On July 30, 2001 I participated in a collective awakening into enlightened mind that I have not written about in detail until now. That experience was so energetically powerful and so far beyond the bounds of normal consciousness that it defies description. I believe it is an experience similar to, if not identical with, what the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo called “the descent of the supermind” of which he wrote:

“It is difficult to conceive intellectually what the Supermind is; and to describe it, another language would be needed than the poor abstract counters of the mind.”

The experience of collective awakening occurred during a two month long retreat that I participated in with about 20 other individuals. I have shared my personal experiences of illumination received while meditating on this retreat in my eBook “The Miracle of Meditation, a gradual opening into unbroken trust.

What we experienced collectively was even more miraculous than what I experienced individually. It was the emergence of a source of insight and intelligence that existed beyond everyone on the retreat while simultaneously being inside of us as well. It was a manifestation of a new way of being human and it lasted in its fullest form for about three weeks and abated in intensity over a period of months.

The retreat I was participating in was the final phase of an eight-month period of intensive spiritual practice guided by spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen among some of his closest students. Andrew became a teacher of enlightenment in 1986 and early in his teaching career he saw that there was something happening between his students that was more significant than what was happening within any one individual. He formulated a vision for the “liberation of enlightenment” that he would work on with his students for decades to come.

What he recognized was that the phenomenon known as enlightenment could be liberated from the individual into a collective or cultural space that was held between individuals. In this way the awakening would exist in a culturally shared space making that consciousness accessible to everyone who shared in that culture.

The first thing that needed to be achieved on the road toward this new possibility was to ignite a powerful experience of collective enlightenment among a group of people. This experience would need to be powerful enough to permanently puncture any fixed ideas about the nature of reality that would tend to make us believe that such a possibility was impossible. The experience needed to be powerful enough to catalyze the emergence of a new worldview at least in those individuals that participated in it.

Andrew, speaking with the participants of the retreat, described it this way. “ We need to puncture a hole in the universe into another consciousness and then plant ourselves at the edges of that hole to hold it open for others to pass through.”

On July 30,^, 2011 I was part of a group of individuals who succeeded in puncturing that hole in the universe. But before I get to that specific event I need to describe my personal entry point into this higher consciousness.

Each day of the retreat I as on started at 4am and lasted until 10pm and was filled with spiritual practices of meditation, contemplation and chanting. We were in silence continual except for when chanting. Then a few weeks into the retreat we were asked to meet to speak about our experience at the conclusion of each day. During the first of these meetings we were joined by a handful of other close students of Andrew’s who were not participating on the retreat.

During the first meeting the students who joined us explained that some awakening process had opened up between them. As they spoke the profundity and conviction in what they said spoke undeniably of the awakening they were experiencing. I could see clearly that they all had access to a higher source of wisdom. Night after night we would meet and discuss this emergence and one at a time those of us on the retreat would enter into the same field of higher consciousness that the original group was sharing in.

During one meeting my struggle to find my way into this new possibility came to an end. I wanted desperately to be able to experience the higher mind that I saw in the people around me. I remember the moment of my ‘initiation’ as if it were yesterday.

About half of the people sitting in the circle with me were clearly sharing higher consciousness and the rest of us were struggling to enter into it. What I found over and over again was that I would feel moments of inspiration that would give me a glimpse of what the others were sharing in. And yet invariably each time I would then speak in a way that immediately betrayed even to me that I was not coming from that deeper place. I was either speaking about it from outside of it, or in some way trying to mimic what I thought it would look like to speak from it. Either way my words would land like mud in fire.

Finally out of frustration I tried something completely different. As I sat in that circle I simply listened and allowed the pressure of wanting to experience the ultimate to build up inside me. The pressure of wanting grew and grew. It became an intensity of longing beyond anything I had ever experienced before. It was a force pulling me in to the awakened conversation I was witnessing. I avoid the temptation to try to do anything to try to work my way into that state. I just sat and kept myself as empty as possible while allowing the intensity of longing to build to a point where it felt unbearable.

Then I felt an inspiration to speak, but I did not open my mouth. Instead I simply released the energy that would be required for speech to happen. I relaxed myself while at the same energetically leaning into the conversation. In that instant I felt my mouth move and the first sentence that came out of my mouth was, “I want to live.” But it wasn’t me who had said it. That sentence had come from a source of intelligence beyond me.

This is where “the poor abstract counters of the mind” are inadequate to describe what was happening. What I can say is that I learned to simply allow myself to be overtaken by a source of intelligence that existed between, above and beyond everyone in the room; and yet was us.

As that meeting progressed I simply gave myself to each impulse to speak. I lent my vocal cords and my energy to a higher being that was conversing with itself through those who allowed it to speak through them. Like the others who were similarly surrendered, awakened wisdom was pouring out of me and I was as astonished as everyone else with each utterance because I had no idea what I was going to say until I heard it come out of my mouth.

The miraculous occurrence of July 30 was still a few days away, but I had stepped aside and entered into a field of higher mind that was now speaking through me.

Click here to continue to part 2…

Consider this…

Partial Transcript from WEVOLUTION: UNLEASHING THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF RELATEDNESS – Evolutionary Collective Conversations webcast – interviewed by Ellen Daly

Listen here: http://evolutionarycollective.com/conversation/wevolution-unleashing-the-transformative-power-of-relatedness/

When you say that the edge of consciousness, this emerging edge, is this new kind of relatedness – can you say more about what this is and why you describe it as “the edge”?

Forty-two years ago, the transformational kind of personal development consciousness was coming online and people were beginning to go to Esalen, to est, to India and beginning to learn to meditate.  People were beginning to want to spiritually awaken, grow and develop their potentials.  They wanted to find something beyond the normal ways that we live and they wanted to develop themselves.  That was super exciting, and it happened a long time ago.  Now the world is filled with a plethora of courses and books and opportunities for people to become more awake and aware of who they are and to truly awaken, to go to realized states and develop their potentials.  That isn’t new.  All of that kind of work continues to fulfill the paradigm that was started a long ago.

About eight and a half years ago, I felt a strong desire for something new.  I’d been teaching and working with people, and working with groups, and it just felt like, “Okay, where is it?”  I was kind of getting bored, to be really honest and [LAUGHTER] I just felt like, “Where is it?  Is this it?  Is there some new place that human beings can go?”  Having had the experience with Peter (my fiancé that died long ago) of having a dual awakening I knew that something could happen between two people that was extraordinary.  Then I started thinking, well maybe there is something that could happen with more of us, especially if we weren’t coming together to do work personally on ourselves, or even to meditate together to become enlightened.  I felt that if we could come together and make ourselves available for a new kind of consciousness, if we could turn towards each other the way that Peter and I did – and there were enough of us – something really new could happen.

That got me really excited, and I started talking about it.  Nobody really understood but a small group of people I had worked with in the past and some new people joined together and we started to experiment with a new way of being together – and an awakening began to occur.   Then it started to come through various people.  Lynne McTaggart wrote “The Bond,” which is a scientific back-up for this conversation.  Your wonderful husband, Carter Phipps has written a beautiful book called “Evolutionaries,” which is about this particular worldview. I felt like the relational piece is: The space between people is not awake.  You can have two very awake people and somehow there is still a certain level of competition or judgment, or there’s something that happens when two awake people start to talk or start to relate that isn’t always an “awakening.”

When you use the phrase “dual awakening,” what is it about that that’s different than two people awakening?

In my experience, the last forty years has been about the work of awakening and working on becoming freer and freer and ultimately free from the constraints of the ego.  The work has been about meditating, working on ourselves, transforming ourselves, creating lives and the kind of consciousness we have wanted, individually.  In almost everything, our focus has been on our individual work and working on ourselves.  Our awakening has been done separately, independently of one another.

That’s not a dual awakening, even though there is two of us.  A dual awakening is when you have two people who have turned towards each other in a particular way with different dimensions of surrender, commitment, openness, etc. and an awakening starts to happen.  Interestingly, you can have two people that are not an enlightened master and student, which is usually where the kind of transmission happens where one awakens; but you have two people that are open and available in a particular way, they awaken together, an awakening that happens between two people that aren’t enlightened to begin with.

Right.  That’s fascinating.  Where’s the awakening happening? Are the individuals becoming more awake or is it something else?

It’s both.  The awakening is actually happening in the space between and it awakens both people as well.  It’s also evident that when you’re together there’s an awakeness that increases, it can happen when you are apart, but it happens when you turn towards the relationship in some way.  You can be in altered states instantly, and higher states of consciousness once you’ve developed a certain way of being with one another that just happens automatically.  Just like when someone’s awake, they’re awake.  They may not be awake 24/7, but they’re awake more generally; and there’s an intensity, just like when someone awakens individually there’s usually something that takes you over; there’s some process or at times, a kind of burning and ecstasy. There’s a thing that’s actually happening that you physically feel, that you energetically feel, that you can’t escape from at some point.  Something is ignited and won’t shut off.  It burns through your defenses, all the layers of being separate.  That’s what I call “dual awakening.”

That’s great.  I wanted to pick up on what you were saying about this “space between,” because I think that’s such an important concept in your work and in a lot of the work of people who are talking about: creating a culture around this evolutionary worldview.   The work you’re doing with the Collective.  This idea of the “space between” having its own reality: that there’s something that’s not just inside you or inside me, but actually exists between us.  But it’s invisible.  It’s an internal space.  It’s not the physical world that’s between us, it’s the inside of our relationship; but it’s not just the space inside you plus the space inside me.  It has a reality that’s own, that exists between us.  We can tune into that.  We can start to be aware of the qualities of that.  So it seem that to work with it and develop it, and develop different qualities is important.  I wonder if you could say a little more about what are the qualities that start to emerge in that space when people are relating in the way that you’re talking about. 

Just the fact that it’s being paid attention to is a huge start.  First, there is a readiness at this time on the earth.  I’m sure human beings have had those kinds of awakenings previously on the planet, but there’s a readiness for many of us.  So just by first, turning towards and paying attention to that there actually is a “space between,” it seems to be very ready to give itself to us, to show us how to engage with it more fully.

it’s a funny thing with this “space between.”  On the one hand, like you say, we’re not aware of it very much.  We’re not conscious of it, but on the other hand, we’re very aware of it.  We may not bring it to that level of consciousness, but if we walk into, say, a company or even to another country where the culture is different; we start to experience these different currents, different qualities of experience.  “Oh, this place has a weird culture.  And it’s not just external things we’re seeing.  We’re very tuned into that.  We’re tuned into it with families, with relationships; and yet we don’t usually have a name for it.  We don’t usually name it and describe it as the space between us.  But we’re all swimming in that all the time and we’re affected by it.  When we start to become conscious of that we can start to see, oh, this relationship has certain qualities, or this group of people has certain qualities to that inter-subjective space, to that space between.  So I was curious what qualities you start to become conscious of in this new kind of relatedness?  What qualities does that space between us start to take on?

One thing that you’re saying that we can become sensitive to and aware of are the different spaces you run into when you’re relating to someone instead of paying as much attention to who are they but what’s actually is happening between you is obviously one kind of sensitivity.  What I’m talking about specifically in the WEVOLUTION and in the way that we work in Evolutionary Collective has to do with a mutual paying attention.  It’s two people turning towards and consciously creating the space between, being sensitive to it and reading it.  One of the exercises that we do is you go, “What are we experiencing?”  Then you let the “we” speak.  So it isn’t like, “What do I think we’re experiencing?”  It’s, “What is the ‘we’ experiencing?”  By just having to give voice to it and letting it have your voice, it actually starts to describe in that particular moment what’s actually occurring.  It’s like meditating.  You & your partner get better at it over time.  You can actually feel it creating different elements and qualities.  There’s light and all of the sudden it feels very vivid; or it feels murky, then you can discover what the murkiness is.  You become aware of what’s actually occurring.

It can be two people examining something or you can do the same thing with a group.  There’s two different kinds of “we” spaces as far as I’m concerned, two different access points.  One is to go into a space that’s more impersonal.  So you can have the whole “group” kind of tuning in and allowing yourself to give voice to something, then seeing what occurs in this collective space.  The other way is – which I find really fascinating, which I learned more with Peter – was that there was a precision in connecting with the exact person, soul that is there and allowing the distinctness of your soul to be present in the exchange.

Andrew Cohen, who is your teacher and who is an amazing innovator in this area, talks about perfect relating.  In perfect relating, in my experience, if you get very attuned to exactly the particular connection that’s there, the particularity of that moment and that essence of that person and yourself it’s like a door opens.  A portal opens and you’re in a different state of consciousness that is awakening.  The more precise it is the more powerful opening.  Which is curious.

Can you say more about how you get there?  When you talk about the individuals giving voice to the “we” space?  How do you access that?  How do you know that it is the “we” you’re in?

One of the most powerful exercises – it was never intended to be, but as all things the most simple practices are usually the most powerful; then they take time to learn how to do well.  The exercise I mentioned before is one of the exercises that we do consistently and has just taken people into amazing places. It starts with one person who speaks and the other listens initially. Like if you and I were doing the exercise, if you’re talking, my job as the listener is actually equally as important, which is to be completely with you, and to intend to be so utterly with you that I’m reading you from the inside; people that are psychic have access to that kind of experience, but all human beings can actually experience the other person’s subjective experience fully if they’re open to it and they begin to discover that they can.  So when I ask you the question, “What are you experiencing?” I’m as open and as telepathically empathetic as possible.  Your job is to open up as many channels as possible in sensing into, “What are you experiencing right now?” and to have no judgment.  It’s like meditation.  You’re not trying to get somewhere, do anything; and then to follow exactly what’s there.

The challenge is to be open, allowing and transparent.   Somehow as you practice that, you become more intimate and attuned to the exactness of the moment and the exactness of “you” in this moment, and I’m with you.  You do that for ten or fifteen minutes, which is a pretty long time to do that practice.  Then you switch it over and you ask me.  So we’re already in a place of resonance and being, as people begin experience pretty quickly that they can feel what the other person’s going to say even before they say it.  You start to feel the whole space dimensionalized.  You start to feel different things and after a while your sense of identity can dissolve, you don’t even worry about the “you” that you think you are answering, because you don’t know what’s going to answer.

Then after that we do another ten or fifteen minutes of what are ‘we’ are experiencing.  You loop back and forth and just attuning to what’s there…what’s there…what’s there.  It sounds super simple, sort of idiotically simple, but somehow the depth and the kind of awareness that starts to develop through that is amazing.  There are other things you can do once those skills are developed.  There’s other ways of working with that that also open up the space of being aware of the inner subjective field.

So if people are interested starting to tap into that field and work with that field, is this something you can do in any relationship you have?  Where would people start?  Because you as an individual might be listening to this and thinking, “Oh, I’m interested in that.”  But of course what you’re describing has happened with another person, so where do people start if they want to discover this potential?  How can we do that?

Well, obviously just to open it up, if you just have a willing partner you could just do the exercises I said and something would definitely at least begin.  You’d see how successful you were once you started.  People do participate in workshops with various kinds of exercises where people are just at least beginning to explore this “space between.”  As a teacher I see more dimensions of what needs to be worked with, discovered, where you need to turn towards in order to have something really happen in a big way, so it isn’t just an interesting experience that you had once.  In the experience that I had with Peter, what I realized much later was that there was a way that we were turned towards each other that activated the potentials in our relationship.  It was beyond a practice or exercise that one might do with someone.  One of the ways we were turned towards each other was a passionate commitment to exploring the truth together.

If you think about it, most relationships aren’t really interested in what the truth is exactly or about what is happening between us, and being curious about it, and open.   It isn’t a moralistic thing.  It’s more, can we stay as real as possible and be really curious about what’s happening, whatever it is; even if it’s something that seems like there’s a deadness in the relationship, that you’d be curious about that as equally as something joyful.  So that way of turning towards each other will activate this kind of potential awakening in a relationship.  It’s one thing. There are things to learn and there’s thing to take on if you’re serious about wanting to discover a whole new way of being with another person or, obviously, with more than one person.

So would the need for that kind of commitment, do you see this mostly showing up between people who have a committed relationship already like a marriage or a serious long-term partnership, or is this something that can be experienced and developed in other kinds of relationships?

Definitely, it can be developed in other kinds of relationships.  When you learn what the distinctions are of what it takes to relate this way you can begin to see who you can explore this with.  It isn’t like you’re going to do this with somebody that you’re just working with and you’re just trying to accomplish something together, and they have no interest in spirituality or any kind of higher consciousness.  This is for higher consciousness, for sure, but it could be a friend or colleague.

I have this with a woman that I’ve known for many years.  She’s a teacher.  She teaches in Europe.  We just have this kind of committed relationship.  It’s incredible.  There’s a quality of the Beloved in it.  It’s not a “lover”, but there’s a closeness and a sacred bond that’s presences itself, even if you didn’t feel that before, you’re taken into a place with each other where you see the depth and the real essence of the other person, and that essence starts to be called forth.  So you can’t help but fall in love.  When you see the depth of who someone is and you’re becoming more and more of that together, there’s a kind of love that arises that you can’t stop.

That strikes me as being quite a rare thing, that people have that kind of a relationship with that much depth of commitment and love that isn’t their romantic relationship, or maybe close family relationship; but to have, to create a relationship that intentionally and to work on it in that way, that is not one of those kinds of relationships.  I think it’s unusual.

It is.  It’s unusual but it’s so needed.  I think that most people if you asked them to be honest, either out in the world or in spiritual communities, even though we are sincere, more awake and happier, there is a loneliness and longing that lies beneath the surface.  There was a man who was in the three-day that Jeff Carreira, who co-teachers with me, and I did last weekend.  He was just a beautiful man, very religious (he’s Jewish) and very committed to his religion and just a cool guy.  You could tell he was looking, he was longing for something, a certain level of love and connectedness that’s sacred.  Like you’re looking for home. It was like he was looking for Jerusalem.  There’s that feeling of, where’s the promised land?

I think all of us, no matter how lovely our lives are and how relatively awake we are, there’s a longing for each other, but not just any old way.  There’s a longing for a way of being with each other, then creating together and making this world a more beautiful place that – I don’t think we’re even close.  I don’t think that’s done.  I think we’re ready to really begin to have a unity consciousness, to have some new way of being with each other.

I think that connects very much to why you call this an evolutionary relationship and the work you are teaching in WEvolution.  Can you say a bit more about why you feel we’re ready, why you feel like now is the time for this?  Because it seems like there may have been rare individuals or rare couples or rare groups that have tasted things like this; but you’re feeling that this is something that the time is ripe for. 

I really do feel there is an opening for this now for those who hear the call and begin to find each other this way.  I feel very positive about that.  For me it’s usually more intuitive, and then I gather evidence. I move towards something, have powerful experiences or transformations and then understand it later.

One thing I can highly recommend is your husband’s book, which really explains from a worldview standpoint that there is actually a new development of awakening and part of it is the fact that we’re aware of the fact that the evolutionary force is actually moving through time and space, that we are that force; and that things are changing continuously.  We can be at the leading edge of that force, is part of what this is.  When you start to have an evolutionary relationship you experience being on the edge with each other of something that keeps arising and discovering.  It feels like a volcano of energy and love and intentionality and awakening that you start to ride, that you start to let express in and through you.  That feels extremely evolutionary.  Plus it’s exciting and fun and useful.

As a teacher I can see that this sense of evolution, from a developmental standpoint makes sense.  Individually we have been progressing for hundreds of years and particularly in the past 50 to such a highly individuated state. We are so capable and so free.  We can do what we want, go where we want to go and study everything and anything.  Learn, experiment, and live so many different kinds of lifestyles, etc. The internet creates abundance and access that is new and is completing something for all of us.

So now, of course, the next thing would be not more of the same, but the next stage in evolution is then how do we come together, really newly, not like when we were serfs or peasants tilling the fields, having no sense of individuality whatsoever, but there’s a different possibility now.  One of the things that I’ve also seen in the evolutionary collective, the more we work this way – and the people have been deeply engaged in this awakening – the interesting thing is the more you awaken to this space between and become more aware and whole thing, is you become more distinct.  So you don’t become less distinct, you become more acutely who you are. I’ve noticed people can’t compromise as much because of that. There’s this innate sense of alignment where you can’t just do some job or make money or be in some relationship that is incorrect.  You actually can’t compromise because you feel the palpable distinctness of who you are and why you’re here.  That to be something other than who you are would be out of integrity.

So how is that type of distinctness that you’re seeing in this work different from the kind of individuality that people have been developing, as you said, for especially the last few decades.  You were involved in the work of transformation and personal development, that work that was all about the full expression of our individuality.  How is what you’re seeing now different?

It’s different.  It’s a further development.  Actually there’s a surrender that becomes necessary to move to this next level.  You’ve developed yourself, just like anyone who’s masterful at something, you work and work and work and you get your craft.  If you’re a brilliant dancer you learn how to do this thing and that thing and the other thing, you finally know how to dance.  Eventually you have to let go and you have to be “danced.”  When you’re “danced” is when the absolutely distinctness, the exquisite capacity of your gift comes into existence. To dance and move in only the way you can begins to express itself in the second phase of mastery.

I feel like in the last forty years a lot of people have done a pretty good job of handling and letting go, developing a lot.  Then you have to let go and let it be in service of something greater.  Otherwise it becomes a narcissistic swamp and it turns back on itself.  If people don’t make the shift they seem to not only stop progressing, but they start going a little bit backwards.

So is there some way in which you feel people have to be willing to let go of that individuality before they can discover this higher level you’re talking about?

Well, they have to be willing to keep growing, and that’s always a risk because you can’t hold onto to your “turf.”  There’s a certain amount of the individual work that we’ve done.  I know even for me there’s a certain amount of freedom and I can do whatever I want, and then you’re like (gasp), “If I open more and let go, am I going to get taken over by some passionate need to do something?” Which I have been [LAUGHTER], and it took away a certain amount of freedom and the rest of it.  But it’s a greater joy.  So there’s always a sacrifice.  I don’t think you can get through life without the next risk and the next potential sacrifice, but when you get through it, it’s for something greater.

All right.  So we’ve covered a lot of territory here, but I was thinking it might be good to bring some of this time to earth a little by just talking a little more about some of the different examples of how this has shown up, these evolutionary relationships, because your own story (which I think you shared with listeners) is how it showed up in your love affair as a young woman.  But as you’ve been saying, this kind of relationship is not limited to that type of partnership; it can be found in all kinds of different relationships.  I think it would be helpful to share some examples of how you’ve seen that in people you’ve worked with or in your own life.

Sure.  I have this kind of relationship with Jeff Carreira, is the Head of Education for EnlightenNext and who the person I’ve been teaching with for the last two years.  As two teachers we have a profound and extraordinary evolutionary relationship.  The way that I see it is that two people, just like if you have two of anything, create different possibilities, like two different colors creates a different third color.  Because of the distinctness of people – there are different potentials and different possibilities in each relationship, innately.  You really don’t have anything to say about that.  It’s like, the two colors – if you have red and blue it’s going to make purple, and you can’t turn that into green.  So when you work this way, when you learn how to create these kind of relationships, what happens is that what you’re curious about is, what is the actual potential?  And what’s the dharma?  Not only what is the potential for the hell of it, but what is the potential for life that you are together?  With some people you don’t have much of a connection and you’re not supposed to; even though you can love everybody, you’re not supposed to necessarily have a profound relationship with every person.

With Jeff, given his depth and his brilliance and his level of surrender just as a human being who’s awakened as a teacher, for us together we’re having the most extraordinary experience of creativity and love and literally impacting each other’s consciousness.  We’re tracking each other, almost, all of the time.  There’s an inner place where there’s a constant level of influence that’s occurring.  Obviously it’s impacting the work that we’re doing in a big way, and who we attract, and the things that happen.  It’s been very profound having that relationship with him and as we surrender and turn towards each other powerfully it unfolds in ways we could never have imagined. There are people in the group where there are friendships and some business connections that people want to pursue consciously.  There are all different flavors of relatedness, but what’s consistent is there’s an unleashing of a kind of growth and creativity and love.  I would say those three things are what is unleashed, and through the creativity, whatever contribution there is.

Recently a couple came to one the Evolutionary Collective Intensive Orientation and their marriage was transformed. You could tell from what they shared that there was a level of intimacy and a level of depth and connection that they had never experienced before, and it’s continued.  It’s like they went through a different floor in the building and now they’re there.  It’s being sustained, and it’s changed their families and the whole thing.  But now they know how to turn towards each other and the space between them.  Instead of people having the space open up every once in a while and not knowing how to find it again and not consciously having a commitment to sustaining and growing it, this gives you the tools for a different possibility to be lived.

There’s a word you used that I wanted to pick up on because it’s one of the aspects of your work that’s really fascinated me, and that was word “influence,” because often if we think about influencing each other, we don’t always think of those being a positive thing.  We’re trained to not let ourselves be too influenced by other people because of that emphasis on individuality that you were speaking about.  We’ve all both grown up trying to not be influenced, trying to be original, trying to have our own ideas about things and not allow ourselves to be too influenced by other people.  Of course, we all are, and oftentimes we will be very grateful for the influences on our work or our thinking in certain ways, but it’s a word that we have a certainly mixed relationship.

In your work you tend to use that word in a very positive sense.  You see influence as something to be embraced and worked with.  So I was curious if you could say a little more about that.

Well, one of the turning towards is to develop your ability to positively influence, and your level of capacity to be influenced.  Like you said, the ego goes, “Okay, this is me.  You’re over there and I’m over here.  I know how I think.  You’re not influencing how I think.”  So this is a higher level of development.  If people are still very focused on trying to develop their identity, then this is probably not the kind of relationship they’d want to enter into.  But if you have that somewhat developed, then, you surrender and begin to work with influence and realize that you’re always being influenced.

The capacity to inspiringly influence others is what it means to be a leader; to pay attention to how you influence, and to the degree that you allow yourself to really have transmission, and to powerfully, positively influence others.   Even to take that on is very powerful.  It also requires being very humble and to become so sensitive that you could feel just the slightest air brushing you, the slightest sense of something or allowing someone to look at you with the certain kind of love and appreciation, and it changes you deeply in that moment.

I’m sure you’ve experienced entrepreneurs who are struggling through their projects and you say, “Well, that’s really a good idea.”  You believe in them, and all of the sudden something that they were about to give up on, they don’t.  So I think that taking that on, learning how to influence, and be influenced, and be sensitive to it, and wake up around it; and that we influence each other is the greatest gift.  That’s what you remember.  Some friend who really made a difference in your life was someone who influenced you.  It’s not that people that don’t – I mean, who cares?  Or when you fall in love, with someone that you love – they really influence you.  They have some kind of impact.  It’s not that they have no impact.  It’s definitely one of the core pieces that is worked with.

I know that’s one of the topics that you are going to speaking about in the course you’re doing, and it’s one of the core principles of the way you teach this.  Can you speak a little about of the other pieces, some of the other qualities that you teach, that you look for and help people develop?

Sure.  So the influence – we talked about truth, which is huge.  Since people have an ambivalent relationship with the truth and some of these other aspects, we work to shift that.   We actually create such a vivid experience of the power of connecting deeply that it becomes so compelling to actually give up avoiding the truth, which is huge because most people are avoiding in on some level.  That’s where denial comes from.

There’s also commitment, mutual commitment, which is really different than individual commitment.  When you’re developing yourself individually you learn how to be committed.  Most of the time nobody pays attention to whether or not, in a relationship – what are they committed to?  You might be really committed to the relationship and they might be so-so.  So there’s not a lot that’s going to happen.  You can’t create some kind of amazing possibility between you if one person’s committed and the other person isn’t so much.  Part of what I develop in the mutuality is paying attention to what’s happening also with the “other.”

The same thing with groups, the larger groups:  If you’re not paying attention to how committed the people, how interested are they, how willing to be in the truth are they?  You’re not going to be tracking space and you’re not going to be developing anything beautiful.

It seems like that term “mutual,” mutuality is really central. 

Absolutely.

It’s a word we don’t hear used in that way so much.  Can you say a bit more about why that’s such a core distinction?

Mutuality – by that I don’t mean strategic partnership where people trade back and forth.

Mutual benefit.

Yes, mutual benefit.  That’s the opposite of what I’m talking about.  It’s a recognition first of all that you both influence each other, that to have this level of relatedness it has to be mutual and you give up your right to withhold and hold back.  If you want to be lazy about being related and you want to be not so truthful, or not very engaged and open – you can’t do this.  Then you’re in a whole different kind of relationship.  One of the things people get in this is they get less tolerant of all that. There’s this certain numbness of a way of relating that we just think is polite, is polite and acceptable and normal, and when you look at the real results of those kinds of relationships is they’re not alive.  No potentials are being maximized.  There’s nothing really exciting going on.  You’re basically just sort of “status quo.”  Everything is staying the same.  There’s no influence, there’s no truth, there’s no mutual engagement; there’s just not a lot happening, which is kind of the way it is.  So this in a way ruins being completely comfortable in just normal human relating everywhere.  You’re still okay with it to some degree, but when you start to have more of these kinds of relationships, where give more of your heart and soul the unconsciousness of normal relating becomes unattractive.

There was an example that you shared with me yesterday that I thought you might share briefly of somebody in your work who is a nun.  I thought it was such a beautiful example because when we think about relationships we tend to gravitate back towards the ones that we’re used to: our romantic relationships, our marriages, our friends.  This struck me as sort of an “out of the box” example.

Yeah, there’s a beautiful woman who’s a nun who’s in the Evolutionary Collective and she’s very devoted to teaching from an evolutionary standpoint and bringing a new wave of consciousness into the Catholic Church, which I think is formidable.  She was teaching in Peru and doing the kind of practice that I mentioned earlier with the other nuns.  She just said that it was explosive.  Do you know what I mean?  The explosion of love and the experience of the demand of love was overwhelming and real.  Part of what this unleashes is the love that is demanding.  It wants you completely, fully present, everything you have to give, everything you can contribute to the world.  It wants your whole heart, un-ambivalent, full out.  They were experiencing that and she was just completely blown away experiencing that with the other sisters.  I have high hopes for how this translates everywhere.

We also have another woman who is this amazing third grade teacher.  I wish she’d been my third grade teacher.  She’s just awesome.  And she just listens to the kids.  They have “yes” all over their classroom, big “yeses”, this kind of relating is “yes, yes.” 

Beautiful. 

Thank you for our conversation today…

I also want to say that I haven’t offered an online course for over a year.  I think it’s been about a year and a half.  So I’m very excited.  If people go to my website, evolutionarycollective.com, and go to the courses page it’s called “WEvolution” and all the information’s there.  It will be a seven-week virtual online course.  It’s 90-minute sessions on a Wednesday evening starting May 15^th.  Then there will be two bonus sessions, which will be just coaching and Question and Answers on two Saturdays.  All the information is there.  I’d love if you’re interested and curious about this awakening in consciousness and being related, which obviously is important, please check it out.

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