Interview with Elaine Huang, MSW
Psychotherapist, Montana, May, 2006
Hello Prajna. This is such a wonderful opportunity to record an interview with you. I’ve been looking forward to it. The idea of potentially reaching more people exploring spirituality—that would greatly benefit from meeting you and hearing what it is you offer.
Thank you, I’m glad to do this.
My own life has been so profoundly affected as a result of spending time with you. There were a lot of spiritual misconceptions that I carried that I didn’t realize, and you just have such a clear and yet simple way of talking about the truth. I have so much more freedom than I did before I knew you.
That’s wonderful.
So I thought perhaps we could begin by having you share a bit about your personal spiritual journey.
Okay. Like most people, I began my spiritual exploration at a very young age. I think that spiritual experience is actually more common and more available to people than they even realize. I had many glimpses of being spirit, or being curious about what spirit is very early on. It is that which is us already, our spiritual essence that is already naturally occurring, at some times in certain life situations it gets more listened to than in others. I feel for myself it was very loud. The yearning to know God, what this life is all about, what’s really true. This impulse got me into certain types of spiritual practices at a young age. Through that, naturally, some of it was confusing, and some of it—all of it—very beneficial.
You could say that after I met Adyashanti, I was able to look back at all of that, and connect the dots, and see that the entire time, throughout all of life, that what’s here now was available then and that I am what I’ve always been, there isn’t any doubt in that. This is readily available for everybody. So as far as how I got here, spirit brought me here. It sought itself out through this form. And now it’s living here. You can ask more specifics about that, because, as you know, there’s a lot that happens on this journey and nothing at all has happened, as we are what we’ve always been. This is the realization. We could end the interview right here yet we scheduled more time.
I’d like to hear more about your journey.
I’ve had a few different spiritual teachers; I’ve been involved in many different kinds of practices. I’ve also worked as a minister and studied Theology at one time. I lived in an ashram. As a lay minister I went to shelters, soup kitchens and prisons working with women. The foundation of my spiritual understanding is-what I found out is that what I was seeking is what I am. Always has been. Always will be. So that which is eternal is already here – existing now. And then seeking stopped. Seeking fizzled out. Sort of like Alka-Seltzer in water, in the beginning its very busy and bubbly, then it starts to pop about more slowly, until it eventually fizzles out all together and there’s only water.
Could you say more about that, in terms of what you mean by “seeking stopped.”
Well, seeking to find fulfillment or completion or understanding or some sense of permanence through a set of outer circumstances – impermanence. Seeking through teachers, conceptual understanding, attainment or acquisition, or improving upon my personality. It happily fell away. That’s the falling away. That stops. Seeking to complete ourself through something other. Because there is no other. And that’s the recognition, that’s the realization of spirit waking up to itself. It finds out that what we are already is complete. And that in that recognition, all that isn’t needed naturally burns off. What remains is available to flower and transform the way we are in life, old patterns die. Old grooves in which we seek to complete us, to fill up a sense that maybe something is lacking or I’m not good enough and other sad stories. What we are is not lacking anything. Already full.
It seems that an important part of what you’re saying, what you have to offer, is that the seeking stops. Is that correct?
Yes, this is the great discovery – that you already are.
So you’re saying that what we’re actually looking for—we are that.
Right! We are that. Yes, that’s the good news. Spirit recognizes itself. That’s the recognition. Very simple and at the same time incredibly profound because many people are walking around totally 100% unconscious of their own divinity.
That’s what you mean by awakening? That’s how you define awakening?
Yes, waking up to the direct experience of what’s here always and already. What you are already is not lacking anything, is already whole, and is already divine essence.
So you’re not referring to enlightenment experiences?
Right. There are many experiences that fall into the category of spiritual – or enlightenment. Many stories of enlightenment have been passed on to us. Often what is fundamental to enlightenment is missed in the translation. You cannot add enlightenment on to what you already are. The Buddha called it cessation or extinction – it’s the end of the search. Enlightenment is marketed as a particular type of static experience of bliss or transcendence that we arrive at one day. And what I say is, awakening, true awakening, puts you right back into your own seat, sits you right directly in the middle of your own life to find out how spirit is life. That there isn’t a need to transcend what essentially doesn’t exist in the first place. Our own life is the playing field for divine essence or spirit to trickle into every aspect of life, to discover itself in everything. We find out that nothing splits off, everything is included, that we are one; there isn’t a particular compartmentalized area of life that is only spirit. Or the enlightenment experience. Do you get what I’m saying?
Yes, so it’s really a coming home to what we already are, and then allowing that to fill itself out in the life. In many ways it’s a leveling out process, where we find that we’re not necessarily beyond, or transcendent, but we’re actually the same. Not different. Not separate. Undivided. Not in conflict with life.
So you don’t have to go away from life in order to be spiritual, or after you awaken. You don’t have to go off to the mountains and—you’re saying that we can sustain this awakeness while living our lives?
Yes. Very much so. And I think that when we have an idea that we can’t, then that becomes the obstacle. But more so, with good fortune, or luck, even, living here in this so-called modern time is that the invitation is to be here, relax, no need to go to the Himalayas, a monastery, or a cave. Awakening to what you is happening all of the time, where is India? If you go to India – Ramana or Nisargadatta will tell you to go home India is in you. I’m not negating spiritual practices or discounting anything at all. All has its place. There’s absolutely no doubt about it. What I think what’s often missed is that, is the idea that we need to remove ourselves from the life that we’re in, that’s already happening, to go and obtain, acquire. In that type of belief, we see already that there’s an idea that there’s something other to get and we are not it. The direct experience of awakening is the sought and the seeking are the same. The sought, the seeking, and the seeker! All the same. I always forget to include the seeker, because we find out that the seeker doesn’t exist either! It’s just seeking.
So how is it that we come to this separation? How does that happen?
Good question, I’m not sure I can answer that. If you reflect on your own life— when you take the time and—for myself, I have young children, and I feel very fortunate because not only do I have my life to reflect upon, I have theirs, and exposure to children is a really wonderful, because you get to watch the process of forgetting. We can see in children when they are born, there’s openness. There’s a delight in life, there’s an openness, there’s something that’s awake, curious and present. We see it in young children. And then around one or two, when language gets started, and we start to take on language, we start to take on conditioning. The innocence of conditioning—how we are educated through words to label. We label experience. We label emotions. We label thoughts. And we label everything that happens in the life. This gets programmed in as our conditioning. One part of conditioning is growing up in a family. The ego sense wakes up, is formed so to speak. It wakes up to the identity that it is conditioned to believe itself to be.
And that’s how separation starts.
That’s the appearance of separation. That’s the appearance, and that’s the belief, and that’s where the attention gets focused on the conditioned self, rather than the unconditioned spirit that’s wearing the identity. That’s peeking through the eyes of identification with form, which everyone learns about. Spirit doesn’t do anywhere; it’s in the background. In our culture, we’re conditioned to focus on form, our persona. And when that way of however we’ve been organized by our conditioning: genes, religion, teachers, culture—all of that that just gets passed on or programmed in, in total innocence, without any good or bad intention, it’s just what happened, not a problem. But when this is the only thing that is considered—when the belief is just what the conditioning is—is. Ah, that’s what I am. Then life is bound to be experienced through cycles of pain and suffering. Desire, pain, suffering, all of that: confusion, limitation (in the sense of being divided, separate). But the whole time, behind that, part of that, is the essence, our unborn essence that was there before birth, during birth, throughout the entire life, and continues on after death of the body. So what I do is, I point people back to that. That’s what woke up here. Spirit woke up here to itself.
Can you say more about that, about how Spirit wakes up to itself?
Yes, it’s not the conditioned persona that wakes up. The conditioned persona is just that; it’s the wrong tool, you could say, for awakening. It’s smaller than what you are. So what we are is that which is always happening behind the personal, and that’s the eternal self, you could say, that is forever shining and forever living, which is most natural and most intimate to us. It’s our natural state. So that—I say it wakes up to itself. It becomes available to itself. It peeks through self-identity; it peeks through the veil. Peels away the layers of conditioned self so that it can experience itself with clarity.
Is there a way that we can assist that process?
Follow yearning, whatever it is you yearn for. Find out what is wanted, being really clear about what it is we want in this life. What do we really want more than “feel good”—more than “look good”, more than perfect job, home, car, relationship—all of the outer circumstances that we have been conditioned to believe will make us happy or at peace. We just peel back beneath surface wants, asking, “What do I want more than that?” And in that stepping back underneath surface wants, we come to a deeper yearning of wanting to know truth, to be truth of wanting to know who is the subject of the wanting. Right? What really matters? Is it the essence of life or the objects of our perception?
Can you clarify objects of perception? Is that what you meant, or just what you were referring to in terms of a particular car or a job? Those are objects of perception?
Yes. What we are—we’re essentially a sensing organ. Spirit, divinity, if you follow, if you feel all the way into yourself, you’re a sensing organ. You’re a very alive sensing organ. We are vital, which doesn’t have a boundary, and feels very much like space. We are sensitive and able to touch and be touched by everything. On top of that, are what is known as our normal senses—through the eyes of perception, the ears, the skin—the pathways to the brain which allow our bodies to function.
Through the five senses?
Through the five senses, some claim to have more than that! There’s the underlying oneness, what is, not separate. Right now there is the perception of you and I happening in the space of oneness. There’s not two; when you feel all the way back into what you are, there isn’t differentiation. When we perceive two or multiplicity happens. And then, whatever it is that we’re taking in through the senses—the object of perception—then, that gets filtered through an interpreting sense, which is often referred to as ego. The enemy yet it’s just a verb. It’s an interpretation, and whatever we’re conditioned to believe, then we can interpret that that object of perception will either give us something or take something away. And therefore, then you see the whole of the human condition, to always be moving towards something that it desires, or moving away from something that it fears. All is filtered through an interpreting sense—ego. When this is left unexamined, we miss what is already here, already full, and already satisfied—the oneness that we are, that doesn’t split off. So it takes us away from being led through life by the mind. By our conditioning.
It takes us away from…?
It takes us off the path. It slows down the whole tail-chasing business, you could say. Chasing our own tail to get something that, the entire time, is already here! Does that make sense about objects of perception?
Yes.
And—there is nothing wrong with our objects of perception. Life is all of it, it’s all-included. What gets clarified for us is that, after awakening, we can enjoy objects of perception through the direct experience of already being complete. In this way we are not demanding life to be different, to give us something, we’re not arguing with life—we’re more sensitive to how life just flows and moves from fullness, not from lack. And if we’re only interpreting through the objects of perception, and the interpretation is that something is lacking, then we are being pulled out for life to give us something.
So joy ends up empty?
Yes and no. Empty yes, yet empty is full. There is temporary satisfaction, perhaps, and that’s how many people in spiritual seeking often come back to themselves, is through exhaustion with the outer search, through acquiring objects of perception and being left to feel empty that is depleted. I can attest to that—perhaps we need to do that to a certain degree to discover that it doesn’t work.
So it’s kind of like exhausting this other way and...through enough suffering…
Unfortunately, for some of us, yes! And some of us—I do know of situations of people who don’t necessarily go through incredible amounts of suffering before awakening. Neither good nor bad.
But I think for a lot of us, myself included, it seems like it’s taken a long time to really find the truth, and one thing that you had said to me that was so helpful that I wanted to ask you to repeat it, is that nothing really can be taken away from the essence of who we are. Can you say more? It’s so profoundly helpful when you talk about that.
Yes. You said it beautifully—nothing could be taken away from the essence of who we are. Can you feel that you are the continuum of life? What we are—the unmanifest, uncaused, unconditioned essence—we are—the unseen, the mystery. The mystery is never lacking. And no matter, regardless of what experiences pass through us in our lives, it is incapable of detracting, taking away—or adding!—to this divine essence that we already are. We are the continuum. There isn’t anything in our life that will gives us an advantage, and there isn’t anything that gives us a disadvantage. As far as ultimate truth is concerned everything is the same. And when we grok that with our being—when we get this—it allows layers of judgment, guilt, aspects of our psychological self, what has been learned. It allows that to relax, to fall away. Not needed.
You have a psychological background and, as you know, I have a master’s in social work as well as a masters in clinical psychology, and I’ve worked as a psychotherapist—would you say that psychological healing is necessary before one awakens?
If it happens! If it actually happens, and perhaps in some cases it does. What I would say, for myself—and I can speak only from my direct experience—that the recognition of this that is already here, recognizing that I have always been this; there’s never been anything wrong. Savoring this is the true medicine for all psychological memory to dissolve.
So what we are can heal psychological wounding?
Oh, totally. We are our own best medicine. What we are naturally, what’s already naturally occurring, is the best medicine for everything.
Are you able to describe how that can happen? How it is that what we are heals?
Yes, well, I’ll take it from this perspective. You were just on a retreat with us, a silent retreat. What we are naturally is silence, we didn’t create a new silence. And we are movement. As we sit and allow just sitting, and we allow everything in our experience to be exactly as it is, without any form of mild to grand manipulation to alter experience, to concoct experience, to change experience, to look for something different—when we relax and we just sit as we are as openness, anything that needs mending or healing will be touched by our light, silence, awareness. The light of what we are naturally touches. First I said seen, because I think of seeing and touching as synonymous, so as we sit, as this open awareness, not as a place that we go to but as it ourselves, as already being it, in this seeing, what needs to be healed will be healed, and what needs to burn away, burns away. And what needs to be transformed will be transformed.
Because of the power of the essence of what we are?
Yes, the power of the essence of what we are—well said, exactly. The power of the essence of what we are. Yes. So when we hold integrity to this that we are, its amazing what healing can take place.
I’ve witnessed it, yes. It’s been kind of mind-boggling, after being through so many years of therapy myself, and also working with people from a traditional framework—how healing it can be.
Yes. Because we see that much of our emotional life is just as conditioned as our mental life. We are conditioned to feel certain ways and not feel other ways, and to process things this way, or to feel this way about certain situations, and hang on to them, or don’t hang on to them, until something can happen—all of that! What I offer is called the direct path. It’s the direct path to everything. It’s the direct path to transformation, it’s the direct path to healing, and it’s the direct path to coming into right relationship with life, that’s harmonious and free, without unfinished baggage, so to speak. Awakening is really just the beginning. What is not needed unpacks itself.
Ok—it’s a release of feelings, too?
Of feelings—I want to make a clarification here; we do not become less human. We come in touch with our genuine feelings. We find that—feeling states that we may have felt we needed to work towards or practice becoming—like virtuous or saintly—that when we awaken to what we are already, certain qualities arise that are already natural to us. Compassion, sensitivity, grief, taking a firm stand—are natural to us. Our ability to discriminate becomes very clear. We can be totally in love with what is, and at the same time being able to put a hand out and say, “no—this isn’t appropriate.” Young children are very good at this.
So it comes from a different place, is that what you’re saying?
Yes, from being in right relationship with life.
So we don’t stop feeling?
No, what leaves us are emotive patterns of reacting.
So that’s why the unpacking…
Unpacking happens. Yes. Which means that if somebody whom you’re very intimate with, or close to—a child, a relative, a friend, whatever, and something happens to them, of course you’re going to feel sad and touched by it.
Even after awakening?
Maybe even more so. And the difference is that, the feeling readily available as the most natural thing. It is felt and it passes. All of it. Not a partial or selective feeling.
One thing that you see often with growing up, with children, is that the emotional conditioning can be very strong, about what to feel or what not to feel. And maybe more so around boys—the male gender. And we’re just really in a culture that wants to maintain an illusion of comfort around feeling, so we give children food, and then we learn as adults to put food on top of feeling, to medicate feeling, to pat them on the back—“It’s okay, it’s okay!”—you know, to short-circuit feeling. And all of that just kind of gets confused and packaged in the system. And most people don’t even know what they feel. So awakening allows—it’s almost as if the seed of awakening, it’s always there—it’s already within everybody. It’s that seed of awakening that connects us all. It’s the underlying interconnectedness of everything—the oneness. When that buds, or opens, it opens up everything in life that we ever needed to—that we felt we had to run away from or not feel, so all of those feelings can open up again. And they get to open up from a very different space—from a space of openness; from a space of already complete; a space of already okay. And when it’s seen in this way, in this light, then all of it just passes through the system like energy. Fear can just be seen for what it is and then it naturally is let go of—it’s not held on to any longer. And then you find yourself walking more and more as a free man, as a free woman. As spirit, embodying a human form.
It’s a very different relationship from prior to awakening, with feelings emotions.
Yes. And this is why so many of our ordinary, common-day relationships can often be a repeat of how we were conditioned to be in relationship as children. It’s almost as if the child creates the emotional map and the mental map about how to strategize and how to get on in life. And then the adult lives it out, and we come into relationships with “I have unfinished control issues”, or fear, or whatever, a funny dance happens which may turn into a drama, with drama repeating drama. That finishes itself when these patterns are met fully from awareness. They can’t survive. You come into true relationship with yourself and this is mirrored everywhere you go. Then relationship is not a so-called zone to work out your unfinished stuff!
That sounds really wonderful!
So we don’t run the patterns that we have run before? Do we, after awakening, will there still be the possibility of going through patterns?
Yes, because awakening is a beginning and an ending. My good friend and teacher Adyashanti has clarified this many times. He says that after awakening, in the best of circumstances, ten years for the awakening to really fill itself out, to trickle into every area of life, so that you’re really embodying what you are. The awakening leaves no stone unturned – the full human condition is touched.
It’s an evolutionary process?
Yes, you could say so, very much so. I love this passage from Christ that those who enter the kingdom of heaven are like nursing infants, and that’s it. The kingdom is already here, we are it, we are the kingdom, and we enter it by being like a baby again in the sense that you awaken to yourself as the kingdom. Everything is already complete, but then, to really enter fully, we start like an infant, and then we go to the toddler, pre-schooler, all the way to the fullest maturation, because its being sensitive enough, remaining sensitive enough to let life live you newly-fresh. To let this new life really take over all the old patterns, to let the old die.
So does it mean that thoughts go away, like mind chatter and …
The stickiness! Yes. Thought, as long as we are here in the body-mind, then just as much as we need our heart to continue to beat, there’s a certain amount of conditioning for that to happen, and for the breath to happen, but there isn’t really anybody inside there saying, okay, inhale, exhale, breathe, blood move, all of that. It’s the same with thoughts. Thoughts are also naturally occurring. What we get freed of is all the sticky psychological memory of thought that is based on past experience. And that is forever asking for us to be different, or the situation to be different, and its projecting into the future. And that’s what takes us out of what’s happening right now. So that’s what we mean when we talk about being here in the present moment. In the present moment, thought can be happening, but there isn’t an interpreting sense, so to speak, any longer, that’s sticking to it, and making meaning out of it.
And causing pain.
Exactly. Yes. And stressing over it, struggling over it. That. Upon awakening all of that is not always finished.
The thinking?
Well, the stickiness of it. In my experience it slowed down immediately, In fact, there was a huge pause. Yet in certain situations I would watch it kick in. The more I allowed rest and watching to happen, the stickiness dissolves. As Adya would say truth is a high stakes game. The stakes yet higher the further we move along and the choices become less for what works in the land of illusion. And when we hold true to our integrity as our root, the rest of it just takes care of itself. It really does. And it’s our involvement with it—because still, if the mind is heavily conditioned to seek, as most minds are, then for that to unwind—sometimes it takes a little while.
So then, gurus that we read about who wind up sleeping with their students, there, this process somehow got disrupted, or—how would you explain those kinds of situations?
Hmm, Do I want to go there? Yes. It seems that some ego need has not been fully dismantled. The ego still wanting to gain an advantage or looking for love in all the wrong places. Because if you’re in the position of a spiritual authority to your students, which is what gurus are, if you take on that role and use it to seduce one or many students it has to be feeding something. When I was a sophomore in Catholic school there was a lay teacher that was eventually dismissed due to his behavior with his students. I worked in the Rectory twice a week with a group of Fathers and Brothers. I loved cooking for them. I had secret rituals pretending I was ordained as a Priest. One day I missed the bus and needed to walk home, one of the lay fathers picked me up, drove me to the backside of the football field and raped me. It was horrible and it took many years for me to see through that and that who I am is forever untouched. Meeting Adyashanti was a profoundly beautiful experience. I was not looking for anything at the time. I was at a stage in my life where I wanted to deepen my trust, to run the full experiment, to find out what’s happening here without an outer teacher. Immediately, I knew that he did not want or need anything from me, and that was a huge relief.
You’ve had teachers before?
Yes. Primarily Eunice. Eunice wouldn’t let me get away from her. She was a fantastic fisher woman that prepared me for what was to come. When I received a tape with Adya talking, it was about the mysteries of Christ. My earliest experiences with the divine revolved around the mysteries. I can still see them in my minds eye in the Churches I worshiped at. I seemed to be born with a natural devotion to the mysteries of Christ, always very curious about that. The first tape I heard, he spoke so clearly on that, I was dumbfounded “Whoa!” I needed to meet him, and when I met him, that was the first thing that I recognized. That he didn’t need anything. That he was free. Something recognized that he had –integrity and it woke up here. I don’t know how else to put that in words, recognition of not needing anything happened. And something relaxed in myself. I fell into a very healthy relationship with him, not even so much as a teacher but as a mentor, as somebody who had connected all the dots. He ran the full experiment, and that I could collaborate with, knowing that I was not going to be taken advantage of in my sincerity, in my eagerness to really be solid in truth would not be messed with in any way. And it proved itself out to be true. 100%. Because whenever there was the beginning of a leaning toward him for something, like as if he could give me something! If there was any leaning toward that, he was immediately able to turn it around and just offer it right back. I could see for myself that its 100% true that what I am he is. Same. And already complete. What a wonderful friend to have met, that I am forever grateful for. In the past to Adyashanti, I may have said, “I feel indebted to you.” That’s devotion yet truly my gratitude is in returning the favor to all I meet. And that’s love.
Both of you are such clear and wonderful and beautiful examples of how we all want to be. But not all teachers are that way, and it sounds like what you’re saying is that somehow, in some teachers, the ego is still intact.
Yes, perhaps. Everybody needs to find that out for themselves. I’m not one to say anything about a particular teacher. I don’t really know, we all have to find our way, and sometimes it means having an experience with a few teachers who aren’t all the way clear yet. Or being in the role of teacher and becoming clear. I don’t know.
So in the awakening process, at the beginning stages of it, might fear and anxiety still appear?
Oh yes. Yes! Maybe very loudly. Because the mind is just starting to discover that it is out of a job! The psychological aspects of the mind that aren’t needed, that keep us believing that, keep us linked in, you could say, or hooked in, to a false sense of security. That’s the habit of the mind to believe that it has knowledge and security. But it doesn’t believe it because it’s always looking for more security. It’s a very funny thing, but when you are keen on how the mind operates, its much easier, to just befriend it, to see that’s what minds do. And in that seeing, relaxation happens, and mind is not an enemy, or something that needs to be changed or gotten rid of or held at bay, which is sometimes what certain types of practices teach.
Yes, that’s been very confusing. Like getting rid of thoughts. But it’s not what you teach.
It’s not my way.
It doesn’t work!
No. It hasn’t been useful. It’s like trying to polish a mirage. I find that sitting in the way that I offer it in retreats and in Satsang offer a great vantage point of reality. Just sitting with the way that everything is already is the direct way for the mind to detoxify from its patterns, its habits, and its sticky quality. To sit, simply relax and be the watching presence. As Ramana would say, Be As You Are.
That is your approach to meditation.
Yes, that is the approach that I offer.
So how have you seen through this process. The clarity that is within you and Adyashanti—what is it that you have done to see this all the way through?
The thing I’ll say is to have stayed put in my own life. And I can’t say its been volitional. It’s almost as if everything that I have tried hasn’t worked, so that gets exhausted, and then you find that you’re just left to spirit. So there’s been an unraveling of the false illusion of control. The illusion of control, just in standing right in the middle of life, as it is, and looking to see how much of it I don’t have one ounce of control over. And in that, seeing how, underneath outer appearance, that what we are is the unborn Buddha nature—perfectly capable of managing itself.
Without effort?
Yes. Just showing up. So, it’s not a checking out, its remaining fully engaged in life without being involved. You know what I mean? I Mean really showing up, being present, and very available, without “mucking” with it, without getting involved. And when “mucking” up happens, you notice that. Not to say that I’ve been perfect—or even good—at that. I haven’t, at all! But its through all of the failures of trying to get something to go my way, the way the mind thought it should go—that’s, in the seeing of it, and then having that sink in, that more has been revealed, and more control has been seen through. More of the illusion of control has been seen through so that my posture or position in life is much more relaxed. My life is full.
Yes, would you share more about that?
I have twins that are age 9 now, that were born with extreme challenges, profound brain injuries that affect all of their functions. Both of them dependent on a caretaker for everything. Libby cried for two years nonstop. And I already had a two year old so I had three young children. By the time the twins were two years old I was on my own with that and for our family situation, something had to give. And that was for him to move out. It’s been very very full, which has required attention to incredible amounts of details. Therapies, appointments, interaction with different types of resources. Which also, at the same time, when you have children that have disabilities, its very natural for any mother, for any father, for any being, to want to help it, to want to make it better—to change it. So for me it’s been an incredible unraveling of being able to see, what can I, how can I actually participate in this, and assist it, and what is out of my control, almost like the Serenity prayer. You remember that? “God grant me that serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” And I think that that prayer, alone, is how love moves. So I think that your asking about life with my children is very significant—let me backtrack for a minute. You had asked me, how this depth that you experience has come about through being together on retreat. I was involved at one time with an organization that emphasized Ramana Marharshi’s teaching, I was in my late 20s, I lived in an ashram prior to that, and I had also been to Universities to study Psychology and Theology.
And you’d been a minister…
Yes. At Boston University and a few years after I worked with women in prisons, shelters, groups and directed sacred dramas to fulfill my preaching requirement. When I come across Ramana Maharshi’s teachings, I was working at a computer company owned by Ananda in Santa Cruz. My office mate had visited Nisargadatta in India and invited me to my first Satsang. I had no idea what a Satsang was, yet I was always willing to run experiments, so I went. I heard the teaching of Ramana Maharshi being spoken by the teacher, and what I heard was that you are not the body, you are the Self, which is also the body, but before the body, you are the Self. That resonated so deeply, it was as if ancient roots ignited within me.
It was one of your more profound awakenings?
It was subtle yet profound. I didn’t see blue or white lights or have kundalini run up and down my spine or anything like that. A major shift in consciousness happened, and what ever I thought I was opened up, and how I was oriented in life changed. Life became a celebration of this teaching for many years to follow. I spent a good deal of time in Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Today, I see how beneficial that was. Something had already shifted from my time with Eunice. She passed away suddenly which catapulted me out of the ashram and to California. Before she died, she told me to get on with it! It was as if meeting Ramana and Adya were pre-ordained.
There is a long pause of silence.
Now the ego certainly did not fall completely, because there was an interpretation that was right on the tail end of that revelation, which at times was an ordeal. For every revelation follows an ordeal. This is an opportunity for the ground of your revelation to expand, to deepen. So, for me the ordeal was, and it was quite a long ordeal, of interpreting that direct experience, or any experiences that I had, had to do with hearing the teaching from this particular teacher, or being part of this organization. So it was really interpreting it to have something to do with outer circumstances rather than something that was already occurring, you see? Something that was already waking up to itself. There was this confusion. I was involved with this organization for quite some time, because it was very powerful and I was exposed to non-duality. Some of it conceptual and some of it as a direct experience—a little bit of everything.
Had your daughters been born yet?
No, not yet. When I left there—it was as if I felt that the rug had been pulled out from under my feet—because I had dedicated so much time and energy and resource to living a life according to my idea at the time of what a spiritual life should look like. When we left, I felt my purpose was missing. I was attributing purpose to this outside circumstance separate from the recognition of who I was. I didn’t see that that experience was something breaking free in me. Out of my spiritual identity. That did not register until after leaving. When I left, my first daughter was 6 months old.
We had a very beautiful home birth, consciousness shining through her eyes everywhere. It was the same through her, oneness, I felt myself through her eyes, and that was a very powerful experience, that again shifted consciousness.
When my twins were born, three months early, it was the complete opposite type of birth. I went from a very comfortable home birth, where everything flowed very nicely, to being helicoptered to Stanford 3 months early, with exceedingly high drama. Though, something within that experience was the very same as the home birth experience, meaning that when the babies were actually born, when their body left my body, I could sense of new life, living outside, separate from my body, and I could also sense oneness, consciousness that is, unmanifest, in which all form arises from. Both experiences were very profound and naturally occurring in ordinary life. I didn’t have a context for that. I never read anything or heard about waking up during home birth or the OR room, as a mother.
In an everyday kind of life.
Yes. Both outer circumstances are very different. And something is the same. So being in this life with my children has been just like that. The outer circumstances for all of my children are very different. My first child is so-called normal. She is a typical and still needs a mother and/or a father to nurture her to adulthood. The other two are not functioning as well and another kind of engagement is required. Consciousness has shown me that, regardless of outer circumstance, there’s something that’s always the same. Attention has shifted to the underlying essence of all experience, which is love. The shift has been away from the role of being a mother, to essence, or a space, of seeing how love moves. Of seeing how love, the underlying essence of love, takes care of everything. Not always in a way that our minds can understand, but that our hearts can feel, and resonate with. When we’re not identified with the role. You see? Because awakening does not allow us to be stuck in identity of only a mother responsible for her children. A stereotypical view of mother does not stick here. We’re conditioned to believe that, if you’re a parent, you’re the sole provider; you have the sole responsibility for everything that happens in your child’s life. Then we get to live with the advantages or disadvantages of that belief. Right?
It’s been incredibly awesome and good, for me, in retrospect, because I haven’t been able to “stick” to that, and therefore, the arms in which a mother would normally hold her child have spread so they hold the child and perhaps by force of circumstance, have spread further to see that there’s something else that’s living or managing life. And I think that this is the truest unfoldment of truth. Awakening is one thing, to see what we are, but without falling in love with all of life, it doesn’t get to dance, it doesn’t get to sing. It doesn’t get to show up in a way that is truly authentic, genuine, and tender. Because wisdom is knowing what we are, but love is being what we are. And that doesn’t let us get stuck in an identity. And therefore, the resources, in my particular situation with my children, have become wider and more expansive. Because, when you open up your arms and you let life live you and take over, the eyes of wisdom open. This is an endless seeing of what’s truly available as resources.
Or options?
Or options. I’m speaking how this has shown up in my life, but this in everybody’s life. This is true for everyone. The eyes of wisdom wake up or open up to what’s true, as embodiment happens, our hearts open up, the entire time we are grounded more and more in this flow of love and wisdom, and how our life dances between the two. Nisargadatta Maharaj said—something like that, which I had was curious about twenty years ago when I was first heard his teaching, and now I feel this, like yes! This is what he’s speaking about. I think that the core movement, if we want to call it a movement, is non-resistance, which is the lack of movement. It’s the staying power. It’s staying in the middle of your life, right in the midst of your life, whatever it is, without resistance, without asking it to be different. Without trying to change it or manipulate it in any way, or deny it, hold back, and seeing life from a space of non-resistance, this is awakening.
But that you’ve been able to sustain is very rare, and is what makes you an exceptional teacher.
Stay. Yes. Stay here in non-resistance. And I haven’t been able to stay here. You know, I can’t say there is an I that has been able to stay here. Life has created this staying power, just to stay with what is as it is. This is our foundation. And this is how we get to experience peace beyond all understanding.
By staying?
Yes, by staying with what is. And don’t get me wrong—it hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t. There’s been an incredible amount of challenge, it’s been challenging, and it’s been profound. I wouldn’t ask for one ounce of it to be different. No regrets for any of it. No regrets whatsoever.
It’s one of the remarkable things about you, that you share from your own journey, from your own life circumstance, has offered a ground of very rich teaching that you share with those of us who know you. I’m not so sure that…I wonder what the percentage of people who have awakened could stay as it is in the kind of circumstances that you’ve been through.
Probably just as many as those who, like myself, who also try to change the circumstances! And then when none of that is working, we’re in choicelessness or the wisdom of no escape. And it’s all kind of relative, too, you see, because I think that everybody’s life is the perfect ground for awakening and embodiment to happen. We’re the same continuum. We only appear different.
So you wouldn’t say one circumstance was more fertile for deepening and awareness than another?
Right. It’s really a matter of how you are in it. So every circumstance that you come to with non-resistance is fertile ground. When we give space—openness…meaning we’re without an agenda, or a pre-conceived notion about how life should be. When that’s absent, it’s kind of the emptying out. We’re absent on fertile ground. We’re ripe. This is why we often hear that in order to find yourself you must lose yourself. Meaning to lose all of the ideas that you hold, about life and death, about our image of enlightenment and beliefs—we let that drain out. We’re just fertile ground. Nothing is added. It’s then that the seed that’s already here blossoms. We’re the ground what we are to blossom through non-resistance—which is love. Love happens in us never to us from another source.
Which is the way we perhaps have moved through life before awakening?
Yes. Awakening is the beginning of an incredible process of discovering more and more what our purest creative potential is. Our creativity, our love is ignited. More and more as the ego falls away.
It seems like a very different way of life.
Yes. Does that make sense? Does that give a good picture?
It sounds like it would be fuller and more vital and…easier.
Yes. Decisions are already made. Our heads don’t have to work so hard.
No distractions.
Yes. Our hearts are more available to flow from tenderness, from unguardedness.
That’s why you have all the energy you do. It’s not getting drained and distracted.
Well, perhaps! I may still feel drained or distracted every now and then and that is just what it, it’s not a problem to be fixed. Awakening does not free us of ever having a distracting, confusing or challenging moment. That’s not true. We see the opportunity for growth or clarity in that moment more quickly, we respond differently. Our relationship to confusion, pain, sorrow, etc, shift. Our relationship is different. It’s not that it doesn’t happen any more.
Can you talk more about full and empty? I think that’s terminology that is frequently used.
Yes. We empty from what is false, what’s not true about us beliefs, identities, misconceptions. We see there’s a body-mind happening, but there isn’t a separate entity here that is calling the shots, as an individual. As we empty from that, we fall awake to our fullness. It’s really such a paradox. The more you empty of what is false, the more recognition for your fullness. As we empty at the same time we are flowering with fullness. What we are is space, at certain times it might feel like expansion. What we are includes everything. Nothing is left out. And this is fullness. When the directive came to invite others to sit with me, at first it was clear. Then a little voice of doubt came so I went to speak with Adya and he said, it’s happening there, it’s happening here—and that felt right on. Because we’re not different. Anything that says otherwise is only mind.
Expansion includes everything.
Yes. Everything is included. This is where we start to grok the sense that awakening is not about an individual waking up with a personal set of experiences of happiness, peace, freedom or bliss. That’s not it. We wake up out of a sense of individuality as the space of impersonal essence. We see that appearances are also impersonal—they are not happening to somebody. We are the impersonal nature of all, there’s no boundary—that’s everything. This is everything. Fullness. Emptiness. It’s not one or the other. It's both. Same.
And this is the foundation of what most of us yearn for.
Yes. Yes.
It’s what really actually initiates that searching—the new car, the next degree, the right relationship, that hasn’t satiated.
Yes. The whole process of becoming, acquiring, and adding on to what you are. All of that.
One of the other things that has been such a relief in studying with you is that awakening only seemed possible for a very few—a small percentage. Is that based on a misconception of what awakening is, or would you say it’s from the nature of the times? It seems like consciousness is raising at a more rapid rate. Is that why more people are waking up?
It’s a good question. It’s hard to know the answer to that. I can only make a few guesses of what I see happening. As we know, just as our culture has become more modernized, more media, there’s more available—through meetings, through the Internet. You can download the dharma! There’s an incredible amount of websites available where you can order tapes and teachings, especially of Adyashanti. And we have to be careful about that as well! But I think that—it’s interesting, because if you really look into this (I had a period of time where I studied a lot of different traditions), throughout all traditions, there’s awakening, which may have been called something else, or it didn’t get written down for us to learn about, going all the way back to Buddha and to Christ. The media tells us that our culture is progressing, but we’re not really sure about that!
Structures built out of egoic want, power and the like are beginning to break down. They do not seem to be working. Our population continues to increase so we see more of both suffering and awakening. The media tends to focus on drama. Politics influence media and so on and so forth. Our male form of collective conditioning is very strong- to have power. On the other hand the feminine heart is cracking open over the grief of our planet. Those of us who value and experience deeply how precious life is cannot keep our true nature a secret. Love is still our greatest power.
So you’re saying that perhaps there have been more past awakenings that have been covered over.
Yes I think there have been periods of collective spiritual awakening that we do not even know about. Bankei spoke to thousands and thousands of people about their Buddha nature, lay people and monks alike. They didn’t have microphones, in some ways this is a good thing, as it is not the words that wake us up, it’s the direct transmission of who you are. What is here is there. Stop looking elsewhere. Bankei said, there is nothing new to add on, the Buddha Mind is what you already are before your mother was born. Awakening is not a secret any more. We’re finding more ways to access truth.
In my heart I thought awakening was available for more people and everyday people, but my conditioning said otherwise. So it was quite a revelation when you said to me that this was natural, and “Of course!”
Yes, of course. Its really great having this conversation with you, because I think there’s even more of a taboo in particular cultures and religions for women to let their truest voice be spoken. We are breaking out of that taboo. It is wonderful to have this conversation.
It’s been wonderful for me to find a female teacher. You’ve been such a wonderful role model in so many ways.
I have eternal gratitude for so much.
Thank you so much, Prajna for your time, once again, and for what it is that you teach and offer.
Thank you, it’s been a great pleasure, an honor to know you, and to see you, as you are. Thank you for being here. Namaste.
Thank you so much. Namaste.
Go to other publications:
- Feminine Flow of Wisdom
- Stop Turning
- Tell Me You're Kidding
- Mommy, Can I Nurse?
- Insight Magazine with Suzie Daggett
- Interview with KMVR
- Interview with Elaine Huang
- KVMR with Alan Stahler
“God grant me that serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And I think that that prayer, alone, is how love moves.”