Sharon Landrith Transcript

Sharon Landrith interview

Summary:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Sharon Landrith. Welcome Sharon.

Sharon: Thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity.

Rick: And apologies to those who have come to my site over the last two days and discovered that the site was down. This thing has become so popular that it turned out I was completely compromising the performance of every other website on the server that Batgap.com was sharing, and so they shut me off without notice and shut the whole thing down. So it’s been a two-day scramble with a friend in India to get everything moved over to a new server so that Batgap.com is up and running again.

Sharon: How wonderful. Can I ask you a question?

Rick: Yes.

Sharon: What inspired you to do this?

Rick: Well, I was out in the garage working out on my Bowflex machine listening to Adyashanti, and this little bubble came up in my mind that I’d do an interview show. I first conceived of doing it as a radio show on my local radio station, which has about a 10-mile radius, and for some reason they were resisting it. And I bugged them for a couple of months and I couldn’t talk them into it. It seemed like such a good idea. Finally I thought, “All right, let’s make it a TV thing.” So I went to the local public access TV station and started taping them there, but they never had their act together to actually air the things locally. So I thought, “Why not just put it on the Internet? Why go for such a small audience anyway?” So I moved it to the Internet, and then it just kind of blossomed from there.

Sharon: Well, wonderful. That’s a great service.

Rick: Yeah, thank you. I’m having a lot of fun with it.

Sharon: I like the questions that you ask.

Rick: Good. I take it you’ve listened to a few of these.

Sharon: I have. I listened to Adya’s and I listened to Joi Sharp. I’m not a real Internet person. I’m one of the old folks, I guess. But it’s an amazing tool. I do recognize that. But I like your questions. Your questions are unique, is what I was trying to say.

Rick: Oh, good. What I find handy is I have a little iPod, and I put everything on that, and then I can listen while I’m riding my bicycle or taking a walk or something, so I don’t have to sit at the computer so much. So I highly recommend that.

Sharon: I’ll tell that to my husband.

Rick: Yeah, tell him to give you an iPod for your birthday.

Sharon: Well, I met him. He’s done it for hours and hours and hours, you know.

Rick: Oh, I see. Right.

Sharon: And totally immersed, totally happy, you know.

Rick: Yeah. Me too, but too much. It’s like a computer zombie. Let me read a little bio that I have of you here, which I think is from your website, so as to give people an introduction to you. “Sharon is a gifted intuitive and a spiritual teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti.” I wonder if Adya would say that he has a lineage. I guess he would. “Sharon has a devotion and great love of truth. Adyashanti asked her to teach in 2003 and guide those genuinely drawn to the path of truth. Since then, Sharon continues to deepen into and embody this truth herself. She always invites you to come home to that which you’ve always been.” Bean, bin, potato, potatoe? I don’t know.

Sharon: Are you from Canada?

Rick: No, I’m from Connecticut.

Sharon: They say bean.

Rick: I don’t know. I’m kind of a hybrid, I guess. So there’s a bit more here. “In her presence, you’ll taste a palpable expression of love and intimacy that allows you to feel safe, dropping into the deep vulnerability required to know yourself as the all. Sharon offers support for the required shift of identity that is both direct and tailored to each person’s journey. Her teachings are based on her deep realization of silence and the way silence expresses itself in form. She notes, ‘Often there is still a thread that says, “The me is going to get it. The me is going to wake up.”‘ And it just isn’t true. It actually wakes up out of the me. So in her teachings, Sharon emphasizes how silence wakes up in the body and how the embodiment process is actualized. She is well qualified in this endeavor by her many years as an intuitive counselor. Since she has the ability to read the physical and energetic body, she is uniquely able to help unlock patterns that inhibit realization and the embodiment process that follows.” Okay, so that was a rather dry way of introducing you. I’m sure you could have said all that yourself spontaneously, but that gets it in a nutshell for us.

Sharon: Got that over with?

Rick: Yeah. So generally in these interviews, as you know since you’ve listened to them, there is kind of a balance between telling one’s personal story, which can sometimes be very interesting, and how one came to this realization. And people can relate to that, “Oh, darn, I can relate to that. That’s like me. Oh, maybe there is hope for me too.”

Sharon: That can be helpful.

Rick: Yeah, and then also just expounding whatever knowledge one is inclined to expound, which may have nothing to do with any sort of personal story. So we can explore all that. We have plenty of time.

Sharon: Well, you know, I’m open to where you want to go. What I was really interested in, and I heard you ask some questions, and I talked with Joy pretty extensively about your conversation as well.

Rick: You are referring to Joy Sharp, whom people can find on batgap.com if they want to listen to that one.

Sharon: Yeah, we talk on the phone. We are both from Colorado, and Joy and I talk together. And that question, and I’m more than welcome to share whatever you want to ask, and whatever you’ve prepared. But my question is, we are starting to be in whatever you want to call this, this sort of more direct way of recognition. We are getting a little bit of maturity. I’ve been with my teacher for 11 years, and so I’ve had the great privilege of watching a master, master, master, master teacher.

Rick: Adya, you mean?

Sharon: Adya, and the sangha. So you get to see this sort of large group of beings. I guess my question is, most of us, the seeking has pretty much stopped. The kind of romanticism of it all is pretty much seen through. There is this very large group of people that either have had the essential shift, so the abidance is happening in a continuous way, it doesn’t come and go. And there are many, many, many, many more who have had this very deep glimpse and taste, right? So it’s still the coming and the going. So we’re getting to observe how is this lived and how is this expressed. And I’m sure you’re aware of it because you probably are watching. There are teachers like Jeff Foster, for instance, that is just saying, “I am not non-dual. I am not Buddhist. I am not…” right? And then there is this non-dual camp that’s like, “There is nobody there, and there is nothing there, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.” And all you have to do is just wake up and everything happens automatically. And then there is this other camp that, you know, it’s all just happening and I’m everything. So you know what I’m trying to say?

Rick: Absolutely.

Sharon: We’re coming into this beautiful place of maturity to literally look around and see if this is actually being lived, rather than conceptualized, or rather than still breaking off into these different camps. That’s happened for thousands of years. So is it possible for us to come into this kind of freshness? This hasn’t happened before, as far as we can tell, historically. Not this number, not this collective. So I’m interested at this point in how is this lived? How is this fresh and new? And how do we move out of these ideas and concepts and camps and the division within the non-dual, right?

Rick: Yeah, that’s very much, all you just said is very much a hot topic for me. And I’ve been pondering this week after week and bringing these points up to people that I interview. And I read a beautiful article by Timothy Conway recently, I don’t know if you know Timothy, but he broke the whole thing down very nicely with reference to sort of ancient traditions and so on. And in terms of there being three very, well, it could be somewhat arbitrary, the subdivisions, but he defined first of all the obvious level of life, where we appear to have free will and we have responsibilities and obligations and we might be fervently engaged in some kind of good works, helping children or animals or whatever we do, environment. And then there’s another level, deeper level maybe, where it’s all sort of divine and everything is perfect just as it is, and everything is sort of divinely orchestrated and so on. And then there’s perhaps even a more fundamental level where it’s all unmanifest, it’s absolute, nothing ever happened. There are no animals or children or trees or anything else, it’s all just pure, unmanifest soup. And physics gives us a structure very similar to that. And his argument in this article, which I think really resonated with me, is that if you take a stance in any one of these things, you kind of miss the whole picture.

Sharon: Absolutely.

Rick: Yeah, and it’s like even though they are paradoxically different from one another, each has its own integrity and the rules of one don’t necessarily apply to the other.

Sharon: Absolutely.

Rick: And full realization involves learning to embody it all and embrace it all, and simultaneously dwell on all those levels.

Sharon: And of course, right, it’s that open, silent awareness that permeates it all. That is the one constant, right?

Rick: Yeah.

Sharon: And that isn’t really often being… I mean it’s pointed out in the teachings, but it’s very rarely do I see that it’s actually being recognized and lived. You know, it’s just the tendency of the mind.

Rick: Yeah.

Sharon: Right?

Rick: And that open, silent awareness doesn’t negate any of the other things.

Sharon: It negates nothing.

Rick: You can’t say just because it’s all open, silent awareness, you don’t have to do this, that, or the other thing.

Sharon: Oh, absolutely.

Rick: Yeah, but a lot of voices still say that.

Sharon: They do. And I think it’s an exciting time right now, and you really get this big view of different voices, but I think it’s a very exciting time, is that we’re really starting to explore that and look at that, and maybe take that apart. And that these old divisions and camps of, you know, I’m the empty or I’m the full, it no longer is holding much water.

Rick: Yeah.

Sharon: And of course there’s still this battle happening, and it will continue, because it’s the way of the mind. But I find it a very wonderful time that we’re really looking at it as a consciousness. We’re starting to ask questions about it.

Rick: Yeah, when you say “the way of the mind,” I mean, I find myself doing it. There’s a human tendency to kind of glom on to a particular perspective, and then you catch yourself. You say, “Okay, yeah, that’s part of it, but I’m just feeling part of the elephant here. The elephant is much more than my perspective on it.”

Sharon: Exactly. So you know, it’s just keep coming back to that that is awake throughout it all, right? There’s nothing that it’s not awake in. There’s nothing that it’s not actually arising from it.

Rick: Yeah, I have this friend who is… I’m sorry, go ahead.

Sharon: There’s no exception, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Rick: I have this friend who says, “Well, you’re being wishy-washy, you don’t seem to be taking a stance, because you agree with everybody.” And my answer is, “Yeah, I agree with everybody, but there’s always a ‘yes, but.’ Fine, you’ve got it, but…” It’s like that guy in Fiddler on the Roof, he would always say, “On the other hand…”

Sharon: I like that. And that’s the paradox, right? It’s just like there’s only this, period, end of story, there’s nothing else, the absolute, and yet…

Rick: Yeah, “yes, but.”

Sharon: Yes, but. And … right?

Rick: And that’s not a new understanding. I mean, traditional Advaita is not the plain, vanilla, absolute only, you know, everybody else can take a hike, perspective. It’s actually very inclusive and embracing. And Vedanta actually means “end of the Veda,” but the Vedantas didn’t say the rest of the Veda is bunk. They just said, “All right, well, from this perspective, it’s the totality, but all those other things have relevance if you’re at this or that or the other stage of your progress.”

Sharon: Well, there’s been some misunderstanding around that.

Rick: Yeah.

Sharon: But again, that’s the way it is. Look what happened to Jesus’ teachings.

Rick: That’s the thing, I mean, well, the teacher that I followed for many years, he always used to say, “Knowledge crumbles on the hard rocks of ignorance.” And he also used to say that one can only listen from one’s own level of consciousness, or one’s own perspective, and if that’s not the same as the level from which something is being spoken, then there’s inevitably going to be a misunderstanding or a partial understanding.

Sharon: That’s the truth. You know, here there was like a phase that I went through, my personality has kind of an idealistic bent to it. And so I started to look around and began to see the interpretations and the arrogance and the co-opting of what actually was this fresh and constantly renewing truth. And so the reaction then was judgmental and righteous.

Rick: Your reaction you mean?

Sharon: My reaction. So I got to be with that. And when I began to just let that be and see through it, then I began to see the innocence of it all. That it just can come, like you said so beautifully, or like your teacher said, it can only come from what this mind allows in. And the only antidote of course is to just open up and relax all of that, and then it’s all present, right? But that judgment and arrogance that was here had to be seen through before then the open sort of acceptance of actually it’s all innocent took place. And that’s not always easy for “a teacher,” because the teacher is the grounding, I mean it’s like the lightning rod for everyone’s ideas and projections to be landed on. And you just become accustomed to that. It’s a great fire. It’s a great fire.

Rick: Have you done quite a bit of teaching now?

Sharon: Yeah, I have. You live in the Midwest so you probably kind of understand this. I came from the Midwest and my husband and I were still living there when Adya asked me to teach. So I just began to teach there.

Rick: You were in Kansas or someplace?

Sharon: I was in Kansas. So most of the traditions were in that area and had been for a long time. The Zen tradition had been in especially the university areas for maybe 30 years or more. All the different traditions were there, except the non-dual. So I just sort of naively, and maybe stupidly, I just sort of stepped out and started to meet with people. And they started to ask me in different places, and there was somewhat of a response. But then when I moved to Colorado and I started to go to Boulder, which is a quite sophisticated spiritual community, and I started to teach here in Creston, which again is a quite sophisticated spiritual community. So it was very slow in a certain kind of way, quite gradual. My tendency or interest is more in this more of an intimate, smaller kind of sangha. So that’s what we’ve emphasized, and that kind of remains, and I’m quite fine with that. I’d rather work quite deeply with people, quite intimately, and then see a depth and a maturity happen. So yeah, I teach a lot, but it’s fairly small, 20, 25 in there somewhere. And I like that.

Rick: Actually I got an email from someone who went to a retreat with you and Joy Sharp up in Boulder. And he said he mentioned to you that on a couple of my interviews with various people, the question had come up of whether or not one can awaken without a teacher. And he said, “I’d like you to bring this up with Sharon.” And he said your response was, “Yes, but the embodiment needs a guide.” And he wanted that shared with a larger audience.

Sharon: That’s how it appears here, because from what I’ve observed, and in fact a lot of the emphasis is taken off of trying to support that essential shift of identity, waking up. Because what I’ve observed over this last eight years or more, and I’ve observed so many people throughout the world really, it happens in its own unique way. Sometimes it happens with the teacher. What I’m running into a lot is people in the middle of nowhere. And if there’s some transparency that is present, your natural state will just shine through in its own way. So that seems to…I mean you can set up certain circumstances for sure, and you can be with someone like Adya, that the teaching is so precise and so clear, and the transmission is profound, right? Everything is there with him. So that’s the perfect circumstance that that can happen. But what I’ve found is it happens regardless. It just happens regardless. But the embodiment is… there’s a lot of confusion, and a lot of co-opting, and a lot of grasping, and a lot of, you know, like we just started our conversation. You grab what works for you, and that’s the truth, and everything else is denied, right? So there’s a lot of confusion there, so I think it’s probably vital, actually.

Rick: Let’s explore both of these things in depth. You mentioned earlier, you used the term “essential shift,” and you defined that in terms of abidance. And of course the term “awakening” gets thrown around a lot, and the term “enlightenment” gets thrown around a lot. So let’s give everybody a clear understanding of what you mean by “essential shift” and “abidance,” and if you wish, also “awakening” and “enlightenment,” if you distinguish between those terms.

Sharon: Yeah, I think that’s helpful. You know, I’ll give an example here. Even as a child there had been… do you have a cat?

Rick: Yeah, she wants to go out. I’m just letting her out here.

Sharon: You’re the servant, right? I’ll do whatever you want, honey.

Rick: I’m the gatekeeper. This morning she woke me up at 3 in the morning wanting food, so I fed her, and then I went and meditated for a while. My wife says I’m giving her bad habits, but I think it’s too late.

Sharon: Yeah, you might as well just go with it. It’s too painful otherwise. So here there was many different “glimpses”, I call them that, over and over and over and over. As a child, when I began to meditate, I kind of went along with all of the techniques that were taught, but really the reason why I sit silently in retreats, and I was quite aligned with retreats and did them for many, many, many years, was if I just sit silently, something came and woke up. It happened quite automatically, and that’s what I was after. But the lament of the seeker, it came and it went. And there was still the idea that either it was something outside that came in, or the “me”, the personality, had to do something in order for this to happen. So that hung on for a long, long, long time. And the classic Buddhist teachings, I don’t think it was Buddha’s teachings, but the Buddhist teachings, kind of supported that. You had to do certain things, you had to do this, this had to happen, da-da-da-da-da-da. And probably this was never going to happen in your lifetime. The Tibetans were the only ones that gave you any hope, and then it was so intense, you could never probably do it. But when that essential shift happened, and it happened quite spontaneously, quite profoundly, and quite powerfully, and that isn’t the way it always goes. There’s kind of what they call that “melting quality” that just kind of wears out. Well, mine was many, many, many glimpses over a long period of time, but the coming and the going was quite constant. I just woke up, was out of the dream. I saw this character called Sharon sitting there. I realized, the first thought that came when thoughts started to move a little bit was, “All the teachers were right. There is no way ever that this me is ever going to get it. It’s not designed to do so. It can’t.” And you just don’t give that up until some grace happens and you pop out of it. So it was here, and I’m not saying this is true for everyone, there was this essential shift of identity, and it never went back. It never went back.

Rick: And when you say, “The me isn’t going to get it,” would a fair way of describing that be to say that the “it” we’re referring to is something so much vaster than the “me” that we’re referring to, that the latter obviously cannot contain the former. It’s not like some entity or accomplishment or object that one gets. It’s this vast field of awareness that wakes up to itself.

Sharon: Right, it’s a letting go, right?

Rick: Right,

Sharon: Because the identity is collapsed into this, like you said beautifully, into this little tiny point called “me.”

Rick: Yeah, the ocean is somehow squeezed into a drop, and then all of a sudden it’s shifted around. It’s the drop within the ocean rather than vice versa.

Sharon: Exactly. So when that happens, and again, it’s total grace, it’s different for everyone. Then, no matter what was flushed up, and here, whatever you want to call it, I call it the embodiment, it’s that you come up out of the “me,” and for some that lasts a long, long time, for others it’s a few moments. Here, that recognition, that shift of perspective never changed. It never went back, but almost immediately, I went back to the Midwest. I was having Christmas for my family, I was doing this whole kid-grandmother thing, and it was like, “Whoa, what is this?” And almost immediately, this deep flushing, the embodiment, what it was not, started to pour out. And for probably about six months, it was a wild ride, I mean wild. I would be dropping into the void, where there was absolutely nothing, nobody, and then the next moment there would be this rage, or there would be this confusion of the mind had completely disconnected for a period of time. It was like something had cut the wires, and the mind was over here going, “Nah, nah, nah.” And it had no connection to what was actually expressing itself, none. So it was very strange, and it was very early on with Adya’s sangha. It wasn’t that he probably didn’t talk about it, but again, I didn’t have the ears to hear it. And he already had two or three teachers set up, but I was sort of not connected to that. I tried to talk to my friends who had a very long spiritual practice, if this was any of their experience, and they had no idea what I was talking about. They thought I was kind of like a little crackers. So I just shut up, because something knew itself, and something knew exactly what was happening, and something knew that wisdom was moving. So I just wrote it out, and it was wild. And then I went back, and we had a retreat in California, my husband and I. And the first time I could ask a question, I was up there, and I said, “What is happening here?” And then he explained in this very clear and beautiful way of what really was going on. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was a whole different world. It wasn’t like this better person, more spiritual, awake, more calm, more da-da-da-da-da-da-da, at all. It was like I had stepped out of this, and I had been a very long-time spiritual person. I had had thousands and thousands of experiences for all of my life, to this. And that was it. So no matter what came up, the awareness was prominent. It was never overshadowed, there was never a second that there was a feeling of anything coming and going from then on. So my sense is that that’s a vital thing to recognize. And it isn’t like comparing to how it works for someone else, but it’s really to hear all the way through that you’re stepping into a different functioning.

Rick: Yeah, and in his books, Adya talks about shifts like yours, which are dramatic and abrupt, and then the more gradual ones, which are so incremental that one might not even notice that they’ve occurred.

Sharon: That is true, and I’m seeing more of that actually, and less of those really dramatic ones.

Rick: Yeah, but it’s the whole gamut, and every one is slightly different, but there are certain categories we can put them into.

Sharon: But you know my sense, and the only reason I brought that up was because I think, again, if you look at it, this is more in the collective, this is more recognized than it was 11 years ago.

Rick: Yeah, absolutely, I mean these days people who are having awakenings like yours have plenty of places to turn to, to find kindred souls and teachers and whatnot.

Sharon: Absolutely, and because there’s a lightning in the collective, right, I think that gradual thing is much more prevalent than it used to be.

Rick: And sudden things too, I mean I had this young woman get in touch with me recently, who was living a very ordinary life, not into spiritual things, and she had this kundalini awakening start happening, and she didn’t know what the heck it was. I mean she was a very down-to-earth person, smoking cigarettes and living a normal life, and she needed help, and so I kind of connected her with this one friend who has been through that whole thing, and then she actually got in on Adya’s recent phone call and asked him a question, and then after that the whole thing kind of settled down, and she’s sort of on the other side of it now.

Sharon: Yeah, it’s happening faster, I think. It’s happening easier, and like I said before, I talk to people all over the United States, and they can be a cowboy in Wyoming, and an art teacher, and never heard of anything, and he receives “Deeksha” over the phone and he totally wakes up.

Rick: Yeah, fascinating.

Sharon: It is fascinating. I think it’s extraordinarily fascinating.

Rick: It sort of gives you hope for where the world might be headed.

Sharon: It gives you hope, and also what I’m seeing are these young people, and they’re about maybe 16 to 25, and they are just waking up like that, all over. And I mean in the middle of Kansas, in the middle of Wyoming, I don’t care where, and wherever I go, there will be someone in the audience, and they’ll come up, and they’ll say, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. This happened for me.” But what I think is so wonderful about the younger generation is that they aren’t kind of pulling back. People from my generation, when that would happen, there was this tendency to kind of pull out, you know, a little bit. I think it was our training, and they’re just like, “Okay, I’m in life, I’m going to have kids, I’m going to get married, I’m in it.” And it isn’t even special in some ways, right? It’s just that they go, “Oh, here I am.” So my sense is that’s the real hope, are these amazing young people.

Rick: Maybe the times were such, when we were that age or a little older, and going through stuff that we needed to pull back a little bit. This is just a theory, which you can feel free to shoot down, but maybe we needed every little bit of help we could get, but now it’s more conducive to it.

Sharon: I think there’s truth to that, for sure.

Rick: So many ages, people have run away to monasteries and ashrams and stuff, to get into a more conducive atmosphere. And now, as you say, you can just be in the thick of it and having the same realization.

Sharon: Yeah, I think that’s true.

Rick: Hence the title of this show.

Sharon: Yeah, exactly, perfect. So, we kind of got off of your question a little bit. So that essential shift, if it’s gradual or if it’s sudden and dramatic, that has to happen. And maybe it’s a split second, and maybe it’s over a period of time, I don’t know. But I’ve watched a lot of people that have glimpses and then they claim that this is an awakening. Not true.

Rick: I was just going to ask you that. So would you say that post-shift, the quality or nature of what is being lived is very different from the sort of on-again, off-again phase that you went through? So in other words, it’s not just the on-again phase permanently, but it’s actually of a whole different character.

Sharon: That was my experience, that’s all I can share. That was my experience. That was my experience, even though there was a period of time and it still somewhat happens because that monitor is gone. And so your life looks anything but enlightened.

Rick: To the observer or to yourself?

Sharon: To the observer.

Rick: To the observer, sure, because you’re the same old schmo you always were.

Sharon: Or neurotic, stuff that was hidden is pouring to the surface, or patterns that were held down because there was a monitor that compensated or kept it in the background. All of that pours out.

Rick: Well that gets us to the embodiment aspect of the question, and it’s interesting the way it happened for you. I think maybe for the incremental people, the shit doesn’t hit the fan to the same extent, you know?

Sharon: I think that’s true.

Rick: Because they’re kind of working it out by degrees as they go along. But if the shift is sudden, then the necessary adjustment can be more intense, is what I observe anyway.

Sharon: I think that’s accurate. And here, it wasn’t like I didn’t work anything out before. I spent about 30 years with everything down from body work to long meditation retreats to the works. And perhaps this was just a heavy karmic load, I don’t know. I stopped thinking and comparing it. But yeah, I think you’re right, I think it’s less dramatic. I mean here it was like an explosion for about six months.

Rick: Well you know, I’m very much of the mind that our human apparatus is like an instrument that enables this to be lived.

Sharon: That’s beautiful.

Rick: And that’s what the purpose of spiritual practice is, to fine-tune the instrument and make it a more suitable reflector or receptacle or whatever.

Sharon: Yes.

Rick: But if there’s a big shift one way or the other, if you yank one leg of the table, the other leg has got to come along. So if there’s a big, huge shift in consciousness, as you experience, then the physiology says, “Wait a minute, I’ve got to catch up with this,” because it has to function in an entirely different way to really properly sustain what is being experienced. And there may be a lot of adjustment that’s necessary for that to really get established.

Sharon: That’s a beautiful way of describing it. That was my experience, because it was energetic, it was mental, it was emotional, it was physical, the whole thing.

Rick: Yeah. Did you do anything in particular during that period to facilitate the changes and adjustments that needed to take place? Aside from just berate your husband or whatever you did?

Sharon: I didn’t last very long, because here he was with me through our whole journey. Jean Klein was our teacher before Raja, and we had a lot of Buddhist background, and it was part of what brought us together. And so I’d say, “This is what’s happening. Do you hear what’s happening?” And he’d just go, “You’re a pretty dramatic girl.” So early on I just shut up, because I realized he did not know, even though his teaching was the same, his teacher was the same, he also had many experiences. He did not know what was happening. So in a certain kind of way, I was forced back into this. So that became everything. And what helped was, Adya had a lot of, at that time they were tapes, and I lived really far out. I lived in a very rural area, so I drove a lot, and I listened to tapes almost as constantly as I possibly could. And that was so helpful, because it kept what actually was happening in the foreground, because no one around me really knew what was happening. I couldn’t talk to them. And I’d sit quite a lot, if I could.

Rick: Sat?

Sharon: Meditated. I would just drop, because it was so prominent and so brilliant that it didn’t take much. I just would drop. And then there was that place of ease and well-being, and all was well, because that’s the reality of it. So those two were really what helped. And the other was just, I just hung on.

Rick: Yeah, for dear life. You know, there’s a couple of nice points there. Regarding the sitting, I mean, not only is it in vogue in some non-dual circles to sort of poo-poo meditation as being just a reinforcer of one’s self-image or something, but it’s also sometimes thought that after awakening it’s unnecessary or superfluous. But it’s interesting to note that after his awakening, Ramana Maharshi sat in caves for 26 years before he came out and started teaching.

Sharon: Exactly, exactly. And I don’t know if this is true or not, but I also, I don’t know if you’ve ever sat with Eckhart Tolle?

Rick: Not yet.

Rick: But that transmission of silence is unbelievably stunning.

Rick: Oh yeah, well I’ve been with Maharshi Mahesh Yogi, with Amma, I had lunch with Adya when he came to town here because I set it up for him. And I’m very sensitive to the Darshan effect, and it’s very real, and it really shifts your awareness.

Sharon: Totally, that’s the real gift. I mean, we can talk all we want, but that’s the real gift, is the transmission. But what I had heard is that he sits in silence, as silence a couple of hours a day.

Rick: Eckhart?

Sharon: Mhmm. And so, I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the ground, the fundamental dark, the luminous ground, whatever you want to call that, that’s the nourisher. That’s what informs, that’s what, you know, everything comes home to that. And so rather than a discipline, I’m going to get up at 7 o’clock and I’m going to sit, it’s more like I’m coming back unto myself in this totally deep and non-distracted way. And each time there’s a nourishing and kind of a flourishing, and an informing.

Rick: Yeah, absolutely.

Sharon: So I think, again, it was a good idea because if you’ve had a lot of meditation background, and you’ve hung out a lot of meditation halls, they’re good meditators, and they’ve learned the techniques really well, but literally that practice has closed off what would just come through if there was a little openness. Right? Right? I mean, you see it all the time, that mindfulness, you know.

Rick: Right, some effort, individual effort, sort of keeping things tight.

Sharon: Exactly, so it was a good idea to kind of relax that, but then they threw the baby out with the bathwater, because you know, this is the ground. This is who it all is coming from. This is who we are. So to come back into that and to be renewed and replenished and nourished and informed, it’s like resting at home.

Rick: You’ve used the word “nourished” a number of times in the last couple of minutes, and that’s a really good one for me. It’s like pure being, absolute, whatever you want to call it, it’s doing fine on its own, you know, it doesn’t need anybody to do anything. But as far as living that is concerned, you know, we do have this instrument, and my experience of meditation at this stage is just that it’s extremely nourishing, and it just kind of refines and enlivens, and just purifies, and the whole instrument is tuned up.

Sharon: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: I mean, being was there long before there was a universe, presumably, but now we have a universe and we have beings who can live that.

Sharon: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: And it’s interesting to ponder to what extent the living of it can be developed.

Sharon: That’s my curiosity, it’s right there. That’s my curiosity. These bones are just as awake in the absolute as the dark night sky, right? There’s no difference. You know, the same wisdom, the same essence, the same consciousness, the whole thing is here as much as it’s with the big Buddha temples, and the profound chanting, or whatever. It’s all one thing, right? How glorious.

Rick: Yeah.

Sharon: So living it is the only outcome.

Rick: Right, and again, it’s in vogue in certain non-dual circles to sort of have this on/off, black/white kind of conception of awakening, like, “Oh, you’re awake? That’s it, done.” But in my experience…

Sharon: It’s the beginning! You just started!

Rick: And that’s what I get in talking to the people whom I consider to be a little bit more mature in all this, Adya, Mooji, Gangaji, many others. It’s like they all say, “I don’t know what the end of this is, it just keeps ever deepening, ever refining,” and so on.

Sharon: How could it? Right? I mean, it’s eternal, right? It’s infinite, so it’s impossible. I know one of the great gifts, I mean, here, like I said, when the essential shift happened, that was just the beginning. And we’re talking almost 11 years later, and I would say now it’s starting to some kind of ease, and I don’t even know how to say it, equanimity. Being able to live somewhat, a little bit, from what one has recognized, just a little bit.

Rick: Wasn’t the equanimity there in the beginning, even if all hell was breaking loose, there was an underlying equanimity?

Sharon: There was an underlying equanimity, but the outer expression wasn’t.

Rick: I see, yeah.

Sharon: So now, what Adya calls the seamless, that’s starting to come about. I’m probably a real slow learner, but it took that long, just for that kind of seamless, just really starting to be lived.

Rick: So now you’re more unflappable in the face of challenging circumstances, and more equanimity on the surface, you say?

Sharon: Yeah, and the connection to the outer has really relaxed. It includes the outer, but there is more of an abiding, more of a “it’s right here.” And that out and believing and then coming back, all of that has really relaxed. It’s just much more of an ease of being. All of a sudden those teaching pointers start to come in, “Oh, that’s what that actually is.” But it certainly was not overnight. Some people, I think, they’re more wired that way. You have to live the cards you’re dealt.

Rick: So we’re talking about what Sharon means by an essential shift or abidance, and we’re talking about embodiment. I think those are both very important topics, and I think it’s kind of important in general that people continue to make efforts in this whole non-dual world, or whatever we want to call it, of students and teachers and so on, to clarify their terminology, because there are a lot of terms thrown around, and people don’t necessarily mean the same thing when they say “awakening” or whatnot.

Sharon: I know, it’s interesting. I tend to use certain terms that came from my teacher, Adya, because they’re so clear. But, I don’t know how to say this. My sense is that, just to say that there’s this essential shift, and then truth is prominent, and then it begins to live the life, and that’s as far as the description goes. I think we, again, collectively are moving into something that really has not been fully described as of yet. And, that may be bunk, but that’s my sense. What appears to be happening upon the earth, and I know Adya doesn’t talk about this at all, Eckhart Tolls talks about it somewhat, and he calls it the “new earth”, that there’s something that seems to be…

Rick: Sharon, just lower your mic a little bit more, we’re still getting a lot of…

Sharon: A lot of breath.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Sharon: How about that?

Rick: That’ll be good, thanks. Keep going.

Sharon: Is that there’s this full waking up, right in the midst of form, right in the midst of the earth, and it is including literally everything. It includes, as you say, the absolute, it includes the embodiment that seems an act of love that seems to move and come back and illuminate what has not been illuminated in the body-mind current structure. And here, it seems to be coming in and totally including and consciously waking up in the body. In my example of the bones, consciousness is waking up inside of the bones equally. And quite recently, something seemed to open a way that had never been experienced before, which is like a kind of a descending, and including also this Sharon-ness. Do you hear what I’m saying?

Rick: Yeah, I think so.

Sharon: All the way through. We’ve tended to say, “There is no me, there is no this, there is no that,” and that’s true, fundamentally. But my experience is that something is moving in deeper and deeper. It’s more of this descent, and it’s including this character in a very intimate way, also called Sharon. So there is a residing in the emptiness, but something is not stopping, it’s including, including, and deepening, and deepening, and deepening, and deepening. So there is a kind of an intimacy that is being experienced that has really not been touched consciously before. So I find that interesting. Adya calls it the virgin birth, right? It’s the Christ waking up into form, all the way.

Rick: There are several interesting things in that I’d like you to expand on. First of all, in terms of what’s happening in the world at large, I suspect, it’s just a theory, but I suspect that there is nothing new under the sun in the sense that there have been people throughout history who have had this as full, and as embodied, and as rich an awakening as we can imagine, but they have been such rare exceptions.

Sharon: Absolutely.

Rick: And now we’re talking about some kind of collective mass awakening taking place, so that’s the new thing.

Sharon: I hear you.

Rick: And somebody brought up, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Sharon: That’s true, but I also wonder if, as the collective, if there isn’t something possible that perhaps has never really quite been touched, and I’m talking about the experience on the earth.

Rick: I think you’re right. I think that, as they say, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and there is probably, in our least recorded history that we know of, has never been a whole containing so many awakened parts as there seems to be happening now. So we’re going to see unprecedented ramifications of this.

Sharon: It appears so. We’ll see.

Rick: That’s probably what Andrew Cohen is talking about with his evolutionary enlightenment thing, you know, that he writes books about and talks about all the time. I’m going to interview him in a few months, and I haven’t read his book yet, but he’s always talking about how he feels that the field of spirituality itself – ooh, dog just tripped over the wire, can you hear me?

Sharon: Yeah, I can.

Rick: The field of spirituality itself is evolving, and that we’re kind of breaking fresh ground in terms of what is possible in terms of enlightenment in the whole spiritual realm.

Sharon: There’s a sense of that here, but who knows, right? We’re just all on the run.

Rick: Someone used the analogy a while back as if there’s a thick membrane that had to be pierced in order to have this essential shift, and back in the day of the Buddha, the membrane was kind of tough, but he pierced it, and others have pierced it, and it’s been getting pierced and pierced and pierced to the point where it’s kind of diaphanous now, and it’s easier for others to just sort of step through without much fuss.

Sharon: That’s my sense, that’s what I’ve observed, and just like I was saying in the last ten years, you can really see a change just in these last ten years.

Rick: Yeah. Another thing that’s exciting along these lines is if we think of technology as a parallel, the sort of exponential acceleration of it, and if the same exponential acceleration is happening in consciousness, then that’s thrilling.

Sharon: Thrilling. No one knows how it’s going to be, however.

Rick: No, and it’s interesting to note that there seems to also be an exponential acceleration of things on the negative side, like global warming and stuff like that.

Sharon: Absolutely. I mean that’s what is the interesting part, right? Is it the enlightening that, just like when that happens in the individual, there’s that essential shift, and then there’s this flushing, right? Because it can no longer reside. It’s being permeated by this light, right? Bright. And the sense is here anyway, that’s what’s happening on the earth. So when you watch the news, everything that’s being brought to the surface is actually a great grace. It’s a hard love, it’s a hard grace. I’m not romanticizing what’s going on, but you can see that it’s that same thing as what appears to happen to the individual when that enlightening starts to happen. And here we are on this huge stage, right? It’s amazing.

Rick: Maharishi used to say that the world is going to change radically, one way or the other. It’s inevitable. And what he was trying to do was lubricate the process, just to make it smoother by having people change voluntarily as opposed to involuntarily.

Sharon: I can’t remember the name of the author right now, but his name, let’s see… I can’t bring it up, but the book he wrote that I was re-reading was called “Terra Christa.” I’ll think of his name in a minute. And he said that there is this picture, and it’s a Mormon picture, and it’s showing the light of consciousness, the light of the Christ, pouring through the earth. And there are those who are doing this, and then there are those who are going through a great deal of pain and gnashing of teeth, and it’s a great resistance. And I thought, “Isn’t that interesting?” In this Mormon painting of really what’s happening. The resistance is creating more pain, where the opening is there is a greater grace, and both are happening.

Rick: Interesting.

Sharon: Yeah, it is, isn’t it?

Rick: I’m going to get ooga-booga on you for a minute here. I have this friend named Robert Cox who wrote a book called “The Pillar of Celestial Fire,” and it’s about the ancient science of the ancient sea, or something. But his premise was that he goes into great detail about what he calls “subtle energy”, and he talked about how the Egyptians understood it and everything. And he said that because of the precession of the equinoxes, we’re entering into a time when a great blast of subtle energy is coming from the center of the galaxy and irradiating the earth, and that this is going to cause this incredibly profound shift. It’s a fascinating book, he also talks about how it’s really subtle energy which is involved in the whole waking up of the individual human being, and so on.

Sharon: You know, it’s sort of my �where I look’ is that subtle energy, and you can sense it, this that’s pouring into the earth. And if you’re clairvoyant, you can see it.

Rick: Let’s talk about that a little bit, because according to your bio, you have this clairvoyant ability and you can see into people’s bodies, and you’ve done some intuitive healing things, and also. Tell us about that.

Sharon: You know, it’s just a fascinating detail, I don’t know what it means. I’m the fourth generation in a line of women, and each one in the generation just was born with the ability to see, you know, that old Irish thing, you know? And so it wasn’t anything that I developed or I thought was different, but I was raised in a childhood that we pretty much were isolated from one another. You know, some families are like that. So no one just said, “Well, what’s going on with you?” So somehow there was just this internal world that was just always present. I was never frightened, I never thought it was different, I never talked to anyone about it. So as time went on, probably in the middle/late 60s when everything kind of hit, and I was introduced to Buddhism, which to me was meditation. And so just by opening to that consciously, then things began to really accelerate. And very quickly I began to work with a couple of teachers that were quite beautiful, quite pure, and I was very lucky to have that, because there is a lot of misuse and misunderstanding, but they were very pure. And he could see, the husband could see that I probably could do that. So he just sat down with me and he said, “Just look in my field, and I’ve got an issue here and I’d like you to look at it.” I had no background, I didn’t know anything about it, I had no training, nothing. I sat down and I just saw, and it was a significant injury in his knee, I saw what happened, I saw the energetic picture of how it was, the whole thing, it was just there. And so it was very gradual, people would just say, “Well, I’ve got this, can you look here?” And then I just kind of stepped into faith and began to do it as also my work. So through the years, of course, and I did it for about 25 years, you refine it and you begin to see deeper and more precise and more clearly. But it wasn’t anything that I developed. It was just like being a painter, you’ve got a native ability somewhere, you’re born with it, and then by doing it thousands of times, you get better at it. But right before I met Adya, I could see that it was help putting out fires, but it really wasn’t deeply bringing true healing. And so I just kind of put out this prayer. And then after I met Adya, what I started to do was I used that same skill, and then I looked into it and I could see where that being was consciously. And I could see what was being held out, and I could see maybe how bringing consciousness to that, how that would really accelerate things. So that’s how I sort of pointed at this point. So when I do dukosans, if people are interested, I’ll just tune in, and I’ll look at their field, and I’ll say, “Well, this is really awake, and this is maybe some old belief here, and if you’d look at that, this would help free that up, and this is over here.” And it seems to be of benefit, because it’s very direct. It bypasses the mind. So it’s used in service of that at this point, and very rarely, unless someone really has an issue that they want to look at physically, then why not serve that? But it isn’t the emphasis.

Rick: Interesting. Do you have to be sitting in person with a person, or do you do them over Skype and things like that?

Sharon: Skype, phone, whatever.

Rick: Doesn’t matter.

Sharon: It’s all one, huh?

Rick: And do you have to kind of turn it on and off, or does this happen all the time?

Sharon: I turn it on and off, and I’m really glad about that.

Rick: Yeah, you’re not like sitting in a restaurant, scoping out all the people.

Sharon: You know, and it’s never been like that. It just was sort of, you know, once in a while I’ll go to a grocery store, or I’ll walk past somebody, and I’ll get a download. But it’s just like a cloud or an energetic formation, and it just kind of moves through, and then that’s it. So I’ve always been very glad that I’m kind of very mechanical in a way. I just kind of turn it on, I look, give the information, it goes off. I’m very sensitive energetically, you know, like you. I’m quite tuned in to transmission and darshan, and very, very sensitive to that. In fact, that’s what I tune into, and then the words are secondary. But no, I wouldn’t want the burden of always being turned on.

Rick: Right. I wouldn’t want to turn this into a sort of a party game kind of thing, and you may not feel it’s appropriate, but do you feel like, since you’ve been talking to me for an hour, you’ve been saying a few things that would be appropriate for public consumption, that would sort of demonstrate that kind of ability or insight?

Sharon: Haha… we’ll see. I’ll see if I can check in, and if something is there, I’ll share it with you.

Rick: Okay. Hopefully something I won’t have to edit out.

Sharon: I’ve been invited on all sorts of radio and all of that, and I’ll never do that. You have an interesting field. It’s quite vertical, and what I’m looking at is not so much, I mean it’s unique in that it’s this body-mind, but it’s more like that big picture, the big view of really who you are. And you have a very vertical channel.

Rick: Vertical?

Sharon: Vertical is, I would say, we’ll use the word “incarnation,” you can use the word “dream”, I don’t care what you use. But I would say that just incarnation after incarnation after incarnation after incarnation, you have aligned to that that is more of the spirit. And as you know, because you’re very well-read and you’ve got a brilliant mind, is that it was mostly separated out, right? It was in the transcendence. So you may be in the body, and you may live on the earth, but usually it was separated out, you’re in some kind of a monastery. If the body was even acknowledged, it was more to make it more able to sit for hours and hours and hours and years and years and years. So it wasn’t really seen as a part of the whole. And so that vertical is the pure spirit. And so I would say that you probably came in with a pretty developed interest and background more towards that transcendence, the vertical, the ground, the invisible. And it’s quite, whether it’s conscious or not, and I assume that it is, just by looking at your field, that dark, that fundamental ground, it’s quite awake. But what it is, it’s defined. It’s like this, and it’s still within, oh, I would say, do you know what the central channel is? It’s like the crown and then it’s the interior of the body.

Rick: I think so, you mean like the whole chakra system and sushumna and all that?

Sharon: Right, sushumna, it’s the central channel. Every religion and every intuitive sees the same thing. It’s where the invisible comes into the visible. It’s before the chakras, it’s before the whole thing, right? So yours, it’s very developed. But for whatever reason, when you’re called into this dream that we call life, it draws itself back into wholeness and balance. So you’re going to be drawn into relationship, you’re going to be drawn into the world in a certain kind of way, whether you want to or not. You’re going to be drawn into looking at how is this lived and expressed, because it wants to open up, and it wants to include, and it wants to experience everything. But the tendency and what you’ve come into, it’s a very, quite developed, it’s quite mature, but it stays within a certain parameter. So it wants to come into wholeness, but the tendency, I would say, would be that. So if there’s any encouragement, it is to open consciously meditation, whatever works for you, where you’re undistracted, and open to this very silent nature. It’s quite there for you, whether it’s totally conscious or not, I don’t know. And then let it open up into space. You’ve got the root, you’ve got the ground, but it hasn’t quite opened all the way into the space. There’s this beautiful Tibetan term, and it’s called “Awake Space”, “Aware Space”, or Jesus. It’s the vertical, which is the Godhead, the spirit, the pure spirit, and then the horizontal, which is the expression. It’s the Divine Mother, right? It’s the substance, it’s the holy life. And in the middle is the heart, and of course that’s the awakened way in the body. So if there could be just this emphasis for a little while of what is unbound, what is totally free, what is this, the Tibetans call the “pervading space.” The sense is, it’s all there for you, but this hasn’t quite happened in the degree that will bring about that deep abidance, that deep, sustained being.

Rick: I think that’s a good assessment. I mean, I’ve been meditating a couple hours a day for 44 years, but I always feel that, um, and there is definitely an abidance, regardless of what’s happening.

Sharon: That’s apparent.

Rick: Yeah, falling off a bicycle, running through an airport, even trying circumstances, there is something that is rock solid. But I always have the sense, and I articulate this all the time as a general principle, but it also applies to me, that there is plenty of room for growth, plenty of room for greater clarity, expansion, embodiment. And I can relate to that sort of “lifetimes in monasteries” bit, because I actually did live in one this lifetime for a long time, and really resisted the idea of getting married and all, because it seemed like it was a lesser dharma, and took a lot of adjustment.

Sharon: But life did it anyway.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, it was an intuitive sense that this is the way to go, even though all my friends were telling me I was crazy and stuff.

Sharon: Yeah, right. Well, you know, it’s obvious that that verticality is very deeply awake and quite present. But it doesn’t make sense to the mind because it sounds too simplistic, but there is just this quality of just opening, vast, in the horizontal. And then that great ground permeates everything without exception.

Rick: So when you say “opening vast in the horizontal”, you don’t necessarily just mean unbounded awareness, which one naturally settles into during meditation, and is even there out of meditation, but you mean more of a horizontal in terms of the relative field of interaction and behavior?

Sharon: The space that pervades everything.

Rick: The space that pervades everything, oh.

Sharon: And so again, if the tendency is to be a bit “this”, then it’s just open to the awareness to the exact opposite of that, and you’ll begin to sense what’s being pointed to. It’s the pervading space, you had a beautiful word, I don’t remember what it was, the “unbound.”

Rick: Unboundedness, yeah.

Sharon: But rather than that dark ground like here, the dark ground opens up as it is.

Rick: That’s interesting. You know, some people say that their experience is that they see everything as the self, everything as that unboundedness, and I had a long debate or discussion with Rupert Spira about this when I interviewed him, but I kind of really get the idea of unboundedness as my essential nature, not just an idea but living that. But in terms of apprehending everything around me as the self, there’s tastes and glimpses but it’s not my living reality. And maybe that’s what you’re referring to here?

Sharon: That’s what I’m referring to. That’s that shift.

Rick: Yeah, and you’re saying that what would facilitate that would just be a sort of a relaxing of some sort?

Sharon: And you’re a master meditator, so I think that’s where your laboratory should be. And just, it’s an opening, but it’s a letting go, that absolutely total letting go.

Rick: And you make that sound very voluntary, very wilful in a way.

Sharon: I think it’s possible, because there’s a recognition here. That’s what’s required, and that’s what is choiceless. But when that is open, then I think that it can be. It can be open to, it’s just to be made conscious. And if there’s a strong training, and most monastery spiritual beings have a very strong training to keep it into the vertical.

Rick: Interesting. I think that one thing that would be very beneficial for me also, and I’m not trying to make this all about me, but hopefully others will find it illustrative, is spending more time in the presence of somebody like Adya, having kind of more attunement or transmission opportunities.

Sharon: It’s profound. I’m surprised though, how many miss, they don’t even notice it. The transmission is like not even noticed. It’s all about the words, and it’s all about the experience that the words point out. The transmission of course is what’s making it all happen. But yeah, that classic, it’s a very old Eastern pointer, “Be with the Master,” you know, just hang out with them. Did you ever read, it was called “The Chasm of Fire,” and I think it’s called “Irma Tweedie?”

Rick: It’s definitely on my to-do list, but I haven’t read it.

Sharon: It’s beautiful because it’s all about just being in the proximity of that that is so profoundly awake, and then it begins to move and burn in this very beautiful and quite dramatic way, what it’s not.

Rick: It really does. I’ve had a couple of experiences, both with Maharishi and with Amma, you know, the hugging saint, where I’ve been with both of them a lot, but in a couple of circumstances where I wasn’t aware that they were entering the room, I was kind of like, and all of a sudden this wave hit me, and it was like, “Voom!”

Sharon: Exactly.

Rick: And then, “Oh yeah, they’re here!”

Sharon: Exactly, exactly. So yeah, to be in that presence, it’s so magnified and so amplified. That’s their gift, right? I mean, I’ve had the privilege just twice being with Amma. I mean, it was like, you know, I can’t even describe it, it’s indescribable. But what I have also noticed, and I’ve talked with Joy about this because she’d spent so many years with her, that often people that are just strictly with that transmission, they don’t always have the wisdom. And those on the wisdom path that get it all through the teachings, they don’t seem to have that awake transmission. So again, I adore my teacher, but I think he’s quite rare in that both are there.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, he’s definitely got a complete package.

Sharon: He definitely has a complete package. And so here, when I would sit with him and it happened the first time, it would be the words I heard, but they would just be like ripples on the field. There would just be this total “is-ness.” The transmission was what it was all about, and then everything kind of happened within that. And then I started to talk to other people, and it was all about the words, or they would be irritated about people’s questions, or whatever, and I thought, “God, I’m not that at all!” It was just this vast “one.”

Rick: I think it’s all important. I mean, just as we need food, we need air, we need exercise, we need this, we need that, because there’s all these different facets of our makeup, and each one needs its nourishment.

Sharon: Oh, absolutely.

Rick: You know, in the field of spirituality, you have to have both, you have to have the knowledge and the experience, and one without the other can definitely get kind of lopsided.

Sharon: Yeah, I certainly feel that. I mean, there was this beautiful… there was an Indian man, and he was, I guess you’d call him a healer, I think it was just Darshan, and he said that there are those who follow the path of the sutra and those that follow the path of the direct transmission. But I agree with you, I think this is wholeness, and both is required.

Rick: It’s interesting because you said earlier in the interview that you alluded to people who seem to just have an understanding of this, and kind of mistake that understanding for the whole enchilada.

Sharon: Right, it’s quite common. Or, you know, I couldn’t see that it was even possible, because if the truth would wake up, the essential shift would happen. The sense was that the truth then was prominent, and it would take it all the way, it would be the guide all the way, right? There would be no co-opting and getting off and then starting to talk about the awakening. But what I observed is that it happens much more than not.

Rick: I’m sorry, I lost you a little bit there. What happens much more than not?

Sharon: There’s this true and genuine essential shift of identity.

Rick: Right.

Sharon: So what I thought would happen was that that would be the guide, and it would lead all the way until there was this complete, whatever you want to call it, this seamlessness.

Rick: Right.

Sharon: It doesn’t happen very often. What mostly happens, from what I’ve observed, and maybe this is just a phase, a collective phase, is there’s a certain recognition, it’s genuine, and then somehow my mind grabs and says, “This is it. This is as far as this is going to go. I’m home. I’ve got the blue ribbon.” And it seems to be that.

Rick: Yeah.

Sharon: And others, that’s not a choice.

Rick: I interviewed Mariana Caplan a couple of weeks ago, and she’s written a book about discernment on the spiritual path, and she has a chapter about the 10 most common spiritually transmitted diseases.

Sharon: Oh, that would be a great book.

Rick: Yeah, I love it. Number 10 was the “I’ve got it” disease, you know, this sort of tendency for us, for people, for some reason, prematurely, I guess “premature immaculation” is another phrase we can use, to prematurely assume that whatever awakening they’ve had is the ultimate.

Sharon: It’s a prevalent disease. There was this rumor that went through Adya sangha, I don’t know, four or five years ago, and I have no idea if he even said this or not, but you know how those rumors happen. And he said, “You know, probably only about 50 out of 5, I don’t know, it was a very small number, is going to take it all the way.” And there was just chaos, you know, and of course everyone says, “Well, I’m not that, it’s choiceless for me, I don’t have a choice.” But that’s when it first started to dawn that that essential shift is just the beginning.

Rick: One of Amma’s favorite phrases that she always says in talks is that it’s good to always have the attitude of a beginner.

Sharon: Absolutely.

Rick: And she’s saying that to a mixed audience, so she’s also implying her most advanced people.

Sharon: Absolutely. You know, it’s in beginner’s mind. Suzuki Roshi, you know, that’s the most… because it’s fresh, it’s only here, right? It can’t be any different.

Rick: And actually, in terms of the whole scale of things and what’s potentially possible, it was brought to my attention recently that in the Yoga Vasistha they outlined 16 kalas, they call them, which are like levels of evolution. And humans supposedly occupy maybe numbers 5 through 8, 8 being the greatest saints, and then there’s 8 more above that. So if that’s true, and if we think of it in that light, then we’re all beginners, relatively.

Sharon: We’re all beginners. I mean, you’ve been on the path a long time, and so at least when I was meditating and sort of trying to open, I didn’t even know what enlightenment was. I just had this idea it was union with God, that there was this presence, and I wanted to abide as that, right? So I didn’t even have the idea of enlightenment much at all. But we were told that it wasn’t going to happen, that it was a very, very, very, very rare thing. So now it’s in our common language. Everyone is getting a glimpse, you know, that even just wants to sit still. So now that we’ve grabbed that, you know, it’s like being teenagers, right? Now we know everything, and we think that we’re hot, and we’ve got it, and we’re this and we’re that, you know? Maybe.

Rick: You remember what the voice said to Adya when he had his first awakening? He said, “Keep going!”

Sharon: “Keep going.” You know, the heart sutra, you know, “Beyond, beyond, beyond, to the other shore.” You know, that’s a constant, “Beyond, beyond, beyond, there’s no place to land, there’s no place to claim, there’s no finishing point.”

Rick: There’s another saying, I think it’s from Zen, “Always being, always becoming.”

Sharon: Right, yeah.

Rick: I mean, this whole idea of “give up the search,” and so on and so forth, I think there’s definitely truth to that. You arrive at a point at which that kind of annoying, yearning, searching, desperate feeling dissipates and is gone, but it doesn’t mean the exploration or the adventure is over.

Sharon: Not at all. You know, I think here, and this is interpretation, you may have a very different view, but the search is very innocent, right? It’s awareness that wakes up and it begins to lead the life consciously, but then again, very innocently, the tendency is to go away. So, when the search is ended is when the attention comes back to itself, and then the adventure really begins. That’s the real deepening.

Rick: That’s the way I understand it. I mean, I definitely went through years of sort of, “Oh God, get me out of this, I’ve got to …”

Sharon: Yeah, and that’s just part of it.

Rick: Yeah, and if someone had said to me during that phase, “Give up the search,” it would have been like saying to a hungry man, “Well, stop being hungry.”

Sharon: Right, exactly.

Rick: But once he’s had some food, then you don’t need to say that anymore.

Sharon: Right, exactly. But the deepening, I think, just simply doesn’t end.

Rick: Yeah, beautiful. Well, we could probably sit here all day saying that over and over again. I don’t think you can say it too many times from too many different angles. It’s, I think, a really valuable point for people to hear, which for some reason has made it kind of a theme of these interviews.

Sharon: Well, that’s why I was drawn to your interviews, because you were talking about it, and many don’t. It’s almost a little bit of a taboo. If you say that it’s deepening, then you haven’t got it yet, like I’ve got it.

Rick: Right, you’re like future-oriented.

Sharon: [laughs]

Rick: You have a lovely laugh.

Sharon: Oh, I like to laugh, yeah, thank you.

Rick: Did you always laugh like this, or is it more of a post-awakening characteristic?

Sharon: I’ve always loved to laugh.

Rick: Oh, that’s good.

Sharon: They call it “free karma,” right? Laughter is just totally free. My husband, who studies all this stuff, there’s also 528 hertz, which is the resonant measurement frequency, and that laughter is that.

Rick: Oh, cool, I never heard that.

Sharon: Kind of cool, huh?

Rick: Yeah, it’s neat. Okay, great, well, this has been delightful.

Sharon: You asked all your questions that you wanted to?

Rick: I think so, I mean, the way I’m wired, I can sit here all day dreaming up new ones, but I think after a while I just get this feeling like, “Okay, it’s going to be a little redundant if I keep going now.”

Sharon: Well, it’s been a delight, and I really see what you’re doing is really very beneficial and helpful, and so I’m glad I got to participate.

Rick: Yeah, I look forward to meeting you. If we come out West, or you come out East, or something or other, we’ll get together one of these days.

Sharon: I’d like that, I’d like that. Thank you so much. Love to you. I know that’s very non-dual, but love to you.

Rick: And to you, love to you.