Steve and Winifred Boggs Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. This is a weekly show in which we talk about spiritual awakening. My name is Rick Archer and my guests tonight or today whenever you’re watching this are Steve and Winifred Boggs. My concept of this show was inspired by the fact that in the town where we live, Fairfield, Iowa, and around the country and around the world, there are a great many people who are experiencing what we might call a spiritual awakening. We’ll define that concept in the course of our conversation as we do every week, but I want to say something about what a spiritual awakening is not. It’s not merely a set of beliefs or a religious conviction. We’re not talking about an idea so much as an experience, and we’re not talking about an experience which one might have momentarily and then remember fondly as having been a profound thing for the rest of one’s life. There were great poets who had experiences like that and wrote poetry about them for the rest of their lives, but the experience wasn’t sustained. We’re talking about a shift in one’s perspective of what one is as a person or as more than a person, which is permanent, which is sustained, which is abiding, and which apparently nothing is able to perturb. So that’s my concept for the show. I’m admittedly unqualified to really judge whether a person has had a spiritual awakening or not, but I’m pretty much taking people at their word, and so far I think we’ve lucked out in terms of the sincerity and genuineness of our guests. I have quite a list of people that I intend to interview as the weeks go by, plenty enough to keep us going more or less indefinitely. So I guess I’ll start by inviting Steve and Winifred to introduce themselves a little bit, where they come from, what they do, just something about their ordinary day-to-day existences, and then we’ll begin to get into some deeper considerations.

Steve: I’m Steve Boggs. I’m an electrical contractor. I live here in Fairfield, Iowa. I have for well since 1983, and that’s about it with respect to what I do during the day. But like pretty much everyone in this town, I have a TM background, going stretching back to 1966 when I met Maharishi and started meditating. It’s a very familiar story to many people, became a TM teacher and moved on through the various levels of the TM organization. We ended up sitting on the board of directors at the National Headquarters. Actually you were finishing up at Livingston Manor about the same time we showed up at South Fallsburg. There’s more to the story which we’ll get into as it goes along. I should let Winifred say some things.

Rick: You mentioned you’re from Los Angeles originally.

Steve: I was originally born in native California, yes. Winifred?

Winifred: I’m originally from New York, which you can probably tell from my accent. I moved to California in 1965, started TM in 1967. Steve and I have been married for almost 36 years. We’ve been living in Fairfield, as he said, since 1983. In terms of my personal self, I’m a bookkeeper. I take care of all the books for my husband’s business, but I’m also an artist. I’m a painter. I do intuitive energetic portraits of people, places, events, and pets. I’m also a poet and published a book of poetry in 1993. I guess that’s about it in terms of my daily.

Rick: What is an intuitive energetic portrait?

Winifred: Well, this gets into a little bit of more subtlety of my perception. I’ve been doing art my whole entire life and probably for the last maybe 30 years I’ve been doing these paintings for people. I don’t need to see the person. I don’t need a photograph of them. I just need a name. What I make is that, you know, somebody will commission. Most of my work is commissioned. Someone will commission me to do a painting for, say, their wife or themselves or something. Then I just, when I’m ready to work on it, I start and think about them. Some visual image comes to me and that’s where I start. As the painting continues, more things develop, more subtleties, colors, form, shapes, like that. In the last probably 10 years I’ve grown much more at home with this. Most of that has come because when people see my paintings and I give them to them, they’ll find things in them that are so right on for them, like a shape or color or some object or something. I had no idea where that came from. It just came out of the work that I do.

Rick: Maybe we’ll be able to give the producer a couple of your paintings. He can kind of, you know, stick them in here at this point in the conversation. We’ll see what they look like. Is it the kind of thing where if my sister, whom you never met and lives in Washington DC, commissioned you to do one, her friends would actually recognize her in that? Or is it very abstract?

Winifred: It’s more abstract. It’s more abstract. I have done some that is somewhat representational, like there’ll be some object or shapes or something in there, but it’s not, you know, like, oh there’s a picture of Rick.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: Or there’s a picture of Steve or Brian. It’s an intuitive, energetic portrait.

Rick: Interesting. Do you have a website where these things are displayed?

Winifred: I do. Winifred Boggs Arts. How do you spell Winifred? W-I-N-I-F-R-E-D, B as in boy, O-G as in good, S as in Sam, dot com.

Rick: Yeah. You know what we’ll do is… Arts dot com. Winifred Boggs Arts. We’ll put a link to that in a couple places associated with this show, so if people want to look at them, they can.

Winifred: I appreciate it. Yeah. On the YouTube channel we’ll put a link and maybe the producer will be able to put a link in the closing titles of this so people can write it down and check it out.

Winifred: Thank you.

Rick: So, regarding spiritual awakening, here in Fairfield, from my perspective and my interactions with people, I feel that a lot of people, dozens, scores, maybe hundreds, have undergone a shift to a… what would be a radically different state of consciousness if they had shifted to it instantly, but in most cases people have spent decades sort of culturing and developing this experience, but for many people at a particular time, they really sort of crossed the threshold of some kind and realized, “Oh, I’ve awakened. I’ve changed. I no longer perceive myself merely as a flesh-bound individual who is just located here and now.” There’s something much more vast or universal or however they want to define it, but they have essentially arrived in an experience which redefines their self-concept. And you both have told me that you have kind of undergone such a transition, and so whichever of you would like to go first, I’d like to kind of hear about that. And you can either start with the transition itself, that point, or maybe start with events and experiences leading up to it. Whatever you feel would most meaningfully convey to someone who is either familiar or unfamiliar with this kind of thing what it is we’re talking about.

Steve: Well, Winifred preceded me by five years in this.

Rick: In her awakening?

Steve: Yes. So maybe she should go first? Yeah, I was playing catch-up for a long time.

Rick: Yeah, having inferiority complexes?

Steve: Just wondering, “What am I missing? What is it? What is it?”

Rick: Yeah, what is the old osmosis principle? So what year was that, Winifred?

Winifred: It was in 1999.

Rick: Okay, and what happened? What were you doing? Were you just walking down the street?

Winifred: Well, as I said, I’ve been meditating for many, many years, and something started changing in the early part of that year, ’99, that I started looking at what I thought, or the ideals of what I thought enlightenment should be, and how it should show up in me, or how awakening would show up in me. And I started doing… I don’t know how… It wasn’t like it was over a week or two-week period of time, or… I just would have these thoughts. Well, I’m not going to show up like that. I’m not going to maybe have perfect health. I’m not going to show up like not having a New York accent, and being kind of flamboyant. I’m not that quiet, sweet. I am sweet, but I’m not energetically demure. That’s the word.

Rick: In other words, you might have had certain expectations about what enlightenment or awakening was, and you began to realize, “Wait, maybe that’s not it.”

Winifred: Right, and in terms of myself, my personal self. And so, over this period of time, I would say it was up until maybe March. It was like I was peeling an onion. “No, I’m not going to be that. I’m not going to be that. I’m not going to be that.” And then I came to this place where I realized that you wake up as who you are, who I am, and it was like the bottom fell out.

Rick: Suddenly one day on April such-and-such, or kind of just over a period of a week?

Winifred: Yeah, it could have been. I mean, it may have been a moment, but in this day and age right now, I don’t remember. But I do very specifically remember feeling totally at home with myself, and not only recognizing my personality or my personal self, or my relative self if you want to use that word, but also that I was never born, never died. Like a totality. I mean, these words, the words just do not do justice. But that’s the nature of what we’re talking about. And that went on for, I can’t say that it was, you know, I still had my emotions, you know, my daily life. And that went on for probably until November of that year, of 99, when I was faced with a catastrophic illness, and nothing changed. Nothing changed.

Rick: Nothing in terms of that aspect, which it was never born and would never die?

Winifred: Yeah, in terms of that realization, nothing shifted. And that’s kind of when I knew that this was permanent. And it was a grace and a gift.

Rick: So if someone listening to this, you know, someone might be listening to this, and think, “What is she talking about, never born, never dies? Obviously she was born, and we’re all going to die. So, you know, what is this aspect of herself that, I mean, is she talking about some spirit that goes to heaven, or something like that, and therefore never dies?” Or, you know, that’s how people often conceive of this kind of thing, which could very well be dismissed as a nice optimistic belief, you know, or faith, article of faith, as opposed to something you’re actually experiencing on a day-to-day basis.

Winifred: It’s what I experience on a day-to-day basis.

Rick: And can you elaborate on the nature of that experience? Doing ordinary things, shopping, walking down the street, washing dishes, or however you’d like to explain it.

Winifred: It’s never lost. It’s just never lost. It’s an awareness. It’s beingness. It’s that which holds everything. I mean, I’m sure Steve could probably give you more beautiful expressions than I have.

Rick: This is good. This is fine. You’re doing great.

Winifred: But fullness. No longer searching. I don’t know if that answers that a little bit better.

Rick: It answers it to me.

Winifred: I don’t know about those of you out there.

Rick: One of these days, this might be a live call-in show, and we’ll get questions on the spot. But that’s very nice. It’s funny because I was listening to a spiritual teacher on a podcast a little while back, and he was kind of laughing at the fact that all these people come to hear him say something for hours at a time that can’t really be said or explained, and that they’re sitting there listening to something that can’t really be understood. But he was sort of chuckling at the irony of the situation.

Steve: Right.

Rick: But nonetheless, I think if we have any degree of enlivenment of this in our own experience, we know what you’re talking about. And it is a kind of a universal thing, as we have seen and as we will be seeing. I mean, there are hundreds of books you could read, and hundreds of lectures you could listen to, where people are talking about the same thing in their own terminology, in their own experience. And I liked what you said. Oops, you almost got me. Her mic fell off. Go ahead and put it on while I’m talking. I liked what you said about realizing that it wasn’t going to show up as something other than what you are. I remember when I had first learned to meditate, I was riding along with a more experienced meditation teacher whom I respected a lot, and I was playing in a rock band at the time. And I was saying, “If I get enlightened, and the other guys in my rock band get enlightened, will we be able to just go up on stage and spontaneously create great songs without even having conceived of them before we got up on the stage, or practiced them, or anything else?” And I kind of conceived of it as being this super ability kind of state. And I think, I’ll get to Steve in a second, I don’t want to do too much of the talking, because as Larry King said, “If I’m talking, I’m not learning.” But I think that a lot of people set the bar kind of impossibly high for themselves by assuming, for whatever reason, that enlightenment or awakening is this, that, or the other thing, which it will never be. Or maybe it was for this individual or that individual, but it’s not going to be for you. And some people have accused me of interviewing people who’ve lowered the bar, and said, “Oh, yeah, well, you’re going through a midlife spiritual crisis, you’ve kind of come to the conclusion that you’re never getting enlightened, and therefore you’ve just kind of compromised what enlightenment actually is in order to make yourself feel good.” And so some guy sent me this a little while ago in an email, but I don’t think it’s that. And so maybe I’ll turn to Steve now and have him talk about his awakening, and maybe you can address some of the points I’ve just been making while you do that.

Steve: Yeah. It is true that there are exaggerated and idealized myths, I guess I would call, of this awakening. I want to thank you for taking the initiative to open this portal of communication that may, I think, serve a lot of people really well, to know that this is a real thing that can be, is being experienced by some guy down the block.

Rick: Right. Buddha at the gas pump.

Winifred: On 4th and Burlington. That’s where I get my gas.

Steve: So, like I said, I have a TM background and have always been quite earnestly seeking, ever since the beginning. There was a period in the 80s, after 30 or so years of diligent practice, where it became for me, the paths became, in a certain way, a substitute for the goal, and it was enough that I was a sincere spiritual seeker. The possibility of this actually happening for me in this life was not in my conceptual framework at that point. And yet, there was still somewhere way back inside that restless hunger that never really completely went away. One day, a friend of mine who had lived here for some years and moved away called me and said, “You know, Steve, I want to tell you one thing. That great spiritual ideal we’ve held for all these years, it actually is real. I know it because I’m living it.” I said, “Whoa. You?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Even me, an ordinary guy like me, can live this.” He said that there’s this thing I’ve been involved with for a year or two now called “Waking Down In Mutuality,” and you should check it out. With some trepidation and reluctance, I started casting a wider net and looked into this and found it was a pretty good fit for me. Maybe I should say a little bit more about what it’s somewhat… You want to say some more about…

Rick: Well, I’ll be asking you questions about it. You can either say it now or you can keep telling your own story, or whatever works for you.

Steve: Okay. After a year or so of fairly consistent and serious involvement with “Waking Down In Mutuality,” I found myself living my life, and yet there was this kind of indefinable sort of angst that was quietly increasing in some background place of my being. It was a combination of dread and anxiety or something. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Rick: Depression, too, or just dread and anxiety?

Steve: Depression. No, no depression. Just some sense of… It kept building for a number of weeks. It finally was coming to a head, and I was talking on the phone to a teacher, “Waking Down In Mutuality” teacher in Colorado, who said to me, “You know, Steve, I’d like to give you some homework.” I was wondering what you were talking about. She said, “What if all the spiritual development you’ll ever have in this lifetime is what you’ve got right now? If that’s true, would that be enough?” I said, “Hell no!” She said, “Steve, it’s homework. Just ponder it. Just let that percolate in there, and just call me in two weeks.” So I did that, and the answer, whether it was yes or no, I discovered varied to some degree. Sometimes it was yes, sometimes it was no. Then in our next phone call, this quiet dread was coming to the surface more. I was speaking with her. I’ve always felt very relaxed and at ease and comfortable with her, but somehow in this conversation, I started getting some kind of fear. I was afraid something was going to happen here. In the midst of our conversation about the homework, she said, “Wait a minute, Steve. What’s your understanding of consciousness?” Suddenly, I started to feel kind of on the spot, and I had to perform, and I mumbled out some non-answer about sentience or something. I started to feel pretty nervous. She said, “Okay. So where are you located?” I said, “What do you mean? I’m talking to you on the phone. I’m sitting in my office.” Then at this point, the anxiety was really going. Inwardly, I felt like I was in a submarine, and there was a fire had broken out, and all these red lights were flashing, and warning klaxons were blaring. I was just panicked. Something was happening inside that I was very afraid of. Then she asked another question, and I can’t remember what it was. That sort of panic, that dread peaked, came to this head. I felt like I may have been going to die here. Something was going to die. The intensity of that suddenly just snapped. Everything was silent, and open, and spacious, and I could still… It wasn’t as if I lost the recognition that I was in my… I could still orient myself in the room and sit in the chair, but it was also as if I was in a certain way in outer space, and there was no up, no down, no gravity, no distance, no close, no far, no… It was just open, silent, vast, spacious, endless, changeless. The wonder of wonders is I was that, and I had always been that. It’s mind-boggling when that recognition is viscerally alive in you, because suddenly, even though you’re sitting here in a chair and you’re in a room and you can orient yourselves, you are limitless. You are changeless. You are endless. You are beginningless. You are entirely self-evident and whole. The thing that was most remarkable about it is it seemed like the sound is kind of dramatic, but it was a really quiet moment. It was really small and yet sufficient unto itself. It was almost, not quiet, but it was almost as if this awakening moment happened, and yet, in a certain way, nothing happened. It’s an ineffable thing to try to put words around, because there are so many dimensions to it, and words are so… You can only get them out one at a time.

Rick: It’s just these little sounds we make.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. The thing is, though, that there’s another part of this. Not only that I had discovered I’m infinite and endless and, in a certain way, have no history, because I didn’t begin, but it’s also true that this realization, this consciousness that I am, is everything else as well. It’s not just that I have suddenly discovered my changeless nature, that in my limited nature, I am also you and this and all these other things. It’s just all that.

Rick: Did you realize that just then in that phone call with the lady?

Steve: Yes. In that moment, all this was apparent. Yes. It’s kind of stupefying in that moment, that it’s simple and obvious, and it feels completely natural when you’re at home in a way that you never have been before. There was a kind of pressure that had always occupied my entire adult life that suddenly was just…

Rick: Relaxed.

Steve: Yeah. Never in any of my deepest meditations or most wondrous experiences was that completion realized. Although TM served me really well for 37 years, I think I said before we started, I think I needed a finishing school to finally come home. That’s just me.

Rick: It’s hard to say.

Steve: Obviously, Winifred didn’t. I did.

Rick: Different strokes for different folks. It’s kind of silly to play “what if,” but if you hadn’t been meditating for 37 years, it’s altogether likely this would not have happened. It definitely built a foundation.

Steve: Oh, absolutely. That was one of your list of questions about practice. In this moment, Winifred used the word “grace,” it feels like there’s this grace. This is completely not what I thought it was going to be. It’s not an extension of something that I have been working towards. This is entirely different.

Rick: So that’s interesting. Your concepts of awakening or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it, that you had entertained for 37 years, didn’t match what ended up happening.

Winifred: I love that expression you always use, “It exceeded.”

Steve: Yes. This realization left my expectations. My expectations for this were unmet and exceeded.

Rick: Can you connect, though? Can you say, “All right, for 37 years, I was thinking this, this, and this, and I can see how these things were pointing at the experience I’m now having, but obviously my conception of them was way off the mark because I wasn’t having the experience.” Sort of like the Zen analogy or metaphor of the finger pointing at the moon and mistaking the finger for the moon.

Steve: Yeah, because before this defining moment, all I had was my thoughts about it. And the thoughts – it’s not of the mind. This awakening is not of the mind. It’s of being itself, consciousness realizing itself as you and as this world.

Rick: So even the tastes of that that you had been having in meditation didn’t really predict for you the experience once it had matured or ripened or whatever you want to call it.

Steve: That’s right. It’s not what I expected it to be. It’s way more and way less.

Winifred: I was just going to say something about experience. I’ve had a lot during my meditation career, and maybe even a little before that, I had some very profound and deep and flashy type of experiences. And for some reason, I always felt that was not the goal because it was still in that realm of experience. This has a more quiet, omnipresent feel to it.

Steve: Right. You wouldn’t want to necessarily be having a flashy experience 24/7.

Winifred: No. Because we are in ordinary life too.

Steve: Right. And to me, Rick, it isn’t really an experience.

Rick: Right. Yeah. Okay. Got that. I’d like to ask you, and Winifred, feel free to pipe up anytime because I’ll just kind of ask whatever comes to mind, but I was intrigued by your statement that it was both more and less than what you had anticipated. Maybe you could elaborate on the more and the less.

Steve: Oh, yeah. Another Waking Down teacher that I was speaking with, I was talking about, “What am I missing? Why am I not getting it over this year that I was involved in this work?” And she said, “Look, Steve, why don’t you just write down a list, make it big, get a big piece of newsprint or something and write down all the things you think need to be true for you, for you to consider yourself to be awakened.”

Winifred: He seriously did that.

Steve: Yeah. It was a long list.

Rick: Walk through walls.

Winifred: A big newsprint paper.

Steve: I didn’t realize it until I started writing them down. And I thought, “Yeah, I had a lot of stuff that I thought this should all be true for me, for me to be considered myself.” This is…

Rick: Well, this email that I got that I referred to earlier from a guy who knew about this show, and he happens to be on the Purusha program in Uttarkashi, India, which is this long meditation program for monastics. And he’s been meditating his brains out for decades. And his whole email, the tone of it was like, “Who do these characters think they are? Can they levitate? Can they become invisible? Those are the criterion of enlightenment, and if they can’t do those things, then forget it.”

Steve: Yeah. I had a lot of similar ideas, and it turns out they just didn’t have a lot to do with the nature of this realization. I didn’t awaken out of and away from my life. I awakened right in and through and as this body, this being, this Steve Boggs character. And I expected to be, you know, “Get me out of here,” basically.

Rick: Well, you knew your body was going to continue to function, but you assumed it would run some kind of logic.

Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Above and away from and untouched and forever equanimous and never angry. Yeah. It’s not that.

Rick: So is that the more part or the less part?

Steve: In a certain sense, it depends on how you’re looking at it. I expected it to be that, and it isn’t that. The more part is the part that you can’t conceive of, because it’s not something that’s mental and it’s ineffable. You can try to describe this changeless, endless reality that you know you are, and its infinite variety and wonder and change in your life, but you always come up short.

Rick: Yeah. Remember the incredible string band that grew up in the ’60s? There was a great line from one of their songs. The song was “Job’s Tears,” but it was, “Whatever you think, it’s more than that.”

Steve: That’s true.

Rick: So again, Winifred, whenever, anytime you feel the impulse, just pop in there.

Winifred: I’m not known for being shy.

Rick: When you had this awakening, what year was this? About 2004? This was… 2003.

Rick: 2003? 2004?

Steve: 2004. 2004, yeah. Yeah, because five years after ’99.

Rick: Right. Was that it? Did you just kind of slide back into plain old Steve life, or was it sustained? Was there any kind of…?

Steve: Oh, no, it’s never left, but over time there is a further integration that happens. It isn’t as if all growth stops in this moment and everything is perfect.

Rick: I wasn’t suggesting growth would stop, but I was saying was there any backsliding? Did you get caught up again and forget this thing that you had…?

Steve: No, it’s… how can we describe this? For me, it’s not forgettable. It’s not something that changes.

Rick: Hmm. Some people use the analogy of, once you recognize that the snake is actually only a string or a rope, it’s never going to fool you again. You’re never going to think, “Oh my God, no, I know it’s a string, it’s a rope.”

Steve: Yeah. There’s a knowingness that isn’t affected by…

Rick: Whatever happens.

Steve: Right. But it isn’t as if… I still have attractions, aversions, likes, dislikes.

Rick: Sure.

Steve: I still have a personality. I’m still recognizable as Steve Boggs. I have psychological wounds, I’m sure, just like everybody else. But there’s also, deeper within me, it’s also true to say that this reality that I know myself to be doesn’t change at all.

Rick: Right. I don’t know much about Waking Down, although I have a lot of friends who are into it.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: But one phrase from that that I’ve heard that I like a lot is the “wake down, shake down.”

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: And what I understand that to mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong, is that once awakening happens, then some real housecleaning can take place, which might not have been so possible before when you’re just living a more constrained existence.

Steve: Yeah. Once this realization occurs, that’s when the booster rockets really fire on you.

Rick: The booster rockets.

Steve: The booster rockets. Because now you have capacity to actually hold yourself in the midst of an investigation of the deeper, darker parts of your being that have always been there, but have never seen the light of day because they’re too threatening.

Rick: Yeah. You didn’t have the capacity to relax and allow yourself to face them.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And the recognition that you don’t have to get rid of them.

Winifred: Right. And hide them under the rug.

Steve: Right.

Winifred: You know, that part of your individuality or your humanness.

Rick: Yeah.

Winifred: Because we are, you know, I know I am, and so most people have lots of different parts of their personality.

Steve: I would say that under the impact of this sort of stunning realization, all of your previous beliefs and concepts and assumptions and presumptions and intuitions about your life and your being and who you are and what your identity is and how the world is and who people are and all that, that all has to be reconfigured under the impact of this change, this fundamental change to a place which I would call wellness of being that’s always there.

Rick: Several trains of question in my mind. Before I lose it, I remember reading a book about Peace Pilgrim.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: Many people may have read about her. She was this marvelous woman that just sort of walked around the country for years in a pair of sneakers and a sweatshirt, just completely relying on the grace of God or whatever to take care of her. But I remember in her little book, one of the things she said was that after a certain stage of awakening, she even drew a little graph, but there was this sort of sharp curve of accelerated progress that was possible once a certain basic awakening had taken place.

Steve: Yeah. I would say that’s true.

Rick: Yeah. Do you feel, either of you, that this kind of reevaluation of assumptions and judgments and concepts and all that, the things you enumerated, does it take place spontaneously or do you kind of make it a practice once this awakening is taking place, where, “Okay, I’m going to sort of like chip away at this one and now let’s work on this one?”

Steve: Do you want to go ahead?

Winifred: Totally spontaneous. Mm-hmm. It’s totally spontaneous. Most of the time, or a lot of the time, I wouldn’t say necessarily most, but the interactions that you have with other people and your environment are really ways that have helped me learn about who I am and how I show up.

Rick: Mm-hmm.

Winifred: There’s the waking part, there’s the down part, that embodied part, and then there’s a mutuality piece. Mm-hmm. And that self/other dynamic is huge.

Rick: Mm-hmm. I’ve heard it said that at a certain point in the world becomes your guru and whatever you encounter is exactly what you need to encounter to experience that. Encounter is exactly what you need to encounter to experience or learn what’s next on the docket.

Steve: Yeah, you don’t have to seek it out as a practice.

Rick: Right.

Steve: The universe is going to bring it to your door.

Rick: Mm-hmm.

Steve: There’s a mysterious wisdom of being that creates circumstances in your life that just brings this stuff up for reevaluation.

Rick: And I would say that happens to everybody, awake or not awake.

Winifred: Right.

Rick: That’s what’s always happening, but you maybe realize it more clearly when…

Winifred: Right, and there’s a bigger container to hold it.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: I mean, part of the thing too is something may come up that you notice here, and that sort of sorts itself out, some pattern you have of behavior. And you feel, “Oh, yeah, that sort of feels okay now.” And then a year or two later or at some period of time, there it is again. At least for myself, I’ve noticed a shift in how that shows up in me or how I’m showing up. And I think that’s where a lot of the growth takes place on a personal level, not on that absolute level or awareness level. Am I saying it clearly?

Steve: Yes. The one thing I might add as commentary is that when these personal issues that sort of create the constraint, the limitation of our humanness get triggered in us, and it’s like peanut butter on a knife. It doesn’t come off with one swipe usually. But the thing is, if it comes up again six months or a year later, it’s like a spiral. You’re coming back around again to this spot on the cosmic wheel, but you’re not here now. Right. Now you’ve gone down to here. Now you’re seeing this at a deeper, more fundamental, kind of more foundational part of your being is investigating that dimension of it, and you can continue around with that.

Rick: Is core wound a Waking Down term? I’ve heard that kicking around. And would that be… I mean, you’re talking about issues and little twists and knots and whatnot that we all have within us. Would that be the sort of ultimate issue? Is that what they mean by that? The ultimate twist?

Steve: Yes. All these different personalized individual, like we could call, characterological wounds we all carry.

Rick: Characterological?

Steve: Yeah, that are unique to us. Character flaws and shortcomings and hang-ups.

Rick: Yeah, our own particular personal…

Steve: Yes. They’re like little fault lines that go off various places, but the core wound is the San Andreas fault to which they’re all connected.

Rick: I see. All these different things are all connected to this one basic…

Rick: Well, is the assumption or the purpose of Waking Down to ultimately get to this core wound and heal it?

Steve: To make it conscious. The core wound could be…

Rick: Can it be healed?

Steve: In a way, but it isn’t what you expect.

Rick: How so?

Steve: This realization also could be characterized as your resistance to feeling this core wound surrenders. And this core wound could be characterized as the intuition that there’s something more to life, there’s something larger or more meaningful or grander or bigger that everybody feels. There’s got to be more to my life than this.

Rick: That’s the symptom of the core wound?

Steve: That, as well as the obvious limitations that we feel all the time in ourselves. Those two things together, the rub of those is the core wound, the restless, anxious heart that results from that.

Rick: But you said that when you had this awakening, you no longer felt the restless, anxious thing, you felt content and established.

Winifred: That was more in terms of being awakened.

Steve: That I was referring to something a little bit different there.

Rick: Okay.

Steve: Yeah, I wasn’t referring to the same thing. Now, this core wound is in a certain way healed, but it’s healed in the sense that you become okay with it as it is. That human life does have limitations and your fundamental okayness with that is, in a certain way, a healing of that.

Rick: Wouldn’t you say, or could you say, that you become okay with the limitations because at the very same time and continuously, there is an unlimited component?

Steve: Yes.

Rick: That’s a very comfortable place to rest in and you don’t give a hoot about the limitations as long as you have access to that.

Steve: You continue to feel the limitations. It isn’t as if you’re immune to the constraint of the existential pain of human life, but there’s a larger frame of reference.

Rick: Yeah. You could say that for many people, those limitations are the entirety of their existence and that must be very painful. “Oh my God, my life is meaningless,” or “I’m trapped,” or “I’m doomed,” or “I’m going to die,” or whatever. What you’re saying is, “Fine, we’re going to die and there’s limitations and we can’t do this and we’re not a billionaire,” but there’s a freedom or a contentment that persists regardless of those constraints.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: Correct?

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. One thing just popped through my mind randomly. Can I just take off in another direction?

Rick: Sure, yeah. That’s what I’m doing.

Steve: Something just came through my mind is that we’re in Fairfield and we are, for decades, deeply steeped in the Ayurvedic perspective. One thing I wanted to get across in this, if I could, before we wrap up is…

Rick: No, we’re not wrapping up yet.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Rick: Explain the terms as you go, in case somebody…

Steve: Ayurveda is an ancient Indian tradition of healing arts. It’s been practiced and is thoroughly imbibed in all of its breadth and depth in Fairfield. One thing that became clear to me and to both of us in this is that perfect health is unrelated to self-realization. It’s not a prerequisite and it’s not a consequence.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: I can speak from personal experience.

Rick: Do you want to talk about that?

Winifred: Well, I mean, I mentioned it when I was telling the story of my awakening and… Should I?

Steve: Whatever. If you’re comfortable, otherwise…

Rick: Whatever you want to do. We don’t have to.

Winifred: I don’t know. I mean…

Rick: Well, we can come back to it.

Winifred: Yeah, I’ll see.

Rick: Think about it. See how it feels.

Winifred: Yeah.

Rick: I mean, a number of examples come to mind. I mean, there are a lot of great people who are considered very enlightened throughout history, who had anything but perfect health, at least when they got around to dying. I mean, Nisargadatta, who happened to be a chain smoker, died of lung cancer. Ramana Maharshi died of, I think, some kind of throat cancer or something. We don’t know exactly what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died of, perhaps, but…

Winifred: He had weak lungs.

Rick: Yeah, weak lungs. He had all kinds of things, but it wasn’t… I mean, nobody has…

Winifred: None of us get out of here alive.

Rick: Yeah, true. And I don’t think, in my mind, that doesn’t diminish any of them.

Winifred: No.

Rick: If you have some scars on your fingers, probably from electrician work. You cut yourself, you bleed.

Steve: Yes.

Rick: And that’s not perfect, but it’s not an obstacle to awakening, or being awake.

Winifred: Or being awake while that’s going on.

Rick: Right, right. I remember about 10 years ago or so, I fell off my bicycle one day. I was coming into a gravel driveway and I took the turn too fast and skidded. And I had a helmet on, fortunately, but as my helmeted head hit the ground and my, skinning my hands and elbows, I was kind of amused at the same time at this sort of unshakable silence that was just kind of watching the whole thing in a way. And it was there regardless of all this pain and trauma.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah, it’s often in moments of crisis that this becomes more obvious.

Rick: Yeah, I particularly love running through airports trying to catch connecting flights. Talk about Buddha at the Gas Pump, I feel much more awake in situations like that than I do kind of sitting in my quiet little room.

Steve: Yeah, in a certain way, in the midst of the anxiety to meet the plane, you feel this freedom.

Rick: Yeah, and there’s all this, you’re hustling, your lungs hurt, and you don’t think you’re going to make the connection. At the same time, there’s this just perfect silence that’s predominant even. It’s not even somewhere in the background. That’s the main thing is this perfect silence. And then there’s O’Hare Airport.

Winifred: But that’s me. See, to me, that’s truly being in your life. You know, like living your life, really living your life.

Rick: Yeah.

Winifred: I know it sounds kind of…

Steve: It’s hard to put into words.

Winifred: It’s really hard to put into words because to me it has this huge, huge depth to it.

Steve: Yeah, this is part of what you were saying to me for five years when I was banging my head on the wall, “What am I missing?” And you said, “No, Steve, life itself is your teacher.”

Winifred: What? That’s the title of my book.

Steve: Yeah, and then you would say something like this, “You’re just living your life.” And that’s…

Rick: And you would say, “But I’ve always been living my life.” Yeah. I want more.

Winifred: I mean, that’s one of the reasons. That’s another reason why before I was told I had this illness, that I felt like what had happened to me was really true because he was investigating other things. And I just said, “I don’t want to…”

Rick: Like Waking Down or whatever?

Winifred: No, not Waking Down. Other things. You know, other teachers were coming to town and he would go…

Rick: Check them out. And I’d go and I’d go.

Winifred: I mean, nothing… It’s like I had a teacher. Maharishi was my teacher and I didn’t need anyone else. And I think I should explain, even though I had my awakening before I got involved in Waking Down, what got me into Waking Down was the mutuality piece.

Rick: You might need to elaborate on that.

Winifred: The self, you know, myself and other. And not just meaning like other you or Brian or someone like that, but someone self-other.

Rick: Yeah.

Winifred: Your relationships with other people and how your environment impacts you and how you impact your environment and how that helps you to grow or develop or… You’ll have to excuse me.

Rick: That’s all right.

Winifred: I get a very dry throat.

Rick: Get some water.

Winifred: I keep doing it but it doesn’t… I have some water. I don’t know if that was real clear.

Rick: No, that’s good. But I want to probe a little bit. Usually you hear about waking up or awakening and so on. And so when people first hear waking down, they think, “Well, why are they calling it that?” And my understanding of it is that, like you said, when you had your awakening, it wasn’t so much an ascension where you sort of became disengaged from your individual life or your body or whatever. It was more like an integration…

Winifred: Embodied.

Rick: Into that, into your individual life.

Steve: Yes.

Rick: So is that why you guys call it waking down?

Steve: Yes. The primary thrust of this particular awakening is down into your body, into your life, into the emotional, the bodily, the relational dimensions of human experience is where it all happens. You’re not awakened away from and out of and distant from.

Rick: Now, do some people become awakened and out of and distant from? I mean, are there brands or flavors of awakening that you run into?

Steve: I think there are.

Rick: That where people just become aloof?

Steve: In my conversations with other people in town, I think there are. It isn’t as if… Before this happened for me, I thought, “Well, surely it’s the same for everybody. It’s got to be. It’s true.” But I think there is differences.

Rick: Now, in your conversations with these people, do you feel that they have actually awakened themselves or are they still pre-awakening and they’re kind of conceiving it as being something that will enable them to escape from the fray of life?

Steve: No. I take them at their word. They say they’ve awakened. I think there are different qualities to this. And if I may make a historical reference, otherwise, why else would Adi Shankara be traveling all over India, having these huge debates with all the Buddhists of the day about whether there was or wasn’t a self? There are differences in how this is revealed.

Rick: It’s true.

Winifred: Through the individual.

Rick: And so what you imply there is that maybe the Buddhists were enlightened and maybe Shankara was enlightened, but they just had different flavours of it. Now, some would argue that they were at different stages of it and they were arguing from different states of consciousness. And in fact, there were a number of people whom Shankara debated who, at the end of the debate, saw his point of view and became his disciples and eventually glommed on to his level of experience.

Steve: I don’t know that. I don’t know the answer to that. But my sense is there are differences, both from my personal conversation with other people and from this.

Rick: So I wonder if these differences are more a matter of personal makeup and preference or more a matter of choice, where you choose to engage in a practice or a path or a group that’s going to culture your experience in a different channel than some other.

Steve: I think it’s the latter.

Rick: You think?

Steve: There are different lineages that produce different – I don’t know if I want to say strong enough to say types – but different dimensions of this awakening experience.

Rick: But wouldn’t you say that some people are naturally inclined to be more reclusive and maybe sit in a cave or the modern equivalent of a cave, whereas others are more inclined to plunge into the thick and thin of life?

Steve: Yes.

Rick: Yeah. And so maybe you align yourself with whichever group or lifestyle or whatever is best suited to your nature, and you enjoy your awakening in this way or in that way, according to what’s right for you. So then there’s the mutuality part, awakening down in mutuality. And is the implication of that term that your awakening is kind of a collective awakening as opposed to just your awakening and the interaction with others enhances it? You explain. Why the word “mutuality”?

Steve: Let’s see, the simplest way to do this. Being is equal parts identity and relatedness. And the nuts and bolts, when you get right down in the engine room of relations with other people, is where the rubber meets the road of this realization being challenged.

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

Winifred: There you go. [Laughter] Yes. Actually, that’s one of the things I used when I, you know, how Maharishi was talking about the dyeing the cloth and all that. I grew up in New York.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: And so I always thought, “Oh, when I go see my family in New York, then I’ll know something, whether I’ve gotten anywhere at all.”

Rick: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. The acid test.

Winifred: The acid test.

Steve: So we’re saying there is a sort of catalytic effect in relations with others, and we take this dimension of life seriously, and it’s important, and it’s part of this whole process.

Rick: So how does the actual Waking Down group of organization help you to do this?

Steve: Well, we have open sittings where there’s usually a teacher or mentor leading, and people are sharing what’s up for them, their current edge, we could say. And…

Winifred: Whatever that might be. Yeah, it could be anything. The good, the bad, the ugly, it could be anything.

Steve: Yeah. And others are listening to that person, sensing what they’re feeling, feeling their own, what’s going on in them, their own reaction, and in the back and forth of being true to yourself and open to the truth of the other, something more happens.

Winifred: But I might add that there are people in Waking Down who have their awakening, and you know, they’re gone.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: They don’t come around.

Rick: Oh, yeah, they…

Winifred: I mean, it’s not…

Rick: They feel like they got what they wanted.

Winifred: Yeah, I mean, it’s like you were saying, different people have different flavors or different interests, or…

Rick: Right.

Winifred: You know, so I wanted to put that in there.

Steve: Okay.

Rick: I noticed earlier that… Actually, before I ask you that question, I think we’ll take a little break. Okay. Because we have to change discs, and maybe we have to go to the bathroom. And so we’ll do those things, and we’ll be back in just a minute.

Rick: Welcome back to Buddha at the Gas Pump. This is a regular weekly interview show in which we discuss spiritual awakening, not in an abstract philosophical sense, but with people who have actually undergone such an awakening. And this week we’re talking with Winifred and Steve Boggs. My name is Rick Archer. So I was going to ask you, Winifred, towards the beginning of the interview, when you were talking about your awakening, you mentioned the word “grace,” and your eyes started to tear up when you mentioned that. You obviously felt a great deal of emotion when you mentioned the word “grace.” Why did it have that effect on you when you thought of the grace that bestowed this on you? Doing it again.

Winifred: Because it makes you feel so soft, so loving in the world, like a blossom opening up to the sun. A sweetness, a gentleness. Maybe it’s a grace because I did not know that I could truly have that, that I could truly be that. As I am.

Rick: Did you just compose that on the spot or was that one of your poems?

Winifred: That’s one of my spontaneous poems.

Rick: That was great. [Laughter]

Rick: Usually the word “grace” implies that there is some divine source that has bestowed grace upon us. Do you have that perspective?

Winifred: I guess I wouldn’t phrase it in exactly the same way, but yes, essentially that’s it.

Rick: God or whatever you want to call it.

Winifred: Yeah, however you would like to.

Rick: Feel like you’ve been blessed by…

Winifred: I’ve been blessed.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: I have been truly blessed. That’s beautiful. I love that…

Steve: May I add another dimension to that?

Rick: Yes, please.

Steve: I feel the same way. Another part of that is that all the efforts you’ve made for all these years aren’t what actually did it. There’s something else inexplicable and mysterious and way beyond what you thought this was going to be. The hunger and yearning you carried for all that time suddenly is… There’s breathing room around it. Yet it feels natural and not at all dramatic. What I would say is that the non-separateness that you experience in this, the essence of that non-separateness between you and I, between myself and this table, the essence of that is love, in my experience.

Rick: The essence of the non-separateness.

Steve: The non-separate quality of this realization.

Rick: The component that contains everything, so to speak.

Steve: Yes, there’s a non-difference between who you know yourself to be and everything else.

Rick: And the essence of that is love.

Rick: It feels that way to me. And to you?

Steve: You may not say it that way.

Winifred: I may not say it that way.

Rick: Now when you say the… I’m sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Winifred: I was just going to say I didn’t know what word I would use.

Rick: When you say that all the efforts you made all these years didn’t cause this to happen or something like that, it’s not experienced that way. Let’s say this Self with a capital S or unbounded awareness or whatever you want to call it, is like the sun, and there are clouds which have been blocking the sun, and so it seems like you don’t experience the sun. Now from the perspective of the sun, it’s always been shining. Clouds or no clouds. But from the perspective of the ground, it isn’t shining. And the wind kind of blows away the clouds, and then the sun is shining. I mean, analogies have their limitations, but the sun might say, “Eh, wind is… it doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s like I’m shining. I don’t care whether there’s clouds or wind or not.” But it makes a big difference to the person whose vision of the sun was obscured by the clouds. So it’s ridiculous to sort of say, to play what if and what would have happened and this and that, but there seem to be a number of spiritual teachers who meditate for 30 years or something, they have this awakening, and then they turn around and tell their followers, “You don’t need to meditate. It’s just natural. Don’t bother doing anything.” And that to me seems kind of misguided or misguiding, because it does seem that although the efforts we make in spiritual practices don’t cause something, which in its nature is uncaused, they do kind of lead us to a point where we can be a fit reflector of that.

Steve: Yeah. I would agree with that, that it’s a mysterious process. Were I to conceive of my life for the last 40 years, if it didn’t involve a substantial amount of spiritual practice, would this have ever happened for me?

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Maybe not. Maybe I could even say probably not.

Rick: Right.

Steve: But what I’m trying to get at is in that denouement to realize, when you realize, “Oh, I’ve always been this. I’ve never been anything but this.”

Rick: Right.

Steve: There’s a dimension to it that is self-evident and sort of self-validating that is in a certain curious way kind of retroactive to all those years of seeking.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: All the years of seeking are obliterated in the joy of arrival.

Rick: Yeah, I can see that. But let’s say a person is a multi-millionaire, but they don’t really know it. And then someone says, “You’re a multi-millionaire, but what you’re going to have to do to get all that money is, here it is. You’re going to have to ride a bicycle across the United States, and then you’re going to have to climb this mountain, and then you’re going to have to swim across this channel, and you’re going to have to do this, that, and the other thing. And when you finally go through all these steps, we’re going to give you the key to the bank account, and you’ll be a multi-millionaire.” And so the person does all this stuff, and they finally get the key to the bank account, they have their money, and then they can really enjoy the money. Now, they knew all along that they were a multi-millionaire, and looking back, it seems like a whole lot of fuss and bother. “Why couldn’t I have just been given the key, after all?” But they did have to go through that stuff, because those were the conditions, for some strange reason, of their getting the money. And so, sure, we’ve always been this, everybody is this, the drunk in the gutter is this effulgent self, or whatever you want to call it, but it seems like a certain amount of preparation or something is, from my perspective, it seems to be useful. I mean, the drunk in the gutter could wake up one morning and find himself enlightened, but the likelihood of that seems to increase if we go through certain purification and refinement and all the stuff that spiritual practices are supposed to do.

Steve: It is a mysterious process. It’s hard to establish causality, but this awakening, if we look around, is more common in spiritual circles than it is not. So that says something.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: And if I were to… You want to jump in here?

Winifred: Go ahead.

Steve: One of the questions was… We’ll get to this. It relates to this. From this perspective, if you could look back to talk to yourself 10 years or 20 years ago, what would you say? What would you say? That was a beautiful question. It really touched my heart.

Rick: The guy who named this show Buddha at the Ass Pump came up with that question also. Isaac Nevis.

Steve: Great question. Great question. I’ve been pondering that. And what I would probably say is, Steve, your sincerity and the purity of your intention, those things are your strongest assets in this search. Just keep going. And I’d also say, trust yourself.

Rick: Good. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi often used to say to his students, he referred to them as already enlightened. And everyone would sort of scratch their head and say, “How does he mean that exactly?” I think from his perspective, he could see it. Everyone was essentially enlightened or awakened or whatever you want to call it, but just some little confidence was missing.

Steve: Something had to enter.

Rick: Some clarity.

Steve: And then there’s a reason why they call it self-realization. It happens in and through and by yourself.

Winifred: I was going to say that – I forgot how this tied in earlier with what you were speaking of – that people have seemed to have that desire for enlightenment or fulfillment or awakeness or whatever word you want to call that which we all are. That to me is a huge driving force.

Rick: Yeah. There’s something in that, I think it’s the Yoga Sutras or something, where Patanjali classifies yogis or spiritual aspirants as having either mild, medium or intense striving for that. And he says, the more intense it is, the quicker you’re going to get it.

Winifred: And the reason I say that is because as a child and as a teenager, I felt one of the major things that I wanted in this life was, I called it Peace, with a capital P. That’s what I was looking for. Peace in my soulmate.

Rick: Right. You got it all.

Winifred: I got it all. Yes. But there is that thing that’s alive in people, I think. At least that’s what I’ve found when I’ve talked to people about their past and how they felt about themselves in retrospect.

Rick: People who have awakened, you mean?

Winifred: Yeah. Yeah. There was something in their nature or their makeup all along that kind of predicted. And maybe they pursued TM or maybe they pursued some other Buddhist type of meditation or even Christianity.

Rick: Why not?

Winifred: I lived in a monastery for a number of years. That’s another story. These people were doing the same thing.

Rick: Yeah.

Winifred: Anyway.

Rick: So Steve alluded to some questions. People who are watching this show, eventually we hope to have it become a live show so that you can call in questions. But we’re not there yet. But people have been emailing in some questions and I’d like to read some of them out. And at the end of the show there will be some titles and email address will be on there that you can use to email in questions. But in any case, here’s the first one. I won’t necessarily go through all of these, but one question submitted was, “Since you awoke or shifted or whatever you want to call it, how has the experience of various human emotions changed for you?” And he lists a bunch of emotions, happiness, fear, compassion, anger, love. So let’s do that one. Whichever of you would like to talk about it.

Winifred: I still have all those emotions. What I would say is that they are probably more vibrant and more full.

Rick: So even anger? Anger is more vibrant and full?

Winifred: Yeah, but on the other hand, things move through you and you start to notice how things actually move through you. Different emotions move through you.

Rick: And by that you mean they come and they go like a cloud passing over the sun. You don’t hang on to it all day.

Winifred: I guess that’s the best way of expressing it.

Steve: I would use the word raw. Things are experienced in a more direct way for me emotionally. I’m a lot more vulnerable and raw than I ever was before.

Rick: As if you’ve been somewhat numb before and now you’re experiencing more directly?

Steve: I would say there’s a growing tender heartedness in me that experiences all these different things in a much more direct and undefended and uninterpreted way. It’s just sort of raw and direct and immediate. And yet it’s in the context of something that has a lot of breathing room around it. It’s a curious, it’s an odd thing that your emotional life can be intensified in a way and yet you have greater capacity at the same time to hold it.

Winifred: And you don’t have to get rid of your emotions.

Steve: Right.

Rick: I don’t know if you can if you want.

Steve: Well, I mean, sometimes people just… That’s held as an ideal to be…

Rick: Emotionless.

Steve: Yes, in some circles. Steady, silent. Yes, in some circles.

Winifred: And particularly anger.

Rick: Yeah.

Winifred: You know, not to feel anger.

Rick: Yeah. Some of the sort of more famous saints that I’ve known have certainly been capable of expressing tremendous anger, you know, if the situation called for it, I suppose. But I’ve also seen them turn on a dime when the situation changes. It’s not like they keep brooding and stewing over the thing. In fact, you know Ammachi, the hugging saint, it’s fascinating to watch her give what is called darshan to people or blessings, because people just keep… Have you ever seen her?

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: People come up one after another and some child will be crippled or something and she’ll have tears running down her face. And the next person comes up and she’ll be laughing uproariously. And the next person comes up and she’s all concerned about their financial situation or something that they’ve presented to her. And it’s so interesting because there’s this kind of an ability to immediately adapt to who’s in front of her, what their needs are, what their situation is. And as soon as they’re gone, boom, next person.

Steve: Yeah.

Winifred: It’s like a spontaneous response to what’s in the environment.

Rick: Yeah. I have this list of little points here. The point of compassion kind of interests me. You mentioned tenderness or something, and you mentioned softness when I asked you the question about grace. And I kind of feel like those qualities are related to compassion, that the more tender and soft you are in your own feelings, the more spontaneously compassionate you’re going to be.

Steve: Would you agree to that? I would. I think that in this process particularly, it’s characteristic of Waking Down that the armoring and the defensive tendencies that we have in ourselves, and actually that are even down to the tissue level, built into our bodies, the energy that’s bound up there gets freed up and there’s a more spontaneous flow and less resistance to feeling what you’re actually feeling. So there is, I feel, a greater vulnerability and tenderness. Yeah, absolutely. And it is the essence of compassion that you can sense the other’s feelings in that sort of empathic connection.

Rick: Right. That’s the word I was thinking of, empathy, right?

Steve: Right. Yeah.

Winifred: And have more appreciation for how other people show up.

Rick: Right. Good. So I’m sure there’s more we could talk about, all these different things. Is this a significant question? How has the shift affected your diet or should we pass on that one?

Steve: It hasn’t changed much for me.

Rick: Okay. Have your priorities changed?

Steve: Well, in the way that, yes. Relative priorities. Well, the main priority, the one priority that occupied my entire adult life is fulfilled.

Rick: Right.

Steve: And it is from which I’ve graduated in a way or something.

Rick: But you still spend a lot of time dwelling on that priority, don’t you? I mean, going to Waking Down seminars or retreats.

Steve: Yeah, okay.

Rick: Things like that.

Steve: Let’s say now, instead of a seeker, I’m an explorer.

Rick: Right. And aside from your spiritual priorities, any other relative priorities in life have changed? Like your relationship to money or sports or what you watch on TV or anything?

Steve: That hasn’t changed a whole lot. I do feel a desire to be of service in some way.

Rick: That’s nice.

Steve: I mean, I’m not sure what …

Rick: You feel like you’ve found it yet? Or is it evolving?

Steve: It’s evolving.

Rick: Right.

Steve: There’s something, and it’s related to this tender heart in this that just keeps deepening and deepening as the years go by. There’s something in that that wants to be seen and known and felt and displayed in the world. And I don’t have a clear picture, but it’s emerging from the mist.

Rick: Start a TV show. That’s I think was my motivation, was this feeling of, “Darn it, people in this community have to realize that this is spreading like an epidemic, and it would be so good for people to know that all is not lost.” I mean, I actually had run into people who I mentioned this thing to them, and I know all these people who are having … and they say, “Really? People are actually experiencing that? They’re actually waking up? I’ve more or less given up on this kind of thing.” And that’s kind of disheartening to think that …

Steve: Yeah.

Winifred: Or if you have that, you have to hide.

Rick: Right. That’s another thing. There’s this stigma, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly go on a TV show like that because somebody might see me,” or something. It’s like, “What is this? It’s not malaria or leprosy. It’s something beautiful.”

Steve: It is. It’s such a …

Rick: It’s a share.

Steve: Yeah, and it’s such a quandary because often this is greeted with incredulity.

Rick: Yeah, even hostility. I’ve seen. Not so much personally, but some friends of mine, they mention it to people and they actually get a rather livid response. “How dare you? How presumptuous. Who do you think you are?”

Steve: Yeah.

Winifred: Yeah, that thing where if you say you are, you’re not.

Rick: Right. Those who know don’t say, and those who say don’t know, and all that.

Winifred: I think those times have passed. Have passed.

Steve: Yeah.

Winifred: Are over.

Rick: Good.

Winifred: I think my priority, I really like having meaningful and deep conversations with people.

Rick: Do you have any kids?

Winifred: No.

Rick: I’m just curious.

Winifred: We’ve had surrogate kids.

Rick: Right.

Winifred: Here in Fairfield, you know, anytime you wanted to borrow a kid, you could call up your friend and say, “Oh, would you like us to babysit?”

Rick: Yeah. I’m sorry. I kind of interrupted. Meaningful and deep conversations. No, that’s … I’m just curious.

Winifred: Kids, you know, seeing my kids when they come home from college. Right. Yeah. We never had children.

Steve: I would add one last footnote to that. I would say that I have become much more comfortable with and cognizant of the fact that tears are as significant to human life as laughter. There’s so many types of tears, tears of joy and tears of rage and tears of sadness and tears of poignance and tears of tenderness.

Rick: So you find yourself crying more?

Steve: Well, tearing up at least.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: And crying some. Yeah.

Rick: Even like watching a movie or something like that?

Steve: Oh yeah. I get really moved.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Things touch me more than they …

Rick: That’s interesting because the heart is softer, more melted. Yeah.

Rick: I have a friend that, you know, he said after his awakening, he couldn’t really go to the movies with his girlfriend because he’d make a fool of himself sobbing and she’d be embarrassed. You know, like that movie, AI with Steven Spielberg with a little kid, you know, he’s a robot but he looks like a kid and he’s sitting in this thing for like hundreds of years, you know, talking, yearning for his mother. And he said he just broke down. You know, his girlfriend was like …

Steve: Yeah. Yes. I can completely relate to that.

Winifred: Tender hearted men are wonderful.

Steve: Thank you for that recognition.

Rick: Do you guys still meditate?

Steve: I don’t.

Winifred: Not really.

Rick: Don’t feel the need for it or something?

Winifred: No. There’s nowhere to go. I mean, sometimes I’ll sit, you know, I sit and I …

Rick: Just have some silence and rest.

Winifred: Yeah, something like that but there’s no place to go.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: I would say we’re recreational meditators.

Winifred: Yeah.

Steve: We might do it because the body relishes the quietude. Yeah.

Winifred: Yeah.

Rick: It seems to be different for different people. Some people who have awakened, you know, say, “Oh yeah, I still meditate because I just as you say, the body really benefits from it and I really enjoy that routine, that cycle. Others say, you know, “It doesn’t seem to really make much difference one way or the other.” But, you know, whether or not they do, my impression is that people feel like, as you said earlier, the after burners have turned on or the booster rocket or something. There’s really tremendous progress taking place.

Winifred: And I think it’s important for people to really honor how they feel.

Rick: And to honor how others feel. I mean, not to lay trips on them if they’re doing what’s right for them.

Winifred: Right. Right. You know, we have friends who do and friends who don’t.

Rick:It’s kind of interesting in a way how, some people don’t like this but I find it interesting, how Fairfield is becoming this kind of eclectic spiritual community where, for the most part, there’s a great deal of mutual self-respect, mutual respect and appreciation for whatever a person may choose to be doing.

Steve: Yeah.

Winifred: In fact, I was taking some courses, and I was in California a couple of years ago, and someone asked me where I lived and I said, oh, I live in Iowa. Of course, they’re from California. Iowa… you know… And she said where? And I said, oh, southeast Iowa. Usually they say Ohio or Idaho or somewhere. She said where? I said maybe an hour or hour and a half south of Iowa City. And she said, what town? And I said, Fairfield. She said, oh, I’ve heard of Fairfield, it’s a very spiritual community.

Rick: Cool.

Winifred: Just like that.

Steve: We’re on the map. People are aware.

Rick: Look at all the spiritual teachers who come here.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick:And all these Indian saints and various other teachers, Francis Lucille, Adyashanti is going to be coming, all kinds of interesting people.

Steve: Yes, you can see on Ammachi’s post, it’ll say, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Fairfield

Rick: Right. [Laughter}

Rick: I’ll ask some of these questions and if you feel like we’ve covered them, we can skip them. How has awakening changed your ability to fulfill desire?

Steve: Well, I think the intent of the question has somewhat to do with performance in a way.

Rick: Yeah, like you want to achieve something. Do you achieve it any more effectively than before?

Steve: Not noticeably. It hasn’t stood out as a signpost or something for me.

Rick: Right.

Steve: My life moves along in a kind of natural way, and desires are fulfilled. Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. There’s a way in which I’m affected by that, and there’s a way in which I’m not.

Rick: Right.

Steve: It’s both.

Rick: In other words, your fulfillment isn’t contingent upon actually fulfilling the desire. That’s icing on the cake. In a certain way. There’s fulfillment underlying anyway, continuing.

Steve: Yeah. It isn’t as if we don’t have desire. I have desires, and whenever I have desires, sometimes they get fulfilled, and sometimes they don’t. Life just moves along. It has a natural course to it. I don’t pay a lot of attention to that, I guess is what I would say.

Winifred: In terms of fulfilling desires, sometimes it’s just very simple things.

Rick: Yeah.

Winifred: Like yesterday, I’ve been thinking of this on and off for a couple of days. I thought I should clean the inside of the medicine chest. And I just did it yesterday. And it felt really good. What was that? A joy? Fun?

Rick: Doing a simple thing.

Winifred: Just a simple thing like that.

Rick: Nice.

Rick: We’ve covered a lot of these questions.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: If you were to, let’s say, have to get up and give a speech in front of a thousand people, would you feel nervous, do you think, before getting up?

Winifred: I might feel nervous, but I would still do it. But it’s not nervous the way I would have felt when I first started teaching TM. I mean, I was just petrified doing lectures. And now I feel I can get up, but I still feel some.

Rick: And I just use that as a case in point. Are there any particular things that you really could still have a phobia about? Or do you feel like this awakening has buffered you against that kind of thing? Yeah, that kind of thing.

Winifred: Well, I guess it’s sitting in the bowl of being awake. You know, thinking, “Oh, how’s it going to go? What’s going to happen? What am I going to say? How’s it going to be?” You know, like being in a new social situation, meeting new people. It’s different.

Rick: Are you saying that you don’t kind of obsess over what’s going to happen?

Winifred: I think about it. I feel what I’m feeling internally. Well, like for this, for example. I wanted to come here and do this with Steve. And yet I’m thinking, “Oh, how’s this going to be? What’s Rick going to ask me? How am I going to say? Am I going to sound good? Am I not going to sound good? Am I going to be clear?” All of that. But it’s just sort of something that’s there. And in spite of that, I wanted to do it. And here I am. And maybe you can express it better if I’m asking.

Steve: No, not better. I can express it differently. I would say that I think you expressed it really well.

Winifred: Thank you.

Rick: And I guess– I’m sorry, go ahead.

Steve: To elaborate, I would say that I still have reactions. I still have aversions and attractions and personality and likes and dislikes. It happens in a– And I still feel the reactions in my body, all the things that happen when you feel trepidation or you take umbrage or whatever, all that normal human reactions to life. And yet, there’s a kind of fundamental trust in being that carries you along through your life.

Rick: It all lubricates things.

Steve: Yeah. There’s a frame of reference in which it’s felt that all these sensations of normal human reactions to things are felt that’s composed largely of trust. There’s some kind of trust in you, trust in yourself, trust in others, trust in life, trust in being that is kind of foundational to all of this, even though you still have all of this other normal stuff.

Rick: Nice. That might be a good note to end on. My name is Rick Archer, and I’ve been talking with Steve and Winifred Boggs. You’ve been watching a show entitled Buddha at the Gas Pump, which we’ll continue to do on a weekly basis. After we close here, you’ll see some titles on the screen, some web addresses and so on of things you can participate in. The YouTube channel, if you happen to be watching this on Fairfield Public Access channel, you might not realize there’s also a YouTube channel where it’s archived. If you’re watching it on YouTube and you happen to live in Fairfield, you could also watch it on your TV if you get Fairfield Public Access through either LISCO or Mediacom. There’s also a chat group, a Yahoo chat group, where you can participate with other guests on the show or other people who are interested in the show and discussions about these topics. My email address will be there in the titles too, in case you want to contact me to ask me any questions or questions that I might pose to our guests. Thank you very much, both of you, for coming, and thank all of you for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

Winifred: Thank you.