In the course of Mastering a three day Intensive a Master is likely to have to deal with a few difficult participants, and for these she or he will need to be firm yet remain open. This can be taxing, especially if the participant is pushing one of the Master’s buttons. My experience of running long Intensives is that over the two weeks I will be challenged by, and engage with the minds of, all but a few of the participants. This seems to be the price of going deeper – and it requires you, as the Master, to be able to go to those depths and be clear at those levels with pretty well everyone participating.
When I started running two week Intensives I was fairly naïve about this and not as clear as I should have been. But I had an ability that served me well – namely the ability to put stuff aside. This gave me the capacity to deal with difficult participants reasonably well – and deal with my own stuff later. Later sometimes meant the next time I had a break – but mostly meant at the end of the Intensive when back home. One result of using this ability was that in the beginning it took me a month or more to recover from running a long EI – in large part because I had to process the issues that had been triggered.
In the process of dealing with difficult participants I notice that I will often form some view about what is going on with them; I will use my psychological knowledge to come to some analysis. I think this is inevitable for people who have been through extensive training and growth work. However I must stress two things. First I have come to recognise that although I often get the broad area of people’s trips right, in detail I am always wrong. Always. The second is that it is never helpful to share such analyses with people. Never. I learned this very early in my career as a Master and have not found it hard to apply. No matter how difficult the participant is being, no matter how certain I am that they are in a trip about XY or Z, I only ever give them guidance on how to do the technique better. In so doing I aim to communicate directly with the individual who came on the Intensive to experience the Truth – and do my best to ignore the one caught in their mind and certain that I am a fraud or fool or tyrant (usually a combination of all three). So although in the following text I refer to confronting participants it is never on the basis of my trip or analysis or judgement of them – it is always focussed on getting them to do the technique correctly and abide by the rules of the Intensive.
5.1 Interviews
Here is what I wrote to myself shortly after the six week ended.
“The other time I consciously surrendered was when people came to me for interview. I would listen carefully to what they were saying and also step back from the contact to notice how they were saying it and what was going on with me. Then I would go for as much contact as I could get with the person and just allow whatever to come out of my mouth. With a few people I knew that I would have to confront them about some particular trip (such as arrogance or unreality or lack of intention) and would think out a way to do that which they could hear – and I would do this before they came to see me. Then if what occurred in the contact and content of the interview indicated that this was the right thing to raise or say, I would allow myself to say it. But 90% of the time I had no idea of what I was going to say and listened to it as carefully as the participant did.
A few times nothing would occur to me to say. Then I would say “I understand your problem but nothing is occurring to me”. Sometimes we would wait a bit longer, other times I would have to talk about something else until a clear answer arose in its own way.
A key part of this method of interviewing is to be able to go for contact with the real person. I found I had that ability with all but one participant – and that person had so many trips on me I could never keep them in one place long enough to challenge or contact them. Whenever I felt critical of a participant I would work on myself until I saw that they were doing their best. This did not usually take very long. Once I knew they were doing their best then I could help them to improve that without any loss of contact or love. Here is a very good question to ask yourself when you are in difficulty with a participant “Is this person doing their best? If so, what can I do to improve it?”
Overall I found that my abilities to love others, to contact others, to remain in touch with reality and to surrender to whatever occurred were all extended, stretched and developed. This is what I gained from the Intensive. Since the Intensive I have also been aware of the desire of my ego to be fed and to have praise and adulation from others. I have resisted it pretty well, but it is like a very hungry child wanting to be fed most of the time – especially when people start talking about the Intensive. I am doing my best to tread along a tight-rope which acknowledges myself for what I have been able to do without feeding my ego. And a large part of the resolution of this is to continue to acknowledge that it was God that made and delivered the lectures, it was God who interviewed and guided the participants, and my real achievement was in allowing God to act through me. This was exactly what I intended, it is what I set out to do and it is what I meditated and prayed for many times each day. The best days were those when I surrendered the most – which were the days I meditated and prayed for guidance the most.
The people who stretched me the most were the most difficult. I knew who they were before the Intensive and thought about not allowing them to participate. Had I excluded the difficult participants then
(a) the group would have been really easy
(b) I would not have made any profit on the enterprise as a whole
(c) I would not have been stretched anywhere near as much.
I recommend that when you start running long Intensives you do not allow difficult people onto the group. You will be stretched enough just by the process and length of the group. Only take on wacky people when you are confident you can handle them.
For me the reason why people are difficult is because I was afraid that they would have psychotic episode, or lose their contact with reality or something equivalent. Three of the people involved did seriously lose touch with reality at certain times, and in two cases I had to work quite hard to bring them back. The key to bringing them back was my contact with them. I had to have a very high level of trust with them so that they would trust me even when they were being paranoid or deluded or out of touch – they knew that I had their best interests at heart. This is key and not something that can be established quickly or easily. I also found it very helpful to know how to ground people and how to use acu-pressure to bring them back down into their body.
I do not find it hard to confront people. This is a real gift for an Enlightenment Master because it is usually essential for everyone to be confronted on a long Intensive. – usually in a face to face interview. I have learned that it is part of my role to allow participants to hate me. Indeed if I do my job correctly then it is inevitable that their mind will hate me – if it’s all sweetness and light all the time then I have failed the person (by not confronting them hard enough – being too nice about it). There was a short time when I eased back from confronting one of the participants because I felt that he was in real danger of losing touch with reality and I needed to maintain my contact and trust with him. As soon as he seemed stable again I did confront him, and it did indeed send him off into unreality land again, so I felt my previous judgement had been a good one. Basically this is working within each individual’s abilities – their ability to bear facing stuff, their ability to contact me, their ability to distinguish reality from some very strong trip they are running and so on.
I was often profoundly moved by people, especially when someone was being very real about some huge pain or trauma in their life. I often cried whilst sitting in the chair. I was also moved to tears by many of the direct experiences that happened. I did not mind if people saw me crying. During the lectures I often allowed myself to be silly or angry or upset. I wanted to allow myself to cry during a lecture, but it never happened – either because it wasn’t right or because I was still hanging onto a level of control. Quite often in my breaks I would let myself fall apart completely. I would go under the duvet and just sob and howl with the pain I picked up from others. I often found myself in a very deep emotional place during these episodes – but nowhere I had not been many times before and felt quite OK about. I actually felt as open emotionally as anyone in the group – so I had no difficulty in keeping my heart open to them.
Golden Rule for all Masters: Do it now. Never delay confronting participants.”
This basically says it all.
5.2 Particular cases
Next I want to address the issue of how to handle certain types of participant. Clearly everyone has their own unique trip. But there are certain patterns that I have noticed over the years that I would like to pass on so you can work out your own strategies for handling them sooner.
Ungrounded people:
The most common reason for a participant going weird is that they are contemplating an idea rather than reality. And on long Intensives people get into this and will go weird within a few hours. You have to ask them what it is exactly that they are putting their attention on – and it has to be part of the current, here and now, reality. The most common error in this area is for people to have something powerful come up in their contemplation (e.g. I am oceanic love) and to then set out to experience that idea that came up.
The next most common reason is that the person is holding back from saying something important – often about the Master or about other participants. People go especially weird when they fall in love (with Master, monitor or participant). They also go weird when they become paranoid (about anyone but especially about the Master). Here a head on confrontation will usually make things worse (which is a good sign that paranoia or romantic love is at work). What you have to do is build on whatever level of trust you have with the person and encourage them to check out the reality of whatever it is they are not saying. If you know someone is prone to paranoia start this contract with them at the opening interview and keep referring to it so that if/when things get bad you have a basis on which to talk about it.
Rebels:
Everyone has unresolved power trips and most people will project these onto the Master (or monitor) at some time – especially if the Master is correctly confronting people. As the Master you just have to bear this – do not try to avoid it or duck it. Allow people to dislike and hate you and think you are a fascist and so on.
However what you do not tolerate, not for an instant, is people wilfully breaking rules. If you consider that someone is wilfully breaking rules you must confront them with their behaviour and threaten them with being sent home. And do this fast – do not wait for your courage to grow – it only gets harder the longer you wait. If you think someone is unconsciously breaking rules or being rebellious then start by pointing out their behaviour. The classic is being late for the start of the dyad. You just start to notice that it is always the same person who is last in the room or who needs to have their partner changed. Once you have pointed out the problem and ensured that they are conscious of their behaviour, then treat them the same as someone wilfully breaking rules.
Over Wanting:
If you have screened out people who take long Intensives just to have an experience then you will have eliminated the worst of these – but the chances are that you’ll still have people suffering from this. They will be so desperate for an experience that they will be forcing, or at least trying to force, the issue. They will exaggerate emotional distress, they will be ever vigilant “in case this is an experience” – and it is in this very vigilance that they keep themselves away from the Truth. You have to help them to relax, to trust that things will turn out best if they give up. Over wanting does reside in the ego mind – but then so does everything else, so pointing this out does not usually help much.
Another version of this issue is trying to do everything perfectly. That is the individual’s way of forcing the issue. They take you at your word and do the technique perfectly every time. They check that they only communicate what arises as a result of their contemplation and they are monitoring their state continuously. This is a hard one to correct. I have actually told people stuck in this to stop doing the technique and to just free associate and let things go wrong. In one case (out of four with whom I have tried this strategy) it worked a treat. (The other three are still stuck in it and have yet to find a way out!).
Not intending:
I remember very clearly looking at the group on the six week and noticing that there was one person who, although going through the motions of the technique, was just not getting anywhere. As I left my attention on her it became clear that she just was not intending to experience the Truth. So at our next interview I shared this perception (trip) with her. She was shocked but acknowledged that it was probably true. I told her to contemplate what it was that did not want the Truth. Within two dyads she was in a major crisis. She was desperate to protect her real self and was terrified at the prospect of having to communicate herself to others, and especially to me. She did not get through the crisis, had she done so I expect she would have had an experience; it was that serious. This is one version of the not-intending trip. It is a difficult trip to spot because the person will be going through the motions and will say all the right words – but if you put your attention on them you’ll see that there is something missing – and it’s intention.
By the way I have found it helps people enormously to differentiate between desire/wanting and intention. Wanting is a feeling that comes and goes. Intention is a decision that, once made, can continue through all sorts of states. There is also a good story about Master Dogen and his “will to Truth” which saw him through every possible misconception and mistake, that drives this point home.
Non-communicators
There are some people who just do not get that communicating what comes up means everything about what comes up – including the feelings and significance of what occurred in their consciousness. These may be very shy (or, in one case, very arrogant) people who have become very private by habit. You’ll spot them easily enough. It’s a good idea to have a good example to confront them with in an interview. For example “When you said you were having thoughts about your girlfriend you should include the content of the thoughts and what you felt about them and so on” – in this particular case the person was not letting on that his girlfriend had recently died!
There are also people who object in principle to using words to describe their inner state. This is a very trendy “new age” attitude that traps a surprising number of people. It is correct that words cannot reproduce the inner state, they can only point to it. It is also true that any communication to another will be understood only partially. However point out, as strongly and often as possible, that even partial communication is better than no communication and that it is precisely the communication that enables Intensives to achieve in days what takes the same number of years in traditional silent processes.
Non-contemplators:
These are also very easy to spot. The standard instruction to give them is to “only communicate what arises in your contemplation”. The trouble is that they are in the difficulty they are in precisely because they do not have that level of awareness. Once they start talking it just takes them over and off they go. The best way I have found to help these people is to tell them to make a clean break between contemplating and communicating. A lot of them blur the distinction and that’s how they lose awareness. Making the clean break before they start communicating helps them to break the communication once it is complete. I also go and stand and watch people to remind them to do this – it helps.
5.3 Mid-wifery
I find this a difficult section to write. The cause of the difficulty is that I do not know whether a trip of mine is involved in my judgement that this is a critical part of Mastering Long Intensives. I do know that engaging with people and sharing moments of Truth together is an important motivation for me. Indeed after I had ceased running Intensives this is what I missed the most. I also know that Satya was a successful master of long Intensives and did not engage in the level of midwifery that I am going to recommend here. So you will need to judge for yourself the degree to which you want too become involved with participants and help them at a critical stage of their realisation.
One of the reasons why I decided to set out to help people who are having an experience, but not realising it, or close to, but not engaging with it, was that I “missed” a significant number of my own experiences. Indeed there was one time I went to Satya to thank her for running the Intensive – and unusually she asked me whether that was all I wanted to say. At that time her normal response to all statements was “thank you” – nothing else. The next day I twigged that I had gone to her when I was having an experience – and when I told her this she recognised it as well – but we both missed it in the original interaction. Another reason was that after the powerful kundalini release I experienced in 1982 I found that whenever anyone in the room had an experience I just knew – for absolute certain – that this was the case – and wanted to act on that knowledge. That ability slowly wore off from 1990 onwards, but I find I am still always attracted to people around the time that they have an experience.
Being a mid-wife to someone else’s experience means that you are willing to assist in the ‘birth’ of whatever is there. And to do this you have to be completely open to whatever is there. Not only open, but also willing to be in contact with the person in their experience – which actually means being in contact with the Divine. For most people this means being willing to face anything – because being in contact with the Divine will bring to the surface anything that you are unwilling to face. Ever since the six week in 1982 my prayer when I start meditating has been “God give me the strength to face whatever I have to face in order to be able to serve you and others more completely”. This is what it takes.
So what do you actually do? Well you start by making contact with the person – as deep a contact as you can. I don’t know how to describe this in any other terms. It is a complete acceptance of the other and whatever they are going through. Then, once that contact is in place, you invite them to tell you what is happening. Some people will just go straight there and all you have to do is receive them. But they are unusual. Most people are shy and embarrassed. These people are helped if you ask them to recount the sequence of what happened. They then tell you a long story about this happened, then they realised this and then that and then .. whoops, there they are – beaming at you as the Divine presence itself. At this point I usually cry. And in my confusion say something like “yes, that is it. Now contact that again”.
Again a few people can do this straight away. But most cannot. Most people try to recreate the experience, or try to force it in some way. So I tell them to just put their attention on it and be open to having more. Most times they close their eyes at this point. As they do so I gently say “don’t force it, just surrender to it, just allow whatever arises to arise”. This works for almost everyone – though they may have to go through a few contemplation sequences with something other than the experience coming up. But quite soon they are able to go back into the experience. At this point I say “OK, next time you go there just be open to even more, just surrender a bit more”. By now the person feels completely seen and accepted and can follow the instruction well. And by this point I am also beaming and crying – I may even have been carried into the experience itself by their presence.
What I let them know is that I see them in the experience state. I say something simple like “yes that’s it” or “thank you for letting me see the real you”. This is the point at which I have made the most profound contact with other human beings ever in my life. And they know that I have seen them in that way – and there is a bond between us forever. Incidentally I also know that I have been seen by them in that state. I also then instruct the person to present the experience to their next few dyad partners, for as long as it is available to them.
5.4 Recognising Experiences
In what I wrote above about facilitating experiences there is an implicit assumption that you will be able to identify, unambiguously, whether a participant is having an experience or not. This is not always the case.
The title of the EI Master’s Training Manual is “The Transmission of the Truth”. I think this is the right title and I think all EI Masters need to take it very seriously. People can, and do, have all sorts of wild, weird and wonderful experiences during an Intensive, particularly during long Intensives – but they are not all direct experiences of the Absolute. I regard it as critical that I enable people to distinguish experiences of the Absolute from other experiences. And the only way of doing this for certain is to “get” the other person’s experience in the way that I described in the mid-wifery section. There are no are externally observable indicators that are proof of an experience. And participants are often very poor judges of whether something is direct as well.
Participants are poor judges of direct experiences because during the moment of the experience itself the ego, the part of the mind that makes judgements, is absent. So no one is ever in a state of direct experience and evaluating as being that. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves quite badly. Also participants, like Masters and monitors, can be fooled by phenomena and changes of state that take place and are not associated with a direct experience.
An individual can have a profound change of state without having a direct experience. People experience these shifts in everyday life and in therapy contexts. They are times when the individual’s energy is released for some reason. This type of release and change of state does happen with a direct experience – but it can also happen with a dis-identification, with a sudden insight or because the individual finally lets go of something that they were hanging on to.
People can also have energy rushes in their body, a flushed face, feelings of love and bliss and a stream of new understandings – all without having an direct experience. All these phenomena are often present when a direct experience occurs – but they can also occur without the directness. And direct experiences can, and do, happen without any of these phenomena.
One trap that I have observed people fall into is that they have a genuine experience of the Absolute – but what they think was the experience, or what they remember, was the deep contact with another person or a feeling of rapture, bliss or love. By making this wrong association they are then misled in the future. The next time they experience a bliss state or deep contact they think they are having another direct experience. If you take your role in “The Transmission of the Truth” seriously then you need to help people make these distinctions – especially if they want to run or be on the staff of Intensives.
I find it a struggle to deal with this issue when I am fairly confident that someone has not had an experience – but they think that they have. The problem is that I can be certain when I get an experience that someone has had one – but I can never be that certain that they have not had one. Perhaps they did have a small encounter with the Truth and they are afraid to show it (for fear of being judged), or they have some trip running on me that closes them down. If people ask me then I tell them what I think – but I have noticed that the people in this ambiguous category rarely ask – and I think that they want to hang onto their illusion more than they want truth or Truth.
Whilst it is important to distinguish the Absolute from other experiences, this should not be overdone. Having a direct experience does not make someone a better or more advanced individual than someone who has not had such an experience. (I find this a helpful thing to emphasise at the end of Intensives.) Distinguishing the Truth is important for the Truth’s sake. How an individual makes use of whatever they have experienced on an Intensive is down to them and how they choose to lead their life. I remember one participant who was profoundly moved by a story that I read out in a lecture. She took it to heart to such a degree that the message in that story effectively changed her life. In contrast I have seen other people have very profound experiences and make no observable change whatsoever in their life or their relationships. So although having a direct experience can be a profound and life changing experience, it is not necessarily so – and nor is it the only source of transformative experiences.
I realise that I have not yet said anywhere what you can do to “spot” experiences. Probably the most important thing is to keep your attention on the group all the time. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. The most common error that Master’s make in this respect is to put a disproportionate amount of energy onto the participants who are in difficulties, resisting the process or causing the Master to react – i.e. the difficult participants. Sometimes this can go the other way and the Master’s attention is captured by one or more people in the room presenting direct experiences. These ways of having one’s attention captured are normal – but as soon as you can bring yourself back to watching the whole group.
Sometimes the shape of a room and the number of participants requires there to be two rows – with the Master effectively sitting in line with the space between the rows. I much prefer having one row and will strive hard to achieve this (even limiting the number of participants on occasion). The reason is that it is far easier to see the whole group when they are in one row with you looking down the middle of it. If they are in two rows then at any time you will be looking at the backs of half the group. When there is just one row you can immediately see the people who are currently withdrawn from the group – they will be sitting in such a way that they are pulled back from the line. The over eager ones will be leaning into the space between the pairs. These are obvious observations – and also powerful indicators. I make a point of watching out for people who have withdrawn. I also make a point of tracking people who are quiet and who tend to “disappear into the woodwork” in any group.
What I notice is that if I have my attention on the whole group then, when someone has a direct experience, my attention immediately flips to them. It is not a conscious decision on my part – it is something I notice has happened. And when my attention is pulled in this way I leave it there for a while – sometimes my attention is also pulled by people who are about to break the trip laying rule!
Of all the indicators that a direct experience has happened there are two that I value most. The first is this attraction of my attention. The second is a resonance, a stirring within myself. It is hard to describe this precisely. When the experience is very powerful I will spontaneously start crying. When it is modest I start grinning and feel a sense of elation and gratitude. And when it is just a small experience I am moved to want to go and find out more.
Of the other indicators the one that I find most reliable is the flush that appears in almost everyone’s face. This is certainly not foolproof – people can get flushed with embarrassment and sexual excitement – but it is involuntary and therefore hard to fake.
The indicator that I find the least reliable is the words that people use. Many times people will say the words that I know are an expression of Truth – and there is absolutely no evidence of anything direct. And other times people say the weirdest things as a result of their experience. So I often ignore the words – except in the process of mid-wifery when using their own words can help the person feel acknowledged and understood. The other thing to emphasise is that experiences can happen at any time on a long EI. My early two week Intensives did not have a higher proportion of participants gaining experiences, typically around 30%, but those people often had one early on and one or two more later. My more recent long Intensives have had a much higher proportion of people gaining experiences – over 50% in 1994, 1996 and 2006 – with experiences on almost every day (except day 1).
Next.
A Master's Path 