Latest / Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry / Episode 55: The Simplicity of Surrender, An Exploration of the Path of Awakening

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Episode 55: The Simplicity of Surrender, An Exploration of the Path of Awakening · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

• 0:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Good.
• 0:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to another conversations with Amoda. Ma! Hello, Amoda! How are you today?
• 0:23
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Hello, Cavi! I'm very well, thank you. Good.
• 0:25
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay.
• 0:27
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: okay. So today we are going to. I'm going to read a short excerpt from Amoda's book, embodied Enlightenment which some some of you, many of you maybe, will be familiar with. But I'm going to read a section from that. And then I'm going to be asking Amoda some questions about
• 0:49
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: kind of opening up that passage. So
• 0:53
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: let me start with this. Incidentally, this is from Chapter 4
• 0:58
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: of embodied enlightenment for your reference.
• 1:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Whether you have temporarily glimpsed on the
• 1:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: okay. I'll just fade into it.
• 1:17
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Okay.
• 1:18
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Whether you have temporarily glimpsed an awakened state that has vanished. The light of awakening has revealed itself as the background of your life.
• 1:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: or you have not yet glimpsed awakening, but feel inexorably drawn towards it.
• 1:34
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: These words may fan the flame of truth until it becomes a furnace of radical awakeness within you
• 1:43
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: when this furnace consumes all false notions of what an awakened life should look like.
• 1:51
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The incessant search for anything other than this ever unfolding moment comes to an end.
• 1:58
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: What remains is an unending river of grace, both ineffably divine and utterly ordinary.
• 2:07
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The discovery that allows you to finally rest in this river of grace does not require your past to be healed of what was broken.
• 2:18
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: nor does it depend on your future being more wonderful than what is happening now.
• 2:25
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The recognition of awakeness as the inherent nature of all things, including yourself.
• 2:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: puts an end to the endless search for a better life or a better self.
• 2:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It marks the end of seeking and the beginning of the possibility of true healing very beautiful.
• 2:48
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So actually, yesterday, we were exploring this in the online program that we were that we were offering.
• 2:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So this is very relevant and and is very juicy.
• 3:03
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Let me let me
• 3:06
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: pull out a very short bit and ask you about it. Awakening, you said isn't about adding anything.
• 3:17
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: but about stripping away what isn't true.
• 3:23
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: That's an important point. Is this stripping away. Let's unpack this stripping away a little bit. Is it painful? Is it effortless?
• 3:33
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Is it something we can do?
• 3:36
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Is there a struggle involved?
• 3:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Is it about surrender, or a deep radical acceptance, or all of these.
• 3:47
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Let's open it up a little bit.
• 3:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes.
• 3:54
  Amoda Maa Teachings: stripping away sounds painful.
• 4:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And perhaps someone reading these words or listening to these words that you've just read out will interpret it
• 4:16
  Amoda Maa Teachings: as something difficult, something painful, that somehow I need to really pull away, strip away certain cherished
• 4:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: beliefs or aspects of myself.
• 4:36
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And of course we will resist this
• 4:42
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and really this is not what is being spoken to.
• 4:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Both from my own direct experience and
• 4:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: from, if you like, from that, seeing into the
• 5:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: nature of how awakeness reveals itself. It really isn't something that we need to do.
• 5:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It really isn't something that we have to struggle with. It really isn't something as painful as trying to pull bits of yourself off.
• 5:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: None of that is being implied here.
• 5:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The stripping away that's spoken of that yeah, in these words really is a falling away.
• 5:39
  Amoda Maa Teachings: a natural falling away of certain false notions about the self, about me and my life
• 5:49
  Amoda Maa Teachings: about me as the story maker as yeah as the
• 5:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: actually seeing. Yeah, as some of these false notions about me and my life get stripped away, I
• 6:05
  Amoda Maa Teachings: start to see that I am the story maker, and that story about me and my life gets recreated in many ways, and how this is actually a false construct.
• 6:17
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Really, it's a stripping away of the veils of illusion or the veils of perception.
• 6:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: This happened to me, and I'm a victim of that. I'm helpless. I'm wounded. I'm powerless. These are some of the
• 6:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the false notions that we carry. They're false because they're not relevant now.
• 6:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, they maybe have been relevant at the time that something happened.
• 6:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But when they become part of our psychological structure
• 6:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: they start becoming veils of perception veils through which we see our lives, and that creates the ongoing narrative about me and my life. This is what falls away. That's not something we have to do.
• 7:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's something that happens naturally as we turn our allegiance away to what is more true.
• 7:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: what is more true in this moment, in this moment, in my direct experience, not something that I'm
• 7:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: carrying as as a lens that I see through.
• 7:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's very. It's the invitation to direct experience. And then that which is no longer upholding that truth, or that does not uphold that truth falls away naturally. In that sense it's a stripping away, but it's not painful. At least it wasn't in my experience.
• 7:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's painful if we struggle, yeah, and have to do something.
• 7:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: There seems to be a certain sometimes I know I've pointed to this. I don't want to go down this road particularly, but there does seem to be sometimes all of these elements involved in it, because the investment of the self in the self was so great for so many years that you know the falling away
• 8:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: can bring some brief or some heartache, heartbreak, or something.
• 8:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I I have to counter that with I don't think that's the case.
• 8:42
  Amoda Maa Teachings: If it falls away prematurely, which is not a true falling away. It's some kind of attempt by the self to get rid of something, then there can be heartbreak.
• 8:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: but when it falls away naturally, that which is revealed is who you really are. There can be no greater fulfillment than that.
• 9:07
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Why do people struggle so much? Because if what you're saying is
• 9:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: simply true, and it just comes down to seeing clearly, because in a way that's kind of what you're
• 9:21
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: talking about, is it? Is it?
• 9:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes and no. I would like to add something to this, and that is, it's not just a matter of seeing.
• 9:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, we can see where our false notions are or what we're carrying as a sense of victim identity, or whatever we can see that perhaps through some support, some process, some insight.
• 9:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: but that's not the falling away.
• 9:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The falling away takes place when the fruit is ripe.
• 9:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: when the fruit is ripe. That's why I say it's actually natural. If there's an attempt to, then take that seeing and say, Oh, I've got to get rid of that, because I see it's not really truth, because I'm being told that or that's the reflection, or perhaps I'm having an insight. But actually the fruit is not ripe.
• 10:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Then there will be struggle. Then there will be pain, and that's not what we're talking about. And there's so many people now on the journey of awakening
• 10:22
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that they hear these words.
• 10:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and they're invited into this, and then there is some kind of conflict that goes on.
• 10:31
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I'm saying it has to happen naturally.
• 10:34
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay. But if it has to happen naturally, like the fruit ripening, how does the fruit ripen.
• 10:40
  Amoda Maa Teachings: By being in inquiry over and over again, by being in dialogue over and over again, by being in the insight with oneself, as how these patterns, perhaps, or how struggle and resistance to what is.
• 10:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is actually an impediment to the wholeness of your own being. And we could. That's a very individual journey.
• 11:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes.
• 11:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It takes time, and then it falls away. No understanding will make it happen. No, you know, no psychology will make it happen. It
• 11:20
  Amoda Maa Teachings: one has to have a genuine desire
• 11:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: for freedom, but that freedom can't be prefabricated.
• 11:30
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Can I ask a question that is triggered from this, which is about you?
• 11:37
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The emota that you refer to?
• 11:40
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Let's say, prior to awakening or prior to transformation, or during the journey prior to awakening. And you did have a journey of transformation. Let's say where things were happening to you where veils were being stripped away, where the subtle energy body I use that term loosely, you know, was being shaken up where the false identity of who you were
• 12:08
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: was actually coming undone in certain ways. You did do some cathartic processes. You did engage in some of the dynamic meditations that did a lot of things to you, so that
• 12:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: false let's call it false.
• 12:25
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I don't really like that. But it the false. You that existed prior to awakening was kind of shaken up. Now that process itself
• 12:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: it was not always necessarily easy.
• 12:44
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Is that true?
• 12:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes.
• 12:49
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it is true, it is true, but and we can speak about that. That's the process of transformation. It's not the process of awakening.
• 12:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay, and let me.
• 13:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Awakening is simple.
• 13:03
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Awakening.
• 13:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Ok
• 13:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: itself. And that's what I'm referring to. Journey leading up to. That is a very personal journey of transformation that involves. And if we're looking at pain, if you like, or challenge. The 1st time it happened was when I was 28,
• 13:20
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and my academic.
• 13:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Can return. Yeah.
• 13:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Saturn return. I was not on a spiritual path. I had no particular insight a little bit. I was into psychology and astrology, but I didn't have much insight. I was not mature enough yet. I hadn't embarked on a spiritual journey at all, and something collapsed in my life. It broke apart, and
• 13:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: at the time it seemed to be external to do with my life what I was doing, my career, path, relationship, all sorts of things. But actually it was an undoing of an identity that was attached to being somebody through the academic arena.
• 14:05
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So yes, you could call that a radical stripping away. But that's not awakening.
• 14:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Okay, well, this is referring to in the book, and that happens for people. Of course, it happens.
• 14:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay? So so actually, one of the juicy aspects of this conversation, see how these conversations are very alive between us. Yeah. And that is, the beautiful thing is what we're actually discussing in some ways, just to get it clear for people we're talking about almost 2 separate things. One is the fire or the yeah, the movement of transformation.
• 14:41
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And we're also talking about the nature of awakening. And those 2 things get very, very blended in and very, very blurred. They really do, because a lot of people haven't been on transformational paths, and they have a glimpse or an insight or an awareness of the awakening and the freedom therein.
• 15:04
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And there is a bit of a juxtaposition. I won't say problem. But so that's the juice of this conversation. Yeah.
• 15:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 15:17
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: What do they do?
• 15:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So I'm not sure which side of the you know that that particular sort of
• 15:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: field, this kind of blurred area we're actually addressing, because I'm not particularly interested in the transformation side. No, but.
• 15:33
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: We don't have to talk about the transformation side, but I want to just
• 15:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: kind of finish that aspect of the conversation by saying what actually, in a way do people do then.
• 15:47
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: because we don't have to walk them through it here.
• 15:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: if there's a glimpse. But there hasn't been some sort of personal transformation, because personal transformation is going to be ignited. The very possibility of it will be ignited by
• 16:02
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: being in a field of love, having an experience of the light, seeing something more deeper that you did refer to in in your 1st paragraph. Yeah, something reveals itself and that can ignite. Then the transformational path. What do people do? Ignore it or go on it? Just that, just to clear up that bit of a question.
• 16:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, it's a valid question, of course.
• 16:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Ultimately, wherever one is on the journey.
• 16:39
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the invitation is to be with what is yeah, and inviting
• 16:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: a softness in that, if possible, even though some of something like, you know my Saturn return was painful, but even in that there was a deep surrender.
• 17:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's what it was about. It was a surrender to what is, which in my case was a real stripping away of of the material world, the external world in all ways, apart from my health.
• 17:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I did that.
• 17:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That was the one thing that remained intact and my mental health psychological, although I went through a whole process with it, or a whole inner dark journey with it. But I just have to also put it into context. Most people.
• 17:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: yeah, most people, I'll put it in the 90% of people that we speak with, that come to our events are not in that early stage.
• 17:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: They're not like I was when I was 28, and I had no idea otherwise you wouldn't be in a spiritual meeting. You wouldn't be an inquiry. These are individuals that are coming at least to us or to other teachers that are ready
• 17:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: have either done some inner work, or have some maturity or some insight who are really yearning for something deeper. So already there is something more going on. It's not just a bolt out of the blue.
• 18:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, as
• 18:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it was for me, in which case it's a whole different conversation, which is not one that I'm qualified to be speaking to. So in that context, the invitation is whatever is happening, whether it's the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship.
• 18:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Whatever. Yeah. Aging to invite
• 18:40
  Amoda Maa Teachings: a softness within that, because everything is a portal
• 18:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: to the wholeness of being that underlies all circumstances, all situations, all problems, all dramas, all losses.
• 18:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's an invitation to know that which is always here.
• 19:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and that doesn't necessarily have to be a struggle.
• 19:06
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: You know.
• 19:08
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Do do you think? Okay, well, I'm gonna we're going to kind of keep on on moving. But I actually really want to ask you this personal question about me
• 19:21
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: from where you are, and we've been together for 20 years, and my journey has been.
• 19:30
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I would say, long.
• 19:32
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: although one should never quantify the length of one's journey because everything is individualized in this life.
• 19:41
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Do you experience me as going through a lot of struggle
• 19:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: on the journey that I've actually, in the last 3, 4 years have arrived at a place of greater equanimity and depth. I think we're that's fair to say, I've you know something has happened. Yeah.
• 20:01
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: But the preceding 15 years, in a way I know I was ill for a long time.
• 20:09
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Was I in surrender then, or
• 20:13
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: did you see struggle? Because I'm quite like a lot of people. I actually think you're quite a rare being in many ways. Yeah, it's not to adulate you.
• 20:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: but I'm a little more like
• 20:26
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: everybody else in some ways, maybe.
• 20:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Can you just shine a light on that.
• 20:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's a very good and interesting question.
• 20:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: from these eyes, if you like, and obviously knowing you
• 21:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: quite intimately in being with you on that journey, whilst it has been in some ways relatively slow, gradual.
• 21:22
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I would not say that you struggled with it.
• 21:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's not my.
• 21:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's not what I see in you.
• 21:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: You have always been willing to
• 21:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: to, to, to turn towards what is true, and whilst there have been some.
• 21:56
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I wouldn't say they were very big, some
• 22:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I don't know what they are beliefs about yourself or about life that might create some struggle or separation.
• 22:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I don't think they were huge.
• 22:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The the difference, perhaps, between you and me is that
• 22:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I have been many ways been totally
• 22:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: dedicated or devoted, or only interested
• 22:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in in the nature of consciousness.
• 22:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And then in in liberation of this of this being, and your journey hasn't been totally devoted to that.
• 23:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So I would say that that has been slower. But but truth, I think truth and presence
• 23:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: have been fundamental, even though you might not have, you know, sort of conceptually put that at the forefront in your beingness.
• 23:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I think truth has always prevailed.
• 23:26
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah.
• 23:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in relationship, in the interaction with the world, in the interaction with your life. And that has finally sort of come more and more to the foreground. I don't see it. I haven't experienced you as a
• 23:40
  Amoda Maa Teachings: as a as a big struggler, or you know there's been no drama. There's been no.
• 23:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I mean.
• 23:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Part, you know you've been ill. Yes, of course, but even in that, and I see a great
• 23:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: willingness to be intimate with what is, and to be true to what is
• 23:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: so then you know some some, you know, mental
• 24:05
  Amoda Maa Teachings: veils, let's say, have actually come undone.
• 24:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But I it's not. I mean, it's not like previous relationships. Yeah.
• 24:20
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I'm glad I asked.
• 24:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I don't. I don't.
• 24:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I think. Because, yeah, I am. Thank you.
• 24:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah, thank you for the
• 24:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: reflection. I don't think we've ever really talked, said that, have we, really, but it's
• 24:36
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: but it's like, I see, you know, in that conversation I see you you were. You have always been
• 24:41
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: primarily. That's why you're such a good teacher, in a way, is the light and consciousness and nothing else, in a way. Boom, you know, and that whereas in a way, you know, maybe because I've got Pisces Moon or something. You know I've been. I've sort of
• 25:00
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: come through very, very
• 25:03
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: a lot of actually emotionality, not drama, necessarily, but actually to go down to the pits of myself on the emotional level. And I think that I hear what you're saying, and I think that the what you
• 25:19
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: kind of held me through. Maybe I'm not sure that sounds a little bit mummy, boy thing, you know, but actually did hold a kind of light or a frequency or resonance, and it allowed me to die in surrender, no matter what.
• 25:37
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And that's where the the sort of meeting place that's where we kind of going to come back to what you're talking about, because I think that I did have that capacity to to die. And it sounds dramatic, but it's not dramatic. It's actually very soft. It's actually, you know, and and
• 25:57
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And eventually, gradually, the cliff that was always being talked about eroded into the same ocean.
• 26:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The natural inclination in you, whether you knew it or not, towards love and truth, the truth of love, not mummy love, but
• 26:15
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you know, and and a kind of
• 26:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: gentle joy. The joy of being is perhaps innate
• 26:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in you, or was a magnet within this relationship. And so in that sense. I don't see you having being against it, fighting it, or going in a different direction. So whilst it seems to have been a gradual path, and why not? It usually is.
• 26:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's what I mean. False notions of the.
• 26:49
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Nice.
• 26:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Fall away when they're ready to fall away in the right field, whether that field is within one's own heart, if you like, or in the field of the heart, of a relationship or the heart of a Sangha. It doesn't matter, so we don't have to really struggle.
• 27:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Life will always offer the right doorway.
• 27:13
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The journey in a way can bring us either way, your way, or my way, or anybody, you know, can bring us to the same point
• 27:23
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: of actually, you know, to continue a struggle, or to give up the struggle
• 27:29
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and to give up the stroll is falling.
• 27:35
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, I mean just to add to that, or to perhaps finish it off and move on.
• 27:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes, there have been many experiences of falling away even in the later stages of my own journey. Whether it was transformation or awakening, or spiritual. As you know, the falling away of previous very deeply entrenched relationships, the deeply entrenched relationship with my mother.
• 28:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and and and and many of my own attempts at creative
• 28:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I wouldn't call it expression, but creative offering to the world. Many things have fallen away, but in all that, and especially in the
• 28:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: more recent years, I don't mean really recent. But the later years of my journey.
• 28:38
  Amoda Maa Teachings: There was a deep acceptance of all that.
• 28:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: There was a deep acceptance of all of it, and that's the only way. Painful or not, it's irrelevant, really.
• 28:48
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Did you? Do you mean that when the you know the iteration of Moda, who was doing the transformational work in London when we realized that that was finished, even though it was so beautiful and powerful that it was finished, and I was on my journey of illness. And actually we went into an extraordinary, almost limboic.
• 29:11
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: You know what what seemed fallow, but wasn't Fallow Place, for really I mean, people don't know that for years
• 29:20
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: we will.
• 29:20
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Years I've in nothing for 12.
• 29:25
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Many things got stripped away, but it was. It was like a
• 29:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you know. We lived very simply. The whole movement, if you like, of ecstatic trance dance that I built up through joy through enjoyment. There was no agenda in it, but it was very new at the time.
• 29:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's not these days, but at the time it was a it was a kind of radically new
• 29:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: process, if you like.
• 30:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That drew quite a lot of people. And then, when that fell away, and
• 30:07
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you know, living in London fell away, which was a huge thing, and then
• 30:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: all sorts of things. And yet there was such a deep surrender in that a deep knowing that everything's okay, and what needs to fall away will fall away because something new will be born, but not knowing what that is, and not not clutching at it.
• 30:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Where did that come from? In you? Where did that deep, you know? Trust on a deeper level than the self
• 30:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: you know come from, because a lot of people would be like extremely, either uncomfortable with it or searching for what am I going to do
• 30:48
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: next, or who am I going to be, because there is a even though there's an awakening happened. There's an incredible loss. I don't mean that dramatically, but it's like an absence, because clients fell away. Groups fell away. You know London fell away, you know. Everything fell. I nearly fell away. So you were getting down to the kind of basics. But I witnessed you. It's never really
• 31:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: kind of panicking or saying. What shall I do or anything? It just sort of seamlessly moved into it over a long period of time, of course. So where's that come from when you.
• 31:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Well, 2 things are pertinent here. That particular phase was actually after awakening.
• 31:29
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So in awakening, I am one with life.
• 31:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So what is there to panic about? What is there to? Yeah. There's a deep resting in the okayness of what is
• 31:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: trust isn't even a question. Here I am one with what is.
• 31:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So there's nothing to fight against. So that's a radical transformation.
• 31:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But having said that that was also part of my journey before awakening, albeit a little more.
• 32:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: a little less smooth. Yeah, because there was lots of falling away of things, then
• 32:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I don't know. Then then is it innate? Is it inherent in the personality? I've experienced many losses since the moment I was born for some people that becomes an ongoing rigidity and fear of life. I learned very well, I'm not sure, very quickly, but I learned particularly in India.
• 32:36
  Amoda Maa Teachings: which I think was the turning point.
• 32:38
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That that fear was was a ghost of my own making, really.
• 32:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and I could either live in that fear. I could live in fear of life. I could live in fear of survival, and I've been relatively close to the edge.
• 32:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Oh, I could just be in this moment as it is.
• 33:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and recognize in this moment I am here. In this moment I am here.
• 33:07
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and life starts to unfold. From that place I think I learned trust, if that's the word from from there trust and surrender.
• 33:17
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So that's not a strategy to overcome fear. That's not fear, and it's opposite, which is like, you know, I know I'm going to overcome it, or anything. That is a very different thing.
• 33:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I learned to sit inside fear. In India
• 33:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I learned to sit inside fear of being alone. I learned to sit inside, fear of being
• 33:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in chaos, I learned to sit inside, to sit inside, fear of discomfort and shame.
• 33:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Being far from home.
• 34:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Darkness, I mean literal darkness, strangeness, just fear, generic fear, fear of being seen, fear of being myself, whatever that is, fear of making a choice. I learned to just sit inside of it, fear of survival. I came very close to the edge in India.
• 34:29
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So you're talking about not actually moving when fear comes.
• 34:36
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Not applying. Yeah, I learnt not to be pulled by the minds.
• 34:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Fabrication of what may happen.
• 34:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I learnt not to be pulled by the.
• 34:57
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Hmm.
• 34:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Enamorment with the self. What's going to happen to me? And I'm all alone, and I need this. And who's going to save me? This is all an enamorment of self with self.
• 35:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, it doesn't go anywhere. It just becomes a kind of poison.
• 35:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and I just learnt not to learnt is not really
• 35:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the right word, because it implies that I learned some method or process. It was just really it being in the raw bones of it.
• 35:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I was thrown into it because of a choice I made. I chose to go to India on my own with hardly any money, and not knowing anyone or anything. It wasn't a recreational journey. It wasn't a tourist journey. Yeah, it was quite wild.
• 35:49
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I chose that, but I didn't know what it would mean and what it would entail.
• 35:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But something in me just knew it just knew how to be with what is.
• 36:04
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: See what I'm hearing in a way, in order to bring this into the context of our conversation is that actually, that was prior to your awakening, but actually in some ways was part of the ripening of the fruit, and was part of the priming.
• 36:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Because I've never really experienced you as any any fearful.
• 36:27
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: a fearful person at all. Neither have I experienced you as an egoically strong person. I sort of my experience of you is that
• 36:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: you're sort of a master of of inner fear, without moving towards it or away from it in a very delicate kind of but true sort of way. So then, when awakening this experience, you know, happened
• 36:53
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to you in your apartment in your flat that time in 2,002, if fear had come along, you were primed ready to to just be in there be absolutely. And then something happened.
• 37:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Absolutely.
• 37:09
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Really.
• 37:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's like the primordial fear came undone because I'd faced, if you like, or been in the energy field of fear so many times without the
• 37:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the panic and the selfing that goes on in that
• 37:25
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that was a journey of surrender.
• 37:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: so that when the primordial fear revealed its face, and there was a surprise. I'm like, Oh, there's more, and it's deeper and it's bigger, and it's more unknown. And it's not about anything.
• 37:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It was simply
• 37:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But it started off as fear of aloneness, real aloneness, abandonment, abandonment from God. It's a primordial void. Yeah.
• 38:00
  Amoda Maa Teachings: when that revealed itself A, it was a surprise, and B, it was like, well.
• 38:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it's the same. What else to do? Basically, the self dies in it.
• 38:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So whichever stage it is, if you like.
• 38:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the invitation is always for the self to die in it. But it's such a beautiful death, and it can't happen really, until
• 38:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the fruit is ripe.
• 38:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And along the way there is ripening, so we can't force it.
• 38:34
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's not a how to. That's why I say, it's actually quite simple. It's almost like you slip into it when you're ready.
• 38:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But you can't wait till you're ready. There's almost a kind of journey of willingness and mastery along the way
• 38:52
  Amoda Maa Teachings: along the way, whether that's through meditation, whether that's through inquiry whether it's through just the journey of life. All of that.
• 39:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It's like there's nothing you can do about it, but there's nothing that you can't not do about it either, because you have to be willing
• 39:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to show up to. I do think that there's actually more availability. Now, I don't know, because the fields around various teachers, or that, you know, it's it's kind of spreading, and it just feels to me you were very alone when it
• 39:30
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: happened when this all this happened to you, and I know that the field of love, energy, or field of awakening energy just wasn't as palpable as it is now, and I think some of these, you know, very deep conversations that happen not just here, but other places as well, do provide a deeper awareness of it, not understanding. That's where it can get a little bit dangerous.
• 39:57
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: but actually.
• 39:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: can't it? So that it kind of decomplicates it, and that just, you know I do. I want to segue and just kind of finish up if we've got 10 more minutes or so
• 40:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: of just to to come back to this simplicity, if you like, that you're talking of. Because
• 40:17
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and we? We had this question. People have many. There are a lot of false
• 40:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: ideas, a lot of common misconceptions about awakening, and we deal with that all the time in this work and stuff. But
• 40:32
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: can can we fit what we've been talking about into this, and to bring it back to the kind of
• 40:40
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: well, really, some of the simplicity that you're that you're talking about, because simplicity doesn't mean that nothing happens. Simplicity just means there's a
• 40:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and you said it was soft. You said there was something like just a breath in it, or something, or the ripeness is
• 40:58
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: is available. It doesn't. You don't have to go through 20 years of hard work to get to the ripeness, the ripeness. Actually, it's an ironic thing is actually here. Now. Right?
• 41:09
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So let me just speak about that a little bit if you can.
• 41:20
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Let me just pick up on that. Which aspects of that are you asking about.
• 41:29
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Well, I want. I want, I want to just kind of end on making sure that
• 41:35
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: you know what your invitation is is kind of clear.
• 41:40
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: yeah, so that we had a conversation about transformation. And then I asked you about me and what you saw. And then we talked about. You know we've been around the houses a little bit, and I just like I like to come back to some something. I asked you whether stripping away is painful, effortless, or a struggle or surrender. And you kept kind of coming back to really a simplicity
• 42:06
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: that's that's available. That's possible. And so it's really just to kind of come back to that. Really.
• 42:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Okay, yes.
• 42:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: probably one of the most
• 42:26
  Amoda Maa Teachings: clear and direct invitations for each individual wherever you are, whatever whatever your circumstance, whatever
• 42:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: stage or level. I don't like the use of those terms, but wherever you are you're on your journey of transformation, or awakening, or understanding or softening. The invitation really is
• 42:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: to notice in one's life as you go about your day. In your experience where there is resistance.
• 43:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: resistance is the
• 43:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is the sign. Resistance is. If there's resistance to what is. And therefore, if there's resistance, you experience tightening, you experience tension, you experience struggle, you experience fear. You experience shrinking, you experience helplessness. Yeah, everything that is a diminishment.
• 43:38
  Amoda Maa Teachings: a contraction, whether it's a psychological contraction, mental, emotional, or physical contraction
• 43:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: arises from resistance to what is, if we can notice that.
• 43:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, the invitation is, if you can notice that in yourself become attuned, and notice how it is.
• 44:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: A mechanism of closure that has become habitual.
• 44:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That actually doesn't serve anything.
• 44:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It doesn't serve the outcome. It doesn't serve your well-being. It doesn't serve life's fullness. It doesn't serve love.
• 44:25
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It only serves to put you in a prison.
• 44:31
  Amoda Maa Teachings: If you can notice that.
• 44:33
  Amoda Maa Teachings: then what? Well, then, you have a choice you can carry on, or you can just simply soften in the midst of whatever it is you're trying to resist.
• 44:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: You can just soften.
• 44:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: You can thus surrender, surrender, not to anything but surrender that
• 44:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: mechanism that wants to shrink because it's never helped you. It doesn't help you. It's an illusion.
• 45:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Oh, but it's going to protect me. It doesn't protect you
• 45:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: just makes you tighter, and if you're tight you're separate from life. Life can't support you in this moment. Soften.
• 45:16
  Amoda Maa Teachings: die! That's a death.
• 45:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: A simple death is like an exhale
• 45:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in this moment, that's all. It is one moment, one moment at a time.
• 45:31
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that is the journey of awakening, awakening out of the dream of self
• 45:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that is encased in an imaginary prison
• 45:40
  Amoda Maa Teachings: of poor me. I have to. I have to tighten. I have to shrink just in this moment.
• 45:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, if anything, all the transformational work that I did. We did together, breath work, movement, work, cathartic work, everything that you can mention that was put into that bag is all about the exhale.
• 46:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah.
• 46:07
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The exhale took me to awakening.
• 46:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: If we can continue to exhale in every moment of life, I don't care how painful it is, how difficult it is, what story the mind makes up about it. But in this moment, if you exhale
• 46:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: for a moment, the veils will clear, and you're just here, that's all. It is eventually that becomes
• 46:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the ongoing reality or the eternal reality.
• 46:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah. 1, 1 of the things
• 46:42
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: one of the misconceptions that I've noticed that we've talked about that is included here
• 46:47
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: is that enlightenment or awakening is some state that's perennial, that is just fixed, and we arrive there, and it's the magical Shangri-la of awakening. But I hear what you're what you're saying is that actually
• 47:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: enlightenment is this moment breath, this moment, breath out, this moment, breath out.
• 47:14
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It's always occurring. Enlightenment is always taking place in the now
• 47:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: in the now in the now
• 47:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: not somewhere up ahead, and it becomes more braceful.
• 47:30
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: more abiding, so that that breath out doesn't require so much attention.
• 47:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: But until then, in a sense, it's in the now, in the now in the now is that that's what we.
• 47:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's a beautiful way of saying it. I mean, I think yesterday
• 47:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in our program, our online program, I think I said something like, I live in a constant state of surrender. Well, that's what you're talking about. It's not something that has to be done. It's not a practice, there's no effort. Neither is it some sort of passive
• 48:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: doormat kind of situation.
• 48:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: but it's a state of surrender, because it's just the softness of openness always. What is here. What is here? What is here is what is here. I suppose the Zen tradition would call it the suchness of things. The suchness of things implies
• 48:35
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that the veils of perception, the veils that we perceive things through this should be happening. This shouldn't be happening. I want this. I don't want this. I like this, I don't like this, and so on, actually come undone, and all that remains is the suchness of things, and in that suchness, far from it being a sort of dry, meaningless
• 48:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: place. It there's a kind. The natural joy of beingness arises.
• 49:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, it's not a superficial, peripheral joy. It's not a joy about anything. It's just a gentle okayness with how the river
• 49:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is flowing and that river can flow in a gentle way. It can flow in a very quiet way, or it can be, you know, bubbling and torrential, and it's all vibrant aliveness.
• 49:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I think that's what I was going to say is like the the we did talk about this a little bit. The natural
• 49:35
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: what one could call intelligence. We have to be careful with that word in a sense, but the natural aliveness inherent in us, inherent in it, inherent in existence starts to reveal itself. Whatever is happening, it's there always, and it can. Only you only taste it
• 49:57
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: by the moment to moment, breath out, breath out, breath out.
• 50:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes, and actually, that inspires me to say that as a way of
• 50:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: asking you to reflect on this, is it not true? And I've noticed, and I think you've noticed that as you've come to this
• 50:20
  Amoda Maa Teachings: over your long journey to this natural state of beingness.
• 50:26
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you can call it equanimity. You can call it peace. You can call it whatever you like, but it's a kind of natural state of beingness. It's no longer veiled by certain mental beliefs, whatever they are, self constructs. Let's say.
• 50:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is it not true that an innate intelligence, let's call it wisdom has arisen in you.
• 50:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and it's not come from learning.
• 50:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's not come from reading. It's not come from anything.
• 50:56
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Isn't it like that?
• 50:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And isn't that
• 50:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: actually what has taken place in me, too? But I've seen it, you know I've seen it come alive in you. I don't know what you know. My journey is a bit different, but
• 51:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you know it's like. Where does all that wisdom come from? Where does that innate intelligence, either in in the relationship with yourself, let's say, but also in your relationship with others that you may work with through our teaching through one-to-one sessions. It's like, Wow, where has that come from? That's what happens
• 51:31
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in awakeness. We don't come to some super elevated super special state, but an innate wisdom reveals itself, and that wisdom
• 51:40
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is really the same. For all that know awakeness.
• 51:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, it may have slightly different expressions, and so on. But it's the same wisdom.
• 51:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Where does that come from?
• 51:54
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I do not.
• 51:54
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Amazing. It's like the beat.
• 51:56
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes, ma'.
• 51:56
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Beingness itself is innate, is inherent. Wisdom is inherent in that.
• 52:03
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It's like the, you know, when the self kind of falls away, another door opens, and inside that door is the land of wisdom, and it doesn't belong to anybody, and nobody can own it. And it's just kind of there. That's why I say natural intelligence. But that doesn't really even describe it. And there it is. It's sort of, isn't it? It just sort of bubbles up. It's as if there's a self-evident yeah.
• 52:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Quantum field of
• 52:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: of natural intelligence that informs all life that creates life in all its manifestations, always has done, always will, and somehow we're one with that when
• 52:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the veils of self come undone.
• 52:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Isn't that beautiful?
• 52:51
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: That's the divine is, you know, not to elevate it. I don't know, you know. That's a great great conversation.
• 52:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But that's why, in what you read out the passage you read out earlier, I think there was something along the lines of the River of Grace.
• 53:07
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes.
• 53:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Self is
• 53:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: ineffably divine and utterly ordinary. And that's what we're speaking of. This is ineffably divine, because we're one with that divine intelligence. If you want to call it that innate intelligence that is beyond the self.
• 53:26
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And yet it is utterly ordinary, because it's only known through the suchness of things. If we have any kind of veils of it being a super conscious state, or a omniscient state, or a, you know, superpower state, then those are veils that also cloud it.
• 53:44
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And also, if you or I, or someone were to take ownership of it, you know. I've arrived at wisdom, and this is what I've you can feel it, can't you? It's sort of puffed up almost, or something. It disappears.
• 53:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Oh yes!
• 53:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And it becomes yours.
• 54:00
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Taking.
• 54:01
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes, there's no.
• 54:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Position. Taking in this, I mean, there can be, and we see examples of that. But no position taking no ownership. It doesn't belong to us.
• 54:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Beautiful. Okay, this is. This is, I think, is, this is a wrap, as they say in I don't know where. But let me just. I'll read that final paragraph out, and then I think we'll we'll finish up. So what you said, the discovery that allows you to finally rest in this river of grace does not require your past to be healed of what was broken.
• 54:37
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: nor does it depend on your future being more wonderful than what is happening now. The recognition of awakeness as the inherent nature of all things, including yourself, puts an end to the endless search for a better self or a better life. It marks the end of seeking and the beginning of the possibility of true healing.
• 55:04
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay, once again, I seriously and thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with you, and thank you for sharing
• 55:17
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: anything, any final words for for us.
• 55:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Once again. I think we've said enough for now.
• 55:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah, I think we've talked a bit about it so as much as one can talk about such things
• 55:34
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: enjoyed each other's company.
• 55:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Thank you so much, everybody for listening and watching.
• 55:41
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: We'll be back again as soon as we can possibly be. Until then, may you be! Well may you remember the breath out, and the simple gentleness of being to be soft with one's experience. What greater equanimity, love, presence, and grace is than that?
• 56:00
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Take care, and we'll see you soon.
• 56:04
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Be well, thank you so much, Moda Namaste. Everyone.