Awaken the World: Insights into Meditation & Consciousness with Daniel Schmidt

Join us as Daniel Schmidt, the passionate force behind the Awaken the World Initiative and the Samadhi Center, guides us through an exploration of the perennial philosophy and the transformative power of meditation. Our discussion focuses on the human quest for transcendence, a journey which maps from the depths of suffering to the peaks of awakening. Daniel's personal narrative of struggle, pathology, and a life-changing Vipassana retreat offers a guiding light for those navigating the choppy waters of spiritual seeking. We dive into the heart of self-inquiry, opening a door to a more profound understanding of awakening and the unity of awareness that transcends religious constructs. Daniel draws upon his experiences of dismantling the structure of the self and how long-term meditation changed the functioning of his psyche and the health of his body. He explains how allowing energy to flow within oneself will activate higher levels of perception, helping to bring subtle energy anatomy like the nadis and chakras online. We discuss why Daniel has chosen film as a way to share and convey his message to the world and the artistry involved in using this medium to explore deep concepts and insights. The conversation culminates with a consideration of the collective awakening of our world, where each individual contributes to the collective in surprising, paradoxical ways. Daniel emphasises the importance of maintaining a beginner's mind, reminding us to embrace the full spectrum of life with a sense of wonder. Indeed, Daniel extends an invitation to all seeking transformation and unity in this ever-awakening world.

Daniel made the award winning film Inner Worlds Outer Worlds, the Samadhi film series, and he is also one of the creators and speakers in the Awakening Mind series. He is the founder of the Samadhi Center in Ontario, Canada which hosts meditation retreats incorporating various meditation styles and supportive practices such as breathwork, dyads and sound healing. His approach combines self-inquiry with traditional forms of meditation so that participants have the opportunity to realize their transcendent nature while also purifying themselves of conditioned patterns.


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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

there was actually nothing to look for. That's the crazy paradox with all of this the mind that was looking, trying to accomplish something, trying to do something in its meditation was the very thing that had to give up. The farther we go on the path, like we're experiencing all of it, all of it, on some level, is happening, and this is the human experience, this whole continuum from the absolute horror on one end to the absolute bliss and beauty on the other, and awareness is just. It's here for the show, somehow.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Welcome to this episode of the Field Dynamics podcast. Today, we are joined by Daniel Schmidt, founder of the Non-For-Profit Awaken the World Initiative, created for the purpose of awakening humanity through free films and media in every language. Thus far, he has made the award-winning film Inner Worlds, outer Worlds, the Samadhi film series, and he's also one of the creators and speakers in the Awakening Mind series. Daniel is the founder of the Samadhi Center in Ontario, canada, which hosts meditation retreats incorporating various meditation styles and supportive practices such as breathwork, dyads and sound healing. It is his intention to convey the one perennial teaching that is inherent in all spiritual traditions. His approach combines self-inquiry with traditional forms of meditation so that participants have the opportunity to realize their transcendent nature while also purifying themselves of conditioned patterns. Daniel emphasizes that Samadhi can be experienced not merely as a temporary state, but also as a stage of development. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Yeah, so you're a proponent of the perennial philosophy, as mentioned in your bio. Would you please explain to our audience what the perennial philosophy is?

Speaker 1: 2:02

Yeah, that's a big one right off the bat. So yeah, to me I think, on the spiritual journey as life unfolds, there are things that people have in common. So there's a sense in which everyone's unique journey is sort of a unique individuation of the soul and unique aspects. But then there are these aspects that everyone has in common as well. As we move through this sort of human journey, evolutionary journey, there's a certain unfolding and there's a certain sort of I hesitate to say a template.

Speaker 1: 2:52

But there are things, when we look at the different journeys collectively and individually, there are things that can be seen that are in common different cultures, different religions but yet there's something at the core that is the same, something that is unfolding. So it's sort of like a divine template, you could say that is behind all of these unique expressions. So I kind of stole the term from Aldous Huxley as well. He wrote a book called the Perennial Philosophy and so he really he sums it up way better than I could actually, but he goes into the different traditions and shows how really it's a journey to knowing ourselves, like to the ineffable, to the, that which is beyond language and culture and tradition and words.

Speaker 3: 3:55

With regards to your own journey, your own unique, individuated path, I'd love to hear what drew you in this life to the path of meditation, and particularly through the Eastern and Buddhist lineages.

Speaker 1: 4:08

So initially it was desperation and suffering that brought me onto the path. There was a period where my identification with the character was so strong that it just the thought patterns were pathological and it created this mind-body state that was just not healthy. And so there was sickness manifesting various things rheumatoid arthritis, type one, diabetes, complete kind of discombobulation of the whole self-structure. So really embedded in the matrix and going after money, going after the usual things that people go after it. Really it took like an interrupt in that pattern to kind of break me out of it. So for me that was sickness. For other people, if they're drawn to a sadhana or a practice, that can also be an interrupt.

Speaker 1: 5:19

But for me at that time awakening wasn't on my radar or wasn't into any of this stuff, so it literally was like a lightning bolt that just was like no, you're not gonna do that, you're not gonna be playing out that pattern anymore.

Speaker 1: 5:37

And so it was like I had this sickness and my mind-body pattern that I had to deal with and I had to figure it out, figure out what was going on, and so I really just wanted to find the off button for the pathological thinking. I knew meditation was, it was supposed to be something that clients would use to be something that calm the mind. So I happened to have a friend at that time who went to a vipassana ten day retreat and he came back and he was in this very zen-like state. It was beautiful energy and I thought, okay, whatever he just did, that's what I need, I need to try that out. And so I just literally went to a vipassana ten day course without any idea of what I was doing or what I was getting into, and that was the beginning of my path and facing the pattern head on.

Speaker 3: 6:44

Basically, Just to extrapolate on that slightly, I'd love to hear if you had any connection to faith Might be the word to use here beforehand, when you were in that sort of dark night of the soul, or whether that was absent entirely from your sort of existence.

Speaker 1: 7:02

So when I was a kid I grew up in a very Catholic family, irish Catholic with nuns and priests and mother superior and all that, and I kind of rebelled against religion and so I didn't have any sort of religious faith. So to me the word faith is interesting, so I didn't believe in anything. I actually got into philosophy to sort of have a weapon against religion and to be able to kind of deconstruct all of these things that I felt had sort of messed up my character in early life. So I didn't have that type of faith. But to me, like a faith, like a true faith, is sort of a. It's like a trust or a deep knowing that there's something that we're moving towards, like something that's beyond this world and this pattern that we find ourselves identified with. And I knew that whatever was in play in my life, I knew that I'd built this pattern, this self-structure, and I intuitively felt that there was a way to move beyond that or move to undo it as well. So this trust in.

Speaker 1: 8:37

I showed up at the Vipassana Center listening to Essen Goenke giving these teachings and I just for some reason trusted that what he was saying was true. I had a deep knowing. And then, when he actually conveyed the Vipassana technique, there was just this immediate recognition or a knowing that this is it, this is what. At this point on the path, there was a recognition. So yeah, so to me there is something there, there's something deeper than the mind that is sort of moving, but when the mind can get out of the way, there's something that is moving in a direction of union. I could say.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Yeah, I'm definitely going to make a note to circle back to where that personal evolution went, because you're very associated with this word, samadhi, as we're going to see in the work that you put out. So curious to circle back to how that initial Vipassana experience then translated into your interest and experience of that very revered set of states or state. But before then wondering, you're really engaging with the world through the medium of film and media in general. How come you've chosen this particular way of getting your message or your voice out there?

Speaker 1: 10:11

Yeah, I'm not ultimately sure, but it seems like the early part of my life I was involved with film and television.

Speaker 1: 10:21

So a lot of my skills were in that area and as I got deeper into meditation, the sort of impulse to put everything together, to try to kind of grok it and convey it to others, was there. And the best way that I knew how was through film. Originally it actually started out as a PowerPoint, I just thought for my retreats. I just wanted to put all this information together and be able to convey it in some way. But then I realized I actually have skills to edit video and create music and I felt that there were other aspects that were more powerful as well, like music or just the feelings that can be conveyed sometimes are as important as what's being said. So it was partly just an exploration and it seems like when I look back at life it seems almost like a poetry of how things have come together to be able to express in that way, and even though it seemed like a kind of random journey at the time, but now, looking back, it seems like it actually happened for that purpose.

Speaker 3: 11:43

I wonder if you could make a distinction for us between the path of meditation and self-inquiry, or we feel like you make a distinction between them and you refer to this as the long path versus the short path, and I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that.

Speaker 1: 12:00

Sure, sure, yeah, I sort of see it as a pathless path. So, to me, what we usually engage with at the beginning of our kind of time-bound journey we come to usually like I did myself with the Vipassana tradition we come to usually techniques or teachings, teachers. So there are these things that we engage with, and usually it starts out on the level of the mind. There's some mind understanding there that we it's like we learn a technique, so there's something conditioned, and so, whether it's observing the breath or a body scan, or all different traditions have different sort of practices, and so. So to me, those practices are working within the self-structure, within the conditioned self. And the way I see those practices, you know the eight limbs of yoga, the noble eight fold path, all of that there's a sort of loosening of the bonds within the self-structure that can be helpful to sort of create an openness or a space for awakening to happen. And so in that space of openness, when we sort of create the right conditions, then we're ripe for self-inquiry and so we can directly inquire into our true nature, a direct inquiry, so not via the mind, not via any of those conditioned patterns. So to me, there's a convergence where meditation leads to, ultimately, to samadhi, to a cessation of the meditator, essentially this doer or this conditioning that is doing something that we can say is meditation. Some activity falls away, and then you know when. That you know, as Dogen said in Zen tradition. You know, meditation is the dropping off of mind and body. So when that mind and body drop off, then what remains, you know, in that stillness, in that you know that just presence, you know who or what is that that remains in that space. So I see meditation ultimately, like true meditation, is self-inquiry. It's when there's no meditator, there's just a beingness, just a presence, and so it doesn't have to be, you know, a formal practice, it can just be that presence can be present, you know, anytime, but you know, so the and the self-inquiry is doing the exact same thing that meditation does.

Speaker 1: 15:11

When we engage in self-inquiry, when we have this intention to know ourselves, then at the beginning it's always the false self that is apparent. So, so there's this, this purification. It's exactly the same process, just coming at it from the other end, rather than engaging with the self-structure using techniques where we're going directly to the true self, and then it's like the self-structure, you know, these deep layers of the unconscious start to come to the surface and this purification process starts to unfold. So, collectively, I call that the pathless path because there's, you know, in one sense there is a sort of a development happening within the self-structure, a sort of preparation or loosening the bonds, you know, so that awareness can recognize itself. But when we do recognize ourselves, you know, you recognize that that awareness was always here. So so there, there was actually nothing to look for.

Speaker 1: 16:23

That's the crazy paradox with all of this. The mind that was looking, trying to accomplish something, trying to do something in its meditation, was the very thing that had to give up. It had to actually fail, essentially, you know, or drop away, in order for that the true self to be revealed. So this, this is the paradox, you know. So, upon awakening, it was like you know what was all that about? You know what was all that practice and yoga and sadhana and all of that, like, who was doing that? That was actually the conditioned character all along doing it, but yet somehow it was necessary. It was. It's almost like like an alchemy pot being stirred, you know, it's like like stuff bubbling up from the unconscious and things happening, and then suddenly the conditions are right, we can't make awakening happen. But somehow, when we come to this kind of open state and the cessation of mind, then the conditions are right for awareness to self awaken.

Speaker 2: 17:40

Yeah, and you keep circling back to the word purification, which is very common in the Eastern traditions. Path of purification, one might say, is that more Samatha, path of tranquility and concentration? Would you equate purification with healing? Just an interesting general question. It seems like they're talking about either the exact same thing or something similar. What are your thoughts on those related words?

Speaker 1: 18:09

Yeah, so to me. In Buddhism, in the Yogi traditions, they have this word samskaras or sankaras in the Pali. These are the conditioned patterns that are in play in the unconscious and we become identified with these patterns. They're patterns of essentially craving and aversion or preferences within the self-structure, so wanting certain things or pushing away other things. To me, the purification is the making conscious of not just the samskaras. In Buddhism there's the five skandhas. These are all the operations of the self-structure. There's this sense of being embodied in a body and then there's sensations that arise on the body, there's perceptions, and then these perceptions of things are tied to memory and all of that. Then out of that we generate these preferences which are the habit patterns within the self-structure. All of that collectively, we bring into consciousness, because if it's running in the unconscious it's like a veil or a filter.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Essentially, aldous Huxley used the reducing valve. I love that. It's like a reducing valve for energy, consciousness and all of that. The healing aspect of it, I think, comes If you think about energy running in these patterns endlessly. Some of these patterns can be beneficial for the self-structure, for the organism. Sustaining Some of them can be pathological and be detrimental to the human experience. When we start to unravel or unlock the energy from those patterns, then the healing can happen from those pathological patterns. That energy becomes free and the energy has its own intelligence, it has its own agenda to not only heal the self-structure but to evolve the self-structure as well. Once it's actually functioning properly, the nadis are flowing and the chakras start to come online, then these higher aspects of human development start to unfold. To me, this is the inner lotus is that when the self-structure is functioning the way it's supposed to function, then there's this evolutionary force that comes to life, these organs of higher perception and the third eye, the chakras. All of that starts to come online and different dimensions of the human experience become available.

Speaker 3: 21:29

It's really great to hear you talk from your perspective and your background about some of these similar threads that we talk about and work with at Field Dynamics.

Speaker 3: 21:38

For us, we're working with bringing attention, perception and awareness to the energy field, to the aura, in order to, exactly as you just described, become familiar with the perception, the sensation occurring there and what energetic thread might be running through, in order to identify with that content or dis-identify actually, but to clarify and understand it so that energy can be freed up, as you said, to help evolve the self-structure, to activate an awakening process, if you will, higher orders of energetic movement through the physical form and the subtle system. It's interesting hearing you relate to these subtle realms and this energetic phenomena that's sort of arising, because in experience of Buddhist communities, for instance, they don't necessarily like to discuss these sort of esoteric activities and there's not necessarily a sense of advocacy for studying the subtle bodies or even necessarily the phenomena that's occurring that's the better way of putting it so the cities that are arising. I wondered if you tended to explore these realms yourself or if you advise people in your own to sort of move through them and not to pay so much attention.

Speaker 1: 22:53

So, yeah, I see it as a middle way to move through these things. So I think the caveats in these different traditions are there for good reason. I think, especially as we start to have awakenings and we start to see the workings of the self-structure, we'll have these awakenings. In Buddhism they talk about the jhanas, or the stages of meditative absorption. These can be incredibly blissful and almost rapturous experiences, or very peaceful, beautiful experiences, and there can be this tendency for the ego structure to chase those experiences, chase those sensory phenomena. So the further we go on the path, the more beautiful these experiences are, the more difficult it is to just let them arise and pass away without trying to get them back. And this actually brings me back to my first vipassana retreat that I mentioned. So in that retreat I experienced what's called Savakalpa Sumadi, which is the Sumadi of merging with inner energy. So in terms of human experience, it's a huge peak experience. It's like being one with all that is. But of course, at that time I was a total newbie, a total beginner. I had no idea what non-attachment was. So I was 100% identified with the Dan character who was having this peak experience. So I thought at that time this is it. I'm like Jesus or Buddha and of course it was temporary and I lost it as quickly as I got it. And within the self structure. It's almost impossible for people not to chase an experience like that when they first have it. It's very difficult. It took me another 10 years until I got deeper into the non-dual traditions and ended up at a Zen center. Eventually my self structure, my Dan character, had to fail. It literally tried to get every technique, every thing it could do to get that experience back and it was in that total failure that then eventually it got exhausted, gave up and then what remained was actually the true me awareness itself.

Speaker 1: 25:54

So I would say, for those experiences of higher states and higher worlds and all of the phenomena that unfolds on the path, the way I navigated it and the way I've watched other people navigate it through retreats, I think there can be a tendency in these traditions to sort of negate it as well, to say you know, this phenomena is not important and just ignore it.

Speaker 1: 26:29

And I think that's a mistake as well, because there's an energetic unfolding that is happening. It's a natural byproduct of inquiry and meditation for these things to unfold. These are just other dimensions of ourselves. So we don't want to get attached to it and we don't want to negate it or push away. We just want to have a complete experience of it, but without grasping and without developing this seeker that is trying to hold something, because sometimes these things will stick around for a while, sometimes they won't. But I think the you know, the baseline of our self structure. It's like we, you know, if we stop grasping, then our baseline, we become more permeable to awareness itself and these more subtle energies just come and go more freely. But if we're trying to hold some experience, then we shut down that evolutionary process.

Speaker 2: 27:41

I'm curious how you might describe how your experience of life moment to moment has shifted from that, that in that 10-year stretch where you said you were really caught up in the self structure that was suffering a lot, that had physical symptomology trying to express itself and you went within you, dedicated yourself. You just described at least a 10-year stretch initially there, of doing a lot of intensive meditation work. How might you describe that progressive or demarcated change in yourself as a human, as an experience? What was different? Physically, emotionally, psychologically?

Speaker 1: 28:22

Yeah. So now there's really no pathological sickness state, so no symptoms or none of that. All of those manifestations have gone and some of them like the type one diabetes. It's an interesting one. If I tell a doctor that story they just say, oh, you were misdiagnosed, that can't have happened.

Speaker 1: 28:50

So there was, I would say, like a rewiring happened within the body and that took a long time. That was years and years of really going in and feeling the contractions and the energetic holdings within the body. So, yeah, that process. For many years I'd go to a retreat and I'd be really tuned up and be in alignment and then I'd lose it again and go back to another retreat. So I went through the thing that many people go through, that it's like I've got it. I lost it kind of phase of the path and over time I think when I look back on my life, the most notable thing is there's just less suffering. I think that's the ultimate measure of one's path when you look back, is there less suffering? I think if there isn't, then there's not a lot of benefit to all this work, because it is really incredible difficult work to rewire the self-structure. So there has to be a tangible benefit. So for me the main thing, I think would be those pathological patterns of craving and aversion are not prevalent. And just energetically there's a big difference in just the sort of visceral sensation of life, so just feeling the movement of energy in the self-structure or like the self-inquiry world.

Speaker 1: 30:39

We use this term direct experience. So I would say there's more direct experiences that happen in life, so just experiences of simple, mundane things that are extraordinary because of the dropping off of the conditioned self. So just seeing a tree as if it's new for the first time, and these direct experiences just happen. It seems like the more we work on the path at dropping this conditioned self, there's a more immediate or direct connection to life. So just more experience of everything.

Speaker 1: 31:31

And it's not always good, it's always that sensitivity that allows for a beautiful, blissful, direct experience is also a sensitivity to everything within the self-structure, so the whole continuum seems to be more alive. I guess you could say so. The practice or the path is to recognize that part of the conditioned mind that is judging one experience as good and another bad. So when we can just let it all be as it is, then it's just an aliveness that is kind of playing there. So that kind of direct experience was absolutely polar opposite to where I started out, in the matrix, which was just totally in the mind and trying to figure stuff out, and just lost in thinking. So thoughts have also settled down a lot as well. So there's just much less thinking happening, just pathological thinking.

Speaker 3: 32:47

I'm sure there's many people listening, dan, who would like to hear more about how your journey unfolded in terms of a lot of identification for people, I'm sure, with this idea of the deep suffering, the original Dan who was there with these pathological mental patterns, conditioning struggle and the attendance at the first, the passenger retreat. But how did things unfold from there? What signposts, what guidance did you look for? Was it that you stuck with the Gwenka retreats for some time? How did that continue to unravel?

Speaker 1: 33:21

So, as I mentioned, at that retreat, having that Samadhi experience, it's like the seeker was born in that moment. So I went from not even knowing that Samadhi was a thing, or not even having anything on my radar, to just trying to learn everything about what it was that I had experienced. So I started really getting into Buddhism first of all, and got into eventually some of the more esoteric aspects of Buddhism, like Zogshan, mahamudra. It seemed to be sort of a progression into these sort of non-dual aspects of these traditions. But I also got into Taoism, learning about the Christian mystics and some of the saints, like John of the Cross, saint Teresa of Avila. So I was literally like everything that could possibly offer me a thread of insight. I was pulling all those threads and trying to find something that would lead me back to that experience. So that went on for a long period of time and I was really drawn to creating a meditation center at the time as well. So I was doing a lot of meditation, but at that time it was really using techniques, using the mind to sort of quiet itself, basically not really inquiring to who is beyond the mind or what is beyond the mind. I went through numerous dark nights of the soul, because my Dan structure very quickly became like the spiritualized ego structure and so I became this annoying kind of meditator guy that was always talking using Sanskrit words, and I guess I still do that a little bit. But there was various incarnations of the Dan character that they just kind of came and aspects, were unconscious and had to eventually be seen and then dropped, and usually there was some sort of humbling experience that would bring that character face to face with its delusions or its limitations. So the big one was getting to the Zen center and just being put in I often use this phrase conditions of no escape for the ego. So they really created these conditions of no escape where you're almost guaranteed to fail and whatever you think you're doing in meditation, it's not going to work. You're sitting on this cushion for so long that something has to give, something energetically, has to break through and that self structure has to give up and fail. So luckily I ended up failing big time at the Zen center.

Speaker 1: 36:59

So the Savakalpa Samadhi is the temporary Samadhi, samadhi with a seed, or potentially calls it Sam Pradhanjnada Samadhi. So these different traditions have these different words for it and it's always temporary, whereas the big awakening to your true nature is not a state, it's a recognition of what is ever present, that primordial awareness that is ever present. So at the Zen center, that's what unfolded was a recognizing of this character that had been identified with all this time was actually not truly who I was, and so that recognition, it's that primordial awareness that remains even in deep sleep. So even when the mind and body drop off, there's some continuity there which you can't say. What that is, it's not a thing. There's no observer and observed or any of that, so it's a truly mysterious. I can't even say a thing because it's not a thing.

Speaker 1: 38:20

But whatever that is, it's that recognition of what we are, that which remains beyond the mind and body. For me, that was the turning point on my path where I realized what all these traditions are actually pointing to, and it's so beyond words and beyond it's. All these fingers are pointing at it, but we get fixated on the fingers and we're either trying to negate the finger, like biting the finger, or we're sucking on the finger for comfort, but most people won't make that jump to look beyond the finger and just to let go. And so these retreats that I am doing, really there's no, ultimately no doing in order to make that happen. It's actually just a recognition of what is ever present and a recognizing of what this conditioned self is already doing. There's already this motion and this pathological activity, and so when that finally settles down, then we can just recognize or remember what is beyond.

Speaker 2: 39:48

Speaking of what you're doing at your center, I was really fascinated by the inclusion of the dyad work at your center, which is inspired by Charles Burner and I think he used to call these enlightenment intensives. And I came across Charles Burner's work many years ago because I bit like you, like an avid, voracious, spiritualized keep looking for every little thread imaginable. And Charles Burner was a really interesting teacher I found. I read through a lot of his work and saw his enlightenment intensives. Never got a chance to do one but thought, wow, what a fascinating process. Would you explain a little bit about what that is, what purpose it serves?

Speaker 1: 40:24

Yeah, I actually I came across it right around the time I ended up at the Zen Center and all these things started converging and yeah, so what this is is Charles Burner was also into Zen as well, so he really was interested in creating conditions that would lead to Kensho or Samadhi, or awakening, and so he really started exploring. You know, like what is it that actually, you know, makes this flip happen? You know, some people can go to a Zen Center and, unless the conditions are really right, they can somehow manage to navigate that for years without that flip happening. And so some people it'll happen, but it's usually a very small percentage. And so he he started to investigate and doing these experiments and what he realized is that there's a need for this continuous practice to happen for a certain period of time where the energy is not flowing into the old condition pattern.

Speaker 1: 41:44

So in these dyads it's an incredible way, it's almost like a sneaky way to force people to meditate in a very intense way. So you're looking at a partner in their eyes and you're inquiring, so your partner will say to you tell me who you are. And then you have this intention to directly experience your nature, and then the technique is to just report whatever comes up to your partner as a result of that inquiry. So so, very quickly, all the stuff that's in the unconscious, the samskaras and you know emotional blocks. You know things get crazy very quickly with these, these intensives. So people are having cathartic experiences there, so trauma releases, all of that kind of stuff starts to happen very, very quickly and and if you can sustain that continuously you know the some people it's very, it's very difficult. Everybody who does these intensives will say that's the hardest thing I've ever done. I believe that that was totally insane and and and but it but it's, it's the way to face all the stuff that is in the unconscious.

Speaker 1: 43:03

So we it's an opportunity to to feel all the things that got stuffed down. You know that we didn't want to feel in the first place or we whatever, whatever life experiences were there that had a really strong charge. We weren't able to process it in the moment. So it created the sun conscious wiring, so so by communicating it to another person who is there, they're just witnessing, so they're not responding, they're completely neutral and and and it's sort of a safe mirror for allowing this, this, you know phenomena, to unfold. And by doing that you know this, this purification happens very quickly and there's you know, charles burner calls it a clearing there's a clearing of the mind and then we create these conditions which make awakening or can show more likely to happen.

Speaker 1: 44:02

And in that particular technique so the best sort of facilitators who've who facilitated that, these techniques it usually yields about a 30% can show result. So usually, like one in three, roughly one in three people who go to these, these retreats, will have an awakening of some sort. So there can be a, you know, a glimpse, or there can be a profound opening to our true nature which can can last for a long period of time. So, but usually, you know, a third of people will, will get there in some way. So it's, it's, you know, out of every technique or everything that I've seen, I've done a lot of, you know the traditional meditation and and you know the breath work and the, the yogic practices, all of that, they, a lot of those things, will lead to a Savaka up as somebody experience like a merging experience or peak experience.

Speaker 1: 45:09

But there's very few things that will actually bring a Kencho where, where we recognize our true nature. So so this to me is, it's the most important tool in my arsenal at these retreats because it's it's truly creating these conditions for no escape to make that flip happen.

Speaker 3: 45:33

And it's the principle of these conditions for no escape and it's really evocative to you talk about it and I like the poetry of the, the dyad, that the idea that when we think about the structure of to in society, male and female polarity right and finding unification, that it takes the to to be effective at identifying and recognizing the one.

Speaker 1: 45:56

And there's, there's a real power in, in having another person present and and it's so much more powerful. You know, just sitting on a cushion on your own, it takes so long for for this recognition to happen. But the interesting thing, having this other being, you know, you're looking into their eyes continuously for hours and hours and hours and and you it. The interesting thing is, you know we what, whether we're doing the inquiry ourself or we're holding space for someone who's doing the inquiry. Eventually it becomes apparent that it's actually the same thing, like whether you know if I, if I want to know who you are, you know, or you want to know who I am, the same as me wanting to know myself, you know. It's actually the one awareness that is is, you know, disguised in these, these different characters.

Speaker 1: 46:52

So it, so it doesn't matter which side of that you're on, it's actually the same investigation and that, I think, is why it unfolds so much more quickly when you have a partner, because there's there's this sort of reflexivity or or, you know, mirror, like unfolding. That happens because you're, you are looking into your own eyes and one sense you know, you're, you're sort of waking yourself up through this, this other being, and it's interesting at the. You know the, the retreats, like you switch partners. You know, every every 40 minutes you have a different dyad partner and after a certain point it's like they're just interchangeable. It doesn't matter what avatar is in front of you, it's the same same being. You know, looking through the eyes.

Speaker 3: 47:45

It's great to hear about these parallels with healing and purification and people's intention, maybe to heal themselves of something, versus their awakening journey. We like to think of them as one and the same at field dynamics. So this idea of working with repressed emotions, traumas, the incomplete experiences of life that are hidden, as you say, in the unconscious or the shadow, to bring those to the surface, to conscious awareness, to purify, to heal, or pointing along the same path, of course, I'd like to ask a broad question based on that. We have a principle here that's obviously very universal in nature, that individual healing is collective healing in its nature, and I wonder if you could answer, from your perspective, what the awakening of humanity might look like.

Speaker 1: 48:33

Yeah, that's a beautiful question. Yeah, I think there's this sense when we're at the beginning of our path, where it's like this idea of awakening that I'm going to awaken, there's this me that's going to awaken. The world is all asleep but I'm going to awaken. So it's like awakening from the world, but the truth of it is it's a total flip. It's the opposite. Actually, when awakening happens, it's like awareness is recognized in everyone and all things, and so it's the world that awakens. So literally, absolutely literally, to awaken yourself is to awaken the world Literally. When you're awake, it's all the one consciousness, the one source awake. So there's nothing other than just your own awakening, because when you're awake the world is perfect as it is. It's all just this play of form and the suffering. When I say stuff like that, sometimes people say yeah, but what about all the suffering and torture and all of that? And the only thing I can say about that is the farther we go on the path we're experiencing all of it. All of it, on some level, is happening, and this is the human experience, this whole continuum from the absolute horror on one end to the absolute bliss and beauty on the other, and awareness is just. It's here for the show somehow. It's here for all of it, for this whole continuum. So when we're identified at one end of that continuum, it seems serious when we're down in the weeds and identified with the character, but yet when we awaken there's no problem. It's like the actor on a stage realizing oh, I've been playing this character the whole time. I forgot that it was just a play, a play of form. So the play is so real, it's so powerful in it, the matrix is so powerful in its capacity to draw us in, and that's the beauty of it as well. If it wasn't that, then we wouldn't take it seriously and it wouldn't be much of a game.

Speaker 1: 51:37

One thing I should say is I think there are certain beings, like the great masters, who have taken this all the way. So people like Jesus or Ramana Maharshi is a good example where it doesn't seem to matter on the external. You can crucify them, or their bodies are being eaten by maggots or whatever, and they're still abiding as the self, they're still in that loving awareness. So that, I think, is the ultimate goal. So for me, I'm nowhere near that. I get identified with things, but the farther I go on the path, I think, the more free it becomes. So the other aspect is it feels like the matrix that we're in right now. It's like a river and there are eddies and currents and sometimes that river is really going fast and lately it seems like the river is really ramping up as well. So there are times where there's incredible surprises that come out of the self-structure.

Speaker 1: 53:04

So I never assume that I'm beyond anything. I feel like to me. The one thing I always come back to is a beginner's mind, like a not knowing mind, really truly knowing that I don't know what. I don't know Because I've been surprised so many times on the path where there's new unfoldings or there's just new possibilities for life. When we really have a don't know mind, we allow that energy to be free. Then we can allow the next thing to unfold. So I like to just kind of hang out and not I don't know mind and there's a sense of wonder. Then, instead of thinking, I know the lay of the land and I've figured all this stuff out and I'm free of suffering and all that stuff, I don't believe any of those thoughts anymore. I just try not to believe any concepts that my mind generates.

Speaker 3: 54:18

Obviously, we'd love to share your domain here, as we bring things to a close wakentheworldcom and if there's anything you'd like to share in terms of how listeners might interact with you, your offerings, your services to this world.

Speaker 1: 54:34

Yeah, so right now we the most recent thing we've created an online sort of build your own retreat. It's a seven day I am retreat, so we did it live in December, january and have all the recordings of it on the website so people can sort of recreate that seven day retreat where they can sort of create conditions of no escape in their own home, basically, and there's all the teachings, all the pointers, guided meditations. There's also breath work, sound journeys, all kinds of stuff like that. So it's like a whole little retreat that people can create. And the only difference is in the live retreats.

Speaker 1: 55:31

We did the dyads in the evenings so people would have to kind of find their own dyad partner if they wanted to really recreate the same retreat. But we have a community page where people can actually hook up with dyad partners and we are actually working on an app to. It's like a, you know, get a dyad partner anytime anywhere in the world, kind of thing. So that's going to be coming in the next few months as well. Yeah, and if people just check out the Awake in the World site, there's a lot of resources on there. We have monthly guided meditations, q&as, there's morning meditation, silent meditation every day and just tons of resources on there.

Speaker 2: 56:21

So we encourage people to check out your work and your films as well, which are free available on YouTube millions of views, and I'm sure that's really influenced and enriched a lot of people's understanding of these kinds of concepts and the work that you're doing. So thank you so much for that work and that contribution, and also for your time today and your wisdom, and it's been a real pleasure getting to hear about what you're up to in the world.

Speaker 1: 56:47

Thank you, yeah, and it's great to find out about what you guys are doing as well. It sounds like very much in sync. So, yeah, let's stay connected.