Welcome to the Advanced Realization Process Teacher Mentoring

Level I ∼ Cultivating a Healing Presence
Living and teaching authentically

Fridays 10:25 am – 12:30 pm Pacific
May 24, 31, June 7, 28, July 5 (optional)
Sep 6, 13, 20, 27, Oct 4, 11
Nov 1, 8, 22, Dec 6, 13

Intentions: May 10, 2024
wholeness
speak and heal
trust
give and receive our wisdom authentically
openness – and from that openness receptivity
forget my ideas and receive each of these moments and have it be the information that guides me forward
an integration of giving, receiving, integrating fully and openly
integrate my head and my heart – unity
opening – expanding to the fullness of my being so that my love can flow into my body and into the world
growth within myself and also in what I have to offer to the world
connection with all of you and through RP, which feels like a new way to connect with people and a very exciting way to connect with people and rich way to connect with people and also connection with myself and fundamental consciousness
connection – and learning what you can build from that base of trust – connection,
finding my voice – speaking my truth

Introductions May 10, 2024

1-2 minute talks May 10, 2024


Establishing a Foundation for Living and Teaching Authentically
May 10, 24, 31, June 7, 28, July 5 (optional)

Guidelines for Meeting with Spiritual Friends Outside of Class:

Important learning happens when spiritual friends seek open-heartedly to learn from each other. Speaking directly with your partner(s) weekly for 75-90 minutes allows each of you to deepen contact with your essential self as you each explore what really matters to you. Suggestions as to how your time together might be mutually nourishing:

  • Decide on dates/times to meet – exchange contact info – and talk about what makes a study group meeting particularly meaningful to each person.
  • Take time ahead of each meeting individually to preview the upcoming cohort session – so when you meet together, you can ask for what you want and need in order to grow towards wholeness and to be prepared for the upcoming cohort session.
  • Rotate who facilitates each study group meeting. (Zoom link, reminders, agenda – facilitating the meeting skillfully so that the study group meeting is valuable to each person.
  • Begin each session with a short breathing practice or core-to-core attunement or any other meditation assigned for the past or upcoming week – so that each person can settle – and so each of you can relate being-to-being.

Samples as to how you might organize your study group meeting to prepare for the upcoming cohort session:

  • (10 min) Meditating: Core Breath
  • (10 min) Connecting:
    • Express what’s most alive, what’s moving you, what’s touching you in the present moment
    • Ask for what you want or need.
  • (55 min) Preparing for upcoming sessions:
    • Journal sharing
      • Choose a journal entry that reveals what’s core to your growth
    • Directed reading discussion
      • Share a key passage and talk about what it means to you
      • Read Judith’s explanations of a key term – and then ask each person to explain that same key term in your own words
    • Upcoming session preparation – for example, for sessions 2:
      • Describe your ideal student. Explain why.
      • Describe skillful ways to recognize and respond to your own and your students’ basic human needs to feel safe, trusted, connected, and respected
  • (10 min) Reflecting together
    • In what ways was this study group meeting valuable to you?
    • What worked well?
    • What didn’t work as well?
    • What suggestions do you have for your next study group meeting?
  • (5 min) Closing
    • What are your take-aways from this meeting? What’s lingering? What’s unsettling? What’s nourishing?

Preparation for Session 1

  1. Design a life schedule conducive to your well-being
  2. Meditate 30+ minutes daily. Make a recording of yourself guiding each of these exercises, and listen to either or both exercises daily:
  3. Read the preface and Chapter One (pages ix to 26) in Judith Blackstone’s book The Enlightenment Process: A Guide to Embodied Spiritual Awakening.
    • What key terms from the reading do you want to be able to explain clearly to your students?
      • For example, “enlightenment,” “fundamental consciousness,” “direct experience”?
      • Write down direct quotes from Judith and then write down how you would help your students understand.
  4. Journal regularly, responding to the prompts below, including paintings, poems, collages, or drawings:
    • What does mentoring mean to you?
    • What are your hopes, dreams, wishes, and expectations? from the teacher, from your study group, from others in the cohort?
    • What are your personal challenges? Your fears?
    • Consider what you might want to share a) in your study group, b) in breakout rooms, c) in the cohort session.
    • Write a short, sensory-rich response to each prompt, inviting others into the immediacy and aliveness of your direct experience:
    • The awe of connecting with something greater than yoursel
    • A crisis that shattered the identity you had created for yourself
    • A story about your own awakening
    • Choose what you might want to share in the breakout rooms, upcoming study group meetings, and cohort sessions.
  5. Optimize your office or studio set up so that:
    • Your presence fills the screen
    • Your colors, lighting, and background create an ambience of safety, warmth, friendliness, and connectedness as well as professionalism.
  6. Consider these options for microphone and camera needed for your office or studio set up

“The family the soul wants is a felt network of relationship, an evocation of a certain kind of interconnection that grounds, roots, and nestles.” -Thomas Moore

 

Agenda Session 1 Unveiling the fullness and vividness of the unified relational field

 

Process: Meditations, stories, and somatic inquiries to move from a fragmented experience of life towards the unity of enlightenment

Inspiration from Judith: “I have found that many people are capable, with some practice, of the experience described here. This is the realization, or unveiling, of a subtle dimension of consciousness pervading our own being and everything around us as a unified whole. It is the experience of the luminous transparency of ourselves and our environment, and the fullness and vividness of it.

“This book is about the relationship between the individual self and the unity of self and other experienced in spiritual awakening.

“The experience of our fundamental, unified dimension of consciousness is uncreated; it arises spontaneously as we relinquish our constraints on ourselves. Enlightenment is the laying bare of our own human nature, and yet it is extraordinary. It means to experience oneself and the world as made of the light of consciousness.

“To become enlightened is to move from a fragmented experience of life to a unified experience.

“When we become enlightened we feel a continuity, a wholeness, of inner and outer experience, without any shifting of focus. This means that there is no longer any divisive schism between subject and object. We also experience our whole internal being at once, so there is no schism between thought, feeling, and sensation. All of these experiences are a unified whole; they occur in the single unbounded space of fundamental consciousness.

“The unity of enlightenment is not a merging of self and other, nor a collapsing of our internal experience in favor of the environment. It is a continuity of the internal space of our own form with the internal space of the other forms around us.” (The Enlightenment Process.)

Experiential introduction to somatic inquiry:

Can you sense the space come alive with each person’s presence?

  • Somatic inquiry is a subtle nondual somatic process that:
    • Integrates experiencing into awareness
    • Sensitizes you to the arising and ceasing of subtle physical sensations, emotions, thoughts / beliefs
    • Heightens your experience of resonance within your body and resonance flowing between you and others

Speak and listen as fundamental consciousness. Introduce yourself with a 1-2 minute sensory-rich talk about:

  • A personal experience of “awe” or
  • A personal “crisis” or
  • A personal “awakening” or
  • “Enlightenment” or
  • “Fundamental consciousness” or
  • “Direct experience”

Note: Speak authentically – in a way that connects others to the immediacy of your direct experience.

Open space: What’s alive in you right now? What touched you the most during this session? What does ‘presence’ mean – and why does your presence – and the presence of others matter? What are your take-aways from this meeting? What’s lingering? What’s unsettling? What’s nourishing?

Closing

Mentoring Level I May 10, 2024

Preparation for Session Two:

  1. Look at either or both videos from May 10th. Optimize your office or studio set up so that:Your presence fills the screenYour colors, lighting, and background create an ambience of safety, warmth, friendliness, and connectedness as well as professionalism.
  2. Center Read Chapters 2-3 (pages 27 to 81).
    • Write down Judith’s explanations for key phrases – and then write down your own words to help your students understand them, for example:
      • The subtle core of the body
      • Holding patterns
      • How emotional pain becomes bound in the body
      • The healing process
  2. Meditate 30+ minutes daily, choosing from the practices named below.
  3. Journal:
    • Reflect on our first session together as a cohort.
      • What are you learning?
      • What worked? What didn’t?
      • Suggestions for today and future sessions?
      • Note: Always, I value hearing your experiences, questions, suggestions, and different perspectives.
    • Write a short, sensory-rich response to these prompts, connecting others with your direct experience, describing (through images or words):
      • Your personal path towards healing your body, heart, and mind
      • Your own journey towards awakening and embodying your spiritual essence
    • Describe your ideal student / client. Explain why.
    • Describe skillful ways to recognize and respond to your own and your students’ basic human needs to feel safe, trusted, connected, and respected.
    • Choose what you might want to share in the breakout rooms, upcoming study group meetings, and cohort sessions.
  4. Meet with your study group to practice some of the assigned meditations, share questions and thoughts about the assigned reading, and discuss excerpts from your journal.

Agenda Session 2 Recognizing each person as ‘kin’
Process: Meditations, somatic inquiries, breakout rooms, and open space to know, feel, and touch each other across the distance between us.

Inspiration from Judith: “As fundamental consciousness, we gradually dissolve our “bubble” of self-protection. We dissolve our self-consciousness, our vigilance to our own behavior and the responses of others. Our sense of self becomes an open, unbounded expanse of receptivity and responsiveness.

“We have direct, in-depth contact with other life, and we feel great kinship with other life, because the core dimension of our own being is the same as the core of other life. But our contact with other life occurs across space, from our body to the body of another. If I feel someone else’s grief, I know it is someone else’s because it occurs somewhere else in the field of fundamental consciousness other than in my own body. I may respond to that person’s grief with grief in my own body, as often happens because we are empathic creatures, but I will be aware of the sequence of another’s grief and then my own.” (The Enlightenment Process)

“When we see-feel within another human being, we can sometimes see through their layers of protective and compensatory constrictions and perceive the person that they truly are within this binding. Often this evokes in us a recognition of our basic kinship with other human beings and a spontaneous upwelling of compassion for the ways in which we have all hidden and confined ourselves.” (Trauma and the Unbound Body.)

“Fundamental consciousness is the basis of our kinship and equality with all other life. As Felicia and I continued to sit with each other as this unified, pervasive space, our continued relationship of teacher and student (or doctor and patient) became secondary. We had a felt sense that we were made of the same essence, the same transparency. Although we each had our own history and perspective to communicate to each other, this could now take place in a context of ongoing contact between us. As fundamental consciousness, we knew, felt, and touched each other across the distance between us.” (Belonging Here)

Somatic inquiry: Can you sense how kinship unveils a true sense of belonging – of safety, trust, connection, and respect?

Somatic inquiries are designed so that you may:

  • Be present to yourself and each other
  • Pay atttention to your own internal experiences – phsicall, energetically, emotionally, mentally, and perceptually.
  • Discern real-time perceptions of the “space” / “spaciousness” within and around you – is it unbounded? opening? closing? other?

Breakout rooms: Practice connecting with each other as “kin.”

  • Opening: Choose a facilitator who guides a brief meditation, discerns shared interests, and engages everyone in dialogue that’s meaningful and nourishing. Choose a process observer who facilitates reflections (see closing).
  • Sharing: Share what’s most alive in you (let others know whether you welcome responses or not):
    • Journal excerpts
    • Key terms / key quotes
    • Dialogue about your ideal student
    • Skillful ways to recognize and respond to your own and others’ basic human needs for safety, connection, trust, and respect
  • Closing (process observer facilitates brief reflections): What worked? What didn’t? Suggestions for next time?

Open space for sharing:

  • Insights, questions, challenges in connecting as kin?
  • Perceptions of the “space” / “spaciousness” within and around you – is it unbounded? opening? closing? other?
  • Questions about somatic inquiries?
  • Your ideal student?
  • Skillful ways to recognize and respond to your own and others’ basic human needs to feel safe, trusted, connected, and respected?

Closing: What’s alive in you right now? What touched you the most during this session? Are you inhabiting your heart-body-mind more fully? What does ‘kinship’ mean – and why does it matter? What are your take-aways from this meeting? What’s lingering? What’s unsettling? What’s nourishing?

Preparation for Session 3:

  1. Read Chapters 4-5.
    • Write down Judith’s explanations for key phrases and then find your own words (or a mind-map or sketches) to help your students understand the meaning and significance of these terms:
        • Autonomy
        • The merged state
        • Hypervigilence
        • Learned relationship style
        • dDsentanglement
  2. Meditate 30+ minutes daily, choosing from the practices named below.
    Note: You can also listen to – and practice – these recordings while washing dishes, folding laundry, or taking a walk.

  3. Journal: Write a short, sensory-rich response to these prompts:
    • Describe one of more of the defensive barriers you creatied early in your life between you and other people.
    • Describe someone currently in your life who stresses you.
      Which early childhood defensive patterns are most likely to show up when you’re stressed – or distressed?
    • What childhood needs still feel unfilled?
    • Are you aware of a legacy of bound pain that has been passed on from one generation to another in your family? If so, how does that affect you? (see pages 89 – 91).
    • Are you aware of a legacy of bound pain that has been passed on through society? If so, how does that affect you? (see pages 13, 29, etc.).
    • Judith writes about “the displacement of consciousness away from the vertical core and internal space of your body.” (see pages 92-99). How would you describe the movement of your consciousness, energy, and body, when you are stressed – or distressed? (see pages 83-84).
  4. Meet with your study group to practice some of the assigned meditations, discuss the assigned reading, and share excerpts from your journal. Pay attention to your internal experiences – physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally, and perceptually.

Agenda Session 3 Sense contact – a ‘touching back’ – a resonance of our shared aliveness

Process: Meditations, somatic inquiries, breakout rooms, and open space to deepen your inward contact within your body so that you may live within these more subtle aspects of yourself, alive and responsive to the world around you.

Inspiration from Judith: “Our fragmented, defended state was primarily created in relationships with other people, and so it is these encounters with other members of our own species that seem to be most rattling to our emerging sense of unity with the world.” (The Enlightenment Process, page 83.)

“Everywhere we are in contact with ourselves within our body, we are alive and responsive to the world around us. This produces a lived experience of continuity and connection with everything and everyone we encounter.

“In reaction to traumatic events, big and small, we constrict and fragment our body and withdraw our consciousness from those parts of our body. We organize ourselves in ways that dampen the intolerable experience of that restrain those aspects of our own behavior and personality that have brought us harm.

“When you experience fundamental consciousness pervading your whole body, you experience the internal coherence of your individual being. You do not need to create this unity or integration – it occurs spontaneously. It feels like the deepest contact that you can have with your own existence. When you experience this same fundamental consciousness pervading your body and environment at the same time, it is also the basis of the deepest, truest contact that you can have with other people and with all forms in nature. It makes you and your environment a spacious oneness without eradicating in any way the substantiality and separateness of your individual being. In this way, it is an experience of oneness and separateness at the same time.

“The Realization Process provides a method for refining and deepening our inward contact with our body in order to contact and live within these more subtle aspects of ourselves.

“The contact between the therapist and the client will be experienced throughout the internal space of both bodies, both beings. Love meets love, not in the space between two people, but within each person’s chest. Understanding meets understanding, as a felt experience, a resonance, within each person’s body.” (Trauma and the Unbound Body, appendix.)

Check-in as a somatic inquiry:

Express honestly what you are experiencing moment-to-moment. Let them see you, hear you, meet you.

Suggestions: Deepen and refine your inward contact with your body, so that as you speak and as you listen, you are staying in deep, conscious contact with yourself. Follow the spontaneous emergence of your own inner guidance towards ‘landing’ in truth – towards ‘living’ in truth.

Breakout rooms:

  • Can you experience kinship with each person?
  • Can you experience love meeting love within each person’s chest, as a felt experience, a resonance within?
  • Can you experience understanding meeting understanding, as a felt experience, a resonance within?
    Can you experience power meeting power, as a felt experience a resonance within?
  • Can you experience both the substantiality and separateness of your own being at the same time as you feel oneness with each person?
  • Practicing staying in contact with yourself and others in real time -What (childhood) defensive patterns that were meant to protect you from the world actually keep you bound up? Paying attention to the physical sensations, emotions, thoughts/beliefs, energies, and perceptions of space that emerge within your own body.

Open space: Invitations to work 1-1 with Roma exploring (childhood) defensive patterns that actually keep you bound up.

Closing: What’s alive in you right now? What touched you the most during this session? In what ways are you inhabiting your heart-body-mind more fully? What does ‘contact’ mean – and why does it matter? What are your take-aways from this meeting? What’s lingering? What’s unsettling? What’s nourishing?

Preparation for Session 4:

  1. Read Chapter 6 & Epilogue (pages 135 to 158). Write down Judith’s explanations for key words and then find your own words to help your students understand the meaning and significance of each of these words or phrases, for example:
    • direct transmission
    • projections onto God (or the Universe)
    • subtle signs that mark growth toward wholeness
  2. Meditate 30+ minutes daily.
  3. Journal: Choose a topic for a talk due Session 5. Let everyone in our cohort see you, hear you, meet you. Let the guidance emerge spontaneously from the stillness and spaciousness of fundamental consciousness.Suggestions: Deepen and refine your inward contact with your body, so that as you speak and as you listen, you are staying in deep, conscious contact with yourself. Follow the spontaneous emergence of your own inner guidance towards ‘landing’ in truth – towards ‘living’ in truth. Describe what you are experiencing moment-to-moment.You can pre-record this talk on audio or video or speak “live.”

    Prompt:     Prepare a 4-6 minute “teaching story grounded in your own inner exploration of what is “true” for you on your journey towards wholeness

    Guidance:     Speak in a way that allows your insights to penetrate into the hearts of your listeners. Can you sense the oneness that defines spiritual maturity?

    In preparation:     Reflect back on your life and on the reading, Look back over all your journal entries. Recall your somatic inquiries – and your experiences in your study group and in our cohort. Meditate – and let the ‘space’ reveal your deepest experience of reality – and what you want to say.
  4. Meet with your study group to talk about your current teachings of RP or your future plans for teaching RP or your challenges related to teaching RP. Practice some of the assigned meditations, share questions and thoughts about the assigned reading, discuss your understanding of key concepts, and share other reflections from your journal. Share with them the guidance that’s emerging spontaneously from the stillness and spaciousness of fundamental consciousness.

Session 4

Focus: Hone your body as a trustworthy instrument of perception.

Deepening your understanding of somatic inquiry as a way of living

  • Somatic inquiry is a process that:
    • cultivates your capacity to sense guidance spontaneously emerging
    • dissolves (over time) defenses and other holding patterns
      dissolves (over time) your sense of being a subject separate from an objective external world
    • unveils the direct experience that your own being is continuous with the pervasive, unified qualities of awareness, love, and physical sensation
    • dissolves (over time) your subjective manipulation of your perception
    • dissolves (over time) a perceived boundary between yourself as the perceiver and that which you perceive
    • opens you into the clear immediacy of the perceptible world, “direct” or “bare” perception.
      • An early Buddhist text describes bare perception by saying, “In the seen there will be just the seen; in the heard, just the heard; in smelling, tasting, touching, just smelling, tasting, touching; in the cognized, just the cognized.”

Somatic Inquiry: Can you uncover an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy-mind system?

Judith writes: “To become enlightened is to move from a fragmented experience of life to a unified experience. An ancient Buddhist text says, ‘The mind of the buddhas is all-pervasive. The mind of sentient beings is in fragments To develop a scope like the sky has great benefit’ (quoted in Randrol, 1993, p. 101) ….Above all else, the spiritual path is a process of becoming real. We grow toward internal contact with ourselves at the same time as we transcend our separateness and realize the oneness with everything around us. This includes the unfolding of our essential human qualities – awareness, love, and sensation. It requires the integration of love and detachment, distance and intimacy. We cannot become real by pretending to be other than who we are right now. Even after we have begun our realization of fundamental consciousness, we are still incomplete, fragmented people, at the same time as we are attuned to the dimension of wholeness and unity. This means that we retain our human right to sing the blues, even though we are increasingly capable of joy and peace. … If we attempt to eradicate our internal experience of ourselves, we thwart our spiritual progress and deprive ourselves of the great pleasure of becoming whole…. There is a more subtle level of boundaries that can be described as the placement of our consciousness in relation to our body and the bodies of other people. Most people create artificial boundaries to separate themselves from other people, or they attempt to live without boundaries, losing contact with their own body and self in order to connect with others. In fact, most of us manage to do both. In the process of enlightenment, we realize that the fundamental dimension of our own being is continuous with the fundamental being of other people. There is no true barrier between us. At the same time, we begin to live in the core of our body and to relate to the world from this innermost core. The shift inward to our core is a deepened perspective on the world; it feels as if we are relating to people from further away. There is a sense that we are finding our true distance from other people as we discover our oneness with them. …. The realization of fundamental consciousness transforms the body …., affects our breath, the use of our senses, our physical comfort and health, and our relationship to gravity…. and deepens our capacity for relationship with other life…. There are unconscious bindings in our body, energy, and mind that limit our reception of the present moment… When we are enlightened, our consciousness pervades our own body and everything around us. This is a more subtle dimension of consciousness… Enlightenment is a clear, alert, but very subtle perception of the present moment based on a lasting refinement of consciousness. … It is a lasting transformation of our being, involving our ongoing experience of life.” (The Enlightenment Process.)

Practicum: Watch three short video clips of actors feeling vulnerable. If they came to you because they wanted to feel more confident, how would you begin the first session? Take notes as you watch each video clip:

  • What do you sense as you meet each client for the first time?
  • What is the first thing you would say to each person to set the tone for your session?

Breakout rooms: Share your observations and your opening comment.

Open space for sharing

  • What’s most alive in you at this moment?
  • Sense the movement of energies, physical sensations, thoughts and beliefs, perceptions, and emotions – and allow guidance to spontaneously emerge.

Closing: What’s alive in you right now? What touched you the most during this session? In what ways are you inhabiting your heart-body-mind more fully? What does ‘contact’ mean – and why does it matter? What are your take-aways from this meeting? What’s lingering? What’s unsettling? What’s nourishing?

Preparation for Session Five:

  • Meditate 30+ minutes daily. Focus on the recorded RP meditations from weeks 1-4 or from the library that will be most useful to you for your teaching talk week 5, and also these two:
  • Practice your 4-6 minute live or videotaped talk that integrates your own inner experiences into a “teaching” to be shared with the whole class. Let the guidance emerge spontaneously from the stillness and spaciousness of fundamental consciousness.Speak heart-to-heart.
  • Meet with your study group to practice your teaching talk. Meditate together, engage in somatic inquiries, talk about your insights, challenges, and questions, as time and necessity allow.

Session Five

Focus: Attune to truth in the center of your being

Somatic inquiry: Can you sense how your own truth benefits the truth of the life around you?

Prompt: Share a 4-6 minute “teaching story” grounded in your own inner experiences with the whole class.

Note: Can you speak in a way that allows your insights to penetrate into the hearts of your listeners?

Speaking inspirationally from your own experiences, warmly, and authentically allows you to relate to others with less projection, and with the love, empathy and compassion that arises spontaneously when realizing nonduality.

Judith writes: “We can maintain attunement to fundamental consciousness while speaking by consciously inhabiting our neck, vocal mechanism, and the subtle core of the neck. The voice becomes more authentically expressive when we inhabit our vocal anatomy, making it easier to convey our true thoughts and feelings. We also feel safer when we inhabit our body because we have a felt-sense of our own existence. It is less likely that we will feel the need to defend our voice if we experience the quality of our being while we are speaking, or about to speak.

“It is helpful in both cases to consciously inhabit the upper chest, as well as the neck. If we experience that we are ‘sitting in our heart’ while we speak, it will keep us from leaping up into our head or pressing down against our chest and obstructing our breath.

“For each of us, the subtle channel in the vertical core of our body is our entranceway into fundamental consciousness. That is, when we access this core, we discover the subtle emptiness or transparency of our body. We know when we enter the vertical core of the body, for it has a specific quality. It has a fine electrical charge, and within that, stillness and a quality that we can recognize as truth, or essence..

“We also possess the innate ability to recognize reality. Our lives are guided by our ability to tell truth from deception, balance from disharmony. As we realize fundamental consciousness, we recognize that our underlying reality has been the goal of our lifelong navigation toward balance and harmony.

“Christian interpreter Maurice Nicoli (1967) writes, ‘When Good comes first, a man acts from mercy and grace. Then he is made whole. When he is Whole, he no longer misses the mark’ (p. 59). In this quote we have the idea that the individual becomes whole by being good. And the more subtle idea, very similar to the Buddhist idea of dharma, that he is now right on target, that he does not ‘miss the mark.’ That mark is the action that benefits everyone involved.

“To the extent that we can act without artifice, without manipulation of ourselves and others, our actions are the actions of cosmic consciousness, the perfect tao. This means that our own truth benefits the truth of the life around us.” (The Enlightenment Process.)

“When we drop to the bottom of our heart, we actually drop down to the bottom of our chest and the bottom of our throat. This allows us to feel the connection, the internal continuity, between our heart and our throat and to speak our emotional truth.

“An ancient Hindu prayer asks us to be led from ignorance to truth. Our spiritual reality is the same as the essential truth of our personhood. As we dissolve our protective shell and realize our oneness with other life, we realize ourselves. Within our own body, we find the unified, responsive, spontaneous being that we have always known somewhere in the background of all our experience. This landing in truth, when we have been living in limitation and disguise, is one of the most fulflling experiences available to human beings..” (Trauma and the Unbound Body)

Sense the nuances of a somatic inquiry: Can you sense guidance about how to ‘land’ in truth – about how to ‘live’ in truth – spontaneously emerging?

Open space for sharing

OPTIONAL BONUS SESSION July 5

Same Zoom Link

Purpose: reflection on weeks 1-5 and preview summer and fall work

Note: the following questions are to inspire your thought … hold them lightly, please …

Everyone is welcome! If you can’t attend, please email me or someone else your reflections, concerns, and suggestions.

1) What has been most valuable to you thus far? What has been least useful?
recorded RP meditations for practicing? study group sessions? use of our time together in our cohort sessions? private portal to our library? reading? giving talks weeks 1 and 5? activities during class weeks 2-3-4? open space for sharing and questioning? personal attention and feedback during and out of class? posting of the recordings? the recordings broken down into smaller portions? private sessions?

2) What skills are you learning? What capacities are you cultivating? What sensitivities are you developing? What do you want to make sure we address before Dec 13?

3) As you preview the guidance for summer and the overview of the fall work, what questions, concerns, and suggestions do you have? (I’m concerned that it might be overwhelming rather than clarifying … are you? or do you feel that this is useful and doable?

4) What suggestions and feedback do you have for me?

Note; you’re welcome to get your money back if this isn’t a good fit for you.

I am deeply committed to each person – and I want to make sure that our time together meets your interests and needs. Thank you!


Summer Interim: Becoming more intimately attuned to yourself

Practice Realization Process meditations daily

  • RP practices for realizing a depth of presence that inspires your life and your work.
    • Subtle breathing practices
    • Fundamental consciousness practices
    • Whole and human practices
    • Standing and moving practices
    • As you practice each of the meditations above, notice the purpose of each one. That process deepened my understanding immensely!
    • Check in with others in your study group to see which meditations are most useful to them, and why.
    • Be sure to take turns leading each other in these meditations. As you guide, first make deep contact with your central channel, breathe in your three core points. Deepen your contact with yourself through deepening your contact with the qualities of fundamental consciousness – awareness, emotion, and physical sensation. When you guide at this depth, there’s a powerful transmission that offers deep healing. Note: your capacity to ‘receive’ love opens up others’ capacities to receive love. Paradoxical? Check it out!
    • Note; you are not ‘sending energy.’ Your ability to receive the qualities of fundamental consciousness (awareness, emotion, and physical sensation) through any of the points in the central channel differentiates you from “reading scripts.” Now you are “teaching nonverbally.” That’s one big step into being a ‘nondual spiritual teacher.’
    • Note: you are not ‘doing the meditations’ that you’re teaching. Instead, you are in and of the field of fundamental consciousness. That makes all the difference.
  • Cultivate authentic, mutually-nourishing relationships with others:
    • Relational field practices
      • This is truly significant. Nonduality is the wholly mysterious experience that we are made of consciousness, and simultaneously we are human. It’s because we are human that we can relate. When we can relate core-to-core, our relationships are authentic and mutually-nourishing.
      • Practice these relational practices frequently in your study groups to deepen your own embodiment, heal self-fragmentations that get activated in relationship with others, accelerate your spiritual realization, resolve conflicts, and cultivate your skill in repairing relationships with others in your group, with your clients and students, and with groups you teach.
      • Though the purpose of each practice is somewhat different, the overarching intention is that we are able to rest in our hearts, open and undefended. That’s what ‘living in duality’ or ‘living nonduality’ or ’embodiment stillness’ or embodying fundamental consciousness means. It’s to be conscious and in contact with our whole body, experiencing the resonance within our whole body, and simultaneously experiencing the resonance between and among us – without losing contact with our very human thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.
  • Cultivate your “see-feel” skills.
    • Hone your body as a trustworthy instrument of subtle perception.
      • Subtle perception practices
      • Practicing these subtle perception practices on your own and with others.
      • These and other RP meditations are fundamental to uncovering an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy mind system, such that you know without thinking, you hear without listening, and you see by sensing. Your access to fundamental consciousness matters.
      • It’s critically important to refine and eventually reach the deep integration of your senses so that you can perceive each moment with all of your senses at once. And this just takes time and practice. And then the ‘shift’ happens … almost imperceptibly… If you’re concerned that it hasn’t happened ‘yet’, then consider whether you really want to be able to “see-feel’. What might you ‘see-feel’ that you’re unconsciously defending against?
      • Note: The more fully you embodiment fundamental consciousness, the more fully you’ll be able to rest in fundamental consciousness, grounded and centered in your own body, awake and responsive to others and to your environment, allowing the healing process to emerge spontaneously out of the qualities of awareness, emotion, and physical sensation field. (This takes practice … it’s an aspiration … )
  • Identify your own topics for specific courses you’d like to teach or specific individuals you’d like to reach – what Realization Process practices would be skillful in addressing the needs of your students. Again, the questions below are designed to be useful to you. Only address what seems realistic and relevant at this point.
    • Which meditations do you think are easiest to teach? Why?
    • Which meditations do you think are for the most advanced students? Why?
    • How would you integrate RP practices (and which ones) into teaching beginning, intermediate, or advanced yoga sessions? into bodywork sessions for relaxation, releasing stress or anxiety or depression, or healing deep trauma?
    • How would you teach beginners new to meditation?
    • How would you teach experienced meditators who are new to embodiment?
    • How would you address issues such as students who get restless or confused or sleepy? students who “seek to understand” with a logical, rational mind? students who are anxious? depressed? argumentative? distracting or distressing to other students? students with serious mental health issues, mood disorders, addiction issues, deep complex trauma, etc.
    • Which are your favorite meditations to teach? to do on your own?
    • I encourage you to listen to recordings while walking, doing the dishes, folding laundry, making the bed, etc. Also I encourage you to let yourself sink deeply into meditation without ‘doing’ anything. And also you may find these recorded meditations very useful for helping you get to sleep or get back to sleep if you wake up in the middle of the night. I do! :)

Engage in courageous acts to launch your work in this world:

Note: I’m brainstorming below … pick a focus that’s resonant with everything else that’s going on in your life. After all, it’s summer!

  • Create / update a website resonant with who you are and what you offer. I recommend Talia DeFalco, as she’s an experienced Realization Process student so she’s familiar with what we’re teaching. Also she has an amazing sense of design and great tech skills. Check out these websites that she has created:
  • Design new offerings on topics as diverse as
    • self-love
    • resilience
    • compassion
    • other? (I am usually drawn to teaching that which I most want to learn. And also, it feels to me that I’m usually the last person on the planet to understand things …)
  • Create (more) audios or videos so that you can draw on them to share with your students and your clients. Decades ago I worked with Emmet Miller, MD, a mindbody physician. He recorded all of our sessions, and I listened them over and over. I found that so useful. Also he had / still has recordings that address particular issues that his clients face. I bought dozens of his recordings at that time in my life.
  • Take this opportunity to network with others who might be able to support your work – e.g., other types of healers such as yoga teachers or energy workers or body workers or therapists who might help you find your place in the community, partner with you, or send you clients. Think about how you might offer a ‘free’ session to the individual or to the person’s clients or students – as a way of establishing yourself. Place flyers at local health and holistic stores. Go to your local spiritual bookstore and offer a free workshop there – or an afternoon of $10 introductory sessions there. Start networking!
  • Other?

  • Choose a couple ‘burning topics’ that you’re excited and passionate about, issues that seem urgent and critical to you. The key topics that arose in cohort 2 coalesced around issues of ‘connection,’ ‘belonging,’ and ‘gender/sexuality.’ Also they were interested in ‘healing’ and in ‘disentangling/releasing.’ For the most part, those issues arose during their summer study group sessions.
  • Practice ‘directed reading,’ rather than seeking to understand the entirety of Judith’s books. to be specific, look for ‘burning topics,’ as you read these books: Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness and Belonging Here: A Guide for the Spiritually Sensitive Person.
  • Either highlight a hard copy book or use ‘search’ for key words on a Kindle version. Then write down key quotes from Judith that seem most important, as they are vital resources to help you explore some of your ‘burning questions.’
  • Choose quotes that illuminate the inquiry that you’re on.
  • Design and facilitate both personal and study group somatic inquiries to get an experiential understanding.
    • That means that you’re asking people to pay attention to
      • shifts in the movement of energies
      • textures of shifting physical sensations, including tensions, physical contractions
      • emotions that arise when you bring to conscious awareness (childhood) memories (see Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions.) or Karla McLaren’s Youtube books or videos – e.g., why shame is your friend (shame versus guilt).
      • cognitive processes (thoughts and beliefs that arise from the fragmented or bound parts of yourself
      • perceptions of space (if the person is feeling lonely, is their perception of the space that it’s tight, closed, bound – such that they’re feeling all lone? cut off from contact?) Perception of the space is of critical importance. I don’t think we’ve explored it nearly enough!!! :)
  • Here are the burning topics that arose in cohort 2 (each one had personal importance to the people who chose to gather together in an “affinity” group to explore it further):
    • Realizing that you could not express your gender and/or sexuality without facing social persecution
    • Feeling estranged from others or sensing that you truly didn’t belong
    • Losing contact with your own feelings and needs
  • Here are excerpted examples of key quotes from Judith’s books (selected because they gave insight and clarity – and seemed relevant):
    • CONNECTION: “Sensitive people are often so aware of other people’s mental and emotional life that they lose connection with their own inner responses and needs…. The lack of genuine connection with significant others in their childhood may derail the development of their own connection with themselves, and their ability to feel close with other people…. The gifts of sensitivity, emotional depth, and insight … can be entranceways into both the everyday world of shared human connection and the most subtle, spiritual dimension of our being.”
    • BELONGING: “Our sense of belonging in the world is integrated with, and surpassed by, a sense of belonging to something beyond, and in some sense more real and enduring, than the confusion of the world around us…. The more advanced the teaching, and the students, become, the more the ultimate is presented as something belonging to us, as a wonderful but entirely natural part of our own nature…. This ongoing experience of contact gives us a deep sense of kinship with everyone we encounter and a sense of belonging in our world. It can help us surmount our fears of other people, as well as erode our prejudices and our aversions.”
    • GENDER / SEXUALITY: “The qualities of physical sensation, emotion, and awareness become, in our human anatomy, the qualities of gender, sexuality, power, love, voice, and understanding. These are the qualities that are enfolded in our being, which deepen and develop as we realize fundamental consciousness. They are also the qualities of our self-expression and our mutual contact with other human beings… Attuning to the quality of gender does not mean that we have to feel “feminine or “masculine.” It means that we can inhabit our pelvis and genital areas and feel the qualitative dimension of these parts of our body… Gender is an important political issue, an issue of freedom to be ourselves without social persecution. ”
    • HEALING “These [Realization Process] practices approach the healing of trauma in two ways. There are practices that directly facilitate body-mind integration through inhabiting the internal space of one’s body, attuning to the unified ground of fundamental consciousness and the inherent qualities of one’s being that emerge as we know ourselves as this ground. And there are practices that utilize our attunement to fundamental consciousness in order to precisely and lastingly release the trauma-based constrictions in the body.”
    • DISENTANGLE / RELEASE: “Contact with the subtle core of the body … helps us disentangle from fixed beliefs, traumatic memories, and it refines our focus so we can more effectively and precisely release the trauma-based holding patterns from our bodies. All of our holding patterns contain the movement into the constriction and therefore the exact pathway of their release…. As you begin to release these organizations in your body, you may discover that the areas in your body of bound fascia contains your child mind (your childhood mentality at the time of trauma), the memory of what happened to you, and the emotions you felt during the trauma. “
  • You might instead want to focus on topics that you want to teach – that seem urgent and important:
    • Wholeness
    • Depth
    • Fluidity
    • Subtlety
    • Luminosity
    • Contact
    • Etc.

5. Please journal – or draw – or dance – or sing – or find some other creative outlet for expressing what comes up for you during your personal somatic inquiries. Contact your study group for support. They are there for you. As am I. Contact me if it’s critically urgent.

6. Prepare to share your experiences Weeks 6 and 7.

  1. The Healing Process

“As the basis of the therapeutic relationship, fundamental consciousness encompasses both the separate individuality and the oneness of the therapist and the client at the same time. The openness and authentic presence of both the therapist and the client seems to produce a spontaneous, and often mutual, healing process.

“As therapists, we can learn to trust this process to emerge. We do not have to fill the silence with ideas or healing strategies. We can open to the silence and allow the true creativity of the situation to flow.

“As Freud observed many years ago, the painful memories of the client seem to follow their own order; they emerge in exactly the right sequence for the client to be able to understand and resolve them. The client may also become aware of the constrictions and fragmentations in their body as they relate the narrative of their psychological history, and these rigidities may become more visible for the therapist as the client is ready to release them.

“The therapeutic process is often healing for both the client and the therapist. Many therapists report that their clients bring issues to therapy that are also key psychological issues of their own. And that helping the client resolve these issues contributes to their own healing. Or that the client’s expression of pain helps dislodge and release the pain in their own body. The practice of sitting in the open space of fundamental consciousness while another person expresses their deepest wounding can also help us open our heart and our understanding, and become stable in our realization of fundamental consciousness.

“To stabilize in one’s realization of fundamental consciousness means that the pervasive space is always there, pervading our body and environment. Not that we are always aware of it, but if we check on it, there it is. We do not need to shift our perspective or attune to it, or even find it—it is just there.

“As fundamental consciousness, we are naturally equal with our client. Situated in the core of our body means that we are living within the center of our being. And the center of our own being is also the center—it touches and connects with the center—of all other beings. We cannot inhabit our body fully and know ourselves as fundamental consciousness, if we are holding ourselves either above or below other people.

“At first, in the therapeutic process, it is usually just the therapist who has realized fundamental consciousness. But, as the client continues to do the Realization Process practices and to release holding patterns from their body, they will gradually join the therapist in the experience of pervasive space and oneness. The contact between the therapist and the client will be experienced throughout the internal space of both bodies, both beings. Love meets love, not in the space between two people, but within each person’s chest. Understanding meets understanding, as a felt experience, a resonance, within each person’s body.”

Blackstone, Judith. Trauma and the Unbound Body (pp. 185-191). Sounds True. Kindle Edition.

2) The Healing Ground Therapist

“The Healing Ground therapist who is attuned to the pervasive space of fundamental consciousness can, to some extent, “see-feel” the shifts in the client’s experience as they speak. This can help us discern what is most potent for the client in their narrative, even if their words do not provide this emphasis.

“For example, a client may say that they feel very little about the loss of a parent, but the therapist will be able to observe the movement of grief or anger in the client’s body even as they say this. They can also see-feel where the client is most open to experience and where they have defended themselves. Sometimes, they can even see the ages and the emotions that are held within the client’s body.

“The pervasive space of FC enables us to see-feel the client’s experience over there, within their body, without running it through our own body.

“People who are sensitive to the pain of other people are often drawn to the helping professions. Many psychotherapists report that they can feel what others are feeling, not just be reading changes of expression of posture but by actually feeling the other person’s feelings in their own body. They may also describe some discomfort at this and exhaustion at the end of a day of working with people in pain. This entrainment, or mirroring of another person’s pain, can also be confusing. If we experience another person’s pain in our own body, it can be difficult to distinguish their pain from our own.

“As fundamental consciousness, however, the HG therapist is attuned to themselves and the client in a way that is deeper, or more subtle, than mirroring or entrainment. Instead of feeling the client’s pain in our own body, we can see and feel it within the client’s body. Although we may respond with the same emotion in our own body, we can discern that it is our own response to the other person, rather than that person’s emotion. And we may respond with some other emotion. As the pervasive space of FC, we can know what we are experiencing in our own body and what the other person is experiencing in their body at the same time. Empathy occurs across distance, rather than by feeling the client’s suffering as if it were our own.”

3) The Therapeutic Relationship – Questions for Discussion and Reflection

“When, as Healing Ground therapists, we can experience fundamental consciousness pervading ourselves and our clients, the therapeutic relationship is transformed in several ways:

  • Our own presence is more centered, grounded, and empathic.
  • We can track our internal responses to our clients more clearly.
  • Our perception of our clients is more refined.
  • We are more open to the spontaneous emergence of the healing process.” (paraphrased)

The relationship between any therapist and the client can also present the biggest challenges or even obstacles to the client’s healing: (questions added by me)

  1. Why would it be possibly destructive to the client’s healing if the therapist’s emotional responses to the client are angry, shaming, envious, or sexual?
  2. Why would it possibly be destructive to the client’s healing if the therapist’s relational style is withdrawn or intrusive?
  3. Why would it be confusing and unsatisfying for the client if the therapist’s contact with themself, and subsequently with the client, were lacking depth or cohesion?
  4. Why would it be confusing and unsatisfying for the client if the therapist lives much more in their head than their heart? or their heart more than their belly? or their belly more than their head, or heart?
  5. How much does the depth of the therapist’s contact with themselves matter? Why?
  6. How much does the depth of the therapist’s contact with the client matter? Why?

4) Therapeutic Presence – Questions for Discussion and Reflection

“Although it is also crucial to be seen and heard by another person, psychological healing is something that the client really can only do for themselves. It is an inward process of:

  • remembrance,
  • self-examination,
  • self-insight, and
  • contact with the internal space of their own body.

“The therapist’s stable, open presence gives the client permission and safety for this internal process.

“The therapist holds the thread that allows the client to make this solitary journey without fear of becoming lost in the labyrinth of their past.

“The ability of the Healing Ground therapist to inhabit their own body and to know themselves as fundamental consciousness is therefore of key importance for the healing potential of the therapeutic relationship.”

Please reflect on the following questions: (questions added by me)

  1. Do you shield yourself from certain clients?
  2. Do you come forward toward certain clients in order to feel connection?
  3. Or can you stay within the core of yourself and connect to your clients from the source of your love and intelligence?
  4. Can you stay attuned and responsive to your clients, moment-to-moment?
  5. Can you stay grounded, in the sense of settled to the ground so that you are not as easily thrown off-base by the intensity of your clients’ emotions?
  6. Are you overwhelmed by your clients’ expressing the extremes of their anger, terror, or grief?
  7. Can your clients embody their own full vitality, power, and intelligence without your feeling threatened by them?

Which, in your view, is the most crucial element of a therapist’s presence? Why? Which is most challenging for you? Why?

  1. To feel compassion. Compassion is experienced as an innate capacity of embodiment. If we remain in contact with ourselves, compassion wells up within our body as a spontaneous response to the client’s suffering.
  2. To experience fundamental consciousness pervading yourself and your client
  3. To be attuned to the client and yourself at the same time.
  4. To observe your own responses at the same time as you receive your client’s presence and narrative.
  5. To clearly observe when your responses to the client are based on your own psychological history or cultural biases.
  6. To restrain yourself from reacting with anger, envy, or desire
  7. To notice when you shield yourself against the client’s intensity by blocking your attunement to the unified space of fundamental consciousness.
  8. To observe if you suddenly constrict your chest or hold your breath in order to obstruct your reception of the client.
  9. To recognize if you leave your own body in order to extend yourself energetically toward the client in reaction to their distress.
  10. To disentangle from your client without being detached.

Excerpted from Trauma and the Unbound Body, Appendix A


Sessions 6-11: Realizing a Depth of Presence Inspiring Your Life and Your Work
Sep 6, 13, 20, 27, Oct 4, 11

Session 6: Friday September 6:

1) Meditate

  • to know the natural oneness of your body
  • to be in genuine contact with yourself and others, rather than projecting childhood family dynamics onto present-day relationships
  • to cultivate trust in the healing process spontaneously emerging
  • to realize a depth of presence that inspires your life and your work

2) Check-in

  • What were some of your joys and sorrows this summer?
  • What helps you feel safe? connected? trusted? and respected?

3) Introduce your burning topic with a very brief (1-2 minute) sensory-rich talk that connects others to the urgency or crucial nature of your topic – or to your passion or your excitement about this question.

(Note: This is a “jigsaw” assignment, which means that by the time all the groups guide us through their “live healing sessions,” each of us, whether facilitators or participants, will have learned something significant about each topic.

4) Form “affinity groups” with others whose questions or topics are related.

5) Meet in breakout rooms with your affinity group

  • Share more about the significance of your “burning question” or “burning topic” – e.g., talk about your personal somatic inquiry and your insights arising from your inner experiencing. As time permits, share relevant quotes.
  • As a group, decide on one “burning question” or “burning topic” as the key idea for the live healing session that you will focus on with the whole class.
  • Decide on a date for your ‘live’ healing session: Sep 18, Sep 25, or Oct 2.
  • Plan times and to meet outside of our sessions.
  • Decide on clear actions that each person will do in order to be prepared for your next meeting.

Note: you’re giving us a ‘sample’ …. a ‘deep dive’ … that arises out of your research into your topic.

By the end of class Fri Sep 6:

  • you will have chosen your topic and be in an “affinity” group
  • you will have signed up for one of these dates for your “live” session: Sep 20, Sep 27, or Oct 4
  • you will have engaged in meditations to integrate body and mind and to attune to each other
  • you will have engaged in a somatic inquiries into ways you shift your attention to feel safer
  • you will have practiced cultivating your “see-feel” skills
  • Familiarize yourself with the scope of this assignment – see session 7 and also suggestions sessions 8-9-10.

Outside of class meet with your affinity group:

Again – make sure everyone understands the scope of this assignment – see session 7 and also suggestions in sessions 8-9-10. You’re sharing a ‘sample’ – a ‘deep dive’ that gives us a taste of the “healing journey” that your affinity group has engaged in during and outside of class.

  • Make sure that everyone agrees and is clear about the key idea for your live healing session.
  • Engage in somatic inquiries to get a fuller understanding of how the same issue (for example, feelings of ‘shame’ may have different energetic patterns, different physical sensations, different bound emotions, different memories and thoughts and beliefs, and different perceptions of the space. It’s really important that the actual ‘fragmented’ or ‘lost’ or ‘shattered’ parts of yourself be allowed the space to be uniquely received. We are such complex human beings. Do allow sufficient time for exploration, honoring, listening, receiving, and healing, including embodiment of those places in the body that are most entangled.
  • Choose one or two relevant quotes from Judith that offer insight and understanding to incorporate into your life healing session.
  • Make a plan for how your group will do more research, share your notes, and keep track of insights as they arise, so that, as a group, you gain a more nuanced understanding of your key idea.
  • Bring your unresolved questions and your insights to share with the class Session 7.

Session 7 Sep 13: Design a healing session

  1. Meditate
  2. Check-in and updates
  3. Affinity group work time 45 minutes
  4. Open space: Share unresolved questions and insights from your affinity group meetings.
Here’s an example of how you might design a 10-15 minute session with the whole cohort (followed by 10-15 minutes for Q/A.)
      • Introduction to set the tone and engage your audience
        • Share a compelling, relatable story?
        • Open with a tone-setting meditation?
        • Introduce your key idea and explain how and why you chose this idea – and why it’s important
      • Somatic inquiry with the whole cohort or with one volunteer (so you can explore deeper what’s going on with that person. You might want to arrange for the volunteer ahead of time – or not. (Somatic inquiry – explore a key question – and guide the participant to experience the movement of energies, the physical sensations, the feelings/emotions that arise, the thoughts/beliefs that arise, and their perception of space/spaciousness or not)
      • Follow – up – either with your one client or by inviting people (3?)in the cohort to share their experiences – and respond individually to them.) “Meet the moment.”
      • Closing (a summation, including a compelling quote from Judith)
      • Transition to Q/A

Note: Look at the simplicity and immediacy of the sample somatic inquiries as inspiration.

  • Specific suggestions for everyone in your affinity group:
    • Open into the spaciousness and stillness of your true nature.
    • Realize that fundamental consciousness encompasses each of you individually and also everyone in your group at the same time.
    • Note: The openness and authentic presence of both the therapist and the client seems to produce a spontaneous, and often mutual, healing process.
  • Specific suggestions for the therapist summarized from Judith’s short articles that you read during the intersession:
    • As therapist, trust this process to emerge. You do not have to fill the silence with ideas or healing strategies. You can open to the silence and allow the true creativity of the situation to flow.
    • As Freud observed many years ago, the painful memories of the client seem to follow their own order; they emerge in exactly the right sequence for the client to be able to understand and resolve them.
    • The client may also become aware of the constrictions and fragmentations in their body as they relate the narrative of their psychological history, and these rigidities may become more visible for the therapist as the client is ready to release them.
    • The practice of sitting in the open space of fundamental consciousness while another person expresses their deepest wounding can also help you open your heart and your understanding, and become stable in your realization of fundamental consciousness.
    • As fundamental consciousness, you are naturally equal with your client. Situated in the core of your body means that you are living within the center of your being. And the center of your own being is also the center—it touches and connects with the center—of all other beings. You cannot inhabit your body fully and know yourself as fundamental consciousness, if you are holding yourself either above or below other people.
    • The contact between the therapist and the client will be experienced throughout the internal space of both bodies, both beings. Love meets love, not in the space between two people, but within each person’s chest. Understanding meets understanding, as a felt experience, a resonance, within each person’s body.
    • The Healing Ground therapist who is attuned to the pervasive space of fundamental consciousness can, to some extent, “see-feel” the shifts in the client’s experience as they speak. This can help you discern what is most potent for the client in their narrative, even if their words do not provide this emphasis.
    • For example, a client may say that they feel very little about the loss of a parent, but the therapist will be able to observe the movement of grief or anger in the client’s body even as they say this. They can also see-feel where the client is most open to experience and where they have defended themselves. Sometimes, they can even see the ages and the emotions that are held within the client’s body.
    • The pervasive space of FC enables you to see-feel the client’s experience over there, within their body, without running it through your own body.
    • As fundamental consciousness, however, the HG therapist is attuned to themselves and the client in a way that is deeper, or more subtle, than mirroring or entrainment. Instead of feeling the client’s pain in our own body, you can see and feel it within the client’s body. Although you may respond with the same emotion in your own body, you can discern that it is your own response to the other person, rather than that person’s emotion. And you may respond with some other emotion. As the pervasive space of FC, you can know what you are experiencing in your own body and what the other person is experiencing in their body at the same time. Empathy occurs across distance, rather than by feeling the client’s suffering as if it were your own.
    • When, as Healing Ground therapists, you can experience fundamental consciousness pervading yourself and your clients, the therapeutic relationship is transformed in several ways:
      • Your own presence is more centered, grounded, and empathic.
      • You can track your internal responses to your clients more clearly.
      • Your perception of your clients is more refined.
      • You are more open to the spontaneous emergence of the healing process.
    • Although it is also crucial to be seen and heard by another person, psychological healing is something that the client really can only do for themselves. It is an inward process of:
      • remembrance,
      • self-examination,
      • self-insight, and
      • contact with the internal space of their own body.
    • The therapist’s stable, open presence gives the client permission and safety for this internal process. The therapist holds the thread that allows the client to make this solitary journey without fear of becoming lost in the labyrinth of their past.
    • The ability of the Healing Ground therapist to inhabit their own body and to know themselves as fundamental consciousness is therefore of key importance for the healing potential of the therapeutic relationship.
    • As a therapist, your presence, your embodying the clear space of fundamental consciousness, allows more space for the client’s emotions to emerge, unfold, and flow.

Session 8 Sep 20: Facilitate “Live’ healing sessions 20-30 minutes followed by 10-15 minutes dialogue

Meditations: Meditations for being embodied, grounded, and centered, attuned to the dimension of wholeness and unity, realizing oneness with everything and everyone around you.

Meditations for breathing and settling in your body so that you can activate an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy-mind system.

Meditations for remembering the crucial importance and urgency you feel about this topic – and also why you are so excited and passionate about it.

‘Live’ healing sessions 20-30 minutes followed by 10-15 minutes dialogue

Note: you’re giving us a ‘sample’ …. a ‘deep dive’ …

Guidance for being embodied, grounded, and centered:

Attune to the dimension of wholeness and unity.

Realize oneness with everything around you.

Breathe and settle in your body so that you can activate an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy-mind system.

Remember the crucial importance and urgency you feel about this topic – and also why you are so excited and passionate about it.

After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 5-10 minutes – with a smooth, skillful transition – and a smooth, skillful ending.

“Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …Guidance for being embodied, grounded, and centered:

  • Attune to the dimension of wholeness and unity.
  • Realize oneness with everything around you.
  • Breathe and settle in your body so that you can activate an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy-mind system.
  • Remember the crucial importance and urgency you feel about this topic – and also why you are so excited and passionate about it.

After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 10-15 minutes – with a smooth, skillful transition – and a smooth, skillful ending.

“Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …

Session 9 Sep 27: ‘Live’ healing sessions 20-30 minutes followed by 10-15 minutes dialogue

Note: you’re giving us a ‘sample’ …. a ‘deep dive’ …

Guidance for being embodied, grounded, and centered:

  • Attune to the dimension of wholeness and unity.
  • Realize oneness with everything around you.
  • Breathe and settle in your body so that you can activate an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy-mind system.
  • Remember the crucial importance and urgency you feel about this topic – and also why you are so excited and passionate about it.

After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 5-10 minutes – with a smooth, skillful transition – and a smooth, skillful ending.

“Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …

Session 10 Oct 4: Facilitate “Live’ healing sessions 20-30 minutes followed by 10-15 minutes dialogue

“Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …

Meditation

After Oct 4th, meet weekly again with your study group,

  • Explore address social justice issues
  • Discuss how to respond skillfully to challenging clients
  • Share ideas about how to address disruptive group dynamics
  • Reflect – as a study group – on ‘burning questions’ or ‘burning topics’ that feel urgent and crucial but haven’t been explored during our time together.
  • Share your self-assessments regarding your experiences in nondual therapeutic healing sessions

Lesson plan for Oct 4rh:
Your affinity group will facilitate a live healing session once, for approximately 20-25 minutes, followed by Q/A for 10-15 minutes.
Note: you’re giving us a ‘sample’ …. a ‘deep dive’ …
Guidance for being embodied, grounded, and centered:

  • Attune to the dimension of wholeness and unity.
  • Realize oneness with everything around you.
  • Breathe and settle in your body so that you can activate an internal intelligence at the basis of the body-energy-mind system.
  • Remember the crucial importance and urgency you feel about this topic – and also why you are so excited and passionate about it.

After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 5-10 minutes – with a smooth, skillful transition – and a smooth, skillful ending.

“Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …

Session 11 Oct 11: Reflect on Weeks 6-10 and preview Weeks 12-14.

Sessions 12-16 Demonstrating an Unshakeable Confidence in Living and Teaching Authentically
Nov 1, 8, 22, Dec 6, 13

Session 11 Nov 1: Prepare to individually “teach” the whole class about a burning topic of your personal choice. Your “teaching talk” should be approximately 10-15 minutes long.

  • Choose a topic that you’re passionate or excited about – one that feels urgent or critical for us to hear about.
  • Speak in a way that allows your insights to penetrate into the hearts of your listeners – so that each of us can attune to you through the subtle resonance of communication., and also so that each of us learns something significant about your experiences and your perspective.
  • After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 5-10 minutes.

Note: Speaking inspirationally from your own experiences, warmly, and authentically allows you to relate to others with less projection, and with the love, empathy and compassion that arises spontaneously when realizing nonduality.

Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …

Prepare to individually “teach” the whole class about a burning topic of your personal choice. Your “teaching talk” should be approximately 10-15 minutes long.

  • Choose a topic that you’re passionate or excited about – one that feels urgent or critical for us to hear about.
  • Speak in a way that allows your insights to penetrate into the hearts of your listeners – so that each of us can attune to you through the subtle resonance of communication., and also so that each of us learns something significant about your experiences and your perspective.
  • After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 5-10 minutes.

Note: Speaking inspirationally from your own experiences, warmly, and authentically allows you to relate to others with less projection, and with the love, empathy and compassion that arises spontaneously when realizing nonduality.

Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding …

Prepare to individually “teach” the whole class about a burning topic of your personal choice. Your “teaching talk” should be approximately 10-15 minutes long.

  • Choose a topic that you’re passionate or excited about – one that feels urgent or critical for us to hear about.
  • Speak in a way that allows your insights to penetrate into the hearts of your listeners – so that each of us can attune to you through the subtle resonance of communication., and also so that each of us learns something significant about your experiences and your perspective.
  • After you finish speaking, please invite the whole class to engage in a dialogue for an additional 5-10 minutes.

Note: Speaking inspirationally from your own experiences, warmly, and authentically allows you to relate to others with less projection, and with the love, empathy and compassion that arises spontaneously when realizing nonduality.

Meet the moment,” answer questions – appreciating, normalizing, directing others inward to their own wisdom, offering a direction or suggestion, clarifying, advising, guiding

Session 15 Dec 6: Reflections

Preparation for our last class and our graduation celebration!

1) Please paste this google doc into your browser. Fill it out. It’ll self-save (I hope).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NW02meM95p3tRj30SA4DhY6zH-n_8bLVknFW3cDe5Zk/edit#heading=h.fvnabtsb0gwi

2) Please send me – by December 4th – ONE sentence for each person in our cohort (including me) describing a) how this person inspires you OR b) an important insight that you gained from this person OR c) what you might wish for this person or d) a favorite memory of this person during our time together.

3) Please prepare a short (2-3 minutes) graduation speech. (Please be mindful of the time…)

  • Wisdom from your heart
  • Insights deeply rooted in your own experience
  • How you will take this work into the world
  • How our time together has impacted you, and what still lingers
  • Favorite memories of our time together

Speak in a way that allows your insights to penetrate into the hearts of your listeners – so that each of us can attune to you through the resonant connection, and also so that each of us learns something significant about your experiences and your perspective.

4) Time permitting – I’d love to hear more about anything else that you want to share as to how you’ve grown and changed through our time together in this mentoring program – and what suggestions you have for me and for future participants in Mentoring Level I.