-TOP-What is Nondual Awareness?
A yoga student of mine asked me a question after class one night. “What is nondual awareness?” he asked.
“That is the part of you that is not separate from anything, that is OK, no matter what happens.”
“Oh boy, “ he said, “I’d really like to learn about that.”
“Yes, “ I said, “in light of what is unraveling on a global scale right now, I can’t see any other way of meeting the challenges that face us. What might have seemed like something of a luxury, has perhaps become a necessity.”
-TOP-What is Nondual Coaching/Mentoring?
Awakening to Awareness
“I am here for you, we are here for each other. We are all in this together.
The more we can surrender to being fully here for each other, the greater the benefit. ” Ganga-Ji
This coaching happens in private sessions, and in small groups, in person and on the phone. You can call or email to book a free 30 min. Introductory Session
There is this possibility of genuine transformation—let us be clear about it. This is not reserved for only a few special people. And there is nothing with greater power to liberate, heal and transform than awareness itself. Because we can’t change the way we are by fighting against it. This moment cannot be any different than the way it is. I cannot be different in this moment than the way I am; otherwise I would be.
The nature of awareness is intrinsic well being. When we rest in awareness we recognize this well being, and that we don’t need to go anywhere or do anything in order to be at ease.
Perhaps this is the time, this is the moment, for embracing yourself, your life, and giving up the struggle for control. Perhaps you are tired of trying to squeeze yourself into a ‘higher’ state, and you can get a sense of how it feels to be wide open, and spacious. Maybe you are finally ready to fall into the deep okayness that comes with radical acceptance, the willingness to be with things just as they are.
To be willing, accepting and present means noticing that you are the sky, not just the clouds, the ocean, not just the waves. So much more than the clouds and the waves, and yet not separate from them at all. How could the sky be separate from the clouds, or the ocean separate from the waves? It means recognizing that when you relax and allow, you are large enough to contain all of your experiences, just as the sky allows the clouds and the ocean allows the waves.
Students and clients express:
My mind is drifting in a current that is spacious and undeniably forgiving somehow. The thoughts are all still there, pouring out of my brain as usual, but there is space holding them all for a change. Space that connects me to something so much bigger than my self, and yet OF my self - as if any thoughts separate from me, the illusion of other, have all dissolved for a moment.
(Tara Williams-Jan. 09 Nelson)
“This is one of the greatest gifts I’ve received in a long long time” (Lea Durard, California, April 2010)
Thank you, Shayla, for the introduction to ‘resting in awareness’ in your telecall tonight - As someone who often struggles with a very busy mind, the wisdom you shared about simply accepting the nature of my mind, as it is, without trying to ‘do’ anything or change it, has provided me with an immersive feeling of rest...fullness, self-acceptance and empowerment. (Telecall participant, Oct. 09)
It was profound. Standing on top of the parking garage to get a better view of the town and truly feeling (in my body) how love radiates, and feeling how as we collectively learn to receive and share love - it will continue to grow and expand. “Love is infinite”. I realized that even though I had spoken those words before - my understanding of love was quite finite. It grew on Sunday, as I stood on the roof of the parking garage. Thank you for the simple instruction - to go for a walk and ask myself, “What is love?” (Sonja P. Nelson BC, March 2010)
Nondual coaching happens in person or on the phone. We meet together, as we are, and listen to what wants to emerge out of the openness and silence of being. As your coach, I assist you in learning to recognize, access and integrate the healing and awakening power of unconditioned awareness into your everyday life.
Working with a coach allows you to move at your own pace, work with whatever challenges arise for you, and go to whatever depth is appropriate. Email writings, contemplations, exercises and inquiries are included in this coaching.
Let yourself receive, let yourself be guided, helped, inspired, blessed and loved. Discover the truth of your non-separate nature.
Give Yourself a Break
I’ve been thinking lately about all the years I’ve spent working with people, and how much of that work has been centered around unraveling our fixed sense of identity. One of my ‘Gift of Presence’ students called it “a joyous unraveling.” There are an infinite number of ways that we can relate to our identity, our ego, our sense of separate self. Some people want to understand their ego, some want to improve it, some want to destroy it. And of course some people just want to dress it up and take it out.
There is a lot of controversy in spiritual circles about all this. What to do? How to proceed? Do I embrace my identity? Do I expand it, do I dissolve it? Is it real? Is it an illusion? Do I need therapy, or coaching, or meditation? Or three years in an ashram? I don’t think so.
The whole conundrum seems so much simpler to me now than it used to. I think that’s because I’ve learned to trust my own experience, and the experience of my students and friends. For me, the simple truth of the matter is this: we all get tired of ourselves! Being a separate person all the time is exhausting. That’s why it’s so hard on people when they can’t sleep. Sleep is a total release from our whole waking-state identity.
Sometimes people who come to me for coaching say, “I really need a break. I just want to get away from everything for a while.” When we look a little deeper, it usually turns out that what they are tired of is themselves. They are tired of the same thought patterns, the same habitual responses, the same conditioning. No matter how you feel about your identity, it’s a profound relief to be able to take a break from it, to rest in that place of ‘I am,’ before you add the qualification: “I am this” or “I am that.”
Somewhere, deep inside, we all know that we are more than this static and separate identity. It’s not even a matter of being spiritual. I was having lunch with a lumberjack once, who had never even heard the word ‘meditation.’ He told me about what happened on his 60th birthday. “I went to the mirror and looked at myself,” he said. “And I knew that I am not 60 years old! No way! I am the same one inside that I was when I was a child. Something has never changed. I just don’t know what to call it.”
“Who cares what you call it,” I said to him. “You’ve recognized it-that’s enough.”
I’m always asking my yoga students about this, in relation to the body. “Okay,” I say to them. “When you look at your body from the outside, it looks like a solid object. But close your eyes and hang out there awhile. What is your inner experience of your body? Does it feel fixed? Does it feel solid? And if not, what happened? Where did the static, separate feeling of your body go?”
No-one has ever answered that question, but everyone agrees that when they open to the immediate experience of the body, something is there that they had not really noticed. A sense of space, openness, aliveness, being. It’s right here, and we miss it, because we get fixated on the sense of our own identity.
That simple sense of spaciousness, of openness, of presence, is so easy to overlook, to pass on by, because our conditioned mind does not know how to value that. It feels too much like nothing, and our human training has convinced us to keep chasing after all the somethings. We sure can pile up a lot of somethings before we start to wonder about doing something different.
Sometimes we think we want so much, and all we really want is a rest from our whole identity. The following Sufi tale about this is one of my favorite teaching stories.
A long time ago there was an Emperor, celebrating a great victory in war with an enormous feast. His attendants were busily preparing the Great Hall as the evening of the feast approached. Suddenly the door of the hall slammed open, and a wild, raggedy fellow walked inside. He was old, and disheveled, and no one recognized him. His face burned with a strange radiance that made everyone there uneasy. They wanted to stop him, right where he was. Instead they just stood and watched as he strolled across the great Hall and sat down in the Emperor’s chair.
The Chief Steward drew himself up to his full height, put one hand on the sword that hung at his side, and approached the strange fellow.
“Welcome good sir,” he bowed low. “By the look of you, you have come from far away. Perhaps you do not know that you are sitting in the Emperor’s chair?”
“My good man,” came the reply. I know perfectly well where I am sitting.”
“But sir,” said the steward, “Why do you sit there? Are you a great lord?”
The old man sat back, and looked up through eyes that were unfathomable. “Not a lord,” he said. “I am greater than that.”
“Greater than a lord?” said the steward, his voice cracking. “Are you a king?”
“Not a king,” came the reply. “I am greater than that.”
“Greater than a king sir? What are you telling me? You must be an emperor!”
“No,” said the strange old man. “I am greater than that.”
“Sir,” said the chief steward. “I cannot make sense of what you are saying. You know, as well as I do, that the only one greater than the Emperor is God Himself!”
“
Oh, “ the fellow replied, softly now. “Is that what you think? Well, then, I have to tell you that I am greater even than God.”
“Now sir!” came the steward’s voice, and it was sharp now, like a whip. “You’ll not be playing these games with me any longer. I don’t care what you tell me-nobody, nobody, is greater than God.”
The old man stood up, finally, and the fire in his face and body filled the Hall with a great silence. “Yes,” he said. “I am that nobody.”
-TOP-Nondual Coaching & Transformation
On one level this nondual coaching/mentoring is an exploration of the nature of awakening and transformation, or what I call deep learning. What is transformation? How does it happen? What nourishes and sustains it and what gets in its way? How can we support each other to open to the truth and fullness of who we really are? How can I learn to embody my authentic being in the world, and meet the challenges and obstacles that arise for me? These are questions that you live with as we engage together, without grasping in the mind for an answer, allowing your own experience, and your nondual work to become the living answer to these questions.
The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that’s life. Death is wanting to hold onto what you have and to have every experience confirm you and congratulate you and make you completely together. —Pema Chodron
Genuine, transformative learning cannot happen without opening and expanding the structures of our conditioned mind and identity. It requires of us a willingness to open to our unconditioned awareness or presence, and acknowledge this, knowing that our mind cannot understand what it is. As we learn to access this presence in the midst of everything else that is going on, we experience a fundamental shift of identity. This is what I call a ‘vertical shift.’
The other level of this process happens as we learn to allow our inner experience to unfold and reveal itself. This is the place where insights, revelations, releases and ‘horizontal shifts’ occur. In our coaching process, we work with both levels of our being, the conditioned and unconditioned, moving back and forth, feeling our way, as things shift and open on the vertical and horizontal levels.
-TOP-Core Principles
Cultivating an open, accepting non judging awareness
Being with what is, recognizing our natural, spontaneous and uncontrived being. Coming to terms with genuine acceptance, which is a vital and vibrant power, as opposed to passivity and resignation, which are distortions of true acceptance.
No Pressure
How can we create a learning environment where we do not put any pressure on ourselves?
Open Listening
Something happens when I learn to listen with my whole being, when I let go of my subject -object fixation, and allow the whole field of my awareness to receive what is here. When I listen to myself in this way, I enter into a way of being with myself that the conditioned mind does not understand. When I listen to others in this way, I allow a knowing to emerge in me that only comes when I have no agendas or demands.
Healing
What is the essence of true healing? How does it happen? How do we access the innate healing power that lives within us? What does it mean to come into right or healthy relationship with our emotions? How can we learn to be truly intimate with ourselves?
Our Relationship to Suffering
How do we relate to suffering? What happens when we begin to discriminate between pain (the inevitable sorrow that is a part of being human) and suffering: the beliefs, ideas, attitudes and concepts that we add onto our original pain?
Coming to Completion
Many of the obstacles we face come from situations, feelings and interactions that are not complete inside us. Experiences and relationships that have not been fully experienced, accepted and acknowledged, remain there, waiting until they can complete themselves. Our whole relationship with our past transforms when we commit to this kind of completion.
Embodiment & Our Full Humanity
Learning to ground our contemplations, practices and inquiries in the body, recognizing that our body is the gateway to our deepest intelligence.
Inquiry and Inner Guidance
Discovering our own authentic questions, and learning to drop them into the heart, into the body, allows us to access our heart wisdom, the flow of our intuitive intelligence, what they refer to in Zen as ‘Prajna.’
Embodying our Genuine Yes and No
What is it that we need to say No to, right now, and what do we want to say Yes to--in our lives, in our hearts, in our bodies? Can we open ourselves to the fact that when we say ‘Yes’ to one thing, we are actually saying ‘No’ to something else, and vice versa?
Radical Responsibility
What does it mean to really grow up and take full responsibility for our life? In non-dual work it becomes clear that our inner and outer worlds are not separate. In each moment, I am actually constructing my own experience.
Widening the River of Life
Expanding our capacity to open to greater depths of joy, sorrow, love, pain, challenge, despair and ecstasy. We can discover what it means to open to the whole conditioned realm of existence, as it is, which is really the beginning of our basic sanity.
Profound Honesty
As we learn to embody non-dual awareness, or our true nature, our sense of honesty and integrity deepens and expands. We begin to experience our human nature with more and more clarity and compassion. As this happens, we can allow the shadow, what we have disowned or denied in ourself up until now, to be revealed.
Prayer
Opening to our invisible network of support—asking the invisible realm of love/intelligence for help.
Core Values
Your life changes when you find out for yourself what matters most to you, what you really care about, what you want your life to be about. This deep value is something that only you can discover for yourself. It is a living energy that creates a direction in your life, a cohesive and organizing force, like a North Star. In Integral work they call it “your ultimate concern.”
Unconditional Gratitude
As you open to nondual awareness, a capacity to be grateful unconditionally begins to appear. This gratitude is not about what is happening or not happening in your life. It is more like being grateful for existence, for non-existence, for everything and for nothing.
Contribution
What is it that you want to offer into your community, your planet, your life? How can you work with others in a good way, without rescuing or taking responsibility for their suffering? What excuses or beliefs are you still holding that stop you from offering what you have to give right now? Here is the invitation: Give us what you’ve got—stop holding back.
-TOP-For more information
To learn more about the Radiant Mind approach to non-dual wisdom, visit www.radiantmind.net.
Please call or email Shayla for a free 30 min. initial consultation, by phone or in person. 250.352.7908 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 250.352.7908 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
So much appreciation to you for all you’ve shared, your coaching skills are amazing and have made such a difference for me.—Susan Wilson, NYC
