Buttons

Some buttons that Saniel's approach to teaching still pushes (although I have more awareness around what is behind it now)...

• Special vs. Ordinary
  Due to my own background (awakening at an early age), I have a strong need to emphasize the ordinariness of spirituality and awakenings. I was so socially isolated at the time, with nobody who could see me, in a sense so "special", that emphasizing the specialness of it brings up that pain again.
  
  
• Being Seen
  This may be the underlying aspect of much of this. I feel that the general teachings are aimed at people with very different backgrounds from myself. I do not feel seen.
  
  
• Terminology
  The terminology often seems overly dramatic as well as imprecise. The "core wound", to take one example, refers to a central aspect of the human condition: we are both mind (infinite, beyond all dualities) and body (limited physical body). The term "wound" seems to imply something that was healthy, then got wounded, and can be healed. But the polarity of mind-body, infinite and finite, timeless and time specific, is just part of the human existence. There is nothing wrong with it. It just is, and it is one of the main engines for awakening awareness for us.

Healing

I sense that some of the following areas can find some healing through the Waking Down process.

1. Awakening
   When I had my opening/awakening in my teens, I was not able to integrate and ground it fully. Partly due to a personality that was not well developed and integrated at the time, and partly due to (for a while) not finding others who understood and could guide. There was a good deal of pain around this.
   
   
2. Special vs. Ordinary
   I have a charge around "specialness" and spiritual practice/awakening. I have habitual patterns where I experience an aversion towards the "special" approach, and am attached to it being "ordinary". This is a need that grew out of my awakening situation, where I experienced myself as profoundly isolated socially and "special". I desperately wanted the awakening to be ordinary socially (commonplace among those I interacted with) and personally (fully integrated and grounded in my life).
   
   
3. Comfort and Integration
   I want to experience a deeper comfort with my awakening and realizations, an increasingly profound integration of it in my life, an increased ease and comfort in living it fully, and increased ease and comfort in communicating it to others.
   
   
4. Arrogance vs. Humility
   I developed arrogance as a way to distance myself from contracted states, as expressed in other human beings (reflecting my own of course). I want to let go of this habit, and open up for genuine curiosity and interest in how Mind and Spirit is expressed in other human beings - whether the states are open or contracted. Along with this goes recognition of projections (what I see in others I recognize in myself), true empathy and humility.

Conversation

I talked with Don Jones this evening, and it opened up much for me in many ways.

I realize that I went through the Rot when I was 16 years old. I experienced a profound sense of separation, meaninglessness and despair. I could go no futher into despair. I had hit the bottom in every way. There was nothing to hold onto anymore. It was profoundly overwhelming. A deep personal crisis. (Combined with this was a mysterious illness that affected me profoundly on a physical level, which I later discovered was due to several severe food allergies)

And it gave birth to my awakening. It was between Christmas and New Years, and I walked down the gravel road to the mail box. It was evening, dark, no snow, a big wind, and stars above. I experienced the wind as going through the whole Universe. There was no separation anymore.

I experiencing God/Spirit/Buddha Mind throughout the whole Universe, in and including everything. There was no separation. There was no separation between the outside and the inside. Even the darkest parts of my personality was God and Spirit, as much as everything else.

And my pain came from not being able to integrate it into my life. Not being able to LIVE it fully as a human being. And it came from not being able to share it with others. Nobody understood. There was no separation, and yet a profound social separation.

Throughout this was a process of being taken apart on all levels (mental, emotional, energetically) and reconfigured in new ways. The old was fragmented, and a new wholeness took form. I also saw auras clearly and picked up what was going on with other people. At the time, I was not able to keep it at a distance, so this was also painful.

My awakening clarified over the next several years, and I was able to integrate it more but still far from where I felt it needed to be. When I came to the Zen center in Utah, I found another opportunity to integrate and ground it, and it was a very healing process.

And another aspect of the Rot... There is a profound knowing in me that there is nothing I can "do" to find Awakening. I just have to relax into my experiences, melt into this aspect of God/Spirit/Buddha Mind. There is only grace... (although I can set a stage for it to happen, to invite it in).

My search is for integration and grounding, not Awakening in itself. I want to deepen my exploration and experience of - and life IN - both poles of the polarity.

Update

It's been a while since I was actively involved with Waking Down, but now experience the urge coming back. It is mostly an impatience combined with a sense of the tremendous value of the Waking Down approach.

I have talked with Sean and Kelly (mentor), and feel more comfortable with some of the aspects that turned me off earlier. Mostly because I see how there is a diversity of approaches among the WD folks including those that speak more to me.

Nothing Special

After talking with Kelly, and also listening to some of Saniel's audio recordings, I realized one of the reasons why I had/have the strong reactions to aspects of Saniel's approach.

I have a strong need for seeing the practice and results as nothing special (everything and everyone is Buddha Mind already, we just need to realize it - and glimpses of the realization is always close at hand). Saniel seems to have a need to emphasize it as special and different.

My need for emphasizing the ordinariness is related to my opening experience. I was profoundly alone in my experience, with no-one around who could relate to it. I was continually reminded that it was "special" and I wanted it to be thoroughly ordinary in every way. Ordinary for me, and grounded in my ordinary life - and if possible, ordinary for those around me.

Both approaches are valid (just emphasizing one or the other end of the polarity which the phenomenon itself goes beyond), and speaks to different people and even the same person at different times. They are complimentary approaches.