Over the next few months I experienced deep emotions relating to challenging situations in my everyday life. I hadn’t been experiencing emotions like this in the years prior to getting into the Waking Down work.  These were very difficult to experience, but I had Krishna and Michaela to help me through them. I am a mental type based on the Enneagram, not an emotional type. It was as if my emotions were exaggerated. I found that after these “oscillations” (a Waking Down term) were over I would have low energy for a few days.

Gradually, I began experiencing my thoughts in a more comfortable, less dissociated way. Having awakened to Consciousness before this work, I could see that there was some kind of process that was bringing me more into my body, like a prelude to an embodied awakening. More and more I was experiencing thoughts as being part of who I am as opposed to observing them as the Witness, like I did before waking down.  There was less alienation and separation from my thoughts. It was more like I used to experience the thinking process before I was awake except that now I was awake.

In May, Lena and I attended the Transfiguration Retreat in Estes Park, Colorado. This is an annual event in Waking Down.  During the first evening Saniel played one of his flutes. Listening, I was moved to tears. Its tone and music was very Native American sounding. Saniel announced that he planned to do individual shamanic healings during the course of the retreat. I signed up for a morning session.  Even though I was relatively new to Waking Down, I wanted to experience as much as I could.

Lena and I arrived at the cabin where the healing sessions were being held that morning. About ten of us gathered around Saniel in a circle so the person he was working with could lie on the floor in the space in the middle. He told us that he wanted us to state what our intention would be at the beginning of our individual healing sessions. When my turn came, before Saniel even had a chance to raise his head up and look into my eyes, I blurted out, “I want my Second Birth!” He responded, “Easy enough.” I stretched out on the floor. He specifically stated, “This is Conscious Embodiment,” in referring to the Second Birth.  This was the embodied awakening that was my heart’s desire.

Saniel asked me about my arm and I told him about the accident. In addition to having my forearm crushed in the accident, I had four broken ribs and a collapsed lung. He asked if there was sensitivity on my right side and I told him that there was some numbness. With my permission he rubbed my chest area with his hands. He talked about the sorrow settling into the lower part of my heart. I gave permission to the people there to put their hands on me. Then Saniel asked which of his flutes I wanted him to play, and I asked him to play the one called The Wound. Soon after he began playing with the end of the flute aimed at my chest, I was flooded with profound grief and sorrow. I began wailing loudly, my chest heaving, the sound of the Indian music connecting me to a past Indian lifetime.  I later realized that this experience was the catalyst leading up to my embodied awakening.

In January 2003 I went to check out Saniel Bonder at a Friday evening presentation in Seattle. A friend of mine, Krishna Gauci, whose spirituality I respected, brought Saniel here from California. Krishna was a fellow  practitioner of advaita vedanta, and I knew that Saniel was not of this tradition. I was curious. During the sitting I was impressed by Saniel’s aliveness, intellect and the way he engaged and related to the audience. I also liked his wife, Linda, who was presenting with Saniel.

I bought waking down in Mutuality and left to go to my cabin for the weekend with my beloved, Lena, where I briefly read some of the book. After I got home and went to bed Sunday night something very unusual happened. During the night I woke up twice and then again in the morning. Each time I realized that in my dream I had been immersed in the Waking Down process, without really understanding what the process was. It was as if I had spent the whole night in a dream state in the Waking Down process! Nothing had ever happened to me like this before. I pay attention to my dreams, and I decided that this was something I was meant to pursue.

As part of the Waking Down in Mutuality work, one who is considering getting involved is encouraged to conduct an investigation or “due diligence” concerning the teaching and transmission. I talked to a few acquaintances I had met at other spiritual gatherings who were now actively involved in the Waking Down process who encouraged me. Lena and I also attended a sitting that was open to people who had seen Saniel in January. We learned a bit about what the Waking Down work was and wasn’t. Lena and I then attended the Human Sun Seminar which helped me understand the basic concepts and terms of Waking Down in Mutuality.

After that I began working with Krishna as my teacher and Michaela Kapilla as my mentor. Just a few weeks later in March, Lena and I went to the waking down Weekend in Seattle. What was amazing to me was the number of awakened teachers and mentors that came to facilitate the workshop. It was very interactive among the participants, teachers and mentors. We broke up into small groups, each with a mentor and teacher, for a number of sessions during the weekend. In each group the participants were given an allotted time to talk about what was going on in their life, particularly the hard and challenging aspects.The sharing was in confidence, and the teachers, mentors and even participants would give feedback.It became obvious to me how important the Mutuality part of Waking Down was.

Another part of the workshop was devoted to sitting and gazing. The teachers would sit at the front of the room and gaze into the eyes of the participants who were seated facing them. It is like a traditional meditation except people’s eyes are open. As I recall, the participants had the option of keeping their eyes closed if they wished.

Coming out of the exclusive identity with the lower self and awakening to ones infinite nature while simultaneously embracing and integrating the body/mind  as not separate and not less than ones infinite nature is  embodied awakening or waking down in mutuality.  An embodied awakening can be called a whole being awakening.

Waking down in mutuality is a pathway to an integrated embodied awakening. This will give you the ability to contemplate all the aspects of yourself and to hold them in a kind of honoring neutrality so they are not overwhelming or binding you. With waking down in mutuality you are gaining perspectives on the different aspects of your life. This expands your field of consciousness.

There are many classes offered for embodied awakening in the waking down in mutuality organizations. You can take online classes or find opportunities to attend courses regarding waking down in mutuality. You will find a great deal of useful information online by doing searches. You can read up on the subject or watch videos. Many videos online are of people gazing, though while not informative, they have the power of spiritual transmission.

Waking down in mutuality has to do with fully allowing and claiming the most limited aspects of yourself – your very human nature and all of the things that were missing from your acceptance. If you never felt fulfilled as a human being this can be a healing process for you. It is important that through waking down in mutuality you become connected with your wholeness. Through waking down in mutuality this can be achieved. You want to dig deeper into your human nature. This includes awareness of the anger, turmoil, and other aspects of yourself that may be unpleasant, but can help you understand how they act as an important component of your wholeness. This leads to a greater level of peaceful acceptance.

This process should help you to not only experience the world from a different perspective, but also to accept all the aspects of yourself.  Shifts in consciousness, through thoughts, desires, fears, and other emotions can lead to an embodied awakening. The key is to find a way to stay awake, and this is a hallmark of the spiritual shift that can occur in the waking down in mutuality work.  This particular kind of awakening process does not emphasize rigid practices.  In the process of being in mutuality with teachers and fellow aspirants, there is a natural, organic process that unfolds and supports an individual’s awakening, which in waking down in mutuality is called the second birth.

It is best to find a teacher that is experienced with this to help one realize an embodied awakening.

Through the years I continued to go to Gangaji retreats and to other retreats and events held by self-realized teachers who supported spiritual awakening and enlightenment.  While I deeply appreciated the others, in a spiritual sense my heart belonged to Gangaji.  When I was in her presence I experienced bhakti, the quality of heartfelt devotion that is described in Hindu tradition. As a Westerner I never dreamed of experiencing something that was so foreign to my culture.

Also, I began a journey of deepening into “Consciousness as the true nature of my Being.” Oftentimes, as my thoughts arose, I would observe them as if from a distance, and then they would disappear into that from which they arose. More and more, I would watch my thoughts, emotions, body and circumstances as not really being who I am. I came to see that which comes and goes that which appears and disappears, as not real, but only indescribable being as real.  I had read about this as relating to enlightenment and spiritual awakening in some eastern traditions.  I had identified as Witness Consciousness, seemingly existing in an area above and away from the back of the left side of my head.

Over time there developed a very high degree of non-attachment to my body, thoughts, emotions and circumstances. There was also greater space between my thoughts, and when they arose I was able to watch and let them go instead of identifying with and following them. I truly was in touch with a level of inner peace on a day-to-day basis that I hadn’t experienced before. I was more aware, sensitive and compassionate. I was less judgemental and much more accepting of things as they were. My quest for enlightenment and spiritual awakening was definitely paying off.

I had realized my true nature as Pure Consciousness. I believed that I was no longer seeking. But there was a longing that I felt that seemed at odds with myself as a non-seeker. This longing hadn’t been addressed in the countless books that I had read about spiritual awakening and enlightenment. In early 2002 I went to my seventh Gangaji retreat and didn’t get much out of it.

In the past I had experienced such joy, nourishment and inspiration. In the fall of that year I went to another retreat by a very gifted realize I knew. I was very impressed with him and the energy he put into the retreat, but again it left me unfulfilled.  I began thinking about other spiritual teachers who might possibly give me what I had received from Gangaji until my last retreat with her.  The old ways of getting spiritual sustenance were failing me.  My spiritual awakening seemed somehow incomplete.  It was like I was at a crossroads.

In the second grade my relationship with God took a turn for the worse. I was critically injured in a bicycle accident, and in order to save my life the doctors amputated my right arm. After a while my grief turned to anger, and I confronted Him, “Why me, God?” What did I do to deserve this? It wasn’t fair. Eventually, God and I patched things up, and I went back to loving Him.

I went to Seattle Prep, a Jesuit high school for boys, where my father had gone before me. Overall, I received an excellent education there, but I became at odds with the religious dogma and its contradictions. How an all-knowing and all-loving God could send people’s souls to hell for eternity for doing things like eating meat on Friday was beyond me.  I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s when Catholic dogma was very rigid and archaic.  I am aware that the Church has loosened up quite a bit from those days.

After I graduated from Seattle University, I took a summer job in Alaska to earn money so I could travel in Europe. Growing up I had always loved nature. Where I worked was a vast expanse of land, water and mountains with very few people. I began to see that I was like all the living things—the plants, fish, birds, insects and other mammals—being born, living and dying. I was not greater or lesser than any other living thing. I gave up the notion of an afterlife. I concluded that God did not create man, but that man created God as an idea or concept and heaven as a strategy to overcome mortality. Atheism wasn’t acceptable to me because the nonexistence of God was not provable. I concluded that I was an agnostic. I became quite comfortable with this and attained a level of peace that I had not experienced before. My agnosticism lasted seventeen years.  During this time I had no interest in anything even remotely related to spiritual awakening or enlightenment.

When I was thirty-six I began having extrasensory experiences. At work the phone would ring, I would think of a person’s name, and that person would be on the line. On two other occasions at home I started thinking about a person that I seldom thought about, and several minutes later the person was  knocking at my door. I could no longer limit existence to the physical. I went to Tower Books and purchased some mainstream books on ESP. I soon became convinced that life was not limited to the five senses. I immersed myself in learning about spiritual awakening and enlightenment.  I had this incredible hunger to know about existence, particularly my existence.

I continued to devour spiritual books about enlightenment and spiritual awakening. I began meditating daily. I knew that I was capable of attaining a greater level of peace and happiness, and I yearned for this. My earliest teachers were channeled entities whose love and wisdom were inspirational to me. I became immersed in the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. I wanted to attain enlightenment. I also became very interested in spiritual healing and did work in this regard, especially around the pain I experienced in my family of origin. A friend who taught me in a meditation class introduced me to advaita vendanta, which I embraced. Spiritual awakening and enlightenment were foremost in my mind.