Summary:
- Spiritual Journey: Pernilla shares her spiritual journey, starting with her connection to Joel Goldsmith’s teachings and her profound meditative experiences.
- Challenges Faced: She discusses the challenges she faced, including a difficult period with a controlling individual, and the lessons learned about discernment and self-trust.
- Teachings and Impact: The interview delves into the teachings of various spiritual leaders, including Barry Long, and their impact on Pernilla’s understanding of womanhood and self-acceptance.
- Embodiment and Integration: Pernilla emphasizes the importance of embodying spiritual insights and integrating all parts of oneself for a harmonious life.
This interview offers insights into the complexities of spiritual awakening and the importance of inner wisdom and self-love.
Full transcript:
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 passed the 400 mark in terms of the number of ones done, and if this is new to you and you’d like to watch other ones, go to batgap.com where you’ll see all the previous ones archived in various ways. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and you feel like supporting it, there’s a donate button on every page of the site. My guest today is Pernilla Lillarose, which she tells me was not her birth name, but she had kind of adopted it at a certain point, and I think it’s a very poetic and beautiful name. In Sanskrit they always say that there’s a correlation between name and form, that the name for an apple for instance, the vibratory quality of the sound for apple is the same vibratory quality as an apple itself. So maybe that is true of your name as well.
Pernilla: I’ve never thought of that.
Rick: So Pernilla, you sent me a little bio with some of the more significant steps in your journey and it looks like the first one was connecting with Joel Goldsmith’s teachings in mine has spoken highly of him and I think I’ve even listened to some recordings, but how did you stumble on to him and why was that significant?
Pernilla: Oh, that’s an interesting entry into this. Yeah, that was one of those things that I could not have made up or created. It’s a long time ago. I had been in New Zealand in 1987 I believe it was and I’ve been doing something called WWOOFing. WWOOF which stands for Working Weekends on Organic Farms because I was studying agriculture in Denmark at that time. So I took a year off and I was WWOOFing, that means I was working on different organic and biodynamic farms and I was spending I think two weeks with one man, his name was Clive, he was an older man and he was doing these bizarre experiments making annual plants into, making them perennial, he was using the sun and homeopathic remedies, he was just kind of an alchemist of some type and we had a good connection. I was playing around with him with these plants and at that time since I still was at the university in Denmark studying agriculture, he suggested I took some of the seeds back and did some research in the lab you know just for an experiment. So I did and but that kind of fizzled out, there wasn’t a whole lot that I found out and learned but I decided instead of continuing with agriculture I wanted to work with people more, I was considering becoming a nurse or something, nurse aide. So I wrote to him, I always want to say email in those days there was no email, so I wrote to him and said you know I’m not coming back because you wanted me to come back, I’m planning on staying here. So that was kind of the end and then I got a letter from another WWOOfer who was with him and he wrote something like you know I’ve talked to Clive about you and I’ve been meditating and it’s very important, I have to laugh what I’m going to say now because it sounded so out there, it’s very important that you come back to New Zealand to help raise the Christ consciousness and I was like “really!” and who are you to tell me, you know. So I wrote a letter back which may not have been so nice, I kind of said like you know who are you and whatever I wrote it’s so long ago and I got a letter back saying boy you have a lot of fire under the roof, he was right and he says but you know I have been meditating on it and it’s important that you come and I would suggest you read this book called “Practicing the Presence” by Joel Goldsmith. So this whole event was so bizarre, it came out of nowhere. So I went to the library in Denmark and looked for this book. They didn’t have it. I put a note in if they could find it for me and I think a few months later I got a note from the library that they found the book in Norway, that’s a different country and I could come and pick it up. So this was a big deal you know, so I picked it up, started reading it, it did nothing for me but because it had been such a big ordeal I thought I’m going to make a Xerox copy of this book for later maybe. So I did, returned the book, put the Xerox [photo]copy in my bookshelf and forgot all about it till maybe six or twelve months later something in me went and picked up this book and I started reading it and I started meditating like Joel said and I could not get enough, it was one of those things like soul food you’ve been starving for your whole life. So I started meditating and it didn’t, I think it was only a few weeks into it you know, that’s when I had that big experience that I don’t know if I wrote about it but it was…
Rick: You should tell us about it.
Pernilla: Yeah, so I was sitting meditating and doing what Joel said, “Go inside and say ‘I and my father are one.'” So I did and that’s a Bible quote. Joel he was a Christian mystic and…
Rick: Goldsmith sounds Jewish.
Pernilla: Yes, he was Jewish and he used to be a reader at the Christian Science Church and then he left that and started his own movement called The Infinite Way. So anyway, I sat down and I meditated and I did it every day and then one day it was just like you know, it felt like the heavens opened up and this unbelievable love and it was just so profound you know, I was just completely flooded with love and just thinking about it and I just got down on my knees and I was just like, please do not ever let me go away from, lead me astray again, let me always stay with this and it was one of those openings that lasted for several months and I walked around in love, as love, there was basically just love and I couldn’t do anything but just accept. I remember I was even kind of holding myself, you know, the little Pernilla I was just holding her and it was just love, love, love, was so beautiful and then it all changed as these things often do, right? So in those days I was dancing, I was doing this dance every week and after my dance class I would go down to the cafe right underneath and have a cappuccino and read one of Joel’s books. I was just so pulled in and I was just sitting there and just looking around and just seeing God, love everywhere and then this man came up. This is still in Denmark right? So this man comes up for me, a Black man from California. He comes up and asked me for directions in English of course. So I told him and then he comes back later says, “Can I sit and join you here?” I said, “Sure.” So I kind of put the book under the table, I didn’t want to announce my God thing, I think it was called “God Consciousness” and so he sat down with his wine and he says, so what are you reading? Good luck. So I showed him and then we started talking about God basically and he knew the Bible inside out, upside down, back to front. So we were talking, it was kind of an interesting conversation and then at a certain point I said you know I want to go home now and he says you know I don’t have a place to stay, can I stay at your place tonight? Inside of me there was a big NO. I didn’t know the guy from squat, right? So I said “No, you know I don’t feel comfortable with that.” That’s when everything started turning for me. Then he said, “Well it’s not your house, it’s God’s.” And I knew that was true, in my state. He started coming with things like from maybe Biblical things or something that were just twisted enough to make it in his favor and I was just not in a space to discern. I just I was too open and too maybe too innocent in that space and I really didn’t have discernment so eventually I said, “Well okay then.” So he took I think the bus back, I took my bike back and then I entered into the five worst months of hell of my life.
Rick: Yeah, because you couldn’t get rid of this guy right?
Pernilla: I couldn’t get rid of it and you know looking back it wasn’t my fault but it was because of my lack of discernment that I mean I was not blaming myself but I was just confused and I was in such deep surrender to the divine that you know everything that came I couldn’t quite think, you know I couldn’t discern and his name was Yul Y-U-L which was so close to Joe. You know there were just things that were confusing in my state and then one day or one evening or maybe the first or second evening he says God has sent me to straighten you out or something like that and I still had a lot of insecurity and you know the things that we all carry with us. So I really believed that you know I knew I wasn’t pure inside, I had my old stuff. So there was a part of me that believed that. So you can see it was just so confusing, so confusing and so I thought okay anyway it was absolute hell for five months and during that time I was just in surrender and I said “Thy will be done, Thy will be done, Thy will be done.” I just wanted to surrender. I knew for some reason I knew there was something right about what happened about him being there, there was something right about it and I couldn’t understand it but I just knew that so it wasn’t right just to kick him out which I couldn’t really anyway he was a big guy.
Rick: Couldn’t you call the police and say this guy’s in my house?
Pernilla: No, because I let him in you see.
Rick: Well so you want him out, it’s your house right? So you couldn’t tell the police I want this guy out of here?
Pernilla: But I wasn’t in that state Rick, it was I was in a very confused state where I wanted to surrender to God. I kind of felt that there was something going on here that was part of my opening and so I cut off my connection with most of my friends. He allowed me to stay connected with one friend who had just become a born-again Christian and I could connect with my mom and that was about it.
Rick: So when you say he allowed you, did it turn into a controlling kind of situation?
Pernilla: Totally, totally, totally, yeah. It was pretty bad and looking back it’s like, oh sweetheart how could that ever happen? But it was because I just grew up with a father who was an angry man controlling. So there was that part inside I call it the collapse. I’ve written about that quite a bit too. There’s something in me that collapsed inside, I couldn’t just stand up in my truth because it wasn’t embodied. I mean the experience was not embodied. It was just this openness.
Rick: What finally got him out of there?
Pernilla: I got in touch with a … finally he let me go to a Christian science church and I talked to one of the practitioners. I think little by little I got my bearings back and started seeing that something is just not right here. But it took a while to just come all the way back and it’s like what is going on here? So she said to me, “This is not good,” so she worked with me. Then I called, oh yeah, then I found the phone number for the copywriter of Joel Goldsmith’s books called Divorce. I called them from Denmark and asked if there were any people who knew or who worked like Joel and they gave me the name of a woman called Barbara Moll who was who used to be a student of Joel’s and who was teaching. So I wrote her a letter and she wrote me a letter back. She says get him out of the house. So little by little I got that R… started to grow a backbone.
Pernilla: Exactly, yeah, and then after a few months I got him out or while he was gone I had somebody kind of change the locks so he could come back in. Little by little I got my my spine back and then I went to America in 1988 I believe, 87 or 88.
Rick: Before we jump ahead to that, I think there’s a general principle here that would be worth discussing for a moment because I can almost hear people saying, “Well that was pretty stupid and naive, I would never do a thing like that,” but look at how many people sort of come under the control of dominant cult leaders and spiritual leaders and so on and suspend their judgment and their discrimination and end up giving them all their money or their bodies or you know doing all kinds of crazy stuff because they get into this go with the flow mode, you know, well it’s all divine and I should just let this play out. So I think there’s really an important lesson to be learned in terms of finding the balance between surrender and self-determination. There’s a kind of a balance point between those two qualities. You know, God helps those who help themselves but that implies a certain you know proactiveness.
Pernilla: Well I couldn’t agree with you more that this is I’m not the only one who’s gone through a situation like that.
Rick: Thousands have.
Pernilla: Yeah and because I went through it myself I know what it was in me that made me do that. The first sign was in this cafe when I felt this NO, I didn’t trust it, I didn’t go with that and that was kind of when I look back years later when I started understanding what happened it was that initial NO that my heart just or my body just said NO and I didn’t know how to trust that and I think that has become a very big part of my life, of the work I do, of my message to specifically help women but I work with men too but specifically for women that we have not really lived in a society or in a world where we were encouraged to trust our heart and to trust our wisdom and it’s a process, it’s been it was a long process for me to get to trust that because now it’s much easier, but out in the world still I would say it’s not really supported you know if I say to you, I know I’m not going because I can’t feel it which is how I function today, somebody may go like well what is that supposed to mean, are you crazy, you know there’s not that normal feedback or understanding that this is how I function. So I think we have a lot to learn in the world in our, you know we have a lot to learn about ourselves in this world where it’s not accepted to live from that inner knowing and that inner wisdom. I think it’s immensely important to be surrounded by people who understand that so we feel stronger in taking back our divine power.
Rick: Yeah I think that’s really important and the various scriptures, I don’t know about Christianity or whatnot but I know that in the Vedic literature it really encourages you to keep the company of the wise and keep the company of the holy and so on, that that’s considered and they might even use the analogy or I’ll make it up at the moment if they don’t, that you know you’re like a little delicate shoot or plant and you need a kind of a protective environment at that stage and you know these subtle impulses are… these impulses within are subtle especially at the outset and the world is gross, you know the world is like in your face and it’s so easy for them to get squashed.
Pernilla: Yeah, I think isn’t that also from the Bible when you know the Christ was born they took him away right, they took him away until he was bigger and stronger. There is something like when that first opening happens you’re just like a little very very vulnerable little sprout and it’s very easy to get squashed. I speak from experience and I think it’s easier today than it was back then. I mean this is what 30 years ago? Sure,
Rick: I mean this whole thing that we’re this kind of stuff that we’re into is becoming more widespread.
Pernilla: Yeah, and when I was in Denmark I didn’t know anybody, I could go to the Christian Science Church but that was about it, people didn’t know about awakening or these experiences, it made no sense so it was hard to find somebody to go to get some help.
Rick: I know when I first learned to meditate back in the 60s I was… you know all my friends were taking drugs and so I learned to meditate and with a very short amount of time I realized I can’t hang around with these people anymore but I hadn’t gained new friends and so for like quite a few months I just hung out with the dog and walked to the beach every day with my dog and went to school and you know started doing things on my own and then naturally gradually I picked up a whole new circle of friends. But if I think I if I had tried to hold on to those friends in those circumstances I probably would have fallen away from meditation and gone back into those habits.
Pernilla: Yeah, absolutely.
Rick: I think we’re discussing this because it’s a valuable general principle I think which is that there’s some importance to the company you keep and if people are finding it really hard to get on to a spiritual path or stick to it or anything like that they might want to look at who they surround themselves with.
Pernilla: Yeah, absolutely.
Rick: Not to sound preachy but it’s a practical consideration.
Pernilla: Yeah, you know I think a lot of it has to do with you know the whole neural pathways, the brain wiring. It’s the same, if if it’s not strong enough inside we fall back on the default wiring which is usually not in our favor. I mean it’s not an awakening wiring we can say. So it is important to keep repeating and repeating and repeating so that sprout or that neural wiring gets stronger and eventually you know that’s why eventually I found my spine again so I could stand up straight without falling over if somebody disagreed with me. I think there is just a process to this whole embodiment. I’m very much about embodiment. That’s a big part of it that we that we bring that into our living experience in life that we live it. It’s not just something we bypass in life, it’s very much about bringing it in and it’s a lot of work.
Rick: You know on that note, I don’t know about you but I know people who have been meditating for decades who are still trying to kind of play fiddler crab in the shell. It’s like, oh I couldn’t possibly watch the news or I couldn’t possibly go to this restaurant or you know do something so gross as to you know go to a concert. I mean there’s just, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but there are some people who are in a state of such delicacy that they continually try to shelter themselves and there I think there’s some, I’ll let you elaborate on this, but there’s some need for getting out there and integrating more and being able to sort of do normal things and not be so impressionable.
Pernilla: Yeah, I think there’s different ways of looking at that. I mean I’m very much a hermit in one way. I just love being on my own with my cats in the woods where I live and I’m also out there a lot. I have to find a good balance between the two. I think in the beginning it is important to just shut out everything and just be with all that stuff you know that normally drives you out and away from yourself and to get experiences, to not feel lonely, to be loved, liked, to find safety, whatever it is. I think there is a very important phase to learn to sit with all that energy that usually drives you out. I think it’s very valid and then that there is a point where there might be more of a naturalness to come out because you get more in touch with who you truly are and if it’s not coming, I mean if you’re trying to live in a shell because you’re afraid of the world then there is obviously some fear that needs to be met. It’s quite obvious and it’s easy to do the spiritual bypass. I think a lot of people have done that. That’s certainly not my way, not my path or not the way I work with people. I think being able to bring all the feelings, all the fears, all the things we are afraid of, ashamed of, can we bring those in and learn how to be present with that and that is again it’s a skill. You know I’m trained as a Hakomi practitioner and Hakomi is body centered therapy so it’s really very much coming into the body and learning to listen to the body and when I look in the world and when I go to retreats and different things, I notice how difficult it is for people to actually be present in their bodies and learning to listen to their body from the body, not from the mind. Think, oh I think it is this or it’s probably, it’s like no, what is the body actually saying because that’s where we enter into the body and that’s where real transformation can happen so that who we are becomes embodied and not just something that’s out there and we need to you know shield from the rest. So yeah I think you’re right that probably happens a lot. I think there’s a place for that but if it’s a hiding from meeting something in yourself well you just won’t get embodied. I mean I’m sure it’s all good in the big picture but you won’t get the benefits of actually starting to feel to live the presence and the love and the oneness in your life.
Rick: Since you mentioned the word shame I think I’ll ask you a question now that someone sent in, Raymond from Washington, he read some of your website and we’ve rewritten the question slightly to hopefully make it more clear, hopefully we haven’t misinterpreted what he was asking, but he asks about people feeling shame, having an evolutionary purpose in humanity to make people introspect about their actions, particularly when the actions impact others negatively. What do you think about that? You know I just wrote four articles actually about shame because I encountered some shame in myself a few months ago about just being myself basically, it was just a real deep layer. I just keep going deeper and opening and you just see these things. So for me shame, I don’t know, I have never thought of that, I don’t think I can answer that if it’s for the evolutionary process. You just wrote four articles about it, what were they about? Well it’s about the way I see it and there is this quote from my book there where I talk about that we live basically in resistance to who we are because we believe that the part of us that we resist, we believe that that’s who we are and so as long as we still have parts of ourselves that we want to hide that we are ashamed of, embarrassed of, it’s because there is a belief that we are that and that’s where there’s duality. When you wake up, in my experience I bring everything in, you know I’m also a self-love mentor and I can’t disown any part of myself, I can’t exclude anything about myself because then I live in duality and my movement is to live in oneness with myself and when I live in oneness with myself then of course I experience it in the outside too. So when I found this place in me that I felt, actually I felt ashamed just to be me, to be Pernilla, I mean it makes no sense to the mind so I really had to go and be with that and then I could see that there was a part of me that felt ashamed to even share that I was ashamed to be myself. But the beautiful thing Rick was that I I learned so much about shame and I can see that shame builds on itself and it keeps that shell you talked about, it keeps us kind of separate from the love and the oneness that’s everywhere. So I think it’s really important to meet the shame whether it’s for the evolutionary process I have no idea, those things I don’t quite know how to answer questions like that, I can only answer it from the experience from the inside out and what it meant to me was like when I don’t, when I’m able to share like I’m ashamed of being myself, you know even here on your show that there was a piece of me that wanted to hide that, it’s like no because that’s about as unloving I can be to myself to push this part of myself away and that’s not really the path I’m on. So I started writing a few articles about it and it was actually very liberating and very sweet to see that and the funny thing is when I, when things unfold in myself I also I just start seeing it around me more clearly that oh yeah that’s because we’re actually all ashamed of being who we are, no we’re ashamed of being who we think we are, that’s I think what it comes down to. Yeah. Because when you really know who you are you’re not who you think you were. Exactly, and what is there to be ashamed of? Okay, so there’s areas that are having traumatized in the past that are not fully on board in the oneness, I don’t need to be ashamed of those, I need to love them, you know, so then it’s really bringing every part into the fold. So I don’t know if that’s a satisfying answer for that question.
Rick: Hopefully so and if he’d like to ask a follow-up question he can post that. Okay, so you were about to say that you went to the US, you were studying Joel Goldsmith and then you came to the US and then I kind of cut you off to ask you to another question. You want to pick it up from there?
Pernilla: Yeah, so then I came to be with this student who had been a student of Goldsmith and she was a teacher herself. So I was with her for a couple of years, I basically moved in on her ranch which was a little north of LA, East LA, no a little north of LA I think, and I was, you know, I was working for her, I was her bookkeeper, I was clean now, it’s just anything just to start, you know, I came to a new country. So I was with her teaching for a couple of years and lo and behold I felt moved to move on and became a massage therapist. So one day I told her, “I’m going to move on, I’m going to stop working for you, but take your time to find a replacement, I’m not in a rush.” So I waited and waited and waited several months and I say so, It was so interesting, I’ve had a number of these things in my life where she says, “Well this is something about, this is your ego, you’re not doing Divine God’s will, all that.” It’s like here I got another opportunity, you know, self-doubt, am I doing the wrong thing, right? I did some therapy and for me it’s been a slow process. I keep getting these opportunities from the divine to just grow deeper and release, you know, any more prisoners of doubt or fear in myself and so here was another one and it took me again a while to feel like, okay, God is not going to punish you, you know, even with that awakening and all that, there was still that in there and So I moved on and then I’ve been with many wonderful other teachers over my lifetime, there’s a lot of help and love out there.
Rick: Yeah, you mentioned Barry Long, he was in Australia, wasn’t he? Yeah, yeah. There’s some controversy around him but I don’t remember what it was, but anyway, what was your experience with Barry Long?
Pernilla: It was great, it was very much about supporting the woman to be a woman and teaching the man how to actually treat a woman with respect and not seeing her as a you know, sexual object and respecting what she felt and said and you know, and not projecting all the stuff onto her, so it was very, very important for me to be with him and I even became the US coordinator for his work for seven years or something, so I got pretty involved and it was very, very helpful, yeah.
Rick: What would you say were your main takeaways from the whole Barry Long thing, what main benefits you derive from it? Well, he also always would take us into meditation, he says, “Okay now let’s go into me, me being.
Rick: The self.
Pernilla: Yeah, so we did a lot of that and when I was in Australia, I remember I started getting memories from my past when I was a child where I would suddenly have a shift in consciousness, this is when I was, I don’t know, four, five, six, seven, eight years old, suddenly things would shift and I was just the observer and it would happen once in a while, I didn’t understand it, it was like, oh, suddenly I was just observing what was going on around me and then it would go back to Pernilla and that started happening more there but now I understood what it was, it felt like the pieces started coming together. So that was one thing I started realizing more of who I am, that this is actually who I am and really feeling more and more woman, honoring myself as a woman and trusting myself, trusting myself and the female qualities in me.
Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting, a lot of people, well some people anyway, if they were listening to this they might say, “There’s so much about person and the personality and yada yada but you know Ramana said or so and so that, you know, that’s all an illusion and we’re just sort of, I don’t know, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or something or you know, indulging in something that’s not ultimately real and we should just cut to the quick, go straight to the source, realize our true nature and all this other stuff will kind of work itself out. But then there’s a whole other stream of spiritual enterprise which feels that you can’t, like you said, spiritual bypassing, if you just brush this stuff off as as illusory or as superficial or as, you know, of secondary importance it’s going to come back to bite you, and it really actually needs to be dealt with. So, you know, what would you advise in terms of a balance between those two perspectives?
Pernilla: Yeah, it’s a very non-dual question really, isn’t it? You know, even though I’ve been with many non-dual teachers it’s never been my thing to say, you know, it doesn’t really exist or or whatever, however they say that it’s just never been, it’s never given me any juice, you know, for me it’s all about embodiment and I think I also had to come to terms with the fact that I was not like everybody in that in those communities. You know what, Rick, I’m just being myself.
Rick: That’s great.
Pernilla: I don’t know what that means, maybe I’m completely asleep at the wheel, maybe I’m completely awake, I don’t think, it’s not something I think about, I’m just being myself, I’m just allowing the unfolding to unfold, I’m receiving the downloads a lot, like when I write it just comes and I know who I am in all of that, there’s just this presence that I am, I never feel separate from that and I can see that in that there’s still some past conditionings maybe, maybe some universal conditionings that are playing themselves out and some of them I can still… my presence, my consciousness can still get pulled in sometimes and believe it, but you know I can always come back here. So for me it’s not right to say all that stuff doesn’t matter, it feels… it’s just not my truth, but there is something and I think this is part of how my unfoldings happened where there is a place where I really allow every part that has been left outside the fold to come back in and love it back in and when that happens there’s a melting of what was not loved before, there’s a separation and it can come back in and then there’s a flow of oneness, there’s a flow of love, there’s peace and then it’s easier to just to rest in it when there’s not all these parts knocking on your door wanting in and say no you can’t come in, no you certainly can’t, oh I’m ashamed of you, stay out, you know or you don’t even exist, what do you want, you know. So that has never worked for me, however there is a place where it feels like when these parts have been integrated enough in me when then there might be some thoughts coming knocking at the door wanting to tempt me to go back out, there is a point where I’m like you know what, I’m sorry I’m done with you, it just feels that it has completed itself, it feels like the truth of it has embodied itself, there’s no duality and I’m just done. So again it’s just the natural unfolding of okay I don’t even want to start loving that part, it’s like no, you know we’re done. So there’s kind of there is actually a separation how I see it too between the thought that comes in with some negativity about myself or the world or some belief whatever and then the impact that that has on my emotional body. So I always include the emotional body and help that come into oneness, into peace, into the love and once it is included and incorporated and integrated that’s when this thought knocking on the door it has no power, it has no bearing anymore, there’s nothing biting it back or wanting to engage but as long as I leave these parts out then I will go out there and believe it all the time. I don’t know if it makes sense the way I say it but it’s been I think a lot of people have asked me that question you know when do you love it and when do you leave it and there is kind of there is a flow to it and then maybe the next layer comes up and maybe that needs to be loved and met and listened to and you know when you listen to your body like if I’d listened to that NO back when right I would have saved myself a lot of suffering right. So learning to listen to that then if something comes knocking on the door says Pernilla you can’t trust yourself I was like please you know come on that’s over. So it’s more integrating it and it’s for me it’s not about what you just, I don’t remember the question because I can’t really relate to those questions but no.
Rick: Yeah, well it sounds like what you’re saying is that there’s a balance that you’ve learned to live with in which you know if you were to try to push away and exclude this kind of stuff then you would only make it stronger. On the other hand at the other extreme and so you say you just relax and by relaxing and accepting it you automatically circumvent an inner battle which might otherwise take place but and a lot of stuff ends up getting resolved and rectified but at a certain point there can be you know in contradiction to the sort of whatever goes principle there can be a sort of a “No I’m done with you you know we don’t need to deal with this anymore you know goodbye.” kind of thing. So I’m just reinterpreting what I just heard you say so there’s there’s kind of a balance that you’ve learned to establish and it seems to help you to you know progress and work through and resolve this stuff once and for all.
Pernilla: I think also when you say you know it’s kind of like a resisting you know like no no no there’s there’s an energy of resistance.
Rick: It creates a strain.
Pernilla: Yes and that’s not here when you’re done when it’s integrated it’s like there’s no resistance it’s just like whatever you can move through you know whatever it’s all one but there’s not that sense of the duality. I think just the energy of the latching on or the grasping on to something is gone. Yeah that’s good.
Rick: All right so you mean in the list in the bio you sent me there you listed a number of your primary influences and so far we’ve covered Joel Goldsmith and Barry Long then you mentioned Ayahuasca. Did you go to Peru to do Ayahuasca?
Pernilla: No, I did it here in California. There was a shaman who came and did it. Yeah that was another big, oh that was actually another big turning point in my life. There was I don’t know maybe the fifth or sixth journey I was in. I just experienced myself.
Rick: Fifth or sixth Ayahuasca journey.
Pernilla: Yes, I experienced myself just beating myself up emotionally you know like judging myself and hating myself and just this old conditioning and because when you’re in that space of in journey space there’s you know you’re much more the observer so there’s that gap that happens and I could just watch myself how I did it. It was excruciatingly painful and I felt it in a way I had never felt it before and I just like oh my god and I cried and I cried and I cried because it was so horrendous that I was treating myself that way.
Rick: So you’re saying this is something you actually had been doing routinely but had been unaware of it and the Ayahuasca made you aware of it?
Pernilla: Yes, exactly and I can see you know when I work with people I see how it’s just this underlying thing that most people do. It’s just in our culture I think. So I vowed to not treat myself like that ever again and it was very beautiful, it was a very beautiful turnaround and it still took a while to fully incorporate that of course but that was also the beginning of the work that I do now as a self-love mentor helping people to not judge themselves and criticize themselves and doubt themselves and shame themselves and stay in duality. You know even people who have had beautiful awakenings that underlying current is usually still there. I don’t know if it’s there more in women than in men. I know for sure it’s there in women, there’s the self-doubt and comparing, competing with other women you know trying to be different than we are, very very painful and very dualistic. So here again there was another piece that got opened up to start just really treating myself with a lot more love and and that in itself is probably one of the most, I mean that brings oneness to yourself when you don’t do that division and you know I mean judging and criticizing yourself there’s such duality in that right and if we’re talking about non-dual teachings or awakenings you know where does that really fit in, so we need to deal with that. And that’s why also eventually I wrote the book called “Imagine Being Kind to Yourself” it was like imagine that you know being kind to yourself, like what? But you know what was so interesting when I wrote that book though because those are the days I went to satsang a lot, was never talked about, nobody talked about loving yourself like you said you know it’s not real, I deal with… so I was in that environment and there was this thing that arose in me and because I saw my clients they were just so hard on themselves and I said there’s something missing here you know they would come in and say you know whatever teacher we were with they would say well here see says you know you just have to accept everything as it is so they were trying to accept everything as it is but I said well what about all the feelings you have are they not part of what is and that’s all that then developed and unraveled and became the book eventually to actually learn how to be kind to yourself so you’re not living in that duality.
Rick: I think it’s an important point and maybe we’ll be coming back to it you know several times during this interview but there’s different pieces to this puzzle you know and some of the non-dual satsang teachers who are really sort of radical in that way have a piece, an important piece and you know the sort of the more psychological emotionally oriented people have a piece and somehow you know it’s all the pieces together make the whole puzzle I think and maybe not for everybody but for for most people and you just can’t bypass or sidestep certain things and you know advaita them away.
Pernilla: It’s true, yeah it’s true or meditate them you know I’m going to meditate it away like a way to where, you know where is it going to go if it’s not included in the oneness. It’s a funny concept but you know that’s part of the spirituality we grew up in.
Rick: You can always play devil’s advocate because I mean meditation can clear away a great deal of stuff that you don’t necessarily need to dwell on, it can actually just be cleared away and you know you can clear away stuff you don’t even know you had and you don’t even know it cleared but next thing you know you’re feeling so much better and not behaving in a certain way anymore. But on the other hand it doesn’t seem that meditation in and of itself is able to resolve everything for most people and usually other tools are necessary as well.
Pernilla: Seems to be, yeah.
Rick: Realistically speaking.
Pernilla: Realistically speaking.
Rick: Realistically speaking, it’s like if we actually get real about it and see what kind of results people get and see what’s going on in the lives of some satsang teachers actually. You know it kind of reinforces the notion of a multi-pronged approach.
Pernilla: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it’s important like when you say there’s all the pieces right and we need to put them all together and you may just have to jump from one piece to the other and you know I just need some therapy right now so I’m just going to do that. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to meditate, I’m going to you know stay grounded because when you have the ground things go much easier. So we have to find the ground of our being, we have to wake up to who we are otherwise we’ll just be out there you know doing therapy and rearranging the deck chairs. Absolutely, and there is a place for that too I believe to do that first if there’s too much trauma, if there’s too much identification, if the grip is too tight. I don’t know if you can just let it go and go and do this. So there might be some work that needs to be done before you can even start meditating and benefit from it. But again I mean we’re all different, I don’t see there’s one recipe for all of us, we have to create our own recipe and use it.
Rick: Yeah, I was just reading something maybe it was in your book or some other thing I just came across in the last day or two where somebody was saying that they couldn’t sit still for five minutes to meditate, they just weren’t wired that way, it was too difficult for them and that could be partially due to the technique of meditation they’re trying to do, but also some people just aren’t able to sit easily and there’s other things they can do, maybe five years from now sitting will come naturally to them but maybe right now it’s really not the right thing for them.
Pernilla: Right, and are we supposed to all meditate? I mean is that the rule you know? I don’t know what we all came here for, I’m finding out more and more what I came here for but somebody else may have come down here to experience you know a whole different aspect of life which does not include meditation, so why not allow that to unfold its own way too. I mean on your show here there most people are very interested of course in the awakening aspect because that’s what you bring in here, so that is important here and meditation is a big part of awakening I think, I don’t know how you can connect to that place if you’re not taking the time to go there only and focus on that, so of course we want that here but I think there is a lot more than that and it’s available to us.
Rick: Yeah, that analogy comes to mind of you know they say dig one deep well rather than digging ten shallow wells you know and then you’ll hit water but you know you can twist that analogy a little bit to say well you know how about using ten different tools to dig one deep well.
Rick: Yes, that’s a good idea. Maybe you want a shovel and a pickaxe and jackhammer and you know a bunch of different things.
Pernilla: Yeah, yeah absolutely, you know there was another thing that just came to my mind too when you talked about something that I wrote this other article the other day or recently about you know what are we really awake to, what are we because it’s such a funny concept. A few years ago I ran into a friend who I know is not awake the way we talk about awake you know and she says you know I just woke up and now I can see how I have lived my life with my partner and there was she had woken up to some unconscious of sleep part how she had lived her life and she had woken up to that and this is years ago and it made me think oh for me I always thought it was about the spiritual awakening right which is only part of it because look what we’re waking up to today, we’re waking up to eating healthier, how we treat each other, the government, the finances you know with all the things going on in the world,
Rick: The environment,
Pernilla: The environment, all these things we’re waking up to how we, I mean eating is a big part of it you know, do we eat animals that have been treated terribly and take that in and instead of you know taking a stand for maybe creating a better world we are waking up to that we may have a purpose in life God forbid right in non-duality you can’t have a purpose but I think we do because that’s part of it you know I can’t exclude anything really I can just see that we are more and more waking up to things that we have been completely asleep to and and some of them are a little hard to to wake up to and see what we have actually been participating in in the world but we didn’t know because we were asleep so there’s a lot more to awakening than just to your true nature although that is a huge and very important piece of it if you are actually drawn in that direction.
Rick: Yeah that’s a real interesting point and I think that one can be profoundly awake to one’s true nature and yet still have relative awakenings that need to happen, they can have blind misogynistic or insensitive or negligent or in other ways and so it seems to me that awakening maybe it has a foundation in true nature but at the same time it’s a multifaceted thing and when people say someone says well is so-and-so awake or so-and-so is awake I say “Yeah I guess so to a degree they’ve had an awakening, I suspect there’s other ways or other degrees to which they could awaken but you know it’s all good.”
Pernilla: Yeah and again what are they awake to? If you say that person is awake I would ask well what are they awake to? Yeah and what are they not awake to? Because for me it’s more like you know the awakeness… the more I spend time resting in and as that it just kind of expands and in the expansion I start seeing things that I didn’t see before whether it’s outside or inside so it’s an expansion of the light of the awakeness seeing itself in and as everything where it didn’t see itself before.
Rick: Brings up an interesting analogy that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to say, he used to say that if you think of life as like a territory and in the territory there are different things you could explore, diamond mines and silver mines and interesting things like that but you could go and start going after those but the problem is you don’t own the territory, you need to first capture the fort that commands the territory and then having captured the fort then you can more safely and legitimately explore all these things and you know at your leisure. So maybe this is a good analogy for this idea of different kinds of awakenings, this sort of the true nature awakening would be the fort and if you’re just going after this little mine here or that little mine there without having captured that you’re a little bit on tenuous ground but on the other hand you know you could sort of capture the fort and then not bother to explore the territory and leave all kinds of other things undeveloped and be a real SOB who happens to be in tune with true nature.
Pernilla: Exactly, yeah there’s plenty of those I think.
Rick: Yeah, interesting. Alrighty, so we referred to satsang teachers and I noticed that you’ve engaged with several Gangaji, Adyashanti, I don’t know much about Joe Dispenza and then Sat Shree. Did you find out about Sat Shree through BatGap or did you already know about him? You know I had a friend here in Felton where I live in the Santa Cruz Mountain who had invited him to come and give a satsang so she sent a little email out just to a few you know small group of people that she knew and it was right in town so I went.
Rick: Was that in the last couple years?
Pernilla: A year and a half ago, I think it was not too long after he’d been on your show so I went to a retreat right after which was absolutely wonderful. I do love going to retreats and you know just steep in the silence and Sat Shree has a very strong transmission. Yeah, so it really it mean it just helps expand more that you know and in an expansion I may see more here and may see more there, that’s kind of how it works and I just got back two months ago from two months in Tiruvannamalai with him in India and it was absolutely wonderful you know just to take out two months out of your life and only focus on the truth in the place where you know the truth is beaming you know the energy is so strong in Tiru. Have you been?
Rick: No, never have.
Pernilla: Oh okay, it’s just so I’ve been there before it’s just so beautiful so I just had two absolutely wonderful months of just you know deepening inside, clearing out more stuff, expanding more, just lovely. Yeah,
Rick: That’s great. Elaborate a little bit more on all these people that you’ve interacted with Gangaji, Adyashanti, you know Joe Dispenza, I don’t know anything about him, Sat Shree, just let’s take five ten minutes and just talk about some of the the tidbits that you’ve managed to. Okay, yeah. How each one has their own flavor perhaps and and how different you know it’s like different flowers in the garden, they each have their own aroma and the bee goes from flower to flower. In fact, Mirabai Starr gave a nice talk one time that I saw called “Bees in the Garden” and it was about the sort of multi-culturalism or sort of you know picking up knowledge here and there like a bee would go from flower to flower. So that’s kind of what I do with this show, I mean for me I’m like a big bee just every week sniffing a different flower. So anyway, talk about that a little bit, just about how your life has been going with these different teachers and what you’ve gleaned from from different ones.
Pernilla: Yeah, you know Gangaji was just short, there wasn’t a lot that I went to but Adya was for many years, I was very involved with his teachings and I did a lot of retreats, I was also managing his retreats for a couple of years, so I basically was on almost every retreat he did and I mean I just have a deep, deep love for Adya. I was with him for so many years and I really felt that I got much more grounded in the awakening and started realizing that this is actually who I am and it was not just an experience that came and went, I started just grounding in it more, just lovely. I will always feel a deep love for him, you know, probably for all of them. Well, you’ve met Adya, sure, so you know him yeah. And who was the other one? Oh, you mentioned, well you’ve talked about Sat Shree a little bit, you could elaborate more on his thing. You’ve also mentioned Hakomi and Deeksha which is the Oneness University thing.
Pernilla: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have been a bee just going all over the world nibbling and I really like that, it’s just, because here’s the thing, I just follow, I just follow, I just follow, it moves me, this deeper place in me moves me and I have just learned to trust that. Well, the Oneness University that was also suddenly was just this movement inside, just I’m going and sometimes it surprises me when there’s a strong movement to do something but I just do it. So I did that years ago and I had weekly Deeksha at my house with a group of people who came every week and I thought it was wonderful, I felt there was a big chunk of Pernilla that disappeared during that time and then who was the other one? Oh, I’ll tell you about Sat Shree and again with Sat Shree was so amazing. The India trip that I went on, I knew it was happening, there was nothing in me that wanted to go, it hadn’t even been as a thought, you know, it’s just a possibility and then I talked to a friend who was going to go and I said, oh that’s so great, I’m so happy for you and then I hung up the phone and then this energy starts moving in me, it’s like okay, let me sit down and listen, right? So I sat down and I was like, my God, go to India for two months and just leave everything behind, you know, and then all the attachments came up, what about my cat, what about my mom, you know, she’s in Denmark but she’s 91, what about my clients, what about my students, what about my garden, you know, all these attachments and I just saw it all arising and I was just looking at it and I was like, really Pernilla? Really? Is that more important? And then I got up from my meditation and I knew I was going to India, that’s kind of how things happen for me, it’s never really a choice, it’s more like the choicw is made for me. So yeah, I mean he has such a strong transmission that it’s really there’s really a nice expansion and burning that happens there and that’s kind of what I am more moved to now, instead of learning more, it’s like, nah, let’s just steep in it and let it do its thing.
Rick: Yeah, of course you’re a little bit footloose and fancy-free, you don’t have a husband or children or anything, I mean it’s one thing to have cats and a garden but another thing if you had a family, it might be a little harder to just take off and so, you know, in deference to those who are in that, a more, you know, encumbered situation, if we want to use that word, they shouldn’t feel guilty about not being able to bop around the world.
Pernilla: But you know, there’s something about it, because when the movement comes it will do what needs to happen for you to get there or to do it. So, you know, to compare with somebody it’s not, that’s neither here nor there.
Rick: It’s your movement, your circumstances, your life.
Pernilla: Exactly, and we all have that and this movement is in every one of us. It’s learning to tune into it enough that we can trust it and then move with it instead of using the mind to block or to go back and not do it, right, to let fear stop us. So it’s learning more and more just to trust that and go like, yeah, free as a bird of course and just fly with it and sometimes it may mean that you need to leave something behind or change things because that’s how it works, right, when you allow the Divine to take over your life, you know, things are going to fall away, things are going to change and that can be scary. I mean, I left Denmark behind, I left everything behind, you know.
Rick: Yeah, I’ve done a lot of that too, I mean just dropping everything on a moment’s notice and going around the world, but on the other hand, you have different phases of life and different people have different dharmas, you know, and I think it’s important to understand that one can evolve most effectively within one’s dharma. There’s even a verse in the Gita which says this, it says “though lesser in merit, one’s own dharma is better than another” you know, the dharma of another brings danger. So you have to sort of be true to yourself and true to your circumstances.
Pernilla: You know, I usually use the metaphor of we need to surf our own wave and not try and get on somebody else’s wave because we’re going to fall off, but when you surf your own wave it’s going to take you home. We don’t know how but it’s going to take you home and you’re going to have a lot of experiences on the way that may be good, may be hard, we don’t know, but it’s finding that, that self-love thing that I use, it’s helped me to just come home to to love everything so I can fully trust the deeper dharma or that thing that lives as us, to come home to that. Then it is really like you were just surfing and then you learn to surf with it and you learn to, you know, left, right, yes, no, right? It is a flow, it really is a flow and you need to learn to flow with it and that’s a skill that I didn’t learn that overnight, I’m still learning, I’m learning every day.
Rick: Yeah, and you watch a really good surfer and they make it look so easy, you know, because they’re not fighting the wave or the force of gravity or anything else, they’re just sort of doing it in the most efficient effortless way possible and that’s the best way.
Pernilla: Yeah.
Rick: So you call yourself a self-love mystic and I guess you’ve sort of touched upon what that means, but is there anything, and mentor, self-love mystic and mentor, you like to support your clients in bridging the gap between who they truly are and who they think they are or should be. You want to just riff on that a little bit more?
Pernilla: Well, the mystic and mentor, I kind of like the flow, but there is truth to it, like when you live in and as that self-love, I feel I’m in the mystery because I mean what is the mystery? That’s when you really don’t know, right? The mystery is outside the known and the known is trying to make things look a certain way or go a certain way, but when I just am in this flow of loving myself, I really don’t know where I’m going from moment to moment. I may have a sense like, oh we’re going to the right, you know, and oh we turn to the left, but it feels like I’m in that mystery because I don’t know and you know it can be scary to live in the not knowing in the beginning. So there is also a lot of love and compassion to just learn to surf, learn to find out, well what does this mean, what does that mean, does that mean I have to go right when I feel that movement? So it’s getting to know how to live in the mystery and then the mentoring part is, you know, maybe the the surf teacher who’s showing them how to do that and it’s all done through allowing and allowing and allowing everything that comes up, everything, there’s a space for everything that we are and if we can just include it and listen to it, learn from it, love it and then sometimes it means, okay I need to let this go or I just need to go and talk to that person or I need to leave that job or I need to you know stand up for myself more, whatever it is. See again, I’m really in the… I’m in the human, I’m in the body, I’m not out there, I’m in here, that’s where my dharma is, it’s in the body and so that’s how everything goes because I cannot, I mean I cannot allow division in oneness, it’s just like I mean I say I allow everything, if there is division we allow the experience of division, everything is allowed to be felt and experienced. In the allowing things always change, always, always, always, there’s always like oh and then there’s more expansion, there’s more understanding, there’s more vision, there’s more clarity but when we are resisting right, so it’s a lot of it is between resisting what is and allowing what is, no matter what it is and the more we allow I feel I’m just in the ocean, the ocean of allowing where you know every little fish, every shark, every undercurrent, every tsunami, everything is allowed because the ocean does not exclude anything and in that I feel I am that ocean of allowing and then change can happen for sure.
Rick: Yeah and also saying no is allowed, like you know if you had had that more clear back when that guy you know moved into your house, you know you were sort of everything is allowing but not my saying no, that’s not allowed.
Pernilla: Exactly, yeah. Yeah and how often do we not allow a feeling of no to be spoken because we want to fit in right? Yeah. And I actually think when you’re in spiritual circles there is a tendency to needing to be spiritually correct or something and I mean such nonsense.
Rick: Like give me an example.
Pernilla: You know you might appear more loving than you are or if you’re angry you suppress it or if everybody agrees to a certain thing like and then you feel it’s different, you don’t want to say it because it’s not spiritually correct or something, there’s a lot of that and I think I’m a little bit of a rebel in that way and I had to maybe tone that down a little bit too so it’s not coming from a rebel place but just from like you know it’s just not my truth but I kind of had to fight my way to get to that place where I can just say it from a place like I just can’t feel it or it’s not my truth even if everybody else maybe in a non-dual circle where everybody says oh you know self-love is not real because there’s nobody to love, you know. I had some of that in the beginning where I, well actually I’ll just share this because when I had published my book which I should be happy and grateful for which I was but I had a place of shame, I felt a little ashamed that I wrote such an unspiritual book. You know this is what 10 years ago right?
Rick: This is the one, “Imagine being kind to yourself” that one? Yes. It didn’t seem unspiritual to me, I was reading it.
Pernilla: Well back then nobody talked about that. It was you know not in satsang circles, that was not what we were doing there.
Rick: It was too psychological or emotional or personal.
Pernilla: Yeah exactly, yeah. But I’m over that and I see it actually almost everywhere you know, a lot of people are becoming coaches and a lot of teachers who are out there, spiritual teachers who have different flavors than satsang. I see almost everybody talks about how important self-love is because that is the vision that we have overlooked.
Rick: Yeah and if you talk to somebody like Marianna Kaplan for instance who you know is a psychologist and who actually consults with a lot of spiritual teachers, she’ll tell you that you know without naming names, she’ll tell you that you know it’s quite remarkable or almost shocking how many well-known and maybe not so well-known spiritual teachers have all kinds of issues that they’re dealing with in their private lives. Of course some of that stuff ends up going public too and creating a big disruption. But you know as I said earlier you just can’t advaita away certain things, they need to somehow be dealt with and resolved.
Pernilla: Yep, that’s right and I think it’s very common. I mean we’ve heard so many examples of the spiritual male teachers from the past, the big ones you know how they had sexual interaction with younger boys and so there is definitely there is a blind spot there and like when we talked about shame, I think these people have shame around it because if they weren’t ashamed of it why would they hide it?
Rick: Yeah, this actually brings up a point, I’m glad you mentioned that. At the Science and Non-Duality Conference in October I’m going to give a talk on the ethics of enlightenment, not that I’m some great paragon of you know morality or that I have some profound wisdom or insight into this but it’s just such a troubling and common issue that things happen with spiritual teachers that end up really shaking up their sanghas or you know disillusioning people from spirituality altogether and people scratch their heads after, “What is going on?” Why is it that these instances are so common and is there actually a correlation between spiritual awakening and ethical behavior? Some people actually argue that there isn’t, some say behavior is all just conditioning and genetics and it has nothing whatsoever to do with your state of consciousness and you know I tend to disagree with them and say that there should be a correlation and if there’s a lot of problems in that kind of area that something has not been integrated, something has not been resolved. So we’ve talked about this a bit in this conversation but let’s dwell on it a bit more in light of what I just said, maybe you could say some things.
Pernilla: Well I’ve had a close encounter of that in a relationship I was in quite a few years ago now so I don’t want to go into a lot of…
Rick: With a spiritual teacher?
Pernilla: Not a teacher but somebody who definitely claimed that he was enlightened, awake or whatever and I don’t really doubt that he’d gone through that experience but there was just a lot that had never been dealt with and boy does that come out in an intimate relationship like wow, yeah. So and you know I know a lot of spiritual teachers some more close than others but I have seen and heard things that I go like, “Oh, really?” It doesn’t match. But then again it doesn’t match my view or my idea about how enlightenment is supposed to look, right? How enlightenment is supposed to look? Yeah, I mean in my eyes. What is your view? How should it look? Well again, I can only speak how I want it to look for me because of the movement inside of me and that is I want to include everything. I want to show up in and as love and bring that to where it’s needed. Let’s say bring light to where there is a lack of light or bring love when people are not feeling loved, so it’s bringing that out and again it’s because that is how it moves here in me. I don’t know if that’s how it is supposed to look but if I compare with here then that certainly doesn’t match certain things I’ve seen over there, but in my experience it certainly is true that the more I sink in, the more peace, the more presence. I think presence is my strongest flavor of the expression. I just feel I’m oozing that presence all the time. Some other people it may be stillness or love, but I feel it just comes out the more I clear the windows, the windshield, the more it can just shine out and when I know the qualities of this place when I go inside, I do not encounter shame or anger or selfishness, not in in the core of who I am. I can certainly find that as some dirt on the windshield, so I want to clean that. Again, the movement here is as you have probably heard in this interview, like I’m all about embodiment and clearing up what is not love, what is not presence, what is not peace, that’s how it is for me. So I don’t know if it’s like that for others, it doesn’t sound like it is, but maybe there are some blind spots that they don’t even know about. Maybe they have done the bypass which has been used by many as a way to avoid dealing with this stuff because it’s not always fun to deal with. I don’t like dealing when it’s really heavy-duty stuff, but it feels good when I do because as soon as you go into that place that you don’t want, that you’re shamed of or afraid of or whatever, when you go in there without resistance, it opens up. And here I am again, right? Oh, here I am again. So it’s also a way of discovering yourself in everything that you thought was not you. So there is a sweetness to it also.
Rick: Nice. So I’m hesitant to use the word “enlightenment” myself because it has such a static, superlative connotation, you know, but if I were to use it, you know, then I would really want to apply it to someone who exudes the qualities of saintliness, really. I mean, not only sort of awake in terms of their inner consciousness, but that consciousness has so permeated every facet of their personality and behavior that they’re just utterly compassionate and loving and ethically sound and so on and so forth. I mean, do you sort of hold that ideal also or what?
Pernilla: I think I do, yeah, I like the way you describe it and can you think of somebody that you see like that?
Rick: Well, I don’t know, I don’t want to necessarily name present characters. I can think of plenty who haven’t lived up to that ideal. You know, there’s so many situations like the one you alluded to a little bit ago about some famous teacher messing with young boys, but some of the historical figures like Jesus and Buddha and people like that and Ramana seems to be up there, which is not to say that, you know, I mean Jesus got angry and turned over the money changers’ tables in the temple and did this and that, but so it’s not like they would necessarily fit some idyllic conception of, you know, nicey-nicey, goody-goody all the time. There could be all kinds of a range of emotions, but I guess if I could find a bottom line it would be not harming people in any way. You know, if he’s angry it’s for their good, but I can think of many situations where teachers have been harmful to the lives of others through their misbehavior and that I can’t associate with enlightenment. I agree,
Pernilla: Yeah, but if I think of current, I mean there’s a few people I would think of maybe current ones who are like Ammaji, I see you have her picture behind. I mean when I’ve been to her it’s just coming into the room, it just exudes that love and passion. And she has her critics and you know she’s been accused of being very, getting real angry and you know even hitting people with a stick and things like that which of course the Zen masters used to do. And so I don’t want to just pretend that kind of stuff doesn’t happen, but I always get the sense with her that there really is sort of the the highest ideal in mind in terms of how she deals with people, even if it’s being a disciplinarian or something.
Pernilla: But then again is there something wrong about being angry sometimes because anger is an energy that wants to upset something.
Rick: I’m not saying there is, I mean the example of Jesus for instance getting angry.
Pernilla: Absolutely, yeah, sure. I mean if I look at myself I can get angry but it’s usually very short-lived. For instance, if you have, I had to deal with some phone companies not too long ago, oh my god, and it was I think I spent about 15 hours total to change and whatever I need to do and it was just, I got so angry because I got cut off and you know there’s this, I’m so angry, but it was very short-lived, it was like boom, you know, and then a moment later it was gone. So I just noticed like yeah, you know, this is frustrating and there’s a reaction to that and I’m okay with that.
Rick: Yeah, but on the other hand you know you’re talking on the phone with somebody and you’re tending to get angry but that can also be an opportunity to learn patience and tolerance because you’re talking to some poor character who’s making $12 an hour and they’re doing their best, you know, and there’s no point in getting angry at them, it just makes their job miserable.
Pernilla: Well I usually say, you know, I know I’m angry, I’m not angry at you, I know it’s not your fault but I’m angry, you know, so I kind of do that, but I have noticed that like you say, it’s actually getting less when these things happen. It’s just like, oh well, whatever, you know, so it’s a lessening because I don’t want to be angry, but sometimes there is an anger that just comes out for a moment like that and then you know and it’s nothing big, but I think we just, it just, the lights start shining through more and more and then there isn’t so much room for these other things.
Rick: Yeah, speaking of Amma, she uses the analogy of anger being like a knife that doesn’t have a handle and it’s sharp on both ends so you can wound a person with it but you’re wounding yourself at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Pernilla: Well, you know, perfection, I’m not perfect.
Rick: Yeah, well, it’s a high bar too. Yeah, I know. A question came in from Frank in Norway. Frank asked a question about traumas. He said, it’s a little bit long, taking me “Traumas come in all sizes and we all experience some, especially when we’re young. We normally get through them and leave them behind, believing we are done with them but there are very often remnants that we are not aware of, manifesting as anxiety or depression we don’t understand the source of. The traumas are not forgotten, we just don’t make the connection anymore, they’re hiding in plain sight. I believe it’s a widespread problem. How do you suggest we deal with it?”
Pernilla: Well, I absolutely agree. I think even though the event is over, the impact still lives in us, it lives in ourselves. Because of the work I do as a Hakomi practitioner, which is all about the body, the body, the body, so I know the body tells us what’s going on, it tells us why it has anxiety. So instead of taking some medications, unless you really need it if it’s that bad, but take some time to breathe into that place. Let’s say you have anxiety in your chest, you know, put your hands on your chest, breathe in consciously into the chest and I usually say do it with a kind hello instead of like go away, you know, we usually want to get rid of these painful feelings and we resist them. So for me it’s very much about making Yui and instead of trying to get rid of them, move right into there with a kindness, with a willingness to learn what this anxiety is so anxious about and then when you do that you can be sure it’s going to start talking to you. There might be tears, there might be something, there’s going to be something coming up and then at least there is an opportunity to liberate it or to love it or to give it what it needs, hold its hand, walk through that landscape with love and I mean I have not been able to do all that on my own. I had a lot of Hakomi therapy and Hakomi supervision for years when I learned this and it was, we talked about Hakomi earlier, I mean that’s been my magic bullet for years because it really helped me to walk through the body and move into areas that I didn’t know how to do that on my own but one first step is to make space, allow the feeling of this anxiety or whatever trauma this person is talking about or maybe it’s just conceptual but just make some space for it and then breathe into it with kindness and then see what happens. How does that place respond to somebody who cares instead of somebody just wants to get rid of it or bypass it, like well what is this anxiety so scared about, you know, there might be shame, there might be fear of not being good enough, that nobody cares about me, all the things that happen and then you start integrating and talking to it and giving it what it needs. So I’m very much for just you know filling up with love, yeah, because that’s really all it needs, that’s all we want at the bottom, at the core, we want love.
Rick: Well I hope that helps, Frank, and if you have a follow-up question feel free to submit it. I want to add an addendum to something I just said about Amma and that is that, you know, it’s sort of like she’s not going to deal with a person in a strict way and you know maybe be angry and stuff unless they’ve really submitted themselves to a close relationship, a close discipleship. I remember one time, early on, when my wife and I first started seeing her, we were in some gathering of fairly close people because we were giving somebody a ride home that was in her inner circle and so she was coming in there where they were having dinner and she kind of stormed into the room and she was really upset about something and everybody was like [expression of shock] and then she saw us sitting there, my wife and I, and she like just settled down, okay I’m not going to behave that way in front of these people, they’re new, they didn’t sign up for this, you know, we’ll deal with these other people later.
Pernilla: Well it’s that Zen sword, right? Yeah. I think it’s a good thing to have if you know how to use it.
Rick: And if you’re qualified.
Pernilla: Yes, absolutely, because you can cut through things and sometimes I think that’s very necessary. If somebody is completely lost in something, you know, you know, just not smacking but maybe clapping your hands or something where it’s like you know they come out of a trance and it’s like, oh where was I? So I think there’s absolute value in it but yeah it has to be done in a skilled manner.
Rick: Yeah, I think there are examples of unqualified people trying to behave that way, having heard that gurus behave that way, who do a lot of damage. For instance, Andrew Cohen whom I’ll name since his whole thing has gone public and he has been consciously expressing contrition for the way he behaved for so many years, just blasting people with anger and abusing them and so on and really not in a place from which he could do that with complete integrity and wisdom and thereby hurting a lot of people.
Pernilla: Absolutely, yeah. And that just tells me about this man that he’s done a bypass. There is some absolutely some unresolved stuff in him that even makes him want to do that.
Rick: Yeah.
Pernilla: Like there’s a power thing or whatever and these things always lead back to trauma where somebody overpowered him probably and that’s the only way he knew whatever and then you can do the bypass to get rid of it all. But here it is.
Rick: Yeah, he’s been trying to resolve it recently, even has been doing ayahuasca trips and stuff to work through it. Okay, so there’s a nice section from your book where I started extracting little quotes because I like this theme you were bringing up. You know, you say there’s a new dream that wants to be dreamed and it is beginning to manifest in the many changes that are already happening in the world. It looks like we’re at a point in history where two dreams are meeting. The old one is on the way out and the new one is on the way in. Right where the two currents meet there is a lot of turmoil. If you fight it and hang on to the old dream you will go under with that dissipating current, not because you are bad but simply because you’re holding on to a current that has ended and is going under. So I found that interesting. I’m definitely an observer of the world situation and always trying to think about what’s really happening underneath the latest headline. Because I do feel that there’s a big shift taking place in society and in the world and we’d be quite surprised to see where the world will be if things go in a positive direction, which I don’t know if that’s a done deal, but it’s interesting to consider what the undercurrents may be. If it’s true that consciousness is awakening and that we’re moving into a more enlightened society then that trend or that undercurrent of consciousness getting enlivened must be having a major impact on world events, even though it may not be obvious to the ordinary observer. So what do you have to say about all that?
Pernilla: First I want to say, wow, did I write that?
Rick: You did actually, yeah.
Pernilla: That’s how often I write, I go oh wow, where did that come from? But it is true because it is my experience that there is this new energy arising. I call it a new paradigm. I say it lives in our hearts. I have yet to meet anybody who is not on some kind of awakening path, who does not have some kind of vision of what is possible that inspires them, but they don’t know what to do with it. That’s been my own process again, right? It all comes back to how we live that because there was this thing that’s been pushing me to move forward more and get out there more and it’s about the self-love is a big piece of the energy that moves here as well as creating community. I’m doing a lot to create community too. Community gardens, I have grown a lot of my food and have people gotten involved in that. I have a meetup group called Young Women Empowerment Circle because I see this new energy, I feel sense that in my clients or the women who come to my groups, there is this new energy living in them and they don’t know what to do with it because most people in the world are not attuned to that yet or they can’t really help them because they haven’t gotten in touch with their own. I’m very much in touch with my own and it actually happened years ago where I saw this so clearly where I was, I’ve been watching a DVD from a friend called “From Freedom to Fascism” and at the same time I was reading the books, I don’t know if you read the books, the “Ringing Cedar” series.
Rick: You referred to them and I’m aware of them but I’ve never actually sat down and read them.
Pernilla: I think I may have written that even in my book where she talked about this that there is kind of a hierarchy that’s controlling the world and it’s even controlling how we dream or what we want. I can’t remember, it’s years ago but it sparked something in me just to see that DVD as well as reading those books. I was sitting there and I was just like “Oh, I’m here to help people get back in touch with the dream that lives in their heart.” It was one of those moments and that’s when I started going out there more and do something, so that was mine, that was what lived in here. You have yours by the work that you do here, right? There is something you want to bring this awakening awareness to the world. I think we all have something, for me it’s very much also about permaculture and community living and growing our own food. There’s many, many different things that people are experiencing and I love helping them get in touch with that because that inspires me, right? That’s part of my dream, so if I can help you get in touch with your dream that’s part of my dream, right? Because that’s what I love to do and I see it so much. I think the issue is that people don’t really know what to do with it and what happens to, again referring back to myself, I’ve had to move through a lot of fear to go out there again and be seen and I’ve had some past life regression sessions where I could see why I’m so afraid, you know, I’ve been disemboweled and burned and you know all these things like “Yikes, do I really want to do that again?” So I’ve had a lot of fear of living this more publicly, so when I was invited onto your show it brought up that fear again, so I had to you know be with that and say you know it really is time because this is a message, it’s not my message, it’s part of that new wave that wants to come out and I’m not going to go back on the old wave of fear, you know, trying to hold things together and do things the way that don’t resonate with me. So that’s what I see and I think there’s a big need to help people get in touch with that and find the courage to live that because Rick, it’s so new, it’s so different, you know, it’s so different. Like for me to call myself a self-love mystic and mentor, there’s no school for that, you don’t go, you know, you just create out of nothing, you create out of your heart and when there’s nobody around you saying, “Yeah, go on,” you know, you go like, “Oh no, this is too weird, I better go back to my regular job and at least I pay my bills or something,” but this thing is pushing you, you know, you need to be out there, you need to teach people this thing or you need to build this new green building thing and I’m really excited about this because I can feel it, this energy is so rich and exciting and I want to do my part to really bring it out and it’s happening, I mean there’s thousands and thousands of people who are stepping out doing the absolute unusual and stepping out and being different.
Rick: Yeah, that’s great. There’s an old Bengali saying which is if no one comes on your call then go ahead alone but these days nobody’s alone, you know, because like as you say there’s just such a groundswell of interest in this sort of thing and maybe some people feel alone because they haven’t connected with the others but it’s getting easier and easier to connect.
Pernilla: Yeah, and that’s why community I think is so, so essential because it’s part of the new energy, the new paradigm is living more in community. It doesn’t mean we live 10 people in one house but it means we live in a way where we know each other, we support each other, maybe we eat together sometimes, there’s some kind of where we feel the support from each other so that we are not alone anymore. Being alone is part of the old paradigm in that way, it’s not that we can’t be on our own but there is this new energy and man it’s exciting and you know there’s a word that comes to my mind because in a way we’re being weird, you know, we are standing out as weird and I heard years ago that the word weird comes from an English root or something spelled W-Y-R-D and it means what is meant to be or fate and again that’s exciting, right? It’s like, oh so when I’m weird it just means I’m not part of the gray mass, I’m standing out doing what I came here for, I’m living my purpose. Yeah, so be weird. In Santa Cruz we have stickers here that says something it’s okay to be weird or something, there’s something about being weird in Santa Cruz that’s that’s…
Rick: Yeah, weird is the new normal or something. Yeah. There’s another nice little tidbit I picked up from your book said, this is just a bumper sticker you were quoting, I’ve seen this one too, it says, “If you’re not in awe you’re not paying attention.”
Pernilla: Yeah, there’s the opposite one that says if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention, right? Have you seen that one? Yeah, I guess that’s the standard one, isn’t it? Yeah, so this is whatever we are focusing on, right? If you’re focusing on a new unfolding and your consciousness you will be in awe, but if you’re focusing on the old way, you might get a little angry.
Rick: Yeah. Maybe there’s a place for both, but I kind of have the feeling that if we could… if the scales would completely fall from our eyes and we were to see the world as deeply as it can possibly be seen, our jaws would be hanging open, we would definitely be in awe.
Pernilla: Yeah, yeah.
Rick: Nice, all righty, so divinefeminineflow.com is your website and what would people find if they go there?
Pernilla: Well, there is a little free book they can get called “Five Steps to Dive into the Divine Feminine Flow,” that’s my little introduction to the work. There’s a lot of old radio shows, I used to have a radio show. Yeah,
Rick: I listened to five or ten of those last week, they’re good.
Pernilla: Thank you. So, they can listen to a lot of that for free. There’s some smaller books.
Rick: Yeah, “Women Standing for Love,” right? “Women Standing,” that was something I started on. So, that’s again, it’s like if we as women stand for love and do it together, we you know, we get our spine back, we can stand up and when you stand for love you’re actually saying no to what is not love, right? Or if you can’t do anything about it, you can at least focus on what you want, so that’s part of the new paradigm, you just start creating a new world. A friend of mine once said it’s like, you know, if you have to put new electric wire in the house, you just put a new one, you don’t try and fix the old one, right? You just put the new one in, so that’s what we’re doing here. We just start creating, start creating community gardens, you know, you start creating things and then eventually when the old does collapse, which I’m assuming it will, I can’t see how it’s sustainable, then there is, you know, there’s something else that can start taking over and growing. So, that’s why “Women Standing for Love,” I felt that was a good thing. It’s not, never really took off, but it was one of those downloads and I just went for it. Yeah, and then I have one called “Allow Yourself to be You.” It’s just little booklets you can download and you have my regular book, “Imagine Being Kind to Yourself.” I’m going to offer in a week or two, I’m going to do a six-week class, it’s not on my website, called “The Global Impact of Self- Love.” And so, it will be six-week class, “How to Live That,” how to live the love and how to actually you will make an impact in the world if you’re really being yourself, because when you’re being yourself you are a different frequency, and that in itself, I’m sure you know, that already changes the world by us lifting our own frequency. So, that’s why self-love helps you live your deeper dharma, your truth, there you’re already making a difference and then if there’s something else from there that wants to go out and express itself in a certain way, go for it.
Rick: But if it’s not on your website, how can people sign up for it?
Pernilla: Oh, that’s a good question. If you’re on my email list or I send a newsletter out, so make sure you sign up, you’ll get the free booklet and if you don’t like it you can always opt out at any time, but if you’re on my newsletter list you’ll get probably next week, might send out the information how to get on there.
Rick: So, they should sign up for your newsletter if they want that, and then you mentioned you do individual consultations presumably over Skype and stuff, right?
Pernilla: Skype, in person if you live in Santa Cruz, but yeah, I do Skype sessions.
Rick: Great. And they can read all about that on my website, how to sign up for that.
Rick: Right, good. Well, thanks, this has been a lot of fun. I enjoyed speaking with you.
Pernilla: Likewise, it was fun, it wasn’t so scary.
Rick: No, we’re not into disemboweling people on that gap or burning them at the stake or anything like that. That’s so middle ages, you know.
Pernilla: I appreciate that.
Rick: Which is actually a kind of a good point because we live in an age where something like this higher consciousness thing can really blossom without people being persecuted for stepping. I mean, there was a time when women were burned at the stake for being herbalists and basic stuff like that, that’s common nowadays.
Pernilla: I mean, it’s not so strange that we still have that fear in our cells, it’s still in there. Absolutely, so I really again, you know, be kind to yourself if you’re one of those people who has some fear around that, be really kind to yourself and take the time for that cellular memory to be released.
Rick: Yeah, the world has is growing, I think it’s evolving. I mean, there was this Italian monk named Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake for suggesting that the stars might actually be suns like our own and that there might actually be other civilizations living around those stars and you know he really had some kind of mystical insight into this and he wouldn’t let it go and the church killed him for it. So, we live in a better time, I think.
Pernilla: I think we do too.
Rick: Yeah, well that’s a bit of a morbid note to end on but I think we’ve covered a lot here and I think people will enjoy having heard from you and many people will be getting in touch.
Pernilla: Great, well I really appreciate it, really. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for everybody listening in and it’s been wonderful. I’ve enjoyed myself.
Rick: Good, me too. Let me just make a couple of quick wrap-up points. So, I’ve been speaking with Pernilla Lillarose and this is an ongoing series of interviews. Next week will be Jeanne Zandi, week after that Suzanne Giesemann, who is a repeat. Week after that Lakota John, who will be my first Native American guest on the show, will be talking about Native American spirituality. And of course you may be listening to this two years from now and all these things will already have passed but there’ll be new ones. So, thanks for listening or watching and if you’d like to support the show there’s a donate button on every page. If you’d like to be notified of new interviews or check out previous ones go to batgap.com and just check out the menus, it’s all pretty obvious and not too complicated. There’s also an audio podcast of the show if you like to listen to this sort of thing while you’re commuting. So, thanks and thank you again Pernilla and we’ll see you all next time.
Pernilla: Thank you, thank you everyone.