Clarity Talk: When Awakening Misfires
Hello, everybody! Like everybody else in the world I love to talk about my victories while paying scant attention to my defeats. But today I do want to turn the focus onto sessions that don’t work out as planned. I had one yesterday, damn it.
Of course it’s not my job to wake anyone up; thank goodness I get that. It’s my job to present these powerful teachings as clearly as I can with all the care and attention I can muster, but I’m off the hook in regard to results. However, as many of you have probably noticed in similar incidents in your own life, while I’m doing the session it can feel to me like it’s my job to wake my clients up. I know it’s not true, but it’s still there and I don’t play the denial game with it. That feeling keeps me on my toes, keeps me pulling rabbits out of the hat, or trying anything I can to bring about a successful session.
I’ve done hundreds of these things now, I’m absolutely relentless, and most of the time whoever I’m talking to does indeed wake up. However, once in a while, they simply don’t. Or, once in a great while, the person wakes up, or at least partially wakes up–as in clearly seeing who they are not, but not who they are–and then go back to sleep before the end of the session. They may remember that “something” happened, but awakeness is not actually something we can remember. You can’t take a snapshot of a movie and pass it off as the same thing.
Anyway, expectations met or misfired, it’s all part of the sometimes direct, sometimes meandering, and sometimes frustrating path.
Fred Davis 1.7.14
February 18, 2014 @ 8:14 am
First off like to thank you for your book “Beyond Recovery”. I have incorporated into my understanding of the 12 step program I believe we have in common. I have been working with some others where your book is used as the principle guide in doing the steps and the response has been incredibly positive, so I thank you for lighting up a few eyes.
One thing has been bugging me though and that is the statement of numerous folks “waking up” sometimes in just one session with you and in some cases having never had any acquaintance with nonduality. I’m sure you have explained it somewhere in your literature but I haven’t come across it as yet. Would you be so kind as to explain it to me. I have acquainted myself with it for close to 20 years and have yet to have the big penny drop and so, still having a tether bound to this body-mind, am feeling a little jealous that others with but 2 hours with you have realized their true nature. Please unleash me from this angst. A little tongue in check that but I would like some clarification.
Many thanks Fred
February 18, 2014 @ 3:32 pm
Hi, John! Thank you, John, for your kind words about Beyond Recovery.
As to why people who’ve searched for decades can come to know their True Nature after a couple of hours with me is, on one level, unexplainable. Awakening is unexplainable, too. So I never try to explain it–what I call “Talk and Tell”. An Awakening Session is “Show and Tell”. I help you bend awakeness back on itself so that it “can’t not” see itself. That process works in the great majority of cases. But in the end? It’s a miracle, pure and simple. It’s a miracle every single time.
Very best,
Fred