A couple of weeks after writing to David Boadella I set off to participate in a two week long Enlightenment Intensive. I was apprehensive because my back was very weak and often a source of pain; I didn’t know how I would cope with sitting for hours each. I also had very little idea of how it would be being in such a structure for so long. At the initial interview with the Master, a woman called Satya, I gained permission to rest my back during the walking, working and meal periods. I also settled that I would work on “What is another?” i.e. aim to experience directly another person.
The venue for the group was a sanyassin community who had taken over an old manor house and were in the process of renovating the walled garden and orchard. It was a grand setting. The first three days of the group were a normal Intensive with about 30 participants. But at the end of day 3, the people there for 3 days left, leaving 15 of us to face each other for the remaining 11 days. The schedule became a little lighter, we went to bed at 10.30 instead of 11.15, but still had to be ready for the first exercise by 6am.
The process on a long Intensive is exactly the same as for a three day. For most people the first day and a half of any Intensive are uncomfortable. There is a change in sleeping pattern, change in diet and the removal of all the devices that we use to comfort and distract ourselves. Once this initial adjustment is over then the remainder of the Intensive is much easier. I discovered that taking a longer Intensive gives a much greater payoff, in terms if insights and experiences, for the same level of initial discomfort.
No matter what question one works on the process of an Intensive involves confronting oneself: all the barriers between me and a direct experience are within myself. Facing myself for 16 hours a day for 14 days is a profound growth experience. Some issues which arise early on and seem to be set aside, return with more bite days later. There is no escape because it is all within myself. Although initially the rules of an Intensive may seem intrusive, after a few days I, like everyone else, realised that they gave me complete freedom to devote myself single mindedly to seeking an enlightenment experience.
One of the most powerful insights I had occurred on day 11. It summarised a great deal of the material that had been surfacing in the preceding days. I had been railing against how my mother belittled and controlled my granddad and step father and as I paused I realised that my perception of everyone was completely conditioned by the figures in my childhood family. It was as if I was looking at the world through a screen in which there were just a few holes – and any person I met or related to had to fit into one of these holes. There was one for my mother, one for my grandfather, one for my sister, one for my step father, one for my half brother and so on. No wonder I had no idea what other people were – they could only be ‘seen’ in one of half a dozen roles.
This image of seeing other people through the screen of my childhood reinforced the theme that had been becoming more apparent as the Intensive progressed. The theme was that I had spent my life up to this point trying to get my childish needs met by other people. As a result of these insights I vowed that from now on I was going to do my best to remove my childish demands from my relationships. Indeed this was a key part of completing a Creative Law to have an experience; I only deserved to have an experience of what another is if I could be truly open to them – which required me to remove my demands.
In one strong image I was a pilgrim walking along a straight path on a high plateau in South America. I had a staff and wore brown robes. I experienced great calm and contentment in this image and knew I was going home. I felt that the Intensive was my pilgrimage.
On day 13 I had a powerful dream about breaking out of an automated prison. I used my knowledge of electronics to defeat the system keeping us all locked up. As soon as I had escaped I broke back into the prison in order to help other prisoners to escape. At the time I dismissed this aspect of the dream, but it was prophetic.
I spent most of that morning in a high state, loving everything and everyone. Then, after lunch, Satya gave a lecture about the experience of a Dutchman during World War 2. As a child he had been playing in the school yard when a German motorcycle and sidecar drove into the playground. He was hiding behind a dustbin as part of a game and witnessed the soldiers systematically machine gun down all the other children in the school yard – and then drive off. That story really got to me. I had been working on another under the assumption that underneath everything others are loving beings. I blew my top and yelled “I don’t want to know what another is – they’re full of shit and hatred. I’ve sat here for 12 days looking for the good and haven’t found any. All I’ve got is a load of shite!” Then I broke down and sobbed with the despair of giving up my belief that there was good in another. I realised that I didn’t want to live in a world where there was not good and love in everyone – I was firmly attached to the idea! The bell went and my partner started to tell me about one of his masochistic fantasies and how much despair he was in. I really heard him, I heard the full horror and agony he was in – and realised that my idea that everyone was good had stopped me hearing him before. I looked at him and knew who he was. I directly experienced who he was and started sobbing again.
Over dinner I saw that the glory was that another could carry on through all the suffering. People could go on and forgive and love. And I knew that I knew the truth of what another was – and that until Satya’s story my belief in the goodness had been in the way. It wasn’t that my belief was wrong – it was just that it was a belief and not me knowing directly the truth of another. I realised that all ideas and beliefs were obstacles to direct experience – and as an academic I had spent my life collecting and peddling ideas and beliefs!
I also realised that, for the first time since I had arrived at the venue, I could go for a walk during the walking period. My back was miraculously better. The walk outside as the sun was going down was stunningly beautiful and I spent the rest of the day blissed out and feeling blessed.
The next day my back was aching and in trouble again, but I was still in a very high state. I made more connections with how I held other people away by relating to them as if they were members of my childhood family. I also saw how important it was to really respect other people’s process, no matter how strange or convoluted it seemed to me.
At the end of the Intensive I was surprised at how many of the other participants wanted to come and talk to me. I had presumed that my various confessions and displays of rage and violence would have made people avoid me; the opposite seemed to be the case. Indeed, one participant who had known Eva as an encounter group leader came up to me in a state of awe. “Are you really living with Eva Levkowicz?” he asked. I assured him I was and asked why he was surprised. He shook his head and explained that Eva had a formidable reputation in encounter groups for ‘confronting the shit out of everyone’.
The final surprise came on the way home. A friend gave me and another participant a lift in their car. We stopped at a motorway services for petrol and a cup of tea. As we entered the service station we were horrified at what we saw. The pain, despair and suffering of almost everyone there was plainly written on their faces. It was shocking. We sat in a corner and talked about what we saw – and realised that we had no idea of how open we had become during the Intensive. And because we were all letting go pain and suffering most of the time we had become used to seeing open stress-free faces. To be suddenly confronted by so much obvious pain and suffering was really shocking. I knew that I closed down as a result of what I was seeing, it was too awful witness.
I now understand that one of the disadvantages of many of the personal growth groups is that during the group participants achieve a state of awareness that is not sustainable – when confronted with the level of pain, suffering and discord in the world they shut down again. However the awareness gained whilst in the very open state, and indeed the enlightenment experiences themselves, do show everyone what is possible. For me this was invaluable; it not only showed me what was possible but also directed my attention to the issues I needed to address in order to have more openness in my life.
By the time I returned home Eva was packing up to travel to the centre I had just left. She had elected to participate in the Intensive Master’s Training course that started three days after the two-week Intensive finished. Eva was particularly keen to see Charles Berner who had run the first Intensive she took six years earlier – and he was scheduled to be at the training. So, after a quick ‘hello – goodbye’ I found myself at home on my own. Which was just what I needed in order to digest all that had been uncovered by the Intensive. The most significant development for me was that I realised that I had been holding back on a commitment to Eva because my previous relationships had turned out so awfully – despite my sincere commitment. Looking at the issue I let go more of the sadness and jealousy that I had felt. My wise man also gave me advice about this: You are afraid of being open and vulnerable. Your fear of being open is what leads you to push Eva away, especially when you are arguing together. What has been happening to you is great, now you need to recognise, and come to terms with, your fear. Although this was good general advice it didn’t provide help for how to face my fear of being vulnerable. I could clearly see that it was the fear of being hurt again that was holding me back . I didn’t want this to continue and resolved to let Eva know that I wanted a committed relationship with her as soon as she returned from the training.
It wasn’t quite that easy. Despite my wise man’s advice when Eva returned we had some arguments as well as some vulnerabilities to share with each other and some misunderstandings to resolve. But we found our way through. We were both scared to make a new commitment – this was the third major relationship for both of us. But after a couple of all night sessions we broke through to a new level. One issue that caught us by surprise was that during the two week Intensive I had become more open and loving, and one consequence of this was that Eva had to make an equivalent step – which she did through our processes together. I wrote in my journal: I am overwhelmed by the joy of having what I want – a lovely woman who wants to be with me – a woman who wants to grow as much as I do and who is willing to share her journey with me.
With hindsight I can also see that this was the point at which the intense rows between Eva and I largely ceased. There were two core reasons for this. The first that I was starting to make headway in withdrawing my childhood projections, so I was casting Eva as my mother less frequently. The other was that my commitment to our relationship gave Eva a sense of security that enabled her to withdraw her paranoid projections. It was a relief to both of us that finally we were starting to forge a loving relationship.
This was also the time when a significant part of the journey together was just about to start, running Enlightenment Intensives. Eva had successfully completed the training to be an ‘Enlightenment Master’ and was planning to run her first Intensive in December. She returned from the training course with two large manuals that explained everything about the Intensive and the processes involved. I avidly read them both and quizzed Eva on many of the details. I was struck by the title to the manuals: “The transmission of Truth”. I had read about enlightenment and the need for teachers to retain a contact with a lineage or some aspect of the Divine. Here was a manual describing it all in very simple terms. The crux of the transmission was establishing exactly what a direct experience of the Divine was. I was particularly interested in what determined whether someone was having ‘an enlightenment experience’ or just some good feelings coupled to an insight. The manual stressed two key issues. First in an enlightenment experience the person ‘knows’ in a different way. They do not know through any of their senses; it is not a matter of thinking, feeling, sensing or intuiting something. So, if someone ‘saw the Divine’ or ‘heard the voice of God’ or ‘intuited the rightness of life’ they were not having a direct experience – it was through a sense and therefore indirect. Second in this new way of knowing there is no separation between the person ‘knowing’ and what is known. In this sense calling something an enlightenment experience is wrong because in the moment of realisation there is no individual experiencing something separate from themselves – the individual is one with what they have their attention on. This all made sense to me in the context of the two experiences that had so affected me.
In my journal I noted that Eva and I talked endlessly about Intensives – and sometimes had arguments about her first Intensive. In retrospect I can see that I was arguing with Eva about things because I really wanted to run an Intensive myself – but she was the one who had been trained and would be responsible. At the time I did not see or understand this. Nevertheless, I put all my energy into making Eva’s first Intensive a success. I was the monitor and the cook – which required me to prepare quite a lot of the food ahead of time. And it all worked. There were 10 participants and several of them had direct experiences of the truth. Eva was very nervous mastering the Intensive and did not sleep much for the whole of the three days – but afterwards she felt as high as a kite and loved it. Indeed, she immediately started to plan her second Intensive for the following March – with changes to the way we used the house and the schedule we used.
Both the preparation for and execution of this second Intensive proceeded far more smoothly than before. We were working far better as a team and I accepted that Eva was the Master and that she needed to make all the decisions about how the group should be run, what food should be served and so on. At the last minute one of the 10 participants cancelled, so we had an odd number – which as a problem for all the pair-based communication exercises. So, in addition to being the monitor and cook I also went into the structure quite frequently to make the numbers even so everyone had a partner. It turned out to suit me enormously. I loved serving the group and also having some time to go inwards and find out how I was. By the end of the group I was very open. I started to see that serving other people on an Intensive was an ideal way for me to put into practice being ‘Love’. A short time later I visited my wise man to ask what was happening to me and whether I did indeed have any purpose in life. His response was fulsome (as well as intensely embarrassing to me – to the point where I initially left this out of an earlier draft):
“The most wonderful thing that has been happening to you is that you have been seeing the light in others as well as their suffering – and it is tough seeing the world as it really is. You have set your sights on being more enlightened and you will find each step along the path hard. You have accumulated wisdom from many lifetimes and have found a way to connect to it (me) to help you in this life. It is right that your aim is to wake up. Because you are an evolved soul others will be attracted to you. You have clear evidence of your abilities and of the skills you have learned. You have worked hard on yourself with sincerity – and you are reaping the rewards. You will become a teacher of cosmic wisdom. You are following your heart – as I instructed you to do a year ago – and so anything that you do will turn out OK.”
Not long after Eva’s Intensive I received a letter from Satya inviting me to the first ever six week Enlightenment Intensive. She was only inviting people who had successfully completed a two week; so I qualified. I was immediately excited. As soon as she heard about it Eva encouraged me to accept and to go – she said it was obvious I should do it, and I trusted her intuition on this completely. But there were logistic problems. I was planning a second three week retreat in May and I already had a pile of University work stacked up. If I went away for a further 6 weeks I would really have to work like an idiot beforehand. I was also nervous about being away from Eva for so long. After weighing up all the issues I wrote saying I wanted to participate and included a deposit for the group – it was scheduled to start in September.
My retreat in May was very productive. Eva drove me to the same caravan as last year and left a day and a half later. I missed her going a lot more this time. The next night I had a powerful dream about lust, being teased and inflicting pain on women. It was clear that I was not yet done with the killer in me who wanted to inflict violence sexually. After waking I meditated and remembered very clearly arriving at a place where I could have killed Laura for real. I wanted to smash her innocent teasing face to pulp. As the meditation continued I was plagued by questions: How can I deal with this? How can I accept this as part of myself?
Later in the day I became aware of the hurt beneath the killer – the incredible hurt of having my sexuality rejected, of being put down and not accepted by women, especially my mother. I allowed myself to feel the utter despair, but I wasn’t sure that I was making much headway accepting my killer shadow. The next day I used one of my sub-personality fantasy journeys to make contact with him. At first I thought the fantasy was not working – then I saw him quite clearly. He was an arrogant, sneering, malevolent version of myself. He wanted me to recognise him. He wanted to be allowed to kill insects and animals. I struggled with revulsion knowing that this was what I had to deal with. We completed a negotiation in which I agreed to give him space to express his rage, hurt and malevolence – but outlawed any killing. In return he said he could give me my personal power untainted by his malevolence – which is what other people are afraid of in me. He also told me that as a first step in giving him expression I was to paint a picture of him killing a woman with a sword as a prick and a trident fork at her throat. I agreed to do it even though I expected to hate it.
After the negotiation with my killer shadow I felt a level of relief. Over the next two days I started to look, as objectively as I could, at how I had behaved towards women. I felt ashamed. I could clearly see the killer at work – especially in relation to Laura. I cried and cried, I was so sorry for having behaved so badly. I realised that I was actually really owning this aspect of myself. It was awful and at the same time a relief. By really seeing how badly I had behaved I could repent and be aware enough to not do the same again. I also saw that I needed to claim my sexuality as mine and not invest it in a woman as I had with Laura (in the sense that I believed I could only be sexually satisfied by her). I also wrote another long letter of apology to Laura, explaining what I had discovered about myself.
Most of the rest of the time on retreat was spent meditating and accepting the ‘holy’ part of myself that loved participating in Enlightenment Intensives, loved serving others and ‘being Love’. Quite a lot of my meditation and reflections whilst walking were working out what ‘holy’ actually meant to me. I was recognising at a deeper level that the expansion of my awareness was in both positive and negative directions.
I also had another session of talking to my shadow, mostly exploring the hurt that he felt so deeply. I cried a lot about the hurt he expressed, it went on and on. Indeed it became obvious that his rage and desire to inflict hurt was exactly matched by the hurt he felt, which was largely unexpressed. By the end of the session I felt another level of acceptance towards my shadow. In our final exchange he reminded me of the need to express hurt and to let it go. He also wanted me to pay as much attention to him as to my ‘holy’ self and warned that if ever I forgot him I would regret it. The end result was another painting reflecting anew acceptance of these two parts of myself. After my retreat I spent most of June struggling with hay fever and work at the University. In late July Eva went to a Greek Island, Skyros, to run groups and took her children with her. It was September before we were back together again, and then only for a short while before I left for the six-week Intensive in California. During our time together I recognised that up to that point I had been holding back sexually, I was not letting go because I was afraid that my raw male sexuality would be rejected. All the women I had been with wanted me to be the equivalent of a ‘good boy’. With Eva I was feeling overwhelming desire and wanted to really let go and share with her my raw masculine lust and aggressiveness. To my surprise she loved it! I saw us engaging with this new level of sexuality as evidence that I had genuinely dealt with the key aspects of my sexual shadow.
Next.
A Master's Path 