Awakening into Relationship and Community, Part 1: My Story (by Marc)
There have been some pretty extraordinary events recently both for me and for my community (Trellis House), of which the most significant is my encounter with spiritual teacher Saniel Bonder. It’s too long to tell in a single mail, and so I am writing a three-part series about it: To skip my narcissistic ramblings and jump straight to the info about Saniel and Linda’s tour to Philadelphia and New York click here.
- Part 1 (this mail) is about my developmental journey over the past 7 months, which has involved a chain of events, both internal and external, for which I feel deeply blessed and grateful.
- Part 2 is going to be about Saniel Bonder and his developmental philosophy (that is called Waking Down), that has completely swept me away and created a kind of coagulation of all the different facets of my thinking around issues of development, and clarified the nature of my being-in-the-world and my work. I will describe the basic concepts of Waking Down and the impact they have had on me.
- Part 3 is about the changes that have occurred in me, particularly in how I am bringing this work into the world and also taking myself back into the “marketplace”, or the real-world exchange of goods, services and ideas. In other words, it’s about how I am able to hold onto an experience of “awakening” (of sorts) and still pay the bills.
Part 1: My Story
Over the past 7 months (since September of last year) I have been on the most exciting developmental journey of my whole life. It began with a virtual “explosion” of my writing (the blogs: Adventures in Relationship and Community, Lifestyle Design School and Polyphasic Sleep Blog), and research on various spiritual teachers (Andrew Cohen, Swami Rudrananda, Swami Kecharanatha / Michael Ott), and then continued with getting laid-off from my job last December, and embarking on a series of lifestyle experiments including polyphasic sleep, juicing and raw foods. We successfully produced our first Morehouse course (Basic Sensuality) just under three weeks ago, and took three extremely transformational trips to Shalom Mountain. Plus there are all the usual tasks of “riding” a commune and keeping three women happy (a big one and two little ones).
Some of you were quite worried about me, as I haven’t appeared to be overly concerned about paying our mortgage (which is actually a misperception – I am extremely concerned, just not panicking about it; and am thinking more strategically about the situation than is apparent from my writing). Others have let me know that they thought I had “gone off the deep end,” that my writing was showing signs of hypomania, and that, essentially, I needed professional help.
I shared my reaction to this in a previous post, which is that I am always deeply grateful and appreciative of negative feedback, since it makes me listen more to other people (always a good thing in my case) and, even when I feel it’s “off,” it will tend to nudge me in the direction that I should be going in anyway. Hypomania, narcissism, and grandiosity / ego-inflation are tendencies that I need to keep a close watch on.
Of course many of you thought it was all wonderful. Positive feedback is good too :-).
Despite everything, I was very clear about several things…
Despite the wildness of the “ride,” I was always very clear on one thing: that this ecstatic creative process that I was going through was for real, and that it was going to give some result as yet unseen but far beyond anything I could imagine. There was a pre-rational, instinctive kind of “knowing” about this. I was feeling throughout the whole experience (and continuing now) that I was living an acceleration of my own personal development and evolution, a kind of coming into my own and into my power, perhaps even a “spiritual awakening.” And I felt hugely grateful. It was truly a tremendous gift, an unexpected grace, a variety of “divine madness.” It was very, very cool.
The second thing that I was clear on, was that my own “shadow side,” or psychopathology (which is hypomania and narcissism), was involved, and was obvious for all to see. I am nothing if not transparent, and by some good fortune (for which I blame my parents) I don’t seem to have much in the way of shame or embarrassment about who I am and how I occur. I was pretty upfront about all this, too: to the extent that the central drive of my life is the exploration of consciousness and of pathways to enhanced states of being, feeling and perception, the chief subject of my research is myself. And therefore I will be scientifically rigorous in sharing the results of my investigation, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Third thing I knew is that all work-life and financial issues were going to resolve themselves. This is the really the crux of the matter: where is the money coming from? How do I take an “awakening” experience and ground it in the marketplace? Given my (and human being’s in general) infinite capacity for self-deception, it’s a very legitimate question. I cannot fully answer that question yet, but there has been much progress and I am satisfied with the answers I am getting so far. Please understand, I am not at all a “woo woo, Law of attraction / think positive thoughts and everything will be alright” kind of guy. I am a computer scientist and a Physicist by training. At the same time, I have made (and lost) hundreds of thousands of dollars at different times in my life, and I know by now that money is a manifestation of consciousness. Meaning that, to paraphrase one of Murphy’s laws, “Money expands or contracts to fill the need that created it” (Ok to quote me on that :-). Failure of this communal experiment is not an option. Money is bound to come. And come it has from unexpected places like new couples coaching clients, Yoga Transformational Bootcamp and a variety of workshop leaders approaching us to use our space.
I also believe (and I give part-credit for this to Timothy Ferriss The 4-hour workweek) that almost all of us are very confused about money. We tend to pursue money as the gateway (or required access) to certain experiences (ie love, freedom and adventure). But the truth is that love, freedom and adventure are much cheaper than we imagine, once we start to think seriously and creatively about having those things. I have found in my case that it is much better to pursue the underlying needs first, and once that comes clear to find the way to fund the vision. I have written an entire website about this, Lifestyle Design School, in case you are interested.
Into this fertile soil, Saniel Bonder comes into my life…
While at a Shalom Couples retreat, our friend Pat Parisi says, “I”ve started working with these really cool people, Saniel and Linda Bonder. They are looking to expand their community when they come East this Spring, and I thought of you guys.” First Rebekah checks out their website and says “These folks are right up our alley, let’s do it.” I check them out and am blown away. Next thing I know, Saniel Bonder called us to talk actual plans. Before I can say “shakti,” we are hosting Saniel and Linda Bonder for 3 of their 4 Philadelphia events. This is an awakened master who is going to be spending 2 days in my living room!
Saniel and Linda Bonder are actually going to be in Philadelphia for four events in early April (Thur 4/2, Fri 4/3, Sat 4/4, Sun 4/5) and also in New York City (Mon 3/30 and Wed 4/1) and Albany (4/10). If you are anywhere in the neighborhood (and even if not – this is worth traveling for) I hope you will join us. For details click here.
Waking Down is the most practical, effective, revolutionary information I have ever come across for anyone on the spiritual path – or for anyone who wants to have love in their life while engaging joyfully and passionately with the world. It’s also not some woo-woo spiritual teaching. Saniel was a founding member of Ken Wilber’s integral institute, has been teaching for 17 years, and there are hundreds of documented cases of spiritual awakenings through contact with him and with this work. I know him personally now, along with his life-partner Linda, and I have found him extremely down-to-earth, practical and humble. He also answers email and can be booked for sessions at a reasonable cost, which makes him attractive as a teacher of enlightenment :-).
Stay tuned for the next article in this series: Awakening into Relationship and Community, Part 2: Saniel Bonder and Waking Down.
