Healing Journeys with Suzie Daggett
Suzie Daggett interviews Arjuna Ardagh, teacher, author and the Founder of the Living Essence Foundation in Nevada City, an organization dedicated to the awakening of consciousness within the context of ordinary life. He is the author of Relaxing into Clear Seeing, How About Now, The Last Laugh, and his newest book, The Translucent Revolution.
What is the Translucent Revolution?
It’s about people waking up, and how they are living their lives transformed by that awakening. Most of the time, we are hypnotized by an endless procession of thoughts, desires and fears, like a dog at the side of the road, mesmerized by passing cars. A moment of awakening is when thoughts are not necessarily stopped, but attention is averted from them to the recognition of who you really are, to the recognition of that which is experiencing the thoughts. When we pay attention to our own nature in this way, we realized that what we truly are is limitless consciousness, without beginning or end, endlessly at peace, endlessly free. This is not just a loving feeling, it is love itself. Who you are, who I am, who we are, is really love. This realization, even if it’s fleeting, is tremendously liberating. In the same moment that we realize who we really are, we also intuit life’s potential as much more than the mind would like us to believe.
When did you start recognizing that this was a new social and cultural trend?
In 1992, my teaching work changed its focus, to facilitating awakening. I would ask how many people could relate to what I was talking about. Just a smattering of hands would go up. Now, when my wife, Chameli and I travel through America and Europe, we ask people how many have had direct recognition of what we are speaking of, and almost every hand in the hall will go up. An epidemic of spiritual maturity is raining down on this planet. And, this is not just my experience. In order to write this book I interviewed hundreds of spiritual authorities of our time, people like Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston, Neale Donald Walsch. These people have access to millions of others with their teachings, and everybody is saying the same thing: there is an explosion of awakening. This gives us grounds for tremendous hope for our world. The dominant paradigm of acquisition, greed, and consumption is very depressing news, and leaves one feeling powerless. To see this arising of awakening in the world is grounds for tremendous optimism. We may be near to a tipping point for global consciousness to shift from separation into oneness.
How would someone know if they have had an awakening?
I am sure that many of your readers already know what we are talking about. The challenge today is not so much in the realization of who you really are, but in the embodiment of that realization. Many people have deep openings, yet they may not be lived in a tangible way in their day-to-day life. That is what the book is about. Realization is the beginning, but without embodiment, it is useless. Until it has some kind of opportunity to express itself in the way that we relate, in the way that we parent, in the way that we are at work, until it becomes a force of gifting to the world, the gift will remain ungiven.
It requires nothing less than everything, a total recognition and commitment that the old habits of acquisition, consumption, competition, separation, judgment, fear simply do not work - they lead to suffering for ourselves and others. When we give our deeper realization a chance to breathe, to come down and express itself through the body, it works for everyone. It results in harmony, it results in generosity, it results in a life lived from overflow rather than consumption, it results in spontaneous gratitude, but it does require practice. Not practice to get somewhere in the future, but practice to live the realization now. The practices in the book are all about now. I call them nudges, we have to nudge ourselves back into natural sanity and openness.
How has writing this book affected your life?
I had not the faintest idea just how wide spread this phenomenon was. And now, having interviewed mainstream business and education consultants, people deep within the organized Christian church who are awake, talking the language of translucence, I know that this is a widespread phenomenon. The human race is waking up very fast, we are shifting from Homo sapiens to Homo illuminatus. It is profoundly good news!
Arjuna’s books can be found locally at Harmony Books and The Book Seller or through his website, www.translucents.org where you can also subscribe to the online newsletter. A weekly Translucent Tribe Gathering meets at the Wild Mountain Yoga Center every Wednesday from 7:30 to 9:30.
Healing Journeys is a column written by Suzie Daggett for the Grass Valley Union newspaper. Suzie interviews a variety of health practitioners most Fridays in the Wellness section. Click here to read past articles prior to 2005. Enter "Suzie Daggett" in the search box to get listing of all articles. |
