siddhis are considered to be powers or abilities. Patanjali talks about them in the Yoga Sutras. Anyway, go on.
Myree: Yes, so your subtle gifts.
Rick: Such as?
Myree: Such as, I started to be able to see into other dimensions and other realms.
Rick: Seems like you already had that.
Myree: Yeah, but it got kind of wild after that. So, for example, the house we were renting was an old Jewish house, and I was asleep in my bed one night, and I heard a group of beings that I came to understand to be guides and angels yell my name and yell me to wake up. And when I woke up, there was a man standing beside my bed with an electric blue halo light around him, slightly transparent but pretty solid, with his arm out over my body. And he was obviously a ghost, but in a way that was so clear. It was like looking at another human being. And that started to happen to me all over the place. I was seeing energies and ghosts and entities, and it just accelerated. And I didn’t have a teacher, so again, it would have been great to have had a teacher to help me to learn how to handle that and manage that and contain it, because seeing that kind of information 24 hours a day is somewhat stressful, because you’re living two lives at once. It took me a couple of years to really contain it, but by the time I left living in that community, I knew that these were healing gifts and that it was my dharma and calling to offer them to others. So then I sought direction about how to make that offering to other people.
Rick: I remember reading something you wrote where an angel appeared to you. Was that later on?
Myree: That was about a year later, and I was camping up in Broome in the monsoon season, so it was very hot, and I was probably in quite a relaxed state of mind. Archangel Gabriel came before me in full raiment, just like Streaming, in a very kind of classic image.
Rick: How did you know it was him?
Myree: He told me. He said, “I’m Archangel Gabriel. I’m here to guide you. You’ve got a lot of work to do. You’re going to touch a lot of people’s lives, but you have a lot of work to do on yourself, and you have to do it, and I’m going to guide you.” He was like a kick-ass, hardcore taskmaster for a couple of years, just teaching me how to work on myself, work through past life issues, work through karma, start to work with my trauma and my family and ancestral issues. That went on for a couple of years. It was like a very disciplined working with a divine guide in that way.
Rick: Did he come to you visually for a couple of years or just in a more subtle way?
Myree: Visually, but primarily clairaudiently.
Rick: But you continued to know it was him and you continued to do the stuff he advised?
Myree: Yes.
Rick: So, just flesh that out a little bit in terms of what he advised and what you did and how it was hard and intense.
Myree: So, I had a lot of anxiety, but that was nothing compared to what was to come. So, I worked on that, but some of the things that were really important for me is I had some pretty significant past life trauma that I brought into this lifetime that I needed.
Myree: Which you remembered? I mean, did you remember the specifics?
Myree: Yes, yes. Yes, being in wars, being quite a lot of times being in prison, sometimes speaking up and dying for that. I was kind of an outspoken person in a number of lifetimes. And longings for children that had died that I had done everything to protect, but that mother’s kind of grief and anguish that’s quite a classic. That was very, very painful for a long time. So, working through those issues. And also, if you’re going to be a healer, one of the things that was made very clear to me is that you need to go back and clean up any lifetime where you have any agreements, attachments, contracts that are not completely pure. So, I did a lot of that as well, going through and cleaning up any agreements, past life choices, any internal…
Rick: What would you do to clean it up?
Myree: I would tune into the time and the period. I would look at what I was involved in and I would work with my angelic team to… I would forgive myself for what I’d done. I’d ask for forgiveness. I’d create freedom and healing for anyone that my activities had affected in any way. And I would also heal myself if something had happened to me. And I would close down doors and portals. I think when you’re working, even in a religious sense, because a lot of religions aren’t necessarily super clean, you can open doors and portals to other realms where energy comes in that’s not necessarily savory. And I didn’t want any of that involved in the work that I did with people, so I would close those doors and portals, dimensional realms and agreements with anything that was involved in that, and with any religious organizations as well. I had quite a few lifetimes in ancient Egypt that I had to go back and be curious about.
Rick: So the average person, not the average person, even the person listening to this, who probably doesn’t have those kinds of experiences, doesn’t necessarily remember past lives and all that, should they be concerned about cleaning this stuff up? And can they do so even if they don’t remember it? Or is it really a matter of waiting until you do remember it, then you can clean it up?
Myree: I don’t think you need to remember it. I think you can do it in many, many ways. I’m really into little hacks that make this journey easier, little spiritual hacks. I think you can use, if you have a spiritual practice or meditation, you can have an intention then that your practice send healing back in time to any places where you need to clean up any connections and realm connections that aren’t suitable to you. You can ask that you become pure. I think a lot of spiritual practice will clean it up in a large…
Rick: Automatically.
Myree: Absolutely, automatically. I think so for me as a healer, being of service to others, I felt that it was important that I clean it up anyway. And I didn’t want to be affected by it in this lifetime. So I think if you’re just living a normal lifetime and you’re not running really big energies in order to be of service to others, it probably isn’t so much of a priority.
Rick: Yeah, and perhaps if you are a spiritual practitioner, as many people watching this are, there can be a lot of cleanup taking place without you really appreciating or understanding specifically what’s being cleaned up.
Myree: Absolutely.
Rick: It’s kind of like when you throw out the garbage, you don’t need to pick through it and analyze every little thing that gets thrown out. It’s just good to get rid of it.
Myree: Absolutely, and you can just pray and a lot of it is going. And that’s why people that are practitioners or in a spiritual practice can feel kind of fatigued because so much of that garbage is being cleaned up.
Rick: Okay, so feel free to interject anything that I’m not thinking to ask because I don’t want to skip important chunks of your story.
Myree: Sure.
Rick: But just go ahead, anything that comes to mind, just throw it in there. But in terms of your kundalini thing, you reference it having been pretty intense for a number of years. So, did it sort of kick off with a bang at a certain point? If so, what precipitated it?
Myree: Yeah, do you want to hear the wild story?
Rick: Sure, everybody loves a wild story.
Myree: Alright, I’ll give you the wild story. So, it was 2004, my PTSD had been triggered for about a year, so I had acute PTSD, but I didn’t really so much know that I had it at that point in time.
Rick: And so, just to clarify for people listening, so she said PTSD, which everyone should understand is post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Myree: Yes.
Rick: You probably had that from childhood traumas that you alluded to.
Myree: Yeah, I had it from childhood traumas and a shock just kind of started to wake it up and it started to be present in the background of my life. And I was having a picnic with a friend of mine in the front yard and she had a spiritual teacher that was quite strong and I think the energy of her spiritual teacher was somewhat influencing me at the time and I was very strongly dedicated to Amma. And I remember sitting in the front yard and we had this amazing big oak tree and I looked at the oak tree and the surface of the oak tree peeled back like wallpaper and behind the oak tree was just empty space like blue sky and everything started to peel down and so I was having this very direct experience of the emptiness of all things. And I was sitting there saying this time and I was going, “Okay, I’m psychic but this is actually a little bit much for me. I’m not sure I can live in a reality. I need to also be grounded in 3D reality.” And it just kept accelerating and that night I really prayed very hard. I said, “Okay, I don’t know what’s happening. This is really intense. I need help.” And I went to sleep and I had a dream that night that I should have a massage with a friend of mine. And so I rang her up the next morning and I said, “Okay, I had a dream that I should come and have a massage with you.” And she said, “I’ll fit you in at the end of my day.” And she’s a very loving person and she’s got this big kind of earth mama energy. And so I went and had this massage with her. And when I was getting this massage, I went out of my body, out into another dimension. It was like I was traveling through space and time and I woke up and I was in somewhat what would look like an Egyptian sarcophagus, only it was made out of emeralds. And I looked up from this sarcophagus and there was these beautiful beings in long robes, I guess maybe were beings from another dimension or star beings. And there was another part of myself standing beside the sarcophagus. And I looked up at that and I was experiencing myself mostly as the awareness having this experience. And this one part of me stepped out of the sarcophagus and this other part of me stepped into the sarcophagus and kind of merged with me. And then I just kind of traveled again through space and time back into my body on the massage table. And it took me a long, long time to be able to open my eyes or move. I was really just lying there with somehow bringing back a different element of my own consciousness. Some people would probably call it a walk-in. I can’t say I necessarily did that. Another element of my own consciousness that had never actually been on this planet before. And when I opened my eyes, it’s a little bit like when people describe awakening, when they have a very big awakening. Like the consciousness that come in had never been in this body before and it took a long time to be able to move or speak. And my friend was able to realize, thank God it was my friend, that something really big had happened. And she let me lie there for a long time and then she said, “I’m going to go get food.” And so she came back with Thai food thinking it was going to ground me. And it was quite hilarious because every time I put the food in my mouth, this consciousness had never experienced food before. So I couldn’t stop laughing. And so for a period of time after the experience, I was in what you would call an extremely vast awakened state of pure awareness, oneness, freedom, all those things that would describe that state. And she took me back to my car, but because so much of my consciousness had left and the new one hadn’t organized, I sat in the car and I actually couldn’t remember how to drive my car. So she had to drive me home and I spent a couple of days just letting this settle. And then over time, it just settled down and I went back to more of my everyday consciousness with this going on inside me. But from that moment on, Kundalini was active. And probably for about a year, she was active in a way that wasn’t too destructive to my life, but it was just like you could feel the hum of her in the background and the pulse of it. So I definitely knew she was changing my body and my life.
Rick: By she you mean Kundalini?
Myree: Yeah, that’s right. And I’m trying to remember what happened.
Rick: I want to ask you a couple of questions there.
Myree: Yeah, go for it. Maybe I’ll jog your memory.
Myree: It’s a pretty wild story. I’ve never really shared that with many people.
Rick: Oh, cool. I want to probe into it a little bit. But first of all, it’s maybe interesting to mention, maybe you know about this and could even comment, that supposedly the ancient Egyptians had technologies where they would put you in a thing and it would sort of irradiate you with subtle energy and it would enliven you. Elizabeth H. wrote a word about that in the book Initiation, and my friend Robert Cox wrote about it in a book called The Pillar of Celestial Fire, The Lost Science of the Ancient Seers. But anyway, supposedly they had such technologies. Do you have any comments on that?
Myree: Yes, I actually think that that’s pretty much what happened to me, and it may be actually because I brought in that capacity from a previous lifetime. When I actually went to the Great Pyramid of Giza in the ’80s with one of my family members, it was in the days when you could just wander down. I don’t think you can do that anymore. So we wandered down into the Great Pyramid, and as I was walking down, I could feel the intense, and they’ve measured this now, but I could feel the immense magnetic field of that place. And when I got down into the base of Giza, the Great Pyramid, my third eye opened up, and it was almost like I could look at seven different television stations all at once, all through my third eye. Each one was showing a different dimension and a different activity that was going on. I was, interestingly enough, talking to Ishtar, who I know you interviewed recently, and we were having a talk about this, too, that they did have this technology to send people out into other dimensions and out into other star systems to do different kinds of processes, like what seemed to have happened spontaneously to me.
Rick: Interesting. So, regarding your actual experience that you had on the massage table, you kind of made it sound like a walk-in, people are familiar with that term, but are you actually saying that a sort of a different soul or something came in, or are you really saying that there was such a shift in consciousness that it was like the slate was wiped clean to a great extent, and you’re really basically the same person, same soul and everything, but that there was just a really, to use another computer metaphor, just kind of the reset button, you rebooted and you had to completely readjust to the new consciousness, the new orientation that had awoken?
Myree: So, I wouldn’t say it’s like the really classic walk-in where a person chooses to complete, and then another being comes in and fills that space. I think a part of me definitely completed, absolutely. I don’t think all of me completed, but I definitely feel like there was an exchange out there in that a part of me and my consciousness, so a part of the program of my read definitely got out of that situation and left, and went off to do something very different. It was already like that part already knew where it was going and had made a choice, and the path that stood beside me was very, very beautiful, and very wise. It had a kind of spiritual knowledge that I didn’t have, and so it’s like I got an upgrade, like some software left and new software and information and connections came in, and my cat is just…
Rick: Oh yeah, bring the cat into the interview, that’ll be fine, we like cats. While you’re petting the cat, I just want to ask you another question, which is, you know, some people say that only a portion of our soul kind of incarnates and that even the majority of it remains on some higher plane, and some even say that we could actually occupy the same soul which we are, could occupy several bodies and just be sort of functioning in different lives simultaneously, different portions of it. So, if those things are true, then it doesn’t seem too far-fetched, although we’re definitely in far-fetched territory here, but it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to suggest that, you know, if only a small portion of the totality of our jiva, our individual soul has actually incarnated, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to suggest that another big chunk of it could come in when we’re ready to receive that.
Myree: Yes, I think that I would agree with that, I think that’s a very good way of explaining it, and I think that’s actually what happened. It didn’t feel like something other than myself was coming in, it simply felt like another element of myself.
Rick: Yeah, I think computer upgrade is a good analogy in a way, because you can be using some kind of clunky software on your computer, and then, you know, same hardware, but you upgrade the software and all of a sudden it functions a lot better.
Myree: That’s right, and in fact, after that event, it did cause a lot of challenges for my physical body. It’s like the energy that came in, the level of consciousness and the speed of it, and where my body were at were quite dissonant, and I didn’t quite know how to go together. And within months, I had to take nine months off work and just rest and allow, it was quite challenging.
Rick: Yeah, talk a little bit about that principle of the body being sort of the instrument through which anything is lived, including spiritual experience or spiritual awakening or an enlightened state, and how the body has to be kind of cultured to, we could say, to accelerate that level of energy. Want to elaborate on that a little bit?
Myree: Yeah, in fact, it’s one of my favorite things to, I’m always exploring it, because with my awakening, it’s been a constant challenge, so it’s made me constantly curious about what’s going on. I think the simplest way to understand it is, I’m sorry, my cat is looking at absolutely anything that she can do to be naughty. She’s just left.
Rick: We don’t even really hear.
Myree: Okay, great. There she goes.
Rick: That’s okay. Siamese cats are very vocal. We had one for a while.
Myree: Yes, very vocal.
Rick: 17 years, actually, we had one.
Myree: Oh, good. I’m looking forward to another 13. Wow. I think the easiest way is, when you have a massive expansion, and this can happen if you have a huge blood of consciousness or a huge awakening experience, I’m very careful with the word enlightenment. It’s not one I necessarily feel comfortable with.
Rick: It’s too static and superlative.
Myree: Yeah, but when you have a massive elevation in your ability to merge with and be infused by Divine Consciousness and a shift in your reference point of your identity, it’s like your body loses its operating system. It’s operated like your ego, your identity, in Shamanism called your “assemblage point” and it’s provided the body with a reference point and information, like an operating system, of how to run this life. Usually in one of those big experiences, the operating system is wiped. It depends on how big and how vast, but sometimes it can be that you’re left with a zero operating system. That’s when people say, “I woke up and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t function for months on end. I know Eckhart Tolle sat on a park bench for a couple of years.” It’s like the body and brain, the nervous system, the energetics, and the consciousness have to learn to coordinate again and infuse and organize in a way that you can then be functional in the world as a householder, even if you live in a monastic setting. I think it’s easier in a monastic setting because you have much less demand on you and you can have more room to be just cared for and looked after.
Rick: Yeah, and I’ve spoken to people who couldn’t speak for months on end after a major awakening. And in a monastic setting, yeah, it’s protected and you’re cared for and so on, and that might be really good for, like you said, you had to quit your job for nine months and just chill, but it also doesn’t present the opportunities for integration that a more active life presents. You can sort of get, in my experience having lived in those atmospheres, you can kind of get stuck in a way, in an idiosyncratic state of mind where you can indulge in all sorts of… your subjective state becomes very real and very compelling and without proper sort of feedback from the outside world, you can kind of get lost in that fantasy world. You know what I mean?
Myree: Absolutely, yeah. I actually love that about, like, when my, as my awakening, and we can talk about that in 2009, I didn’t have, I wasn’t in a position then to take time off work, so I had to find ways to be functional and that’s continued to be my situation ever since. And so, in some ways, I feel like that’s the cutting edge for most of us and for many people watching this show, is how to integrate consciousness and how to stabilize it and organize it in a way that you can still fulfill your commitments in the world in a way that’s not overwhelmingly full of suffering. Yeah, it’s funny because sometimes these neo-Advaita people say things like, “Well, you’re already enlightened and all you have to do is realize that, you’re done, you don’t need to do any spiritual practice,” and so on. And if they only knew, I mean, if they could somehow shift into the state that Ramana Maharshi was in, for instance, if they could do that in an instant, it would be completely unsustainable, I mean, completely overwhelming, blow out the circuits.
Myree: Totally, absolutely.
Rick: I mean, it even took him many, many, many years of sitting in a cave to adjust.
Myree: Absolutely, yes.
Rick: Yeah, so there is this incremental adjusting, integrating, stabilizing kind of thing that has to take place, and I’m talking a little bit much, I’ll shut up more and let you talk more, but I just want to throw in the term neuroplasticity, which is very popular these days, which means the brain really changes and the whole physiology changes, and that kind of stuff, it doesn’t happen in an instant. It takes a long period of time for all the neurons to rewire themselves and so on.
Myree: Yeah, absolutely, and you know, the glands start to release subtle substances, which you know, the Rasa, these like mystical substances out of the glands, which also change and evolve the body and the brain and send different qualities of signals through the system, and the body has to adjust to that as well. How do I organize and vibrate from a higher level of consciousness, still have enough sense of self to function in the world and relate to other people, and be healthy? And every time consciousness comes into the body, the brain has to adjust, and if you’re on an awakening path and you’re doing spiritual practice, new consciousness is coming in all the time, it never stops. I find it’s like 24 hours a day. And we don’t want to make this sound like an undesirable thing, because the payoff is big.
Myree: The payoff is huge.
Rick: Yeah, and so it’s just that, like anything else, if you want to be an Olympic athlete, you have to work hard at it, it’s going to hurt, there’s going to be a lot of challenge and a lot of struggle and so on and so forth. So in terms of this thing that we’re talking about, there’s going to be some stuff you’re going to have to work through, but it’s well worth it.
Myree: Absolutely, it’s worth it. And I think Olympic athlete is a really good term for it, because you’re like a spiritual Olympic athlete if you’re on this path.
Myree: And sometimes you sprain your ankle and it hurts, and you can’t get up and run around the track as much as you like, and you have to be patient and just allow things to heal. But hopefully during that awakening process, you’re starting to have access to gaps in consciousness where you start to be tasting awareness and expansion and awakening. Your wisdom is expanding and deepening, your heart is opening, and so is your compassion. So you have very different and evolving understandings of who you are, and you don’t have to wait until these big blowout mystical experiences to start to notice and experience the preciousness of what’s happening to you.
Rick: No, and some people are wired such that they’re never going to have big blowout mystical experiences. They just don’t operate that way, but they’re not missing out on anything critical, because what we’re ultimately talking about here is not a blowout mystical experience.
Myree: Exactly, what we’re talking about is a fundamental, ordinary, everyday state of being.
Rick: Yeah, the most natural thing one could ever live.
Myree: Yes.
Rick: Yeah, I mean it probably would be undesirable if it were going to be a lifetime of roller coaster blowout experiences.
Myree: I actually try to contain blowouts because they’re hard work, for me at least. Yes, then I have to bring myself back down and find a new level of functionality.
Rick: Yeah, I recently corresponded with a fellow who does psychedelics on a fairly regular basis and so do a lot of his friends, and I got the sense he was getting a little bit fed up with it, because he said all of his friends, they don’t have very functional lives, they’re not really accomplishing anything, and they’re always looking forward to the next trip where they’re just going to have the breakthrough that they really need to have to finally get it and all. But then they always come down from it. In fact, I had the opportunity to interview Stanislav Grof a few years ago at the Science and Non-Duality Conference, and I didn’t say this to him, but I had this subtle feeling of, not regret, but just sort of feeling he’d been on this thing for over, you know, this path in life for over 80 years, and he’d had all these amazing experiences, but there was something that hadn’t really settled or been realized, just that feeling. Apologies to Stan Grof if I misread him, but the point we’re talking about is whether awakening or realization or something has anything to do with peak experiences or whether it’s something altogether different than that.
Myree: I think peak experiences can be a doorway and definitely promote an acceleration, if you think of consciousness on a spiral, like you get to move higher up on that spiral. But peak experiences fade and then – someone’s leaving the house, sorry if you can hear me a lot.
Rick: That’s okay, keep going.
Myree: The beauty of that is being able to sink into it on an everyday basis and to find it and for it to be your resting state of awareness, and it’s not a high, it’s actually very ordinary and becomes very normal.
Rick: Yeah, I think it’s all a matter of what we are accustomed to and what we acclimate to, and you know, one person’s high is another person’s normal.
Myree: That’s right, yeah, that’s true actually, that’s true, I would agree with that.
Rick: Yeah, it’s just a matter of, I mean, if you and I could suddenly snap back to where we were 30 years ago, we’d probably be utterly miserable, even though we might have felt relatively content then, just because of the contrast. By the same token, if we, you know, 30 years ago, if we could suddenly snap to where we are now, it would probably be impossible to handle, but now it’s normal.
Myree: Yes, yes.
Rick: Okay, enough on that point probably. So I think we haven’t really done justice to your whole kundalini process.
Myree: Oh yes.
Rick: You talked about it starting, you talked about it completing, so let’s talk about that a little bit more, what happened in between the start and the completion.
Myree: Yeah, so from 2005 it was in the background and humming away, like you know, like a big, like one of those F2500, those big cars with those big engines. But in 2007 I was studying psychotherapy and I was sitting out in the garden reading a book on Jung, and that’s when I had a classic activation of this enormous energy racing up my spine with a tremendous force and pouring out the crown of my head. And it was at that point in time I knew my life was never going to be the same again. And after that I started to have a lot of very acute symptoms. I had a lot of heat, a lot of kriyas, a lot of shaking.
Rick: Oh good, somebody, Kenny from Manchester, UK just asked, “Did you experience spontaneous kriyas during your kundalini awakening? If so, can you shed any light on what causes these, their purpose and their place in the kundalini process?”
Myree: Yes, I did have a lot of spontaneous kriyas.
Rick: Explain what kriyas are, people might not know.
Myree: Yes, so a kriya is, easiest to understand it is a spontaneous movement. It’s a spontaneous movement of your body. It can look like this, like your arm might go, or it might be really subtle, like this little movement. Your head might go like that, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, it’s very common to get a lot in the neck, a lot of neck and head movements.
Myree: On your, if you’re meditating you might find yourself sort of almost like, it feels like you’re jumping a little bit on the cushion, like your spine is jumping, your body. And a kriya can also be a spontaneous sound. So it can be a spontaneous sound that comes out and you go, “Oh!” You know, or it might sometimes, yeah, and it can be, sometimes they’re like growls or even burps. And what a kriya is, is the energy of kundalini. So kundalini is consciousness, energy and intelligence, and it’s moving up through your body. And there are a number of reasons that you can have a kriya. Sometimes you have a kriya because that energy, say perhaps it’s purifying something in my shoulder and it hits an obstruction in one of the subtle channels. And so then my shoulder will move as that energy hits that obstruction and is trying to find a resolution for the issue that’s in that part of the body. And sometimes it can be the energy has freedom through those channels and then you spontaneously do a mudra, and that’s very common as well. And this is the same with the sounds. Like it’s moving through those subtle channels and a sound will come out of your lungs.
Rick: Yeah, I just want to add that I’ve seen groups where people milk this, you know, they sort of like, “Who can do the coolest kriyas?” and they kind of overindulge in it, you know. So you want to kind of maintain naturalness and if these things come spontaneously, don’t suppress them or force them to subside. But on the other hand, it’s not like a sport where we can all, or an acting class where we can all make the weirdest noises.
Myree: I’ve never heard of that, it sounds very interesting. I would suggest the same thing. Just allow it to happen, trust that it’s okay, that it’s part of your awakening process and you don’t need to do anything about it. It will naturally find its own resolution. I think sometimes people have difficult kriyas if they’ve had an injury to a particular part of the body or they’ve had surgery, and so there’s like significant obstructions or there’s maybe some adhesions in the fascia that can create long-term kriyas.
Rick: Anyway, it’s good to have an understanding of it because if it starts happening spontaneously to a person, and I’ve spoken to people who’ve had that, and they don’t have any knowledge of what it is, they could really freak them out. They might think there’s something neurologically wrong with them.
Myree: Yeah, people write to me and say, “Have I got multiple sclerosis? Have I got Parkinson’s?” Yeah, the mind goes to these places of serious condition, so yeah, it’s great to know that it’s a safe thing.
Rick: What’s that thing where people sort of start swearing all of a sudden?
Myree: Tourette’s?
Rick: Tourette’s syndrome, yeah.
Myree: Yeah, it’s like a physical Tourette’s syndrome.
Rick: So, there’s a question, I don’t want to sidetrack it, I’ll ask this question a little bit later that came in, but we’re still talking about your Kundalini process, so let’s continue on that.
Myree: Yeah, so from 2007 till early 2009, it was very intense. I had a lot of intense symptoms, and I didn’t have the knowledge that I had now about how to manage and stabilize it. In fact, I’d actually even sat with a spiritual teacher who’d actually accelerated it, and so it was going so fast, which is very unhealthy. If it’s going really, really fast, then like we’re talking about before, the balance between the capacity of the body to deal with the amount of process and change and energy in the system was a lot of times more than my body could handle, so it was very stressful. And I still had a practice and was going to work, and constantly finding ways to manage all of that. And my mind, you know …
Rick: What was your practice?
Myree: Healing and therapy practice.
Rick: Okay, good. Okay, continue. And my mind was, you were saying?
Myree: And my mind at times would come in and say, “Oh, you know, this is really classic,” and I’d tell him it was really normal. The mind goes, “This isn’t Kundalini. You’re crazy.” That’s like a classic process of the mind in various versions, and thankfully my intuition was strong enough to know, even though this was a very wild ride with a lot of intense symptomology, I trusted it and knew that it was going in the direction of awakening. And in the last couple of months, I really didn’t sleep very much at all. I had intense insomnia because of the speed, and I did go and see this very famous Ayurvedic doctor, and he said to me, “You have to slow it down.” I’m like, “I know,” but we couldn’t find any way to slow it down. It just was my dharma, my journey. It was so loud.
Rick: Well, let’s talk about that for a minute. I mean, how about physical exercise? Pick up jogging or swimming or something, a heavier diet?
Myree: Oh, I did all of those things.
Rick: You did all that stuff?
Myree: Oh, I did absolutely everything. I think the thing that, if I’d known it now, I’d know it now and offer this to other people, but I think what happened to me was that in sitting with teachers, I got too much transmission of Shakti in my system, and it was like an accelerant. And one teacher in particular really did it. I remember him saying to me at the time, “Let’s put more fuel on the fire.” And it wasn’t actually helpful for me, although of course it did take me to the end of that journey. And yes, so now what I would do would be to help the system to diffuse and release that transmission so it can come back to finding its normal balance, and then it would sort of self-adjust and self-correct.
Rick: Yeah, but anyway, emphasis again on normal balance, not pushing it too fast. I had friends who really cracked up pushing too hard.
Myree: Yes.
Rick: And so, safety first. Slow and steady wins the race. Safety, absolutely, and that’s definitely what I tell people. Go slower, have a safer journey, and get there in a functional and enjoyable way.
Rick: Yeah, I mean Tesla has a new sports car that will go 250 miles an hour, but think how fast I could get to the grocery store with that, but I think it would actually take me longer trying to go that fast because I’d die.
Myree: Exactly, exactly, and you can damage your neurological system and especially your nervous system and your endocrine system are very, very vulnerable.
Rick: Yeah, no, good point. I have a friend who’s probably listening to this who went through a very intense Kundalini phase, and she really feels that some things were fried in the circuitry.
Myree: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it can take quite a while to heal them and help them to recover again.
Rick: Yeah, okay. I don’t think it hurts that we keep looping back to this point. Maybe there’s a reason we’re dwelling on it so much and people need to hear this.
Myree: About being balanced and safe. Yeah, about being balanced and safety first and not having spiritual emergencies and so on because of pushing too hard.
Myree: Yeah, maybe it’s a message that people need to hear. I know from my experience there’s a lot of people out there where it is going too fast and they are suffering a lot, so perhaps this message will touch some of those people.
Rick: Yeah, and it’s not only what’s going on in your nervous system and all that, but I mean most people do need to earn an income and kids to raise and stuff like that, so you have to sort of keep it together for those things.
Myree: Exactly. Yeah.
Rick: Okay, so then you’ve alluded to 2009, some completion of this whole thing.
Myree: Yeah.
Rick: What happened?
Myree: So in 2009, in the last couple of months in the lead up, I think it was like February, early February 2009, I went to work in the city. I was living in the mountains in a cottage and at the end of my day I felt particularly exhausted. At this point in time, I kind of suspected it was coming to a close just because of some of the subtle signals that I would notice about Kundalini. I remember thinking to myself, “It’s either going to complete or I’ll die,” because it was quite intense. Then I came home, I was so exhausted at the end of that work day, more so than normal, and I came home and I fed my dog and I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, and I think it’s quite a classic experience, I woke up in the morning completely in a purely awakened state. I was lying there, I couldn’t move my body, I couldn’t speak. My sense of my re-head vanished and I was aware of the vastness of consciousness. In that moment, my re-head never existed and never would exist. In that moment, when you realize that, the whole thing about being human is very, very funny. For me, I was internally, I couldn’t physically laugh a lot because of the drama of being a human being and then suddenly the drama of being a human being has been extinguished in that moment. It was a really powerful and profound experience. It was like the Kundalini had enough velocity and had purified and cleansed my system enough and it simply completed itself. After that moment, I haven’t had any other Kundalini symptoms. Sometimes she dances in my body and that’s kind of really nice, but I no longer have active, progressive Kundalini symptoms.
Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting because I’ve used this story before, but when Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier, nobody knew what was going to happen and as he approached the speed of sound in his jet, it was like the stick was shaking and he was just holding on for dear life. And then when he broke through, all of a sudden it got totally smooth.
Myree: Yes, that’s exactly what happened.
Rick: So when you said something about being a human being, obviously you’re still a human being, perhaps what you mean to say is that a larger reality dawned and so you were not any longer predominantly a human being, you’re predominantly that, with a capital T, living a human life.
Myree: Totally. And then there was quite a period of time of trying to integrate that and I remember at the time not knowing how to relate to anyone from that place. I was very curious how I was going to have any relationships because it took a while for enough sense of self to come back so that I had enough structure in my system that I could actually connect and relate in more normal ways with other people. And I had to find a way because I had to go back to work in about, I took three weeks off and then I had to go back and find ways to connect. And for me, I remember at the time, I listened to some people talking about Advaita but what didn’t really make sense to my experience, because my experience straight away came straight into the body and straight away included everything and it was all about how does this work, how does this consciousness work in my ethics and my values, in my thoughts, in my relationships, in my work, that became the constant curiosity for me. Rather than being in that space of just merging with stillness, it was a much more dynamic exploration. And I remember sometimes contemplating those kind of teachings and thinking, “Well, my awakening isn’t right because it doesn’t fit into that model of what it was supposed to look like.” And that was the way the curiosity and the interest went and has pretty much continued.
Rick: So can you give verbal answers to some of those questions, how it works in your relationships and your ethics and all that stuff?
Myree: Yes. I’m just thinking whether it might be useful to share something else first. What it gives me is a lot more space and to be able to meet people in that space and a lot more love and compassion that’s always present. And I think the biggest gift is in that space, it makes it really easy to see when your own stuff comes up. When there’s something that’s triggered in the system or in the body, you can see it very, very clearly. And so you have this benefit of a lot of consciousness that you can bring to that. I’m not one of those people that’s going to say that there’s nothing left. Maybe one day I’ll get there, but I don’t think so. And that’s okay. It’s quite a joyous and curious unfolding of that experience. And one of the things that I discovered, and this was really interesting for me, so I had this profound shift of awareness, but I still had trauma in my body. The trauma in the system wasn’t finished. It wasn’t finished. And that was really obvious to me. And no one really talks about that very much. So that was interesting and perplexing to me. And it makes me question a lot of the models. And so that would be 10 years ago next month. And so for the last 10 years, I’ve pretty much spent a lot of my time dedicated to bringing awareness and consciousness to my body and to the trauma and to the places where I’ve been stuck continuously over that 10 years as a kind of curious experiment around what’s possible and what could happen if I do that. And I would say in the last two years, and in the last year in particular, there is a lot of space and not much trauma left in the system. But because of my personal history, who’s to say that there isn’t more in tissues and nervous system. But because of that dedication, there’s an immense love and compassion for others as well. And I find myself, it leads me in a space where I’m available to be and listen to any suffering. Nothing moves away from that inside me towards anyone’s pain. And that’s a very beautiful expression of that.
Rick: I think you just partially answered the question I’m about to ask. But since you had that awakening 10 years ago and have gone through all this processing of residues ever since, how has that enhanced your experience or how has your experience evolved as this stuff has been processed?
Myree: I’m kind of feeling into it. I would say the freedom and joy of just being in this life without it being interrupted very much by anything from my personal history is a really profound gift and something that honestly with my personal history, I never knew was possible. So I’m a bhakti, so there’s a deep, constant sense of service that just flows through in a very uninterrupted way that’s very beautiful to experience and be a conduit for. One of the things I think that’s been quite profound was in 2013, my younger brother, my only brother, we were very close, he died in a very horrific and tragic way, which was very, very confronting. And I remember at the time something Gangaji said to me, she said, “No matter what happens, meet it with an open heart.” And I thought, “This is probably the most horrific thing that will ever happen to my family and myself, and I’m going to meet everything with an open heart, all the horror, all the tragedy, all of the unthinkableness.” And that took me to some pretty deep and dark places in that journey of meeting his loss and the things that happened afterwards when someone dies in that way. And when I rose up the other side, there was experience that I did … because when someone dies in a way like that, it has a very powerful sort of psychic impression on you, and I simply decided that I was going to see what it was like to die like that.
Rick: Do you mind my asking, was it an accident or something? You don’t need to say, but …
Myree: No, he had a mental illness. He had schizophrenia. He was a very, very courageous and brave person, and I don’t think I could have lived with his situation as long as he did. And unfortunately, he heard voices, and unfortunately, at a certain point in time, his medication lost efficacy, and there was a time when his voices simply convinced him to do something that was very, very tragic. And yes …
Rick: You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say?
Myree: Yeah. And I probably won’t, because it might be hard for some of your viewers to actually take in that information, so I don’t want to traumatize anyone with this story. I’m happy to share it in other formats and probably speak about it. It’s just something I’m very careful … I’m actually more protective of the audience than I am of myself. And when I was … so after about six months, I still kind of have these images coming to me, and I decided to simply lie down on the floor and allow myself to die the way he did. And in that dying was this like burning up of more residue and personal history, and just another sense of just going out into the vastness. And in that moment, I completed whatever was going on in my relationship and karma with his death. And as I rose up from that experience, the thing that arose in me and has never left would be what Buddhists call causeless joy. So the causeless joy has just been present in my body, in my life, in my heart, in the background of my life, and sometimes very strongly present in the foreground. It’s just like this bubbling love and delight and presence of being here. And sometimes that looks like being an externally very joyful person, and sometimes it’s very quiet and it’s just present in the background. And I doubt that that will leave. I think sometimes when you go to some of those places, you come back with gifts, and thank goodness for that.
Rick: Interesting. So you’re saying that your brother’s death and the way you sort of dealt with it was actually a catalyst in a way for a shift for you?
Myree: Yes, absolutely, yes.
Rick: There’s a friend of mine who’s also a friend of Ishtar’s named Susanna Marie, who had a very similar experience. A younger brother of hers died unexpectedly and tragically, and it really was extremely difficult for her, but it facilitated a shift or catalyzed a shift.
Myree: Yeah, I think when you lose someone that you love and you know so well that they’re almost like a part of you, and their passing is really tragic or unimaginable, you meet places where sometimes I think the only option is to break through the other side.
Rick: Have you been in touch with your brother since he died?
Myree: Yes, for about the first year. I did a lot of work from this side, because when you die like that, I don’t want to go into it too much because it might not be something that people want to talk about, but it can be very damaging at a soul level. I really wanted to help him and help him to have a better incarnation and a better future and a better possibility in his next lifetime. So I did a lot of work, kind of shamanic work, soul retrieval, putting the soul fragments back together and helping him to go through the light in a stable way. It took a year, and it was an exhausting process, but I feel like that was my karma and my dedication to him, and I’m really glad I did it. After about a year, I felt that it was complete, and I actually prayed to Amma that she would look after him and that he could have a rebirth to parents where he would have access to her. Because I felt like he needed that.
Rick: Do you have a sense that he’s been reborn now?
Myree: Yes, yes, yes, with those kind of parents. So I’m really grateful and hoping for the very best for him.
Rick: That’s great. My wife Irene had an experience one time where, I don’t remember whether it was in meditation or in a dream, but this kind of voice came very loud, just said, “Your father has been reborn.”
Myree: Wow.
Rick: I can’t believe that happened. Ancient traditions often say that if someone is really in a good place spiritually and really dedicated to their spiritual development, it has a ripple effect among all their relatives, some say seven generations, but certainly someone as close as your brother would have a profound effect on him.
Myree: Absolutely. I think you can bring your spiritual depth and practice and dedication to bear on their karma.
Rick: Yeah. Our dogs are wrestling on the floor down here. If anybody hears little growly noises, it’s the dogs wrestling and sneezing. Someone named Sebastian from Florida sent in a question, so let me ask that. We talked earlier about portals and closing portals. He asks, “Can you please talk more about the importance of being aware of portals and closing ones that are not part of the higher good?”
Myree: Sure. I think one of the easiest ways to talk about it, and all spiritual traditions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, we know that there are negative energies that can come at us, and I think the more you’re on the spiritual path, sometimes you become more sensitive to those energies that are not necessarily for your higher good. Because this 3D reality is just one realm, and you can imagine there are sometimes … In some ways, it’s all at once, but it’s sometimes easy to imagine it as layers of a cake, so there are other layers. I don’t like hierarchy, but it’s easier to imagine that. Sometimes if we’ve come in with, say, a connection to, say, a particular cult in another lifetime that maybe was dedicated to something that you’re not aligned with anymore, sometimes through those doorways, impressions, information, negative energy, things that aren’t good for you can come through, because if you don’t end in that lifetime, that agreement and connection to, say, that cult, those agreements, contracts, and doorways are still open. Especially when you’re a meditator, you can start to sense these things, and you can feel these energies coming through, and they can be interfering. Sometimes they can be quite difficult or even cause a lot of sabotage. By closing that doorway, that realm doorway between you and that time and place, because in a sense all time is now, you can release yourself from that cult and all agreements and close that doorway so that whatever that cult is transmitting no longer comes into your life, and so then you are much more free to enact your free will and intentions and what it is that you want to create in this life and the path that you’re on. How did I do?
Rick: That sounded pretty good. Another question came in from Jay in Victoria, British Columbia, and we talked about this a little bit, but I think you could elaborate. He said, “Papaji had visions of Krishna and he would stay up all night talking to Krishna. Ramana Maharshi told Papaji that that which appears and disappears isn’t real. In fact, when Papaji first came to Ramana, he was I think possibly late or something, or at least he told Ramana about his Krishna experiences, and Papaji said, “Well, where is he now?” and he wasn’t there now. So it was like, “Oh, that was a wake-up call.” But then Jay’s question is, “Why do some people have visions and others don’t?” I think you should get the dogs out here, they’re having this big wrestling match on the floor, teeth gnashing and slashing. So let me start asking that question again. Why do some people have visions and others don’t? How much emphasis should we put in visions?
Myree: I love that story about Papaji. Thanks for sharing it, it’s one of my favorite stories.
Rick: I just want to add that even long after his Ramana days, Papaji would go to Varanasi and dance in ecstatic ecstasy of devotion in the streets, and he was a very devotional person. And so, yeah, I just want to throw that in there.
Rick: I meant Vrindavan, not Varanasi.
Myree: Vrindavan, sure. In terms of the question, first of all, it’s not important to have spiritual visions. You can have a beautiful awakening, beautiful wisdom and understanding, like a lovely deepening of awareness without having any visions at all, and that’s completely fine and satisfying. I think, as Rick said, some people are wired to have more visions, some people are wired to be more ecstatic, some people’s nervous systems find it very easy to merge out into nature and out into the divine. Some people may have very strong relationships from previous lifetimes with deities and gods and Krishna, or a particular kind of devotional nature that those kind of deities will show up and play with you and speak to you and dance with you. And there’s an exchange and a benefit that comes from that interaction. But in many ways, I just feel it’s like we all have our unique path. One of the things I love about awakening, actually, from watching some of your shows, is I love the diversity of awakening, and then it shows up in such a splendid plethora of ways and means of expression. And I really encourage people to trust what their journey is and what their path is. And if visions are important to you, you need them, they will show up. And sometimes you can make yourself a little bit more prone to those things through spiritual practice and devotion that can accelerate and purify the third eye. And the more third eye is open, the more you are going to be available to those kind of visions and visitations, but it’s not essential.
Rick: I think it’s important to emphasize that we should never be envious of other people’s experiences.
Myree: Absolutely.
Rick: It’s like we’re all different and just because you’re having this or that doesn’t mean that somebody else should have it or needs to have it or anything like that.
Myree: I totally agree, Rick.
Rick: There’s also other ways of explaining it, Ayurvedic considerations, from their terminology, whether Vata, Pitta or Kapha are predominant, what could influence the types of experiences you have, or in terms of the gunas, whether Saurajas or Tamas are predominant, are going to influence your experiences. Even the way that pure consciousness is experienced, according to those things I just mentioned, some people will be more bliss-oriented, others more unbounded vastness, and so on. There can be different flavors of it according to the makeup of your nervous system.
Myree: Absolutely, absolutely, and what your nervous system is available for.
Rick: Yeah. I should just mention in passing David Buckland, who has a site called Davidya.ca, and he’s been on that a couple of times, but he has some nice articles that explain the mechanics of what I just said. Okay, so, picking right up. Maybe we’ve already passed by this, but you mentioned that three wise women elders suggested that before you become a healer you should do something ordinary for a year, so you became a sports and political journalist.
Myree: Yes. Yes, when I left the ashram, I knew I was to be a healer, but I really didn’t. Again, there was no internet, I only had one book on how to be a healer, I didn’t have any resources, and I remember going and meeting three wise women who were Sai Baba and Amma devotees and having a cup of tea with them and telling them my situation, and that was their suggestion, go away for one year, don’t try and be a healer, and go and do something ordinary. So, I moved to the tropics and unexpectedly got this job as a sports reporter, first ever female sports reporter on that paper. Did you know much about sports? Actually, my mom is a pretty wild sports person, so I did grow up loving sports, so I had that in my arsenal, but unfortunately I was in a part of Australia where they didn’t play Aussie rules football, which I knew everything about, they played two different codes, and so that was somewhat stressful going to a game with no idea why the umpire was blowing a whistle. But it was a really good foundation for me because I needed to find a way, because the reason I left the ashram was because I had this very strong inner message from Amma that you’ve done this, because I wanted to be a brahmacharini, I wanted to be very devoted in this way, and the message I got from her was you’ve done that many times, it’s time to do something different, and it was like pushing me back into the world. And as you probably know, when you’ve lived in that rarefied world, it takes a while to reach us to mainstream everyday life again, and so that job was a really important way of getting me grounded and functional back in the world, and it was an excellent way to become a healer and for my future path, because I fell in love with people. That was the best thing, everyone had an amazing story, and if you asked questions and listened the right way, they showed you their heart, and it was a privilege.
Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. Yeah, people are interesting. I mean, you know, people in the checkout line at the supermarket, and people you just encounter here and there, it’s like, everybody’s kind of fascinating. Incidentally, people don’t know the term brahmacharini, it means sort of like a monk, but the female equivalent of it. You’re married, aren’t you?
Myree: Yes. Yeah, I saw some pictures on your website of you getting married at Castle Rock in Sedona.
Myree: Oh yeah, on Cathedral Rock, yes, we got married on Cathedral Rock, it was pretty intense.
Rick: Nice, yeah. What does your husband do?
Myree: He is a network engineer.
Rick: Computer networks?
Myree: Yes.
Rick: So, it’s like making sure everything connects properly.
Myree: That’s right, yes. He’s got the technology now, so I certainly am still learning.
Rick: Yeah, that’s good. So, I’m going to read some more points that you sent me of things you’d like to discuss and make sure we’ve discussed them. You say, “The deepening and evolution of awakening has been constant. I find myself dedicated daily to what it asks of me, teaches, and the purification of this system to embody more and more consciousness. I can’t see that ending in this life, and this is so completely fine.” So, we’ve kind of touched upon that, but that’s one of those points I always feel bears emphasizing, that deepening and awakening is constant, at least that I don’t claim to be in any kind of final state by a long shot, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked to any. I’ve only talked to, interviewed a couple people who I asked them a question like, “What’s the next horizon? Where’s it going from here?” And they looked at me like I was crazy, like how could there be anything more? But I’m afraid I don’t feel that they, I think that that’s a trap. Adyashanti often mentions that, I think even traditionally in Zen, there are like 16 or
Myree: Yes, yes. I would tend to agree. I, well first of all, there’s no one here, like there’s no part of my being that’s even saying I’m finished or I’m perfect or I’m done, like that’s not my lived experience. I feel like I’m living in a constant state of surrender, and it almost feels like energetically and internally, I’m simply bowing all the time, every day to that, even here right now it’s happening, it’s like, yes, yes, yes. And then there’s this like, in every moment, just this, I think the surrender, well, at one level that deepest, well not the deepest, but a very deep surrender has happened, and then there’s nothing but an allegiance to that. But in every moment, the surrender in every moment, in every breath, in every pulse of this life is coming in and expanding out. And even in December, I was in LA and I came back from LA and I could feel something loosening in my personality, because personality remains, it becomes clothing, right, for this lovely expression. But something was loosening in a section of my personality and there was a really big sort of falling away and then like another deepening just four weeks ago. And a lot of what I would, I suppose you would call possibly God absorption, like being really absorbed in that state. I had to actually work really hard to get myself back to do this interview, because I was like, I have to talk to Rick in three or four weeks, I have to get my act together, and bring myself down and back and ground. And also…
Rick: I’ll bring you down, don’t worry about it.
Myree: Yeah, thanks Rick, no worries. I’m going to count on you for that.
Rick: I’m a bummer.
Rick: I’d rain on anybody’s parade.
Myree: Thank you. So there was quite a journey to even get to this interview. For some reason, you know, when I have deepenings, there seems to be quite a big reorganization that happens. And even in this moment, there’s like new frequencies of love and devotion coming through that weren’t present and available four weeks ago. So I’m sure that’s just going to continue.
Rick: Would you say that you’ve lost all sense of a personal self? Do you say that?
Myree: I would say there are moments when I have no personal self. And probably if I hadn’t had this interview and I could allow myself to really stay in that process, which is still there actually, by the way. I have a lot of my spirit team on just keeping me here so that I don’t just go out into that experience. But I don’t really know how to answer that question very easily, because I feel like…
Rick: Would you like me to reframe it?
Myree: Yeah.
Myree: I don’t necessarily know if that fits so well into my lived experience.
Rick: Some people talk that way, which always puzzles me, because I don’t see how one could function without any sense of a personal self whatsoever. But you were talking a minute ago about surrender and you made this gesture, surrendering. I don’t know if, see what you think about this, but I don’t know if being surrendered in the way you just described necessitates having no sense of personhood or individuality. It more means an alignment of one’s personhood with the Divine, not that it doesn’t exist but that it’s just not going against the flow anymore.
Myree: Yes, that would be more my experience. And yes, that’s more an invited term, “no personal self,” and I don’t really fit into that terminology very well in my experience. I would say that this personal self, the identity, is surrendered to that flow of consciousness, and there is a lot of my identities out of the way, but there’s still a personality, still an identity. There’s still someone here that can say, “Mari, you need to be more grounded because you have to do an interview. You need to be more functional because you have to see clients. There are people that are requiring your support.” So there’s definitely still someone here, there’s definitely awareness, and there’s still processes here that can get caught as well. So I wouldn’t say I have absolutely no personal self.
Rick: Yeah, okay, I just thought of a metaphor that might help people. Like if you had a swiftly flowing river, you could have some kind of a rock or a log or something that was just not going to move and the water is just sort of turbulently hitting against you. On the other hand, you could have a boat, a canoe or something that you’re just cruising down the river on and there’s no turbulence because you’re actually just going with the flow of the river. So some people seem to be kind of in opposition to the powers that be or the Divine, the flow or whatever, and their life is constantly running up against problems and others seem to just flow with it, like you were just saying so beautifully with that gesture you made. So you’re kind of like, obviously “go with the flow” is a common phrase, but it has a really profound spiritual significance.
Myree: It does, and when you’re flying like that you’re also one and merged with that river too, so there’s a capacity to be the river and be this life at the same time.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. Okay. A fellow named Johnny from Washington, I’m not sure which Washington, asks, “You were talking about helping your brother’s karma after his death. Recently I heard my brother’s father-in-law was dying and passed away shortly thereafter. My spirit guides told me that I could heal him even after his death and I did healing work on him for about a week after his passing. I was told this was helping his soul somehow. Is that what you were talking about?”
Myree: Yes, beautiful, that’s a beautiful experience, Johnny, and thank you for doing that. Yes, yes, that’s exactly it. I worked with a lot of spirit, a lot of prayer, I worked shamanically, yes, to help him. It’s very, very similar, he required quite extensive support, my brother.
Rick: Okay, good. So you work with people who are going through kundalini awakenings, like you write, “There’s a world of pain for so many people as they are awakening,” and how is it you specifically help to smooth that out for people?
Myree: I guess there’s various different ways that I work with people. It depends on what’s happening to someone. Sometimes I have conversations with people because they’re right at the start of that awakening process and it’s more familiarizing them and educating them and helping them to understand and connect with what’s happening. Other people come to me because that awakening process isn’t going very well, there’s a lot of difficult symptoms, maybe their trauma is coming up very fast, they may be having a lot of health issues or a lot of struggles going on in their nervous system. We sort through what’s going on and what’s actually making the awakening process so difficult and then we find solutions for those different elements or different parts of their system that are struggling. Sometimes I work also with the trauma process and the way that’s interacting, and yeah, that’s some of it.
Rick: Do you mostly work long distance over Skype or something?
Myree: Yeah, I only work online, yes.
Rick: Do you have any kind of a psychological degree or anything like that?
Myree: Yeah, I do, and I’m really glad that I do because I love the ethics of that. I know that you have a spiritual teachers organization where the ethics is really important too, so to me that’s really important. So the diploma in counseling and arts degree and a master’s in process-orientated psychology.
Rick: And when you say the ethics of that, you mean that if you become a licensed psychologist then there’s a whole code of ethics that you can ascribe to?
Myree: Yes, and I think that’s really important because it creates safety and boundaries for the client and safety and boundaries for myself and helps both of us be very clear about the nature of what we’re doing and the arrangement.
Rick: Yeah. I think we’ve kind of touched this, but let’s touch it again. I think you mentioned that people who have been traumatized in some way may tend to have a rougher Kundalini process, and we might be able to say perhaps, can we, that it could be possible for the Kundalini to rise with hardly a ripple, that it’s just a very smooth sort of thing.
Myree: Yeah.
Rick: And for other people it’s like, “Oh, hell’s breaking loose.”
Myree: Yes.
Rick: Yeah. And do you think that kind of correlates with the amount of trauma one might have experienced either in this life or previous?
Myree: Yeah. I find that if you had a pretty stable childhood and a lot of just normal supportive growth as a child, then there’s a lot more openness in the system because when we have trauma we tend to contract in different places. So if you’ve done a ride in this life, when the Kundalini awakens, there’s not a lot of restriction in the system, and it can have a very easeful flow up through the body and out of the crown and flow through the aura into the divine to create that sense of union. And it can be quite effortless. And also people may have had difficulties and then done a lot of therapy or inner work or meditation and a lot of purification that way, and then it’s more easeful. But people that have had a lot of challenges, a lot of trauma, especially childhood trauma, we tend to somaticize that and store it in our body and repress it. And repression is really good when you’re a child. You don’t want all of that active at that point in time. You want to be able to make it through your childhood to being an adult. And so all of that suffering and trauma is repressed in the tissues in the body, it’s a subtle channels, it’s in the nadis. And then when Kundalini wakes up, she wakes up to find that the very places that she needs to move through are occupied or restricted and compressed. And so the Kundalini has to work a lot harder to find passage through those places. And it’s called that spiritual volcanic burning, like literally burning through your personal history in this life. But it’s not only that, it’s often meeting your ancestral processes and what’s going on in your genetics and DNA as well as your past lives. Just let that…
Rick: I think we’re letting a dog in. Here we go.
Myree: Hi, doggies. And so on that kind of physiological basis, if your body is a canal for the boat to flow through, if you had trauma, there’s a lot of rocks and sticks and bowels and obstructions in that canal. So it’s a lot more work to get through. The other thing that makes it difficult for people with Kundalini and who have trauma is that people that are being traumatized find ways to cope with their trauma. And those ways are really important. We often become very controlling of our relationships, of our environment. But the most important thing is we become very controlling of our body. Because often things have happened either psychologically, emotionally, or physically to our body. And so we want to be in charge. I’m the only one that does anything to my body. And that keeps us safe and it contains our hyperarousal and it’s a way of managing anxiety and stress. Then what happens when Kundalini wakes up is that suddenly you have a foreign energy. It seems foreign anyway when it wakes up.
Rick: It seems foreign. I was going to say, is it really foreign?
Myree: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Myree: It seems like something, like a not-me that’s alive in your body, this energy that’s moving around. It’s giving you symptoms. Maybe you have those kriyas. Maybe you have heat. Maybe you’re suddenly anxious. And so those people that use a lot of control to survive suddenly are faced with the fact that they’re in a process where they have to surrender that control. And that can be very difficult and create a lot of terror and confusion and anxiety. Just that learning to surrender and accept and come into a relationship with it. And also Kundalini, when she moves through your body, will bring all of your repressed anxiety and trauma up. And you want that to go, any trauma process, you want to go very, very slowly in an incredibly sustainable way so that you can process that trauma and still have a life.
Rick: There’s a metaphor I’ve found helpful over the years, which is that if, let’s say, if you wanted to dissolve some mud, if you put it in a glass of water, it’s just going to really muddy up the water. But if you could throw it in a swimming pool, it would be a lot less disruptive to the water. If you could throw it in the ocean, it wouldn’t even be noticeable. So the name of the game is to increase one’s capacity for resolving and processing this stuff, not just to take on the stuff, but to increase one’s capacity to do so.
Myree: Yeah, in fact, as you go through Kundalini, what happens is your capacity to process and release that expands and increases exponentially. And you can look back a year, even if you go through Kundalini for a year and then you look back and reflect, you will see your capacity to know and understand yourself and to process and move energy has accelerated and you have new gifts and skills that you didn’t have simply from having that relationship. And she gifts you a lot, like she’s always giving you gifts and waking up wisdoms and abilities and capacities inside you to help you with that at the same time, so you’re not alone with it.
Rick: Yeah, when you were answering the previous question, you kind of were alluding to sexual trauma I think, without actually mentioning it, but I get the impression that you’ve dealt with a lot of people who have sexual trauma, having had it yourself.
Myree: Yes.
Rick: Are there any special issues with that that we need to address here, aside from what you’ve already said?
Myree: Yeah, so what I just said applies particularly, especially to sexual trauma, because those people tend to be very, understandably, very wanting to be very much in charge of what’s happening to your body and your psyche and your system. I find those people need, first off, a lot of support to make that experience as safe as possible, so that you can reduce the amount of anxiety and terror in the system so that the natural presence and awareness can see very clearly what’s happening and start to build a new relationship with it. Those people often need to be held in a very loving and safe way, so that the trauma that is coming up is processed in a way that both gives them the freedom, but also doesn’t activate more post-traumatic stress. So it’s just like a lot of mindfulness and a lot of gentle holding that goes on. There was something else I just remembered, what was that?
Rick: Well, I’ll say something, maybe you’ll interrupt me as soon as you remember what you were going to say, and that is something you just said that reminded me that I know that in psychology they say that you can sort of re-traumatize the person by bringing stuff up in a way that’s not so artful or whatever, and I think maybe in spirituality the same thing is true, and we’ve kind of touched on this point repeatedly throughout this interview, but if things are dealt with, if things are released too quickly or something, it can actually cause more harm than good.
Myree: Absolutely, so you want to keep the rate of the trauma released in someone’s system slow, even if the person doesn’t have a kundalini awakening, and when they have a kundalini awakening it’s even more important because you have an energy that’s processing the trauma, because you have sexual trauma, a lot of that is held, particularly a lot of the content of that is held in the first and second chakras, which are the first ones to generally be purified by that awakening. So usually someone who has an awakened kundalini has sexual trauma, suddenly in a very short amount of time is starting to feel pulled into that trauma history, and that can be really confronting, especially if you’ve kept it to the side as your way of surviving, and survival, your survival is really important. And the other thing is, yes, you don’t want to plunge someone directly into a trauma. Modern trauma therapy, I say just that if you can work through trauma without ever having to go back and speak directly about it, or pull it up, that’s the best way to do it, and there are a lot of really amazing technologies and strategies and therapy styles that have different interventions that you can use so someone can process sexual trauma without ever having to go back and relive it. You want to try and avoid that as much as possible.
Rick: A question just came up in my mind that might be interesting, and that is, what percentage of people in the world do you think are having kundalini awakenings, either through intentional spiritual practice or spontaneously, or are we talking like a fraction of 1%? And second part of that question is, do you think it’s becoming more common? Is there some kind of spiritual epidemic that’s sweeping the world?
Myree: I think we are having a spiritual epidemic, and thank goodness that we are, because we totally need it. I think it’s in the absolute multi-millions and millions and millions of people. My sense is, since 2012, when there was that very strong energetic shift on the planet, and the planet can hold a higher consciousness, there’s been an exponential explosion in the number of people just waking up spontaneously, because the consciousness on the planet is so much higher. Say 100 years ago, if you wanted to wake up, you might have to walk to a monastery, sit with a teacher for 20 years, purify your body, meditate, and then you might get a mantra, and then your kundalini might activate. But there’s this enormous preparation. These days, because it’s like in the atmosphere on this planet, it’s very easy to wake up spontaneously, and with very little or no effort on your own part. I remember one man, he wrote to me, and all he’d done was read one, he’d read a book, and he did one meditation in it, and he had the most profound and difficult kundalini awakening as a result of that, and he’d never done anything spiritual. It happens to people painting, out in nature, through being in a desperate situation and doing a really intense prayer, it just can light people up like that.
Rick: Now, you know that saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” right?
Myree: Yes.
Rick: So, do you think this rising tide of awakening is just going to lift everyone up, or do you think some people are kind of like anchored, in which case the rising tide is going to capsize or swamp their boats? In other words, is it going to get really hard for some people as another segment of the population sort of ascends in consciousness?
Myree: It could get very hard. I think it’s hard already on this planet. I don’t think this is an easy time to be on this planet, whether you’re going through awakening, have experienced a deepening, or you haven’t. I think it’s a challenging time.
Rick: Yeah, I just wonder how it’s going to play out in society.
Myree: I know. I’m very grateful for the epidemic, the way consciousness is going viral, because we completely need it, and I have no idea how it’s going to play out. I love what you’re doing, and I’m very grateful that you do this beautiful show and touch so many people’s lives, because you’re definitely an activator of that.
Rick: Yeah, it’s gratifying to be able to play that role. All these kind of images of a contaminated person spreading diseases are coming to mind.
Myree: It’s true.
Rick: Like I’ve got Ebola and I’m going through an airport or something.
Myree: It’s true, it’s true. And many of the sages say you don’t know in any moment, anyone who’s watching this program, you don’t know in any moment what your presence, one word, you’re passing someone by, how that that can wake them up and activate them. There are amazing stories about that.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. And perhaps, you know, I’ve told this story before, but when I was a kid I saw this thing on some science show about how nuclear fission works, and they had a whole room full of mousetraps and a ping-pong ball on every mousetrap, and then they just kind of threw one ping-pong ball into the midst and they all started going and making each other go. So I think maybe there’s something like that that could be happening with the spiritual awakening where there’s a sort of propagation effect that takes place. Anyway, it’s inspiring.
Myree: It is inspiring, and it’s inspiring, I get a lot of emails from people in all walks of life and the stories that they share about how their awakening was initiated.
Rick: Yeah.
Myree: Quite amazing.
Rick: You mentioned something here that might actually, I don’t think we quite touched about on this point, but it might be encouraging for some people listening. At times the path we are called to walk is barely visible, sometimes lost in despair, doubt and distress. It can be completely confusing. This is you speaking here, “I view confusion as a beautiful beginning point, a sign of change in your process, and a place rich with clues, signals and messages to discover and unravel together as we begin to germinate insight and transformation.” So what would you say to those who feel sort of lost, like nothing’s happening, life is a drag, you know, that kind of thing. All these spiritual people are full of baloney, where’s all the bliss?
Myree: I would say to take some time and stop and be inside that confusion and be with it and notice what is something that stands out for you in that moment of confusion and be curious about it. And dream with it and dream into it. No matter how confused you are, no matter how lost you are, there is always a signal. There is always something there that can show you the next step and then you can be at that next step and pause again and just look from one signal to the next and it will carry you and take you forward.
Rick: Yeah, I think that’s good. I mean, I certainly went through a very lost phase. I was arrested for drugs a few times and spent a few nights in jail and dropped out of high school and all kinds of things. And at a certain point I just kind of got bit by the spiritual bug, you know, and things just began to get better and continued to do so.
Myree: And I think sometimes being lost is really helpful because there’s a lot of things that fall away when you’re lost. There’s a lot of education and conditioning and instruction and family stories of how you’re going to be. And sometimes it’s like a way of shaking out of those things and getting ready, getting right to be really touched by something.
Rick: And actually, you know, I mean, when you consider how difficult some people’s lives are in this world, you know, what’s happening in Syria or Darfur or the Rohingya people and Myanmar and things like that, anybody who’s actually sitting in a chair, looking at a computer, watching an interview has probably got it pretty good compared to many people in the world. So, you know, consider ourselves blessed and then build the blessings from there.
Myree: Absolutely, blessed and very, very privileged and with an immense access to information and ways of finding a way forward that I don’t think humanity’s ever had.
Rick: Yeah. Maybe a final point. You mentioned the value of service, and I know Amma is very service-oriented. What would you say about service as a spiritual path or in general or whatever you want to say about it?
Myree: I think the path of service is a calling, and if it’s your path it calls you, and it’s very hard to refuse, and it’s immediately a path of surrender. It’s not everybody’s path, but it was certainly mine, and I still live that way. I still live in the mystery of the service and what’s going to be asked of me next, and I usually just wait for what form my service is being asked for. And I really just enjoy the unfolding. It just feels like being in a constant act of love.
Rick: Good. Well, that’s nice. I do think, I mean, the reason someone like Amma recommends it, I think, is that it tends to attenuate the ego. If it’s all just me, me, me, what can I do for me? But if you’re actually getting out and helping people in various ways, it opens the heart and it sort of redirects the attention from self-indulgence in some way.
Myree: And it also burns a lot of karma up, and especially if you’re doing that under the auspices of a very powerful teacher, that their blessing to your service will accelerate you on your path and will accelerate you through your karma.
Rick: Yeah. I know Shankara used to talk about how not everyone is ripe for the final stage of realization, which might be produced through jnana yoga or whatever, that karma yoga and bhakti yoga and various other yogas could be conducive to culturing one to the point where final realization will occur.
Myree: Totally. Yeah, and I think one of those paths appeals, like the path of jnana, it never really called me in this lifetime, always very much a path of the bhakti. It’s just where it lit my fire, and while I can read spiritual texts, it’s not where the interest and curiosity of this life have been. And I don’t necessarily know that you have a choice over that, I think it’s kind of your makeup.
Rick: It’s true, yeah, I think so. Alright, well we’ve covered quite a bit of ground. Is there anything we haven’t covered that is lurking in the back of your mind that you want to bring out?
Myree: I think something that I’m seeing a lot at the moment is, because it’s a lot more people that have quite progressed through their awakening experience or kundalini journey, what I’m noticing happening at the moment is that there’s a lot of really beautiful purpose that’s showing up inside that awakening, like a lotus that’s wanting expression in life through action, through service, it might be through creating a business or a particular profession or it could be the path that you walk. But I’m really enjoying this lighting up of some kind of awakening purpose that’s expressing in people’s lives, and I’m seeing that as more common, more viral than it was, say, five or ten years ago.
Rick: Nice.
Rick: Are you kind of … pardon?
Myree: And that’s exciting.
Rick: Yeah, it is. I would assume that you’re kind of optimistic in terms of how the world’s going to go.
Myree: I lean on the side of optimism, but I’m also Australian. We have terrible climate change, we have climate change stress, so I’m also aware that my country is certainly at a tipping point ahead of other parts on this planet, so I’m deeply optimistic and I also have a concern as well.
Rick: Yeah, the Great Barrier Reef down there is getting all bleached out.
Myree: Yeah, our rivers are dying, our fish are dying.
Rick: Are there many climate deniers there?
Myree: Well, our federal government is a very good … at the moment, the government in charge is a very good climate denier, but the Australian population on a whole is very climate change aware and we actually have a category in our medical system for climate change stress in Australia because of the impact and concern in the culture.
Rick: Yeah, the reason I ask is that I sometimes wonder how bad it’s got to get before people will realize what’s going on.
Myree: It’s true, it’s true. And you know, in America it’s much more privileged because I think the effects of climate change will be slower in the United States, which in some ways is a little bit of a concern because I think people tend to need to see the impact to actually then initiate action. Whereas in Australia it’s in our face, like at the moment the biggest river in our country, hundred-year-old fish are dying by the millions just this week.
Rick: And you have some terrible droughts and fires and heat waves and stuff there.
Myree: Yeah, that’s right, it’s very extreme.
Rick: Yeah, well, obviously all kinds of policy changes and economic changes and technological innovations and all are going to need to come to the fore to address this, but I still think that the foundation of everything is the spiritual awakening and that the shift in consciousness will actually bring about the greater creativity needed to bring up those innovations and also will help to melt the stubbornness and myopia of those who are opposing them.
Myree: Absolutely, and I think that we as a whole, everyone in this audience, everyone on the planet that’s growing and consciousness expanding, collectively we are raising the consciousness on the planet so that we can access more of that level of genius that we need from the quantum field.
Rick: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say, perfect. Okay great, so thanks so much for your time. I’ll be creating a page on batgap.com that tells a little bit about you and links to your website and people can just go from there and get in touch with you.
Myree: Yes, that sounds great.
Rick: Well thanks Mari.
Myree: Thanks so much Rick, it’s been really wonderful to be here. Thank you to everyone who’s watching this.
Rick: Yeah, and to everyone who’s watching this, thank you for watching and you know the details that I usually say at the end about visiting batgap.com and checking out the menus, signing up for the email if you want, there’s an audio podcast, so that’s all pretty obvious and basic stuff. So please do that if you’re interested and I’ll see you for the next one. Thank you.
Myree: Thank you.
Rick: Bye bye.