The Spiritual Carnival, Part 2 (5 Years Later) by Fred Davis

This post is the second of a short series. Please read the first installment so that this one make sense to you.

It’s now been five years since I began to leak out that I was waking up students in a single session. (What I always mean by this is that I simply brought Awakeness itself into recognition of itself.) That’s what we call “awakening,” but of course it’s a misnomer, because how is Awakeness itself ever going to be asleep? 

Originally there was just some kind of shakti here that would spontaneously transfer if the ground (the student’s mind) was clear enough. Fred didn’t do it then, and Fred doesn’t do it now. (How could he? There’s no Fred!)  But the mechanics of Awakening Sessions have completely changed not only in the last five years, but in the last few months. If you polish a dull rock long enough, it’ll shine, and if you polish a shiny rock long enough, it’ll glow. After having you guys polish this unit day after day, year after year, through thousands of sessions, that’s what’s happened here.

Well over a thousand people have woken up with me face to face. I get email and YouTube comments virtually every day from people who’ve come to see True Nature through my books, videos, and podcasts. I really have no idea how many people The Living Method has brought to truth, but I can tell you it’s one hell of a lot. I mention all this simply to freshly establish my credentials as an “expert” on initial awakening and as a well seasoned hand on the clearing process that initial awakening inaugurates. 

I report to you what I see happening from this place of experience and authority. I base what I’m saying here on what I’ve seen in the past, and what I see now when I dare voyage into the current nondual marketplace, which is damn rarely. But more importantly, I am sharing and illuminating the experience of my students, clients, and friends from around the world, whether they be senior students, or people who’ve just walked through the door. One way or another I have the conversation I’m opening here time after time – every week, and often more than once in a day.

My early detractors were right to call me out for having wandered off the well-tended spiritual path in new and dangerous ways. What’s happening here simply is not what’s happening elsewhere. We’re not doing what everyone else is doing. In 2013, I had a fellow South Carolinian in my living room who’d been tromping all over the world for 30 years, meeting with a lot of big name teachers. I think his coming to my house was what in American football is called a “hail Mary pass,” just before the game-ending buzzer. In other words, what have you got to lose?

A powerful story spontaneously told itself during our Awakening Session. Neither he nor I had ever heard it before. At the end of it, he woke up. His very first post-awakening words were, “Fred, what you’re doing is beyond nonduality!” I firmly believe he was right.

As I see it, nonduality is simply another spiritual path, albeit an incredibly skillful one. I’m absolutely convinced that a higher percentage of people wake up after association with the nondual community – from Advaita to Zen – than through any other method. And those percentages still suck out loud.

In general, nonduality is a path, and like any other path, it’s leading you from here toward there – toward waking up at some time in the future. Maybe the near future, maybe not – perhaps pretty soon! Maybe even tomorrow – or perhaps later TODAY! But never, ever, right now.

We think we come to understand that there’s “only the now,” and then we expect to wake up to it later. It’s insanity. We hear over and over again that there’s “no me” and then we wait for the me to wake up! It’s insanity. We’re told there’s “just this,” and we go looking for this. Truly, truly, truly, it’s insanity.

And this insanity is aided and abetted – even structured! – by an extraordinarily large percentage of what we call nondual teachers. I’m not saying everybody. I’m just saying almost everybody. That’s how things are. That’s how It Is. And bully for It!

I have no quarrel with the status quo. It keeps this teaching practice humming just as it does theirs, even though we’re headed in completely opposite directions. This article is simply a call-out to the few of you who may be on the edge of things. You may be on a path that you’re beginning to sense or see is circular. It doesn’t really start anywhere, and it doesn’t really finish anywhere. (When I say “finish” here, I mean lead to awakening, which is the beginning of authentic spirituality.)

Let me just go ahead and say it: The odds are very strong that your teacher doesn’t know how to wake you up. There’s a decent chance that your teacher is not even awake. They may look like they’re awake, and they may sound like they’re awake, and they may even think they are awake. But going by the many teachers I’ve covertly woken up, in all likelihood your teacher had one or more spiritual experiences which accompanied a view of truth, from which a badly misshapen memory has been formed in their heads, and that is where they are teaching from. I find it over and over again.

Most teachers don’t even teach the method by which they woke up because many of them don’t know the method by which they woke up, or can only point to it as mystical grace, which they got and you didn’t. Awakening leads to authentic spirituality, but there is nothing at all spiritual about the so-called event itself. “Spiritual” Awakening means that Awakeness comes out of denial. That’s it, and that’s all of it, and that’s the end of it. 

For that phase, Awakening is the invitation to The Dance, but it is not The Dance. Clearing up in post-awakening is The Dance. Everyday life is The Dance. Taking out the garbage and washing the dishes are The Dance. Going to that damn job, making money, raising crazy kids and mowing the yard are all part of The Dance.

Yet none of that is taking place for a personal, individual me – ever, whether you see it or you don’t. It’s not about exotic experiences. Sure, Fredness sometimes experiences a really weird life. So what?

Two weeks ago Betsy and I were out with her folks, who are 91 and 98, at an Olive Garden. I excused myself to go to the restroom. When I got to the bathroom I checked my phone because I always check my phone – I’m as addicted to mine as you are to yours. There was a question from a member of my Continuing Students Program, and I thought I’d just go ahead and snap an answer back at them. Why not?

When I lifted the phone higher to start typing it felt like “I” – meaning I, Awakeness, hallucinating some sort of ethereal form – moved to the juncture between the wall and the ceiling. To make a long story short, I couldn’t seem to get down or even stable, and the unit experienced vertigo. Weird, but not all that surprising, and certainly not shocking.

“Okay,” I said to myself, “You’re having a spiritual experience. That’s fine. No reason not to.” Yet I couldn’t help notice that I was in the bathroom of an Olive Garden, and that Betsy’s ancient parents were awaiting the return of the quick wit and humor they associate with this unit, and would be surprised to find that I couldn’t sit up straight. So it was a little nutty!

It passed. Like all other phenomena, the spiritual experience passed. It was an experience for Fredness, and Fredness is reporting on it, and you’re probably hearing it as if it happened to a Fred. It did not. There is no Fred. There is no real news here. There is nothing to celebrate anymore than we would celebrate steam coming off of water.

Arisings come, arisings go. All of them count, and some of them seem important. But none, none, none of them matter!

There is only This. There is only You. The so-called problem we’re discussing is that virtually nobody knows how to show You to You to where You can recognize Yourself! These teachers are not (generally) charlatans. Many of them are essentially awake, whatever that means. But they are not clear. And they cannot help you. 

They want to help you. They appear to help you. Everyone agrees that they “have it” and that they are helping you. They probably are helping you in numerous ways, but they are not waking you up. You’re like a goat tied to a short rope who keeps walking in the same direction thinking it’s making progress. Take a look. Doesn’t the scenery look awfully familiar?

The current state of the nonduality marketplace is this: everyone is trying to clear you. Great. Clearing is important. They are trying to clear you until you wake up. Or they are trying to clear you until you wake up again. They assign meditation or mantras, prayer or japa, bowing or prostrating, singing or dancing, or chanting and visualization. Do you notice that nothing works? Do you notice that after all of this, you are still not awake?

Last week I woke up two Buddhists, which is not unusual.  They had both been serious, devoted practitioners, one for 13 years, the other for 30. Both flew all over the world for rigorous retreats. Neither were awake when they got to me, and both woke up with me in separate sessions in about an hour. The first words out of the first person’s mouth was, “Oh my God, what have I been doing?”  I rescued her from that pit by pointing out that nothing is ever wasted, that she’d had to do everything she’d done, and that now it would pay off in context, all of which is true.

The other was virtually a devotee of a female spiritual teacher I admire. He’s followed her all over the place, been to her classes, all in the hopes of waking up, which he finally noticed was not happening. He woke up with me in about an hour, and the first words out of his mouth were, “Well, this doesn’t have anything to do with what [she] is doing!” I agreed. He said, “She’s not even really trying to wake people up!” I agreed.

This week I woke up a Talmudic scholar in Israel. His nondual story was all Jewish, and he’d been in it all of his life. He woke up in about an hour. We will, of course, spend some more time together helping him to orient to living as Awakeness and not as a make-believe character. On and on and on it goes, week after week, month after month, year after year. I get reports on almost everybody, and lots of different “schools.”

There is a much, much larger audience for self-enhancement than there is for self-immolation. Still, I gotta do what I’m doing, because I notice I can’t do anything else. 

End of Part 2
To be continued…