6. Your Own Process

I have realised that Mastering Intensives is an extremely powerful growth path. It is actually more powerful than participating in Intensives because you have to act as the Master – as the participant you are largely passive and can let your trips and stuff hang out. As the Master you have to be master of your trips – all of them. I found that I have the capacity to put things aside and to continue anyway. This is extremely useful because I can do it even when powerfully triggered by a participant. So I pay the price at the end of Intensives when all the stuff I have put aside comes back wanting to be dealt with – all at once.

So what will get to you are the people who press your buttons – whatever and wherever they are. People may challenge your authority, they may hate you, they may not do what you ask or tell them to do, they may have crazy trips on you – whatever it is you have to go through your reactions to it all and see the real person who is putting out this stuff. You have to be able to relate to the real them from the real you. In short you have to love them (love in the non-romantic sense). The thing that helped me the most with this on the six week was the recognition that everyone was doing their best. Once I had that perspective then it was easy to drop my trips and reactions and just get on with helping them to participate a bit better.

Falling in love with participants is also a hazard. I do it regularly – in the romantic sense. It is just that they are so stunningly beautiful when they are so open and experiencing the Truth and thinking I am so wonderful! But beware it is a serious trap. You need to have an extremely good core relationship yourself – one in which there is no doubt or witholds. In fact you need a relationship that enables you to fall in love with other people and not have to do anything about it because you are so in love and happy with your existing partner. So pay attention to your own relationship before running a long Intensive – or watch out! (Charles Berner met and fell in love with his fourth wife on the three week Intensive he did!)

You will also be powerfully moved by what others are going through. You will have experienced some of this on three day Intensives. It gets to be a lot more powerful on long Intensives – both because participants run into deeper trips and also because you will be in a more open and vulnerable space. This happens because you are carried along by the group in terms of contact and openness. You must have dealt with all your own core issues – otherwise there will be a serious limit on your ability to be open. It also helps if you have had deep direct experiences yourself – because then you can be open when it counts the most, when receiving a participant’s experience. But this openness will also make you vulnerable. Not vulnerable in a victim sense, just vulnerable to seeing the reality of others suffering and wanting to relieve it and help them bear it. Earlier I referred to the fact that I would often allow myself to freak out in the breaks – putting myself under a duvet and just sobbing and howling with the pain I had witnessed and which resonated within me. I think it is a strength to be able to let go like this – it also keeps one open. I also think it is my way of staying in touch with the group as they go deeper.

What puts me through the mill is my sincere desire to help all these people to become enlightened. If you run long Intensives I am confident that you will be in the same trip.  And you know that to do your best for people you have to tolerate anything and be able to contact the real person from the real you. It is staying in a real love space in the face of great duress and suffering. That’s where you will grow.

Reading back over my own journals I realise that I have had to face some very significant trips of my own whilst mastering a long Intensive. This isn’t recommended – it is much easier to deal with a trip in other contexts, but if you are like me you may have to be forced into it by the process of mastering. Early on, whilst running three days, I had to face down my desire to be nice to people, to help them feel good about themselves and me. I ran two EIs with no experiences at all before I spotted this trip and dealt with it. On one long EI I was plagued by doubt. Doubt that I could do it, doubt I knew anything about Truth, doubt that anyone could have an experience and so on. I made headway by starting to surrender – and was able to put enough of the trip aside to carry on being the Master.

The two biggest trips I have had to face whilst mastering long Intensives were being over-identified with doing things, and arrogance. In my life I have been strongly identified with doing things well, with being successful, with achieving what I want and so on. I carried these traits into the long EI context – and had it beaten out of me. I had to learn over and over again that there is nothing I can DO to get someone else enlightened. I can facilitate their process – but that is all. If you are prone to this trip then watch out – it will be played out as a Master and your doing too much will not serve the participants. And it was this realisation – that I was not serving others but getting in their way – that caused me the most anguish and the greatest impetus to sort myself and my trips out.

Arrogance is a lifelong issue for me. In recent years I have started to experience it subsiding as I  accept my abilities and strengths more honestly – and to myself. It is a paradox, but whilst I was denying my abilities, particularly my intelligence, I was behaving  arrogantly and trying to prove to myself and others that I was bright and able. Accepting these attributes meant that I did not have to go around demonstrating it or proving it all the time – and the arrogant behaviour has subsided. In the context of EIs I had to learn, over and over again, that whilst I might have some insight into other people’s trips and what they needed to do – in detail I was always wrong. I could never ever understand someone else as well as they could come to understand themselves by serious introspection. With good guidance on how to do the technique there is nothing that a person could not discover for themselves far better than anything I could see or suggest.

I have recently rediscovered the significance of the Bodhisattva vow for me. On the first two week I Mastered, in 1985, I read a story from “Zen dawn in the West” by Kapleau. At the end of the story I  read out the Bodhisattva vow – it was part of the story. However as I said words out loud to the group I knew, for certain, that I had made this vow before and that I had to honour it. The key part of the vow was: All beings without number I vow to liberate. At that time it was all I could do to hold myself together, I wanted to just cry with gratitude and love – I am crying now as I type this. I recounted this story to the 2006 group, and explained that part of what I was learning to accept about myself now was the implications of this vow in my life.

It seems to me that I have been seeking to honour this  vow most of my life. It explains my very strong drive to serve others, particularly in seeking greater awareness and Truth. It also explains the need that I identified (as part of my self inspection in 2005/6) that running Intensives had served to fulfil my need to be a spiritual teacher. It might be more accurate to say that running Intensives served to fulfil my vow to liberate others.

Here are the key issues that I think everyone running a long Intensive has to pay attention to:

1. Whenever you are critical of a participant it means that you have been triggered at some level. You need to make use of the criticalness exercise to discover what it is in yourself that you are not accepting. Until you can do this avoid the person you are critical of. But sort the issue as quickly as possible (see next section for the reason why!) The criticalness exercise is described in detail in the Tools section together with examples that I have used in lectures.
2. Always remember that all participants at all times are doing their best. Their best may be  bloody awful and very limited – but that simply tells you something about what state they are in. It is only when you see everyone as doing their best that you will be able to empathise with the real individual.
3. In all your interactions with participants aim to contact, and relate to, the real individual – not the one caught in a trip or seeking your sympathy or approval or whatever – but the one who came on this Intensive to experience the Truth. If you find yourself caught in a participant’s trip then do whatever you need to do to disentangle before you give advice or direction.
4. Remember that “making it all right” for a participant is one of the worst things you can do. You do not have to be unkind or cruel or unfeeling. But you do have to be willing to watch them suffer and to be certain that they are strong enough and have the resources to find their own way out. This is where you as a Master has to override you as a human being; where your desire for this person to experience Truth has to be greater than your desire to reduce their  suffering.
5. Allow people to dislike you, think you are stupid, think you are cruel, think you  are heartless, a fake, a weirdo or whatever. Do not try to protect your image in any way. This is a tough call, especially when you are starting out. But it is really important. People will need to project all sorts of nonsense and trips onto you. As the Master you are an authority figure and everyone I know has stuff to work out with authority.
6. Do not let anything disrupt the routine of the Intensive. Keep to the same schedule. Keep giving the same instructions. Keep the same tone of voice. Keep the room tidy. These provide very clear boundaries and a setting within which people feel safe. If you change stuff they will feel unsafe and will close up – to some degree. So do your best to stick to a well defined routine – even when you feel that everything is falling apart, including yourself.

6.1 My worst Errors

Note added 2024: By far the worst mistake I made was to include zero balancing as part of the six week Intensive I mastered in 1999. For further details see Section 7 and the Appendix on Zero Balancing. In a nutshell it is a gross error to include any physical or energetic therapy with a long Intensive.

Of all the long Intensives I ran there are two that stand out as being poor – especially in comparison to the others. The first of these was in 1986, the other in 2003. The errors I made on each were quite different – and worth recounting in some detail.

In 1986 my core error was to start mastering in an exhausted state. This was a time in my life when I was running  a business, a department at the university and about 6 Intensives a year – as well as managing a garden and four children. I arrived at the Intensive tired and left completely exhausted. Indeed as I walked in through the door at home afterwards I fell over – my body finally collapsed – that is how exhausted I was. My exhaustion meant that I did not have sufficient capacity to handle the participants. This manifested in one person presenting his difficult sexual material in a joking fashion and encouraging the rest of the group to laugh at it – which they did. The end result was that no on in that group felt safe to disclose difficult material.

There were other aspects of the group that caused me difficulties. There were 15 men and three women, and the women were not very feminine. So there was a surfeit of a masculine energy – heavy masculine energy. This meant that it was hard for anyone to be light and open – which also helped keep things closed down. There were a few experiences on this Intensive, but not many, and not particularly deep.

I remember that I became very critical of several members of the group. This was before I became adept at using the criticalness exercise. The best I could do was to take a long run (in their work period) up onto Dartmoor and scream out my criticalness. It helped, but not enough. And nothing could undo my own closure resulting from my exhaustion.

The second group that was not good was  in 2003. The problems here were of a wholly different nature. First it was the first EI that I had run since 1999 – so I had had a four year break and was going straight into a 2-week. Second I wanted to do it from a different place within myself – in fact I wanted to just “be myself”. So I was a lot less formal, claimed a lot less altitude and was a lot more friendly with the participants. Indeed a lot too friendly. I let people off serious trips – by giving them premature and unsolicited reassurance. Also when I did have to confront people there was such a disjunction between my overly friendly style and suddenly this confronting Master that people were shocked – and assumed that I was into a trip of some sort.

But my worst error was that I failed to spot that I had become extremely critical of an EI Master in the group who, in my judgement, was not intending to have a direct experience of the truth. This criticalness blocked my energy from day 9 until I finally woke up to it on the evening of day 12. And the group was stuck for this entire period. It was this experience, more than anything else, that forced me to see that my energy state was a critical factor in the progress in the group. During days 10, 11 and 12 the group was just grinding away and getting nowhere. It was obvious to them and to me that it was stuck.

What happened on the evening of day 12 was that I suddenly saw that I was blocked by my criticalness. I stayed up that night going through processes to discover what it was in myself – and discovered – surprise surprise – that I was running an Intensive and had ceased to want more experiences for myself – exactly what I was critical of in the participating Master. Once I saw and accepted this about myself I felt my own energy release. And blow me but in the first dyad on day 13 someone right in front of me had a direct experience – the group just took off. But it was too late for there to be many deep experiences. The stuckness had caused a significant number of people to give up – and they never re-engaged with the process.

When I reflected on the 2003 group I realised that the lack of formality had actually increased my energetic exchange with the group. Had I been more formal, me being stuck might not have affected things so profoundly. So the two errors compounded each other. I felt a great deal of remorse when I realised the degree to which I had failed people. I also realised that if I wanted to continue to run long EIs then I needed to stay in touch by running few 3-day events.

The other errors that I am ashamed of are the times when I have let people off their trips. I do this by giving them some form of reassurance – when actually what they need is my conviction that they are strong enough to find their own way through. Once I had a clear agreement with two raw food participants that they would start eating cooked food prior to the EI (since I did not permit any special diets). They did not comply with the agreement, I allowed them to participate and spent a good part of the time dealing with their complaints about the food! I should not have allowed them to participate once they had broken their agreement on the diet. Once I also fell in love with a female participant and gave her instructions that were  designed more to impress her than to help her

My wife Eva participated in many of the long Intensives that I mastered. She had some beautiful experiences and it seemed entirely beneficial that she continued to participate. However during the six week Intensive I had to confront her quite powerfully – which was valid as the Master but inappropriate as her husband. It took our relationship 7 years to deal with all the issues raised. So you can get away with it – but having your partner, or even a good friend, participate on a long Intensive  you are running involves a serious risk – namely that you will have to confront a major issue and then deal with the results in the relationship afterwards. My advice is to not risk it.

6.2  Checklists

As a result of my experience in 2003 I ran a  Master’s refresher course for many of the Masters in the UK. As part of that process I wrote the  following check lists for “being a Master” and “being a Monitor”.

Being a Master:

1. Be the Master at all times. This requires you to be able to put your stuff aside and not be caught up in trips of any sort. It also means acting with authority but not being authoritarian.
2. Know the route to the Truth and that everyone can realise it. This is what Charles Berner refers to as certainty. My perspective is that it requires a deeper engagement and personal realisation. You need to know and be able to remember that the most awful participants can (and do) get enlightened.
3. Be able to distinguish insights and other psychic experiences from realisations of Truth. If someone incorrectly acknowledges something as Truth when it isn’t they will usually just stop running EIs. They know, at some level, that they have broken their connection with Truth.
4. Do not ask a monitor (or any other staff member) to do something that you are unwilling or unable to do yourself. This is particularly important in confronting participants and handling crises.
5. Do not delay confronting participants or staff. If you know someone is breaking a rule or not contemplating or somehow not participating properly do not delay beyond the end of a dyad. Some issues are not important enough to intervene in the dyad, but as soon as the dyad is over do what you have to do. Delaying just makes it worse – in every sense.
6. Be in charge of the physical environment – notice how it is and what is going on. By all means delegate, but this does not mean that you lose responsibility.
7. Self inspect whenever you find yourself being intensely critical of a participant or staff member. You are only critical of things in others that reflect an unresolved or unacknowledged part of yourself.
8. Do your best to put your attention on the people who are participating and contemplating well – rather than allow yourself to be drawn towards the trouble makers or difficult participants.
9. Do your best to track how people are doing and if they are not contemplating correctly think out what instruction you think they need. However when it comes to interviewing them, drop your previous analysis and be open to whatever occurs in the contact between you and the participant. (Often it is what you have previously thought out, but be open to something different.)
10. Remember that you cannot take credit for people having direct experiences. It is something between them and the absolute. If you take credit when it works well you are going to have a hard time when no one has an experience!

Being a Monitor

1. Being willing to serve the Master of the Intensive and do it her/his way. This does not mean that you do not discuss things or debate the best way to do something. But if push comes to shove you, the monitor, defer to the Master – and you do it really. This means being able to do something in a way that you may not consider wise or appropriate.
2. Always give positive instructions. As tempting as it might be you should not tell participants what not to do but tell them what they should do. This is really important and the cause of much unnecessary grief between monitors and participants. “You should abide by the rules and put that cigarette out. It would be best if you gave me the rest of the pack until the end of the Intensive.”
3. Never correct an error that you have not yourself witnessed. This means that you do not take someone else’s word for it. If someone reports another participant as breaking a rule or involving them in their communication always ask first “did you break this rule?” or “did you involve X in your communication?” If they deny it then just accept that and watch. The intervention will normally be enough to resolve the issue.
4. When you are tired take a rest. It is better for the Master to be without a monitor than to have a tired monitor. Tired monitors reduce the energy of the group – and you are more likely to make errors.
5. Never say anything that is untrue. You can refuse to answer questions or say “I will discuss this at the end of the Intensive” or “You should ask the Master”. But never concoct something to fob people off – it always comes back and bites you.
6. Always tell the Master any important correction you have given to a participant. This is critical to ensure that you and the Master work together in guiding people towards doing the technique and participating correctly.
7. Attend lectures and listen to how the Master presents the technique. You have to align your interventions with this – and it is powerful if you can refer to things that have been referenced in the lecture(s).
8. Self inspect whenever you find yourself being intensely critical of a participant or staff member. You are only critical of things in others that reflect an unresolved or unacknowledged part of yourself.
9. Be willing to be emotionally engaged with participants, in particular allow yourself to share in suffering when this is appropriate. You aim to maintain a level of formality, but do not behave like a robot. Neither should you intervene uninvited – and never ever offer someone tissues when they have not requested them.

If there are people on the Intensive you really dislike or have negative history with, make these known to the Master and request that other people intervene with those people. Do not pretend.

Next.