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Contents
Vision 8
Introduction 9
The Practice of Freedom… 15
Chapter One Step
1: Be Present With Your Experience 17
Awakening
To What We Are… 19 Getting Our Stories
In Perspective… 21 Welcome Your
Experience… 22 No Resistance, No Suffering… 25 To Be Present Is To Live In The Now… 26 Meditation… 30 Use Your Meditation As A Tool For Exploration…
32 Dive Into The Well Of Your Own Being… 34 A Meditation Practice… 36
Chapter Two Step
2: Notice The Story 38
Residues…
40 Beyond Duality… 41 The Powerful Grip Of Personal Stories… 44 Compelling Religious Stories… 48 The Consciousness Story… 51 Releasing Stories Around Fear… 53 The Practice Of Looking For The Story… 55
Chapter Three Step 3: See The Truth 57
Desire… 59
Letting Go Of The Story… 61 Drop
All Philosophies… 62 Lose Your Head… 63 Loneliness And The Void… 65 “How Do I Hold
Onto This?”…
67 Let Go Of Your Attachment To Bliss…
68 Seeing From The Reality Behind
Reality… 70 The Teaching And Practice
In Real Life… 71 Helping People Get Free Of Their Stories… 73 A
Practice For Being Present… 77
Chapter Four Questioning This “Me” 78
Find Out Who Wants To Be Free… 81 Breaking Through The Story Of “Me”… 83 Toss The Ego A Bone… 86 Embrace Change… 87 Don’t Take Yourself To Be Anybody… 90 My Realization… 92 The Practice Of Self-Inquiry… 94
Chapter Five Awakening To Freedom 95
The Power Of Silence… 97 Take A Stand For Truth… 100 The Truth Is What Is… 102 Recognizing Truth… 104 Release Attachment To Outcomes… 106 The Proof Your True Nature Is Consciousness…
108 The Role Of Religion In A Conscious
World… 110 Grace Rains Down… 111 A Practice For Being Awake… 114
Chapter Six The Power Of Love 115
Practical Love… 116 The Religion Of The Heart… 117 Discovering The Healing Power Of
Forgiveness… 120 Love Unconditionally…
123 Love Your Energies… 125 Don’t Take Your Emotions Personally… 127 The Relationship Mirror… 129 Raising Children With Love… 132 A Practice For Connecting With Another Person…
134
Chapter 7 Creating
A New Story For Your Life 135
Imagination
And Positive Thinking… 137 Manifestation…
141 Be Conscious Around Money… 143 Lead The Way… 146 How You Know When You’re Free… 148 Facing
Life’s Challenges… 151 A Practice For Manifestation… 153
Afterword 154
Acknowledgements 157
Selected Excerpts
From the Introduction
The first time I discovered the practice was working for people was when I was teaching a workshop at the famed Esalen Institute. Esalen is an alternative education and retreat center devoted to the exploration of human potential, situated on California’s rugged Big Sur coast.
On the third morning of the five-day workshop, one of the women participants came in and reported having been to Esalen many times during the past few years, and telling of a man on the staff with whom she had some personal issues. Well, she saw the man that morning and was trying to figure out a way to avoid him, when she suddenly remembered the practice I taught.
As soon as she became aware of her discomfort, she stopped and did something she had never tried before: she became very present with her experience of conflict. Then she looked inwardly at the story she was telling herself about this man: basically, “How can I avoid him?” She noticed it was just a story, a thought. In almost the same breath, she saw she was not the story, not any story. Rather, she was what looked at the story. She was the lucid, ever-present awareness behind the story.
When she saw that, a magical thing happened. As the story dissolved before her eyes, the emotional tension created by being identified with the story and wanting to avoid a confrontation also dissipated, and she felt freer, clearer, more here. She then went up to the man and had a totally fresh, new interaction with him.
Of course, she didn’t become completely free from one moment of insight, but it was a beginning. It cracked an opening in the shell of her ego and all the stories holding it together. She experienced a glimpse, a taste, of the inner freedom which is her true nature.
From Chapter One
Juliana’s Story
The first person to ask me to be her teacher was Juliana Dahl, a mother of four children, the youngest of whom was still in high school when we met. For the next year, we dialogued twice-per-month on the phone, as she lived in Boulder, Colorado, and I lived in northern California. Then, in 2006, I started traveling to Boulder to teach a series of workshops in her home. Here, in her words, is her story:
“I first got a taste of enlightenment in November of 1991 while living in Saudi Arabia. During a healing session my kundalini energy uncoiled at the base of my spine. It shot through my crown chakra and united me with all things as oneness. It was definitely a unitive experience. I felt everything surrounding me as part of me and me part of it. It was very blissful, ecstatic, and because the energy shot through my sexual chakra on its way up to the crown, I also had huge waves of sexual energy running through me. It is how I would imagine making love with the divine would be. I was in a euphoric state for days and for six months after this opening I would swoon in ecstasy when I gazed in the eyes of the person I was with whenever this occurred.
“This experience changed my life because from that moment on, anything in my life that was not in total integrity would fall away. After about a year I returned to my ordinary way of being, with suffering and hardships meeting me daily, but this kundalini awakening definitely put me on my spiritual journey. I wanted to discover as much as I could about regaining the feeling of unity consciousness and the freedom I had experienced.
“It was not until January of 2004 while I was presenting a workshop on female sexuality at the Sacred Sexuality, Enlightenment, and Shamanism Conference in Santa Fe that I met Jim. The subject of his talk was Why Enlightenment Matters. I was drawn to attend his presentation and sat right in the front row, and knew immediately I wanted him to be my teacher. I also understood for the first time that it was not necessary to wait lifetimes to wake up. He let me know it just needed a burning desire for freedom and a fundamental shift in perception, and liberation could be ours.
“During the year I studied with him, I could gradually feel the veils of illusion dropping away. Every time I experienced suffering, I would use the simple practice he taught me, the practice that is the foundation of his work. My energy would shift, and I would feel freer and more present.
“I loved the clarity and depth of his teaching style and we soon became good friends. I gathered a group of friends in Boulder to hear Jim's teaching. He returned several different times to teach in Boulder, where I hosted him. As my relationship with Jim continued over the next two years, I realized I was getting closer and closer to the freedom I wanted to live.
“During the summer of 2008, Jim was teaching a workshop at my home. That Saturday evening, he and I were driving out to dinner. On the way, he said to me: ‘I’m really happy with your progress of the path of awakening, Juliana. You really do see that everything between your ears is an illusion… well, almost everything. You’re still identified with one story.’
“I actually pulled the car over to the side of the road when he said that. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I’d been holding onto a judgment about a former room-mate. I felt she had interfered in my relationship with my then-boyfriend, so I had asked her to move out, and I hadn’t forgiven her. I said to Jim: ‘My God, you are right… I see now that that, too, is just a story!’
“This realization just hastened my resolve to awaken fully, and I decided I did not want to wait any longer. I could feel that I was ready to make the permanent shift. The actual moment of awakening happened the very next day, June 1st.
“What happened was that he invited me to sit in presence with him. He asked me to go deep inside and see what there was that was keeping me from being totally free. As I shut my eyes I saw several different stories which I had bought into as reality for so many years, and which had caused me many hours, days, and weeks of pain and suffering. Each one I was able to release as I knew these scenarios were not who I was.
“Then Jim asked, ‘Is there anything else which is keeping you from being fully awake and free?’ I closed my eyes. This time I saw pure black void. I heard the words: ‘You are empty, there is nothing else ...You are free.’
“When I opened my eyes I knew I had fully awakened to my true nature as pure consciousness, and knew I could experience the bliss and freedom which I had only tasted 17 years ago, all the time. Studying with Jim for these three years really focused my burning desire to have freedom, and his clarity, wisdom, and strong presence—and unwavering love and support—helped launch me back into what I have always been: ‘Pure awareness, expressing through this body, mind, and personality known as Juliana.’”
I spoke on the phone with Juliana recently, almost a year after she awakened. She is living in Aspen now, enjoying the timeless peace, bliss, and fun of being free, working with her sacred sexuality clients, doing massage, teaching yoga, and sharing the message of awakening with those who are open to it.
When I teach, I get variations of this question a lot: “I know awakening is often spoken of as nondual awareness, a freedom from the normal duality of everyday life. However, I don’t understand how you can transcend duality. It seems to me that duality—night/day, good/bad, happy times/sad times—is reality. We live in a world of opposites, and you can’t have the one without the other. You can’t have the ups without the downs.”
Obviously there is night and day, there is pleasure and pain, there is hot and cold, and there is wealth and poverty in the world, but even these distinctions are not clear-cut, not strictly black or white.
One person’s pleasure is another person’s pain, or at least discontent. Day gradually darkens into night, and in the morning, the dawning light heralds day-time once again. But in some parts of the world, in the polar regions, day lasts for twenty hours or more in the summer. Wealth and poverty are also a matter of perception. What we consider poverty here in the United States would be great wealth in some of the poorest Third World countries.
But I understand your real point, that we can’t have the ups without the downs. That is actually very true, when our happiness is based on events and circumstances outside ourselves. If you look to your partner for fulfillment, when your partner is happy and treating you well, you feel good. When your partner is unhappy and taking it out on you, treating you badly, you feel bad. You don’t like the situation and it affects you adversely.
The same principle applies to everything else. When money is flowing in, it brings happiness. When more is going out than coming in, the result, in the words of Dickens’ Mr. Micawber, is misery. Or maybe you are having deep, blissful experiences of meditation, which you label your “spiritual life,” but your “material” life—your relationship, or your work—produces a lot of conflict and suffering.
So again, let me be very clear: If you are going to rely on external factors for your happiness and well-being, you will inevitably fluctuate between times of feeling good and times of feeling bad. You are caught in duality. You are a victim of duality. It can’t be any other way.
Indeed, the more you depend on outer things for your happiness, the more likely you are to live with a chronic, underlying feeling of insecurity, never being quite sure when your good fortune may change or be taken away from you. This is the lot of most people, yet it needn’t be this way.
When you live in the awareness, openness, and freedom of your true nature, your essential well-being no longer depends on outer events and circumstances, nor on what people think, say, or do. It comes from within. It shines through you as a direct expression of the beauty, fullness, and joy of being itself. Peace, in other words, is your true nature.
When awakening becomes real, you are always at peace within yourself, no matter what is happening outside. At the same time, you live in the world, in the dualistic reality. You are obviously going to make choices and act in such a way as to create the most optimal circumstances for your own survival, comfort, and well-being. The more smoothly your life works at a material, physical level, the freer you are to devote your energies to serving others and fulfilling your destiny.
You create positive karma. Karma is simply any action having reverberations, which results in a chain reaction. Positive karma is conscious action and generates feelings of love, compassion, and goodwill. Negative karma is caused by unconscious actions, and always results in suffering.
But, again, the beauty of awakening, and why it is so important, is your basic peace and well-being do not depend on whether outer conditions are favorable or not. It really does free you from being attached to and thus at the effect of outer events, and the inevitable insecurity and suffering such attachment brings.
It frees you from suffering because it frees you from the idea of being a “someone” who gets attached and who suffers.
From the Chapter Three
Drop All Philosophies
Until you actually awaken to deeper levels of freedom, it’s inevitable that you will try to hold onto a story—some thought, belief, concept, story, or philosophy—which gives you the flavor and feeling of the freedom you seek. This is okay up to a point, but eventually it will become clear to you that even the words and philosophies, no matter how accurate or succinct they may be, have to be released.
One of the last public talks I attended with Jean Klein was in a church hall in Sausalito, California. There were fifty or sixty people in the room, waiting patiently for Jean to come in and take his seat at the front. When he arrived, he had to be helped to his chair. He seemed very old, thin, and frail, yet his gracious European bearing was still very much in evidence, and he was dressed as elegantly as ever.
He sat down with some difficulty and smiled at us. A beautiful, clear light emanated from his eyes. We sat in silence for a while, and then he began to speak. He talked of the need to see through the "person" so we could come to our real presence, our true being. There were some questions, and subsequent dialogue. About half-way through the evening, a serious-looking young woman in a business suit raised her hand. When Jean acknowledged her, she stood up. She looked like a banker, or a stockbroker.
"Dr. Klein," she asked, "May I ask, what is your philosophy of life?"
There was a long silence. Then Jean beamed one of those disarming smiles of his. "Madame, I have no philosophy… That is why I am a happy man."
Laughter rippled throughout the room. The young woman smiled rather self-consciously, and then sat down.
For months after the exchange, I found myself thinking about Jean's words. It was so simple. Forget the philosophies, the stories, the beliefs, the theories and just abide in the openness and freedom of our true nature. Then we really will be happy. We'll live out of wholeness, with wisdom and compassion, and we'll do what needs to be done—without fuss, without bother.
But if we hold onto a philosophy, a belief system, or an agenda of any kind, we create a barrier to the unfolding of something deeper, something more authentic, fresh, and alive. When our beliefs reinforce the idea of being a separate "self," a lonely wave on the ocean of life, it is that separation that breeds feelings of isolation, insecurity, and fear.
But when we let go of all philosophies, all stories, and just be, happiness is ours…
See if you can touch that place right now… Be present with whatever you are experiencing… Notice any thoughts or stories passing through your mind, and any sensations of feelings in your body, and see them for what they are… Just passing phenomena, coming and going… Now visualize yourself as empty space on the inside of your body, an emptiness which is at the same time, infinitely full… Notice how “you,” as the one who is aware of all this, are still very much here... In this moment, you need no story or philosophy to define you… Then open your eyes and just be present as the beautiful, conscious person you are…
