Speaker 1: Kind of mental consciousness is the basis of our wholeness
Speaker 1: with that means that in order to experience it, we
Speaker 1: need to open to it throughout our whole being, our
Speaker 1: whole body. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the direction how they feed their good wolf. Our guest
Speaker 1: this week is Judith Blackstone. She is an innovative experience
Speaker 1: teacher in the contemporary fields of nondual realization and spiritual,
Speaker 1: relational and somatic psychotherapy. She developed the realization process which
Speaker 1: will be discussing in this interview, which is a direct
Speaker 1: path for realizing fundamental consciousness, as well as the application
Speaker 1: of nondual realization for psychological, relational, and physical healing. She
Speaker 1: currently has six books in publication and has taught the
Speaker 1: realization process for over thirty five years throughout the United
Speaker 1: States and Europe. Her latest book is Trauma and the
Speaker 1: Unbound Body, The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness. And now
Speaker 1: here is our interview with Judith Hi. Judith, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you. I'm very glad to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad to have you on. Also, we've had
Speaker 1: a couple of needed to reschedule this a couple of
Speaker 1: times due to various things, so I'm happy we're finally
Speaker 1: able to do it. Your book is called Trauma and
Speaker 1: the Unbound Body, The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness, and
Speaker 1: we're going to dive into the book in a minute,
Speaker 1: but let's start the way we always do with a
Speaker 1: parable There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson
Speaker 1: and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks about it for a second, and he
Speaker 1: looks up at his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the mother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah, well, what it means
Speaker 1: to me is that we can, to some extent at
Speaker 1: least nourish the better qualities of our being, the better
Speaker 1: impulses of ourselves. But you know, it's an angel question,
Speaker 1: certainly since the beginning of psychoanalysis, and quite quite a
Speaker 1: long ways before that. Philosophically, whether these wolves are innate,
Speaker 1: whether we're innately good and innately bad, so that these
Speaker 1: two wolves are are an equal footing, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: Some people, of course, think that they are. Some people
Speaker 1: feel that our bad tendencies are are agreed, and our hatred,
Speaker 1: even our aggression, our perversions or clouding of our goodness,
Speaker 1: and my experience well as a long term meditator and
Speaker 1: as doing the work that I've been doing for several
Speaker 1: decades now seems to bear up the ladder that when
Speaker 1: we get deeply inside of ourselves. We really make contact
Speaker 1: with ourselves. Not an easy thing to do, but when
Speaker 1: we do, there's an a Nathan goodness that we that
Speaker 1: we feel that at the same time, as we reach
Speaker 1: a kind of sense of authenticity, like, oh, finally the
Speaker 1: masks are off, I can be who I am. This
Speaker 1: really feels like who I am. At that same point,
Speaker 1: there's a feeling of one thing of kinship with other
Speaker 1: life forms, so that other people kidship. And also we
Speaker 1: draw close to our actual love, our actual actual ability
Speaker 1: to love of course, a wonderful feeling. And also happiness
Speaker 1: there seems to be and I'm just basing this on experience,
Speaker 1: there seems to be an innate source of happiness that
Speaker 1: we can attune to in our body. Of course, when
Speaker 1: do we feel happy, Okay, you know happy maybe too
Speaker 1: strong a word, content, yeah, happy, when we feel love
Speaker 1: you know, like and I remember in my own process,
Speaker 1: as I began to feel the automatic spontaneous welling up
Speaker 1: of compassion for other human beings and to myself, was
Speaker 1: that occurs then that that greet the old wolf gets
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller. I just want to say one other
Speaker 1: thing about this, one thing that that bad wolf feeds on.
Speaker 1: One of the things that it feeds on is being caged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it builds a dreadl and build strength. So we need
Speaker 1: so even though, yes, we can focus on our better tendencies,
Speaker 1: and that's a whole lot better. You know, of course,
Speaker 1: we're talking here also about mindfulness. You know that we
Speaker 1: know how we're acting, that we know what we're thinking,
Speaker 1: we know what our responses are, so then we have
Speaker 1: a way, you know, we can start to look at
Speaker 1: least the sources of that change and shifted. But if
Speaker 1: we just try to squill those bad impulses, they sometimes
Speaker 1: come out sneaky ways. Yes, I agree with everything you're saying,
Speaker 1: and I always find that distinction. You know, in the
Speaker 1: in the West, we tend to have the concept of
Speaker 1: original sin. Eastern philosophies tend to be more underneath everything.
Speaker 1: We're fundamentally good. And I think for purposes of practicality,
Speaker 1: I think that both those things, we have the seeds
Speaker 1: of both those things within us. But I tend to
Speaker 1: agree with you that, you know, my experience has been
Speaker 1: as whatever the process that sort of clears away and
Speaker 1: opens me to a deeper nature or increases the sense
Speaker 1: of a bigger part of me tends to lead almost
Speaker 1: automatically to a lessoning of those sort of quote unquote
Speaker 1: bad wolf qualities. Yes, yes, that's that's exactly been my experience.
Speaker 1: So that that battle. You know, when there is a
Speaker 1: battle between, for example, being kind to people and not
Speaker 1: being kind to people, and there's a battle, I think
Speaker 1: what we're really battling is our old hurts. Right. If
Speaker 1: I've been hurt by people, especially when I was young
Speaker 1: and very impressionable, I didn't have much to compare it
Speaker 1: to have been hurt by people that I distrust people,
Speaker 1: then I'm battling within myself. Should I be kind to them? Well?
Speaker 1: Why should I be kind to them? They will probably
Speaker 1: not reciprocate that, but maybe I should. Maybe I should
Speaker 1: give them the benefit of the death. And that's the
Speaker 1: battlefield rather than rather than on the or in the
Speaker 1: level of ourselves. Right. It's kind of always ironic to
Speaker 1: me that when I am feeling better, like if I'm
Speaker 1: just in a naturally happier, more expansive mood, then it's
Speaker 1: just easier for me to be kind to people. And
Speaker 1: I'm not really having that debate, but when I'm hurting
Speaker 1: and whether that hurt come from past traumas or whatever,
Speaker 1: or wherever it's coming from. But when I'm in a
Speaker 1: place of constriction and hurting, then it's very very difficult
Speaker 1: for me to summon kind feelings, even if my intention
Speaker 1: is to be that way. Yes, that's right. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about your book. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: it's called Trauma and the Unbound Body, the healing power
Speaker 1: of Fundamental Consciousness. So what I'd like to start with
Speaker 1: is do two things. First, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: what fundamental consciousness is, and then I'd like to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what trauma is. So, but let's
Speaker 1: start with what is in your definition fundamental into consciousness. Okay,
Speaker 1: So fundamental consciousness is an experience. So I really don't
Speaker 1: know what it is ontologically or metaphysically, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but I do know that
Speaker 1: we can experience it, and as an experience, it's an
Speaker 1: experience of ourselves as actually made of a very very
Speaker 1: subtle I'm going to say dimension, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, very subtle dimension of consciousness. So so our
Speaker 1: most subtle attunement to ourselves uncovered seems to uncover, rather
Speaker 1: than create, uncovers this very subtle consciousness that we can
Speaker 1: experience everywhere in our body at once. Now, at the
Speaker 1: same time as we experience it pervading everywhere in our body,
Speaker 1: so it feels like this is what we're made of,
Speaker 1: we also experience it pervading everything around us. That means
Speaker 1: that even if we look at it table, the table
Speaker 1: is appears both to be substantial and permeable, actually pervaded
Speaker 1: by consciousness at the same time, we don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that experience of ourselves and the world
Speaker 1: around us as made of fundamental consciousness is actually like
Speaker 1: I'm actually seeing it the nature of the universe, which
Speaker 1: is what some traditional teachings claim, or whether I'm seeing
Speaker 1: my own mind after my own consciousness at the same
Speaker 1: time as I'm seeing what that consciousness reveals, as some
Speaker 1: other traditional teachings claim. So that's open for debate as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned. But I do know that we
Speaker 1: can experience it right right, And I think that is
Speaker 1: that is an interesting point, And I think it's partially
Speaker 1: why these things that this deeper level of consciousness is
Speaker 1: often described as beyond words, because the experience is inefftable
Speaker 1: in a way, and and the intellectual debates about what's
Speaker 1: actually happening become kind of unimportant if you're actually experiencing it.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, it's an experience. There are also
Speaker 1: teachings that say we can't experience it because there's nobody
Speaker 1: there to experience it. And I'm not of that school
Speaker 1: of thought. We can't experience it, it seems to I mean,
Speaker 1: as the Buddhist experiences itself. You know, it's not a
Speaker 1: consciousness of something, it's consciousness itself. But we know it right,
Speaker 1: we know it when when it appears, and we can
Speaker 1: also and we can also facilitate its appearance or emergence.
Speaker 1: And that's what that's what my work is about. It
Speaker 1: is facilitating that what seems to be a self arising,
Speaker 1: uncreative experience of ourselves as this very subtle consciousness. Wonderful.
Speaker 1: And so a couple of things about fundamental consciousness that
Speaker 1: you say, you say it has three qualities, awareness, emotion,
Speaker 1: and physical sensation. Um, can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit more about each of those aspects of it or
Speaker 1: each of those qualities? Yes, Yes, fundamental consciousness is the
Speaker 1: basis of our wholeness with that means that in order
Speaker 1: to experience it, we need to open to it throughout
Speaker 1: our whole being, our whole body, and our whole being.
Speaker 1: So when we do that, it's not just blank space.
Speaker 1: Although we can't experience of this emptiness, it's just empty,
Speaker 1: just cheer transparency. We can't experience that way, but we
Speaker 1: can also experience it the same fundamental consciousness as having
Speaker 1: in a very subtle form, the basic qualities of our
Speaker 1: human being, of our being and um. By the way,
Speaker 1: this uh acknowledgement of the ground of our being as
Speaker 1: having qualities innately is again a matter of debate within
Speaker 1: the traditional Asian spiritual teachings, but many of them, both
Speaker 1: Hinduism and Buddhism, have schools of practice and schools of
Speaker 1: thought that say that, yes, indeed, that this ground of
Speaker 1: our being, this essence or Buddha nature, does have qualities
Speaker 1: in the realization process. As the name of my work
Speaker 1: and the realization process, I name these qualities awareness, emotion,
Speaker 1: and physical sensation as a way of opening our whole being,
Speaker 1: our awareness, our emotional capacity, and our capacity for physical sensation,
Speaker 1: opening all of that to the the whole pervasive ground
Speaker 1: of fundamental consciousness. So we attuned to the actual felt quality.
Speaker 1: By quality, I mean feeling only the word feeling I
Speaker 1: use to too many other contexts. I use the word quality.
Speaker 1: We attuned to the experience the quality of awareness around
Speaker 1: and within in a way above our head, to the
Speaker 1: actual attunement to feeling of that space. When we do that,
Speaker 1: we experience that same quality preventing our whole body awareness
Speaker 1: and preventing our body and environment. When do we attune
Speaker 1: to it blower down right, like the mid third of
Speaker 1: our body. It has an emotional quality to it, not
Speaker 1: a specific emotion, because this is a very subtle, ongoing experience.
Speaker 1: Fundamental consciousness is unchanging our experiences. It's unchanging, so we
Speaker 1: experience it this as steady as stable. In other words,
Speaker 1: so this emotional quality is deeper and more subtle than
Speaker 1: any specific quality. But once again, we can attune to
Speaker 1: it in the mid third of our body has a
Speaker 1: feel to it. Once we do that, we can experience
Speaker 1: it everywhere in our body and everywhere in our environment. Right,
Speaker 1: So even the chair, I don't mean that the chair
Speaker 1: has emotion. I'm not saying that, but this emotion little
Speaker 1: ground pervades the chair right, pervades everything that we experience,
Speaker 1: both inside us and outside of us. Now, the third one,
Speaker 1: when we go way down on our body, down on
Speaker 1: our tour, sat down on our legs, we can attune
Speaker 1: to another feeling physical sensation, again more subtle and more
Speaker 1: ongoing than any of the content. Right to make a
Speaker 1: distinction between ground and content. In this work, physical sensation
Speaker 1: as the ground is unchanging, more subtle than any specific
Speaker 1: physical sensation. Once again, we can attuned to it that
Speaker 1: lower part of our body, but then we experience it
Speaker 1: everywhere in our body and pervading everywhere. They blend together, right,
Speaker 1: They blend together awareness, emotion, physical sensation pervading our whole
Speaker 1: body and our whole environment, and they make up the
Speaker 1: richness of that ground of our being wonderful. I really
Speaker 1: like that that distinction. So now let's go into the
Speaker 1: second part of of what I said, is like, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what trauma is, and then
Speaker 1: we'll kind of we'll tie fundamental consciousness and trauma together.
Speaker 1: But but let's start from your perspective. What is trauma?
Speaker 1: I'm using the word trauma in a general sense, as
Speaker 1: it often is used these days to mean anything that
Speaker 1: is too overwhelming, too abrasive, confusing, or painful for us
Speaker 1: to take in as a whole. Mostly, of course, this
Speaker 1: occurs in childhood, where we're so extremely sensitive to the
Speaker 1: environment and we don't have anything to to balance it,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have any our our understanding isn't developed,
Speaker 1: and we can't get away. So even angry voices or
Speaker 1: face that's usually loving suddenly looking very sorrowful or angry,
Speaker 1: even that something is ordinary commonplaces that can be traumatic
Speaker 1: and be too much for a child to take in.
Speaker 1: Being said, when we're not hungry. All are the things
Speaker 1: that most children you know experience at some point in
Speaker 1: their life. Certainly, if there's more severe trauma such as
Speaker 1: being held down, being abused, being hit, beaten, being criticized,
Speaker 1: you know, consistently, uh so more severe trauma that will
Speaker 1: have an even greater effect on us, we will have
Speaker 1: to keep that out. So it is a realization process.
Speaker 1: My main concern is the realization of ourselves as fundamental consciousness,
Speaker 1: and that requires us to inhabit our body. The more
Speaker 1: fully we inhabit our body, the more fully we open
Speaker 1: to and know ourselves as fundamental consciousness. But when the
Speaker 1: child or teenager, or even if trauma severe the adult.
Speaker 1: When we experience something that we cannot take in, an
Speaker 1: experience that we have to keep out to some extent,
Speaker 1: we constrict the instrument of our experience, which is our body.
Speaker 1: We constrict through the through the level of the fast
Speaker 1: I think mostly fashion being a level of tissue that's
Speaker 1: everywhere in the body, that surrounds all of our organs.
Speaker 1: That means that we can constrict ourselves deeply, even within
Speaker 1: our body. So we're keeping we're keeping abrasive events out right,
Speaker 1: we're limiting the impact of these events on us so
Speaker 1: that we're not shattered. This is a very a very
Speaker 1: good thing that we do automatically to keep ourselves in tact,
Speaker 1: to keep ourselves from shattering. We also constrict ourselves to
Speaker 1: hold back, to hold in anything that that is not
Speaker 1: met with love or approval from from our environment, you know,
Speaker 1: at the beginning, from our parents, right, So we hold
Speaker 1: back our tears, we hold back our anger, anything that's
Speaker 1: not going to be met with approval. And and so
Speaker 1: one of the things you say is that even though
Speaker 1: our basic nature is wholeness, that traumatic events cause us
Speaker 1: to become divided. That that is what one of the
Speaker 1: primary things, as I understand what you're saying, that drives
Speaker 1: us out of fundamental consciousness. That's right. Either to realize
Speaker 1: ourselves with fundamental consciousness, it takes a very deep in
Speaker 1: where the tune into ourselves. There's a question of whether
Speaker 1: children are just naturally and fundamental conscious I don't think
Speaker 1: they are, no, because it requires deep in where the
Speaker 1: tune into the very core of our being. Children are undefended,
Speaker 1: they're open, but they're not necessarily realized in this In
Speaker 1: this way experiencing themselves and their world is pervaded by
Speaker 1: fundamental consciousness. So it's when we go to then try
Speaker 1: to realize ourselves with fundamental conscious that we come up
Speaker 1: against these constrictions. Now, we don't need to release all
Speaker 1: of these constrictions in the order to realize ourselves with
Speaker 1: fundamental consciousness, but we do have to really is a
Speaker 1: certain degree of them, right as as those constrictions in
Speaker 1: the fashion of our body, along with the memories of
Speaker 1: the trauma, right even the mentality of ourselves as as
Speaker 1: children or as adolescents. When we when we went into
Speaker 1: those constrictions, as that releases, we are able to contact
Speaker 1: ourselves deeply enough fully enough that finally we're able to
Speaker 1: attune to that very very subtle ground of our being.
Speaker 1: And so let's talk now a little bit about how
Speaker 1: your process works. You know, you talk about that you
Speaker 1: approach the healing of trauma in two ways. You you
Speaker 1: attune to fundamental consciousness by inhabiting the body, and then
Speaker 1: you use fundamental consciousness to release trauma based constrictions. So
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit about what the method
Speaker 1: involves in a sense that the listeners might understand what
Speaker 1: they would be doing as part of it. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so realization process is, that's what it is. It's a
Speaker 1: series of practices, and most of the practices work with
Speaker 1: inhabiting the body, tuning directly through through the internal space
Speaker 1: of the body, through that deep contact, being able to
Speaker 1: let go of ourselves on that very deep level, so
Speaker 1: that we let go of ourselves into this very very
Speaker 1: subtle consciousness pervading everywhere. So those are specific practices for
Speaker 1: living within the body. It's very different than being aware
Speaker 1: of the body to actually be present within the body,
Speaker 1: and those practices also a tuned to these qualities of
Speaker 1: fundamental consciousness and directly to that permeability of the world
Speaker 1: around us that we experience when we experience our own
Speaker 1: permeability as fundamental consciousness. There are also practices for tuning
Speaker 1: to a very subtle channel that we're through our torso, neck,
Speaker 1: and head. This has been also in the Hindu system
Speaker 1: in Hindu yoga called shashumna uh. In Tibetan Buddhism, it's
Speaker 1: called the central channel. So many of the Asian teachings
Speaker 1: recognize this very very subtle channel. Again, it's an experience,
Speaker 1: not something that we find, you know, you know, if
Speaker 1: we open the body after death or something. But we
Speaker 1: can experience this very very fine channel the depth of
Speaker 1: our being, and that helps us to enter into fundamental consciousness.
Speaker 1: So these practices, there are also practices for relating with
Speaker 1: another person that way, because the more inward contact we
Speaker 1: have with ourselves, the more contact we can have with others.
Speaker 1: So most of the realization process involves those practices for
Speaker 1: realizing fundamental consciousness. But there's also a specific practice for
Speaker 1: releasing the constrictions, the trauma based constricts within the body.
Speaker 1: The very deep constrictions within us will not unwind just
Speaker 1: by inhabiting the body. They're they're too deep and they're
Speaker 1: and they're tied to painful memories, right, So so we
Speaker 1: know better than to simply open our heart when we've
Speaker 1: been badly hurt. So these constrictions are not just physical,
Speaker 1: they're tied to tied to our being in a very
Speaker 1: deep way. So those deep constrictions within ourselves need to
Speaker 1: be worked within a very specific way, which we do
Speaker 1: by tuning within them from the subtle core of the
Speaker 1: body so that we get a very fine attunement and
Speaker 1: focusing within them in such a way that they actually
Speaker 1: move further into constriction and then release. And a very
Speaker 1: important part of that release work in the realization process
Speaker 1: is that then after that little bit of release occurs,
Speaker 1: we inhabit the body, right, So we're not releasing into
Speaker 1: just nothingness. We're releasing into that ground of our being.
Speaker 1: So we get to experience ourselves as as more hows right,
Speaker 1: it's more love, more voice, more understanding, more power, more
Speaker 1: sexuality as we release these holding patterns and more capable
Speaker 1: of opening to fundamental consciousness. So we've got a couple
Speaker 1: of questions about what you just said there. The first
Speaker 1: is I'd like to explore this idea a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the difference of being aware of our body
Speaker 1: and living within the body. So let's take a common
Speaker 1: practice like a body scan. Is a body scan being
Speaker 1: aware of the body or is that living within the
Speaker 1: body or does it really depend on how you do
Speaker 1: it in the depth to which you go, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: depends on how you do it. But most people who
Speaker 1: scan the body, it will be just there. They're scanning
Speaker 1: their awareness through the body right so, or where their
Speaker 1: feet and then they were their ankles, and then they
Speaker 1: wear their legs, so so that's not yet living within
Speaker 1: the body. Some people may just automatically, maybe because they
Speaker 1: already have that depth of contact with themselves when they
Speaker 1: do a body scan, they may actually enter into and
Speaker 1: be present within each place in their body. We we also,
Speaker 1: in the realization process, go part by part and then
Speaker 1: we go to inhabiting the body as a whole. And
Speaker 1: that's because if we just simply told ourselves, well, okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to live within my body, we would
Speaker 1: leave out those parts of ourselves that we habitually leave
Speaker 1: out right, So if we're a little bit ungrounded, you know,
Speaker 1: having the clouds, then we won't include the feet in
Speaker 1: that internal inhabiting of ourselves in the internal presence. So
Speaker 1: that's why we go part by part, very much like
Speaker 1: a body scan, except that the maneuver is different. You know,
Speaker 1: it's different to tap down find the feet. That's the
Speaker 1: awareness of you know, from my from my mind I
Speaker 1: focused down on my feet, or to actually know ourselves
Speaker 1: from within so that it feels like the internal space
Speaker 1: of the feet, for example, is conscious. That our consciousness
Speaker 1: is everywhere in our body, and so when it comes
Speaker 1: to inhabiting these parts of our body, you know, I've
Speaker 1: done some some work in this area. Imagine you're familiar
Speaker 1: with like Reggie Ray's work, who tends to do some
Speaker 1: of this type of stuff. And where I find is
Speaker 1: that in general, what I notice is not a lot happening.
Speaker 1: Is that just a matter of not being attuned to
Speaker 1: it enough and needing to just go more slowly, spend
Speaker 1: more time, be more patient or kind of What are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that when you're let's say, you say,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to descend into my feet and
Speaker 1: really be there, and that the amount of sensation that
Speaker 1: is noticeable is very very low. Yeah, If that's the case,
Speaker 1: then then you're not deeply enough and fully enough in
Speaker 1: your feet. Of course we have to. We would have
Speaker 1: to look at what your expectation is, right, you know,
Speaker 1: what you're expecting to feel, because low is a subjective quantity.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's that's how it feels. Constant bliss is
Speaker 1: what I'm looking for in my feel right. Well, that's
Speaker 1: certainly your birth right, that's everybody's birth right on some level.
Speaker 1: But um and in fact, we can attune to bliss
Speaker 1: within the feet. I actually have people attuned to a
Speaker 1: quality that feels like self. And it's you know, it's controversial.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying absolutely not saying that there is a self,
Speaker 1: whatever that would mean in our postmodern world. If there
Speaker 1: is a self, I don't know. But so you know,
Speaker 1: that's like an old, old debate from many, many years ago.
Speaker 1: But the quality of self actually enters us into our wholeness. So,
Speaker 1: especially with people who have some experience meditating knowing themselves
Speaker 1: introspectively on any sort of sub level, I'll have them
Speaker 1: and habit each part of their body, and then a
Speaker 1: tune to the quality of self within the body that
Speaker 1: helps fill out that experience. But if you dwell there
Speaker 1: even without a tuning to anything in particular, the richness
Speaker 1: of the experience will deepen. Excellent. H So that was
Speaker 1: the first part you mentioned, which is to a tune
Speaker 1: to fundamental consciousness by inhabiting the body, and then how
Speaker 1: about using fundamental consciousness to release trauma based constrictions. Right,
Speaker 1: So let me just be clear that we're tuning to
Speaker 1: fundamental consciousness not just in the body, but we start
Speaker 1: in the body, but the tuning to it then pervading
Speaker 1: the space outside of our body, and then the space
Speaker 1: inside and outside at the same time, and then pervading
Speaker 1: our body and the environment. So we're tuning directly to
Speaker 1: it in the environment as well as within our body.
Speaker 1: To the three qualities that we discussed earlier, not just
Speaker 1: that you know, before we get that's a separate, actually
Speaker 1: separate exercise, but just a tuning to that transparency, that permeability,
Speaker 1: feeling that we're in our whole body, then finding the
Speaker 1: space outside of our body, then experiencing that the space
Speaker 1: inside and outside of our body is the same continuous space,
Speaker 1: and then experiencing that the space that pervades our body
Speaker 1: also pervades the other people in the room, the other furniture, right,
Speaker 1: even the walls of the room. Without leaving our body
Speaker 1: at all. So we're finding that very very subtle, pervasive space.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not actually space, if it's anything, it's consciousness.
Speaker 1: But I talk about it as space because it's spacious.
Speaker 1: It's experienced as expands space. Right, So so we a
Speaker 1: tune directly to that. Now when we get to too
Speaker 1: many fundamental consciousness to heal ourselves from trauma, there's many things.
Speaker 1: For one thing, just being in the body gives us
Speaker 1: a sense of actually existing, which you know, heals trauma
Speaker 1: in many different ways by helping us feel secure within ourselves,
Speaker 1: that we're in possession of that internal being that we
Speaker 1: can attune to that we know is who we are. Uh,
Speaker 1: That in itself is very healing built you know, as
Speaker 1: a basis for our self confidence, is a basis for
Speaker 1: feeling that we take up space. You know, that we're
Speaker 1: as potent as the other human beings around us in
Speaker 1: terms of our the strength of our being. When we
Speaker 1: experience fundamental consciousness pervading our body and everywhere around us,
Speaker 1: we get to that very very subtle level of ourselves
Speaker 1: that has never been injured, right, We get to, oh,
Speaker 1: this is who I am, this has not been it's
Speaker 1: just waiting here. This is the experience I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: not speaking metaphysically, I know it sounds that way, but
Speaker 1: we have an experience and when we get to it
Speaker 1: of having uncovered as if it's always been there, just
Speaker 1: the way they say, like in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism,
Speaker 1: they say, I've never moved from the beginning. I have
Speaker 1: never moved from the beginning, I said, We've always been
Speaker 1: this expanse is for face of space. But that's the
Speaker 1: experience we uncovered there we are, We're still intact. Even
Speaker 1: if no matter how severe the trauma has been in
Speaker 1: our life, we can get to this part of ourselves
Speaker 1: that is still intact, still capable of love, right, still
Speaker 1: capable of feeling power, feeling sexual responsive, news, feeling, you know, understanding,
Speaker 1: expressing ourselves so forth, so that in itself you know
Speaker 1: really much. All of the realization process practices have some
Speaker 1: impact on the healing of trauma. The locating of that
Speaker 1: subtle channel that runs through the vertical core of the
Speaker 1: body very important for our realization but also important for
Speaker 1: healing from trauma because it allows us to feel centered
Speaker 1: like that subtle core of the body feels like the
Speaker 1: center of our being. And then even if people are killing,
Speaker 1: going berserk around us, we're still in the center of
Speaker 1: our being. We don't need to get draw into the
Speaker 1: old powers of reactivity, the old patterns of reactivity, to
Speaker 1: those kinds of circumstances that used to trigger us. Right. So,
Speaker 1: the subtle core of the body also very important, deepens
Speaker 1: our perspective, connects us deeply inside ourselves, very important for
Speaker 1: healing from trauma. Now we use that focus, that very refined, subtle,
Speaker 1: thin keen focus that we cultivate, that we get to
Speaker 1: when we know that subtle core of our being. We
Speaker 1: use that subtle focus to focus within the trauma based
Speaker 1: constrictions in our body as the first step to that
Speaker 1: process of release. M HM. And so one of the
Speaker 1: things that you say is that you say psychological healing
Speaker 1: and spiritual awakening are you consider them be too intertwined
Speaker 1: in inevitable aspects of our progression towards personal maturity, And
Speaker 1: that a lot of spiritual people think that meditation might
Speaker 1: be sufficient for becoming whole um or if we can
Speaker 1: release the constrictions without knowing our personal history. And you
Speaker 1: say that I believe that healing does not occur or
Speaker 1: last without psychological insight. So my question do you they're
Speaker 1: slightly more specifically, is to what extent do we need to,
Speaker 1: as you say, know about kind of what our traumas were. Obviously,
Speaker 1: some people have very strong, very clear traumas that they
Speaker 1: remember really well. But there's a lot of other people
Speaker 1: that don't have a lot of memory. Myself is one
Speaker 1: of them. Like, I don't think I had any capital
Speaker 1: T traumatic events right as a child, but I think
Speaker 1: I had lots of lowercase tea. But my memory, my
Speaker 1: actual being able to recall an event, it's very blank
Speaker 1: back there. Um, what's kind of blank? My memory is
Speaker 1: just bad in general. But I'm kind of curious. How
Speaker 1: does somebody who may not have access to some of
Speaker 1: the psychological memory these work with this process? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that we have to remember everything, you know,
Speaker 1: but if we start with the body as we release
Speaker 1: those holding patherns, that will often uncover the memories. Right
Speaker 1: as as the release is happening, We're like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: I just remember, you know, my father coming into the
Speaker 1: room that time, you know, when I was three years old.
Speaker 1: You know, the memory for whatever reason, it's fascinating seems
Speaker 1: to be connected, associated, or even bound within the tissues.
Speaker 1: You know of the constriction, the trauma based constriction. So
Speaker 1: that will help unfold the memory. And then once the
Speaker 1: memory starts to appear, if it does. If it does,
Speaker 1: then we can use that memory to help us be
Speaker 1: even more precise in how we constricted ourselves, so that
Speaker 1: the releases, you know, we're actually releasing them the exact
Speaker 1: pathway of the way we constricted ourselves. That's why it's important.
Speaker 1: It's not vital. I'm if we work just with the
Speaker 1: body and release it. The only problem with that, you
Speaker 1: know there will be released, and if we inhabit the body,
Speaker 1: we can maintain it. But we are liable if we
Speaker 1: come into a situation that is similar to even those
Speaker 1: low grade traumas that we had as children. Uh, we're
Speaker 1: liable to constrict again, right because we don't know what
Speaker 1: the trigger is. So so it's helpful. I won't say
Speaker 1: it's vital, but it's helpful to have the memories to
Speaker 1: I always begin when I work with someone individually, which
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm retired from that, but when I
Speaker 1: had worked with someone individually, I always start with talking
Speaker 1: in front of you want to make you know, established
Speaker 1: contact and trust in the therapeutic situation. But I also
Speaker 1: want to know what do people What do people know
Speaker 1: about their past? If there's no memory at all, it
Speaker 1: often means that there was quite a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: you know that. So there's no rules about this, but
Speaker 1: that's often the case. The someone says, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: remember anything, Well, then I will, you know, ask some
Speaker 1: pointed questions, well where did you live? You know, what
Speaker 1: was your father like your mother like, just to start that,
Speaker 1: to open a little bit. But that there's just kind
Speaker 1: of sketchy memory. It's fine, we can we can then proceed,
Speaker 1: you know, just with the memories that are there are
Speaker 1: usually the more important ones. You know. Of course, severe
Speaker 1: severe trauma will sometimes really be suppressed completely and even
Speaker 1: that will begin to emerge with the process of release.
Speaker 1: I also think it's good to know our our history,
Speaker 1: so that we know who we are, we know what
Speaker 1: what we survived. Uh. Certainly, not to blame anyone, because
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious that pain has passed down through the
Speaker 1: generations that our parents suffered or would not be causing
Speaker 1: us suffering. So not to blame, but to know, to
Speaker 1: have a passion for ourselves, what we went through, what
Speaker 1: we managed to survive, Why we constricted ourselves. How Come
Speaker 1: it's hard for us to love now? How Come it's
Speaker 1: our TuS to express ourselves now? I think it's a
Speaker 1: good thing to know if if it's successible to you, wonderful.
Speaker 1: So we're near the end of our time here. Is
Speaker 1: there anything else that you feel like it's really important
Speaker 1: to your to your method, to your process that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about that we should before we wrap up? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, I mean there is
Speaker 1: one important aspect which I just mentioned very briefly, and
Speaker 1: that's the relational aspect of the work. Where are we
Speaker 1: practice being with another human being in and as fundamental consciousness?
Speaker 1: For one thing, because we we created pretty much all
Speaker 1: of our constrictions, almost all of them in relation to
Speaker 1: other people. So we can open very lovely on our
Speaker 1: meditation cushion all by ourselves and time. As soon as
Speaker 1: we see another person, we'll go back into the fragmentation
Speaker 1: that self other fragmentation. So in the realization process, I
Speaker 1: go right away to relational work. And also helps people
Speaker 1: know that they can experience oneness, real openness which is
Speaker 1: request the basis of trust and all those good things
Speaker 1: oneness with other people without losing inward contact with oneself.
Speaker 1: In fact, that oneness is based on inhabiting our own body,
Speaker 1: so it's based on inward contact with our own experience. Excellent, Well, Judah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. I've definitely really enjoyed talking with you,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed the book. Thank you. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that you don't do individual work with people anymore, but
Speaker 1: there are a list of licensed teachers on your website.
Speaker 1: Will have links in the show notes to your website
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. So thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on. Yeah, thank you, Eric.
Speaker 1: Take care. M. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a donation to the One
Speaker 1: You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like
Speaker 1: to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.