Awakening Now

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What happens when the person who taught you the most about awakening is also the one who needed you to stay small?
In this conversation with Nicole Wordlaw, we explore the difference between the awakening we imagine, permanent, painless, almost superhuman, and the one that actually happens, ongoing and fully human. Nicole speaks openly about a cage that formed in her mind long before she met her teacher, and how that same cage was later reflected back to her inside a devoted spiritual relationship. We talk about rest as an unexpected teacher, the quiet work of giving herself permission, and what it means to stop looking for a final arrival.
About the Guest
Nicole Wordlaw is an African American clinical psychologist, longtime meditator in the Buddhist tradition, spirited coach, and the author of Waking Up Alone, Navigating the Narrow Passage Through Master-Slave Narratives. Her training at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley honed her thinking mind. But the wisdom she needed did not come from a book, nor did it come from staying away from the difficult. The wisdom she needed arose from spirited practice, practices that illuminated the quiet, still voice that always sounds like Love. She lives with her two children and partner on the Indigenous lands of the Monacan people in Virginia.
Website: https://www.nicolewordlaw.com/ 
Substack: https://nicolewordlaw.substack.com/ 
Book Waking Up Alone: https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Alone-Navigating-Master-Slave-Narratives/dp/1591813735

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Music by Valdi Sabev. In loving memory and gratitude for the music he shared.

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Websites
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There's a question the voice in your head has never been able to answer. Most of us have never actually asked it.
In this episode, the second part of a live Zoom meeting, I work directly with four people, each caught in a different version of the same voice. Shame that's become an identity. Guilt over other people's feelings. The quiet certainty of not being good enough. An inner critic that still feels completely real even when it's seen clearly. Each time, we ask the voice one simple question, and each time, something in it goes quiet.
These live meetings happen every third Thursday of the month, and everyone is welcome to join. Sign up to my newsletter to receive the link. 
If you want to explore this more deeply, I've put everything together here. You're welcome to subscribe to my email list and be the first to know about the next round of Seeing Through the Separate Self Experience. https://zcmp.eu/1XWa
Music by Valdi Sabev. In loving memory and gratitude for the music he shared.

Support the show
Websites
http://ilonaciunaite.com
http://liberationunleashed.com

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The voice in your head has been talking your whole life. But have you ever actually stopped and asked it who it's talking to?
In this live meeting, we look directly at the voice in the head, not as something to argue with or quiet down, but as something worth seeing clearly. We trace how it turns into the inner judge, why it can be so convincing, and where this pattern actually came from in the first place.
Rather than trying to fix what the voice says, this conversation points somewhere simpler: seeing it for what it is. Partway through, I bring in a question I use often in Deep Looking. Mind, are you at peace? It's simple, and it opens something.
If you've ever felt caught between believing this voice and hating yourself for believing it, I think this one will speak to you.
If you want to explore this more deeply, I've put everything together here. You're welcome to subscribe to my email list and be the first to know about the next round of Seeing Through the Separate Self Experience. https://zcmp.eu/1XWa
Music by Valdi Sabev. In loving memory and gratitude for the music he shared.
Support the show
Websites
http://ilonaciunaite.com
http://liberationunleashed.com

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Can awakening happen through relationship, or only in solitude? In this conversation, Guy Sengstock, founder of the Circling® Institute, makes the case for the former. For almost thirty years he's built a practice around real, unmanaged contact between two people, and he traces what happens when someone stops performing and actually lets themselves be met.
We talk about wonder as the root of his work, what it means to listen to someone's deepest humanity rather than just wait for your turn, and a line that stayed with me after we stopped recording: I find being a self a strange thing to be. Guy also shares the idea that you could sit with another person for a thousand years and still not get to the bottom of who they are. 
Guy shares the main principles of Circling®  and invites you to try it out through his website.
This episode marks three years of Awakening Now, and I want to thank you for being part of that, for listening, sharing, and writing in with what's landed for you.
If you've done real inward work and find yourself wondering whether it holds up under contact with another person, this conversation is for you.
About the Guest
Guy Sengstock is the founder of the Circling® Institute, a relational practice rooted in wonder, authentic presence, and deep listening that has been running for nearly 30 years. He teaches people how to meet each other and themselves with more honesty, curiosity, and genuine contact.
🔗 Self-study courses: https://circlinginstitute.com/self-study-programs/
🔗 Live courses: https://circlinginstitute.com/programs/
📧 Contact Guy directly: guysengstock@gmail.com
Music by Valdi Sabev. In loving memory and gratitude for the music he shared.
Support the show
Websites
http://ilonaciunaite.com
http://liberationunleashed.com

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What happens when the last illusion falls away, and it doesn't feel like peace?
In this conversation, Christiane Michelberger returns two years after her first appearance to talk about what actually happened when her final fetter fell away. Rather than the bliss she expected, she describes hours of disorientation, the sudden loss of a place to withdraw to when things got hard, before it resolved the next morning into something she calls relief.
We talk about the difference between direct pointing and direct experience as paths to seeing through illusion, why awakening doesn't mean the end of anger, fear, or being triggered, and why no teacher can transmit realization to another person. Christiane also shares a striking way of thinking about illusion itself, as a kind of hallucination, sensory experience without sensory input, and what it means to keep returning to what is actually here.
This one is for anyone who has had a glimpse and is quietly wondering what a fuller shift might cost.
Music by Valdi Sabev. In loving memory and gratitude for the music he shared.
Support the show
Websites
http://ilonaciunaite.com
http://liberationunleashed.com