In 1981, when Valerie Vener was twenty years old, she was caught in a house fire and had a profound Near Death Experience that was a significant part of her Awakening Journey. At one point she surrendered completely to her death and everything was transformed; the fire which had been terrifying a moment before was now fascinatingly beautiful. She became absorbed in a realm of brilliant light that left nothing to fear and nothing to be desired; there was nothing left to reach for. She saw that this brilliance was her own true Self and realized that the Valerie who had been identified with the body was not in control, never was and never could be. It was during this Near Death Experience that her spiritual teacher, Da Free John, appeared to her expressing eternal love and two choices: to return to her present body or take on a new one. Either way, he said, she was his. Valerie knew nothing of Da Free John before this experience and after her recovery she found him and became his student.
Valerie's expression of herself is so lively and so animated in her body that a written transcript of her words is missing a significant component of her communication. She is in almost constant motion while she talks, utilizing her entire body to articulate her experience. You could say that she "dances her talk." Valerie is a highly creative person who has been a dancer and choreographer as well as an actress, musician, poet and artist. The continuous flow of energy and movement through her being visually demonstrates what she teaches: an allowing of all energies--physical, mental and emotional--to be, fully, as they are.
One aspect of her expression that does come across in words is her grounded earthiness. Valerie gets down into the "nitty-gritty" with people; into the grit of life in the body with all it's functions, its desires, aversions and pains. There is nothing that she's uncomfortable talking about. We noticed that this made us comfortable talking about aspects of ourselves and our lives that we usually don't discuss with "spiritual teachers." With Valerie, there is an unusual aura of ordinariness, not being anything special or particularly spiritual--just another human being. One might even say that she leans the other way and expresses herself in a way that is contrary to what one would think of as spiritual. But this does not appear to be intentional. It seems that she is just being naturally who she is. Also, we should note that Valerie's dialogue is more circular than linear and takes you on a journey that sometimes seems to go off the point, but always comes back on target.
What she considers her true Awakening Experience occurred ten years after the fire and is described in this interview.
CONVERSATION WITH VALERIE VENER
The following is from an interview that Lynn Marie Lumiere (LML) and John Lumiere Wins (JLW) conducted with Valerie in connection with their book The Awakening West:
JLW: Probably the most essential question that all of us ask at some point is, "Who am I?" What comes up for you when you ask, "Who am I?"
VALERIE: This is essentially what I am talking about all the time with everyone I meet. For me, answering that question has had to do with being able to sit in a place in myself, or rest in a place in myself. And for a long time, "Who am I?" became how to get to that resting-place. The one I was was always trying to get to the resting-place. Somehow, it became very funny at one point that I was trying to get to the resting-place by doing something that wasn't resting. Then it just became obvious who I am.
I am that very One that lives my body, that lives your body, and I am absolutely energetic; I am in energy, I am as energy. And, I am absolutely delightful, delightful in my trillions and billions of modifications, and "how wondrous it is to be me!" [Laughter] Seriously, all that exists outside of me as a modification exists inside of me as a modification. Simultaneously I can be all of that and this one thing that I am. (So, if that can be expressed clearly in writing, I'll be happy!)(See also Sri Ramana Maharshi: "Who Am I?")
LML: Can you say something about what that one thing that lives you and lives all things is?
VALERIE: The best way I can express that with words is to say that there is a stillness and then there's a wave and then there's a stillness and then there's a wave, and I am That which is the stillness and the wave. This sounds ridiculously intellectualized, but that's the best way I know how to say it. In motion, or in discussion, in love-making, or in shit-taking, or birth giving, or even in sitting at the bottom of the breath, just sitting and waiting for a breath to come in, I experience my being as the One who observes the waves, allows the waves, feels the waves and is the waves.
JLW: Nice description.
LML: Valerie, what does "Awakening" or "Enlightenment" mean to you?
VALERIE: I am hesitant to answer this question. After the fire experience, it was very important for me to get back to that experience of my Self that I remembered. That was the beginning of what I would call my conscious spiritual life. Before that the spiritual life was just very natural. I would stand on my head and put my legs in a full lotus position because it felt good and my body would be involved with energies that would now be called clairvoyant. I was experiencing life from an energetic point of view. After the fire, it became apparent that the one who was experiencing life from an energetic point of view was suffering and was unhappy. I had always known it was unhappy, but now I knew that this unhappiness was a sense of individuated self. From that point on, I considered the word "Awakening" as coming back to the place of relaxing past the sense of "I" that was suffering and identifying again with the sense of "I" that was not suffering.
So, the reason that I hesitate to answer that question is that as soon as I start talking about Enlightenment people imagine that it's something that they don't already have. And they have that same sense of wanting to get back to themselves. Now, at this time in my life, I do not have any sense of wanting to get back to myself anymore, anywhere, anyhow. The whole quest to get back, Awake, was recognized as the mistake. This was seen as what was causing the feeling in my body and mind of unhappiness. So, I don't know how to describe Awakening because from one point of view it's a ridiculous quest that is actually the cause of the sense of "I" and its suffering in the first place.
JLW: It creates an "I" and the discomfort of the one who seems to not be Awake.
VALERIE: That's correct. When I wasn't fully rested in this simplicity, for whatever mysterious reasons of my unfoldment, "I want to be Enlightened" was very, very important. We all experience this in some way--"I want to be a fantastic artist, free in my expression. I want to be able to play racquetball where there's no mind. I want to be in relationship where I can to be absolutely fully free and able to love and be loved."--All of these things are associated with this yearning, burning place of wanting to be other than who we now are. And from my point of view, Enlightenment is the natural ability to sit in that yearn, burn place and allow even the yearn, burn to exist without contracting or pushing away from it. But from the point of view of the physical, seemingly separate self, that is a very painful thing to allow.
So, before my fire experience, I found myself always wanting to avoid feeling that pain. It was very scary to feel my separation, my mortality, my isolation, my intense, burning sorrow of "not good enoughness." From the point of view of my body, that still exists, but without interference. In that freedom, it makes so much sense that it's my joy to allow it. It's joyful because I'm not trying to go anywhere to get out of it, so it's freely allowed. When a wave--any emotion, or anything--is freely allowed, it quite naturally works itself out. When it's resisted, it stays in place in a way that feels uncomfortable. So, if a wave is going to move through anyway, you might as well relax and enjoy it.
JLW: Could you tell us the story of how Awakening occurred for you?
VALERIE: Again, this question assumes the point of view that I was "unawakened" and an "Awakening Experience" occurred. So now we're going to talk about my unenlightened, unfulfilled self and how it finally, perfectly became fulfilled. This is were I get frustrated because I can talk about that and in talking about that I am going to have to paradoxically, simultaneously, symptomatically disagree with myself -- disagree with that perspective altogether! I would say that my Awakening has always, already occurred and that I feel sort of tumbled through it almost like a drop in an ocean. It's something that is always occurring. We have one essential Self-occurring.
LML: Did awareness of this Awakening that's always occurring begin with the fire experience?
VALERIE: No, I couldn't say that the fire was the beginning. I could say that because there was a profound, Near Death Experience, there was a Self understanding that was not yet full and perfect, but very, very close. But that experience was itself a result of a prior Self-understanding. And Self-understanding allows natural, true and human behavior.
I guess the answer is that it's been coming in waves, this Awakening Experience. It has certain moments. It has great big moments. It has great deep moments. But, if I were to say when my actual Awakening Experience occurred, it was not until ten years after the fire. In the fire there was a very dramatic understanding of my brain core in relation to how it perceives energy, how it interprets energy, how it relates to energy and how it contracts upon energy and locks itself in place. That occurred in the fire, and then from that point on my experience of self was very, very different.
But the actual Awakening, where there was no longer a search for Awakening, happened in a very simple moment. For me, my practices have always involved the body and what tends to happen is that I just freely let go into myself whether I'm in a tub of water, on the floor, or even leaping through the air. When I was trying to get "Enlightened", it was about letting go so that the Divine could teach me or Awaken me. At a certain point there was about a three-day period where I called in sick to work and I was alone in my house. I felt a lot of energies moving, but very simple, ordinary energies. I was spontaneously doing yogic movement and there was a lot of crying and emotional/bodily releasing, but this was very normal for me. I felt very happy, very, very happy and free and ordinary. I wasn't even thinking about spiritual practice at the time.
At a certain point I found myself grasping my left hand with my right hand, a very spontaneous movement. I remember cellularly realizing that my right hand was squeezing my left hand literally out of love. I was crying and weeping and holding myself and allowing energy to move through me and there was just a moment of looking at it. Really, that simple. Looking at it and realizing that I was squeezing myself because I loved myself--and something simply and finally relaxed. The squeeze stopped, not just in my hands, but from way, way inside my brain. And my body also relaxed in a very simple, very ordinary moment.
From that moment on, because of that change in asana, a tacit experience in my body, seeking for Enlightenment was an impossibility, there was nobody left to seek. My unenlightened experience had been resistance to feeling the waves of me, especially the distasteful ones. Now I was freely able to experience the things that I had thought were my unenlightenment before. I would say that that was the experience that really was "the one."
JLW: One of the many things that is really a treat about the interviews we have done is the spectrum of experiences that people share with us. It's amazing. It's really amazing.
VALERIE: Yeah, yeah. And they're really all saying the same exact thing. We're all doing our best to say the same exact thing which is a description of our Self. Now, when you are identified with the Self who lives all things and all beings, describing yourself becomes difficult for many people to understand. This difficulty can be seen using our shared human body as a metaphor. "I want to see myself perfectly", "I want to understand myself perfectly." But there are places in my body that I can't see as easily, like up inside my asshole. Yet I keep trying to and trying to and trying to. Once you realize that you can never see yourself perfectly and then somebody asks, "Well, who are you perfectly?" it's kind of a funny joke. Who I am perfectly is the one who is relaxed about finding itself. This gives me the simplicity that allows the asana for perceiving things a little bit more as they are than I used to be able to see them.
JLW: When you say asana, do you mean the positioning within yourself?
VALERIE: Yes, I use the word asana because for me it's a very physical experience. Hatha yoga is when you are moving the body into very simple, yet demanding positions or "asanas" that allow the energy to move freely through it. In order to do that, you must go beyond your restricted capacity. So, you're moving the body into shapes, integrating the breath, integrating the being, to literally move beyond itself to find more freedom, more space. Each asana represents a very different vessel for receiving energy, and therefore offers a different perspective. Imagine how someone standing on her head would have a very different perspective than someone standing on her feet, even if they are both looking at a painting on the wall. From each asana the painting looks different, even though it1s the same painting. Unenlightenment is a particular asana, and it provides a distinct perspective. Once this position is released, a different perspective is just naturally so. And from that perspective, there is a different way of relating to self that people notice is more free. But the actual picture is the same damn picture. The picture has't changed.
JLW: Yeah, it's more or less the same world, it's just that your frame of reference is different.
VALERIE: Yes, your perspective for reception is different.
LML: You said that for you it's a very physical experience. Could you talk about the body in relationship to Awakening?
VALERIE: I'm going to do a little metaphoric shift here for you. We have all these shared human, cultural, archetypal systems. We are attracted to, and comfortable with certain archetypes and not others. Yet, they all represent different kinds of essential conversations with ourself. "Let's look at ourself and understand ourself through astrology or science or through gardening," whatever. We have a set of ways of picturing ourself. But from my point of view, we all have the same deck of cards in some very systematically essential way. We are human bodies. We want to have a language then, that we somehow share and feel comfortable with.
When I was very young, I realized that my language, my way of sharing, had to do more with energy than other people did. For example, I have been deaf in one ear since I was three months old due to a viral infection. So certain parts of my nervous system have become more sensitized to make up for that. I needed to open the best I could to get the communication from someone speaking to me, especially in a crowded room. I noticed that a bodily practice was required for opening in this way. My body had to relax. My body had to go beyond its fixed state of being. Somehow it had to let go. This practice of letting go made things much, much easier and became my way. People call me a risk taker. My energy archetypally represents a kind of risk taker energy. It demands a bodily understanding of itself. All of my passions and attractions were about that, as a dancer from a young age, an actress, a musician, and I love to talk, I love interpersonal relating.
JLW: You dance when you speak. You are never not dancing.
VALERIE: : [Laughter] It's very difficult for me to communicate without movement, that is a natural expression of my energy. Dance is a way of speaking energetically, without words, or in this case, to enhance words. The freedom that I represent in certain body movements would offend some cultures and other cultures would not be offended. So then it became even more, "How do I communicate even when my energy is being rejected?" All of these things have always been very passionately exciting to me. It was just very clear to me that relationship to Self included understanding what I was as this bodily vessel -- related to itself, to others, and to the energy that was living it.
The question is funny to me in a way. I have friends who are Awakened and they look very "intellectual" to me. They're speaking about these things very articulately, sometimes, you may have noticed, more articulately than I! But for me, there's a dryness in it because all the waves and the energy are happening from the heart to the brain and above the brain. The body is still living and functioning, but I don't see the same electricity moving all the way down, fully down into the whole body. I have seen very few where the electricity is moving freely throughout the body, where there is a whole being existing there without much interference.
LML: To me, this appears to be what's happening with you.
VALERIE: Oh? That's nice! [Laughter]
LML: There is a difference we experience in you that we have commented on and noticed and maybe that's a description of it. At first I thought, "Well, maybe she's just comfortable in her own skin."
VALERIE: I'm actually very uncomfortable in the skin. If I'm going to be honest with you, it looks comfortable, but I'm allowing the uncomfortableness of what it is to be fully human. It's not necessarily always fun to feel those waves moving through certain areas; in order to feel them one must relax and expand and essentially increase capacity for more. And when you let in more, you realize, "Wow, there's more still!" It's never ending. There's always more than this capacity can seemingly hold.
For me from very early in life it's been about surrendering, which was archetypally demonstrated in the fire experience. It was always wiser to let go. I was always letting go beyond my limited capacity because I was attracted to what would happen when I did. "Relax, you understand the teacher more." "Let go and the argument even becomes more real." "Run very quickly down a mountain, letting go completely and marvel as you are moved down the mountain." "Let go as the fear moves through." This has always been very pleasurable for me. But it has been harder to let go on the emotional level than on the physical level. It is difficult to allow that incredible wound that you feel in the emotional body when you let go there. That place, for me, was more risky and took a lot longer to allow in my human body.
LML: Yes, most people have such deep emotional wounds.
VALERIE:It's just one universal emotional wound--individuated sense of self. It's a horrible, painful experience. But you don't get to "non-individuated" consciousness without having individuated consciousness. You're a human being. [Touching Lynn's leg] I feel your skin is hotter than mine is right now. We are separate as we sit here, gazing into each other's eyes. That's painful when you really feel it. Because that means that you're going to die and I'm going to die. So, I have to allow that, not disengage from that.
I allow that in every given moment, and then it's obvious that there's no one else but me sitting here. But I'm still me sitting here feeling the pain of loving you. And the pain of seemingly being separate. It has to be a bodily practice for me. Emotionally, I can't get past that.
LML: Are you saying that for you the only way it works is to work through the body?
VALERIE: No, for me it works as the body. It is the body. It is the mind. It is the emotion. But for me, the body itself was such a teacher. "Relax your legs and oh wow, you feel different." "When you're fighting with someone, let a breath come and go and you see it differently." It's just so instantaneous. You don't have to figure anything out. It's just so simply true. Now I'll get all philosophical and guru-like on you. When you see a flower grow, the flower is simply growing. It doesn't have a consciousness in which it's figuring out how it's supposed to grow more correctly. It doesn't have a sense of looking at its dying leaf and thinking it's fucking up, that it must do something to fix this leaf. You know what I1m saying? There's a freedom in just allowing the flower to grow. And that was always a bodily practice for me. I am simply "being the flower." [Laughter]
JLW: Valerie, if someone comes along who has this yearning, burning desire for freedom and asks you, "What can I do?" what would you say to them?
VALERIE: Actually, that is one of my favorite, favorite questions and I have to say that that is the only question that people ask me, once they understand me enough. When people come to me at this point in my life, when they're coming to me as a spiritual teacher, they're coming to me with that question essentially. But first they come with, "Let me see if this bitch is someone I can feel safe enough with to trust."
JLW: And also, "Is it real?"
VALERIE: Yes, but "is it real?" is really about "can I trust this person?" And I've been there, believe me. I met my spiritual teacher, thank god, in an archetypal death experience within my own brain. So, that relationship was never a question for me. It was never a question of, "Is he Enlightened?" It was more a question of, "How am I going to do it?" "How am I going to surrender to this?" "How am I going to surrender to this seeming separate being when I know it's me?" "How am I going to do that?"
But when people come to me, I'm not presenting a guru-devotee relationship, I'm just here to discuss whatever the hell they want to talk about. And they want to be out of this wound that we just discussed, this individuated consciousness. They want to be--especially those who have studied a lot, they want non-duality, I think is what they call it. They want oneness, sense of Self. They want what I wanted. They want to not be feeling the suffering of their life.
So, what I do is point out in whatever humorous way I can how they are trying to relax. And trying to relax and relaxing are two very different things. I joke, I laugh, I essentially use my whole body. I do my best to allow people to know how much I feel that wound that they're trying to get out of. I let myself feel it fully with them, as them. It's like, "Look, I know your whole quest for sense of Self is about avoiding self. So let me just sit there with you. And then the question really doesn't come up as much. It's always burning there, but what comes up now is the want to ask the question and then the realization that the question itself is coming from an asana that must be let go of--then the question doesn1t exist anymore.
So, when people ask me, "What can I do?" I go, "Yeah!" Cuz now we can really talk about it. You can't do anything is the answer to that question. There is nothing to do, nothing to do. And yet, when I die in forty years or so, I'm sure there will be people who will talk about me and say, "She said to do this and that." But I'm just allowing my being to be choreographed; I'm freely allowing it to be lived. There's nothing I'm doing.
JLW: It's not so much the content as the demonstration.
VALERIE: Yeah, but see, once you really tacitly get it--I mean tacit with a capital "T"--once it's not just a belief system. . .
JLW: You mean kinesthetically?
VALERIE:Kinesthetically, but tacit also has to do with the mind. My cells understand, and my asana is naturally and forever switched. It's like when babies first start to walk. They haven't yet incorporated bending their knees so they walk with their knees straight and it gives them this kind of waddle, hip walking hiddle-wiggle thing. And it's very fun to watch cuz they're cute as hell. But once they've learned to bend their knees, it becomes a whole new thing for them. Now they have an all-new capacity.
You would have to go back through dance or mime or clowning, or whatever, to re-learn how not to bend your knees because it is so natural to do when you walk. It's the same for in my Awakened body. Once I identified with myself differently and there was no longer the struggle to identify with myself, my knees bent in a different way. [Laughter] Just seeing someone "easily walking with their knees bending", you don't have to do a whole lot of work. The teaching process becomes a demonstration of a much easier way to walk. People realize that they're walking with their knees straight and naturally something relaxes. That can only be taught and learned through tacit understanding within yourself. Then, it's not even a thought anymore.
So, my answer to the question of what to do is, "NOTHING!" Sit in that yearning, burning to do something, anything to get out of the wound. Just allow the yearn, burn to exist without avoidance. That requires a new and very different asana and will provide a new perspective. That would be my greatest advice.
LML: Okay. Could you talk about how the experience of Awakening has affected your relationships?
VALERIE: There was this passion for relationship early in life; a passion for allowing energy flow between people; being disturbed if it didn't flow correctly; feeling responsible if it didn't flow correctly; and having to deal with a sense of self-hatred about not being able to make it flow correctly. And this still buzzes through my being.
But how has Awakening made a difference in my life? Because I'm walking differently within myself, I'm capable of relationship in a way that I wasn't before. A lot of what I was afraid of in terms of just being in myself was essential relationship. Because relating to "others" means I am individuated consciousness. "If I love you, we're in trouble."
JLW: Because we're separate.
VALERIE: Because you're separate and I'm going to get fucked! I'm going to lose you either by betrayal or death. So to love you fully means great risk. Now it is not a possibility for me not to take that risk. Now there is no separation between you and me so love will exist. How is this paradox so delightful that I sit separately and yet I am One? That does not erase the burn of individuated consciousness or the fear of love, it actually allows them fully. Love, bliss and that yearn, burn place are like the same pitch of music. When you relax into the yearn, burn, the love is there too--same. Allowing separated, individuated sense of self was what finally allowed fully integrated sense of Oneness. That changes everything. And it changed nothing. I'm still the idiot that was living before that. The body is still animated, only more so now that there's no holding back. I still like to watch Matlock on TV. [Laughter] You know what I'm saying? Nothing changed. There used to be this universal, "running to try to find herself" woman and now she still exists but she's the universal "found her Self" woman. It's amazing to me. Because nothing changed except my sense of self. So, did I answer that question?
LML: Yes, you did.
JLW: You're doing fine. So far you're passing! [Laughter]
VALERIE: Oh good, my Jewish parents would be very happy. "I'm gettin' an 'A'!" [Laughter]. You guys are obviously not Jews or you would have laughed at that.
JLW: So, many of our friends, many of the people we have encountered are having glimpses of recognition of who they truly are.
VALERIE: Isn't that awesome?!
JLW: It's wonderful . . .
VALERIE: You know what, I have to interrupt your question for a second... You've had glimpses of that since you were suckin' on your mother's breast, if you had the opportunity to do that. Sometimes when you're taking a shit, sometimes when you're watching a beautiful sunrise, sometimes when you love your son or daughter, you've always had glimpses of yourself beyond the contraction. Yes? Somehow, something mysteriously allowed you to relax more than you usually do. The fact is that people are now somehow being able to allow that more and more and more. So, back to your question . . .
JLW: As I was saying, many of us had glimpses or profound recognition and our experience is that our conditioned identity comes back and seems to obscure the recognition again. There is a desire to stabilize and this seems to be what has occurred for you. You had a series of glimpses then.
VALERIE:I'm going to interrupt you again . . . From my unenlightened asana I very much want to be Enlightened. In some way I'm not liking some of the energies moving through me. I feel that the only reason they are moving through me is because I am in some way constricting energy. I am in trouble and I want to stabilize the moments when I felt like I wasn't in trouble. And I'm saying to you the best I know how that that is in itself the difficulty.
If I were to think of the perfect place to hang out as a body maybe it would be like a tropical island, a place with great weather always, a community of loving people, a system of trade and support that did not dishonor my being, where my art was allowed and honored, where true freedom was allowed, my natural relaxations were allowed and I had fresh water and healthy food, lots of culture, and so on. All these things could allow for an easier sense of self in the body. But the fact of the matter is that I live in Oakland, California! There is pollution going on here, emotional and physical pollution. There are chemicals moving through my body that may be called "toxic." We are receiving chemicals in the nervous system at all times. Thus, surrendering to myself isn't always "pretty."
People want these glimpses of freedom, these "bliss moments" to be their constant state of consciousness. And you imagine that freedom would be void of the senses of self that you're trying to fix, trying to get out of. Now the allowing in my body is such, that even that idiot you're trying to get rid of, is free to be here as it is. And when I allow that idiot, when Valerie just is herself completely--even the parts that are frustrated, or don't want to be here, or are jealous, or say stupid things, whatever the hell it is--when I allow it all freely, then I see how universal and how perfect it truly is. When you're a jerk, be a jerk. It's trying not to be the jerk that makes you an asshole! [Laughter]
From the point of view that "Valerie is in charge", there is self-consciousness. Nobody really likes feeling self-consciousness. But, the chemicals of self-consciousness don't go away by avoidance. If I'm sitting in a room and somebody says, "Answer a question about Enlightenment." My body goes, "Oh fuck, now I'm going to have to say something great. What the hell is Enlightenment from Valerie's point of view?" If I'm trying not to be a jerk while that's occurring, then I'm not going to allow Valerie to actually express what Enlightenment is. There is an assumption that I would sit here and not feel self-consciousness. And I'm saying that self-consciousness exists and I exist, and I house self-consciousness. I don't avoid self-consciousness. That's the only difference. In your question, you're saying that you've glimpsed this sense of Self, and then you seem to go back to the self you dislike, and so you try to get back to Self again. I'm saying, that no matter what comes up, I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere, or trying to get back to anything.
We are born through a system of contraction and release. When giving birth, we are sacrificed to a system of contraction and release. We know intuitively, that relaxing into the process as much as possible and participating as fully as possible, makes the whole thing easier. When you're giving birth, your capacity is being stretched and stretched and believe-you-me stretched beyond it's seeming capacity. This process of contraction and release (and the demand for increased capacity) is always occurring, at all times whether giving birth or not. How perfect that our way of coming into this world is a dramatic and tacit experience of what it is to be lived in this world. That same contraction, release, inhale, exhale, expansion, sacrifice--that is what you are.
So, if you are resisting this process, or see it as distasteful, you might seek Enlightenment with the hope that you wouldn't have to experience this sacrifice anymore. Your question is "How can I maintain this sense of Self that I find more pleasurable than the "me" I usually identify with?" And I say to you, I am doing what I do in every occasion at all times--naturally surrendering. I'm not saying that waves of self-consciousness, or waves of whatever, no longer come and go through my being. Enlightened or not, waves come and go. The relationship to the waves is what changes. I'm fully allowing them. I am a conscious sacrifice to the Self. And that sacrifice is my pleasure.
In my Near Death Experience, it became evident that the more blissful states of Self, those less identified with the human body, were much more pleasurable, and therefore, harder to let go of. But it's always the same, whether I'm experiencing seeming pain or seeming blissfulness. It's the same practice. This is why I get all grounded and earthy and talk about taking a shit. Because whether you're taking a shit or sitting on a high mountain in the most blissful, contented state, you're still the same receptor/releaser. And you're an integral part of a larger, much larger process of reception/release. When you believe you are supposed to be different, in any given moment--different than you are perfectly being lived--you have just made your small "s" self the center of the universe.
JLW: Everything would be different. I understand...
LML: Here's another question...Most people in the West don't relate to Awakening as something that's possible for them to experience. Do you see it as something that is available to everyone and not just a rare few?
VALERIE: I love this question, I really do, because when "I" was trying to become Enlightened, it was impossible...
LML: That's what I'm finding out!
VALERIE: Yes. And then I realized that I already was Enlightened, but I wasn't particularly fond of what that meant as a sacrifice. We are one functioning being, so of course, every single being has the capacity. And every single being is required to feel very specific energies moving through it. So, if I am one point in a geometric circle and I decide that from my little point of view I1m not happy with the way things seem and I would like it to be different from what it is. I'm being silly because I'm just a point in a much larger circle. The unenlightened asana believes that point over there is a better point of view. But from the point of view of literally being the circle then all points are obviously perfect, and thus, perfectly allowed. All of us are Enlightened simultaneously. Not all of us are experiencing the pleasure point of that. Some of us are holding up different ends of ourselves.
JLW: What about those that carry evil for the world? Some people seem to embody it archetypally.
VALERIE: They certainly do. And it's a great sacrifice.
JLW: In a way they sacrifice their whole life to show it to everybody.
VALERIE: That's correct. We're holding ourselves full. These ends that are extremes have to be held. And I swear, when you're at either end, you're at the same place. So, the most truly evil and the most truly good are doing the same practice. They may have their attention in different places, but they're doing the same practice.
The point for me is not, do people have the capacity for Enlightenment, it's are we willing to be that vulnerable? We may get hit over the head with a bat at any given moment; we are not in control of any of it!
LML: We don't have any control over stopping pain from happening.
VALERIE: That's correct. And how many people are even capable of relaxing past the want to stop the pain from happening? Everybody thinks that Enlightenment means that they wouldn't feel the things that they don't like feeling. However, fully human manifestation--as the body--allows extreme energies to move through without interference, even those that are distasteful. Self-consciousness is most distasteful! But if I didn't allow it, then I wouldn't be able to help you allow it.
So, how many people are capable of my ridiculous, seemingly heroic, vulnerability? I think literally every single human being has that capacity and is doing that perfectly, already, in a larger system in which we exist. So whether you're Enlightened or not, you are absolutely perfectly living as the vibration that you are.
JLW: In the Buddhist teaching of Prajnaparamita, it speaks about the Bodhisattva, the one who is dedicated to the Awakening of others, praying that all beings experience conscious Enlightenment. It's recognizing that everyone is already that, but it's not conscious. And because it's not conscious, there is a lot of suffering.
VALERIE: Yes, but even here, it's about getting to Enlightenment and getting out of "suffering"--it's still the same asana. Saving the world is very noble, very heart felt. But praying for everyone's Enlightenment is still an avoidance, still seeking. When you die, really die, completely die, capital "D" die, the whole conversation changes.
LML: Are you noticing that more people are receptive to what you are saying than earlier in your life, like at the time of the fire?
VALERIE: I don't know, either people are more receptive or I'm meeting more people who are receptive. I know that my ability to speak it has changed. I've been honed by the people who didn't understand me. Let me tell you honey, I have been honed! It comes down to the Truth we have heard for centuries, yet hardly anyone seems to understand, because it's a secret until you tacitly understand it. I am that very One that lives me. I am That that's living you. I am in That that's living you and me.
JLW: What do you see as the main obstacle to Awakening for Westerners?
VALERIE: The belief that they are unawakened.
JLW: Is there anything else you would like to add here?
VALERIE: Yes, as an aside. . . vulnerability and surrender, we seem to put those two things together. If I surrender, I'm vulnerable. In my experience, surrender meant strength, literally so. Vulnerability meant strength. But then whenever something vulnerable occurs, and I have to feel the chemicals of vulnerability happening in my body, I can see why people don't like to be vulnerable. For example, you're interviewing me and asking me about my Enlightenment experiences, and it's hard to describe these things. So, I feel vulnerable. This is really a confession of my own vulnerability and my own strength.
I want to embrace John's question of how do I maintain the remembrance of who I am to the point where I can allow myself to be fully, without encumbrance? Be simple. Take it to the most simple place in your being. Relax and notice that when you are trying to get to anything great stress is occurring, because it means that where you are is not okay. I've heard that forever, right? So, I thought, "Oh, I've got to try not to try." Now the chemicals of 'trying not to try' are going to move through my system. There they are. "Oh now I'm being interviewed and there are chemicals of vulnerability going through." "Oh look, there's my voice getting higher and talking faster." If I added to that, "Jesus, I'm not Enlightened because if I was I would transcend those chemicals and I wouldn't be vulnerable." Horrible!! What's fun for me this time around, in this body, is being the monkey that hangs in front of you and says, "Look! You can speak any fuckin' way you want!" If my voice gets high it's because it's embarrassed; it's because the chemicals of embarrassment went through my body. So I'm the jerk that got embarrassed.
JLW: And fundamentally, so what.
VALERIE: Yes, and fundamentally, how fun! [Looking at Lynn Marie] If I get to be a jerk then you get to be this jerk that you're holding back, which I find exquisitely beautiful, exquisitely beautiful. You know this one that you're afraid of? Let her in! Let her in. She's so exquisite.
LML: It seems that what you are saying is that you are not identifying with anything that's moving through your body. It's not "me" that's embarrassed, or "me" that's a jerk; it's just embarrassed or jerk energy moving through--not personal.
VALERIE: If I say what is paradoxically true, you're right, I'm not identified. I'm able to show my asshole to anybody because, you know what, we all got one! [Laughter] But it still doesn't keep me from having the asshole. Those are two very different things.
LML: Well, do we want to end on that note?
VALERIE: Sure, why not!
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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Clear Visions Publications
P.O. Box 18487
Oakland, CA 94619Released: March, 2003
ISBN: 159233010X
Paperback
SEE:
THE AWAKENING EXPERIENCE IN THE MODERN ERA
JOHN WREN-LEWIS: A Near-Death Experience Opens the Door to a Permanent Transformation
AWAKENED TEACHERS FORUM
ZEN, WOMEN, AND BUDDHISM
THIS SITE LISTED ON
THE GATE KEEPER'S
LIST OF SPIRITUAL TEACHERS
DA FREE JOHN: Also known as Adi Da, Bubba Free John, Master Da, Da Avabhasa, Adidam, the Bright, Da Kalki, Da Love-Ananda, and simply Da, among other names, Da Free John was born Franklin Jones in New York City in 1939. He now lives in his own community on the island of Naitauba he calls Translation Island in Fiji. Da Free John is considered by his followers to be the first ever Western avatar a Sanskrit term meaning an incarnation of a god or of God. For more information and book titles, write Dawn Horse Press, 2040 Siegler Springs Road, Middletown, CA 95461. See also the page about Adidam at the University of Virginia's Religious Movements site. Some of Da Free John's books are considered to be a brilliant source of spiritual wisdom. He is, however, not without controversy, as there have been allegations of behavior by Da Free John which, in nearly all circles would be considered inappropriate for anyone professing to be a spiritual teacher. For more on that, see "The Case of Adi Da" here and here.
