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Letters with C.L. Part 1 Here are copies of letters that have passed between me and C.L., a wonderful woman who first encountered us in late '98. Through reading my and Saniel's writings, having regular phone contacts with me for several months, coming down for a Waking Down Weekend, and through her own persistent investigation of Being, she rapidly clarified her Second Birth and is now in the shakedown and deepening phase. She has agreed to make these letters public in case they might be useful to you . I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. November 1998 Hi, my name is C and I am 59 years old. I have been reading Waking Down and am having most wonderful and incredible experiences with it. What is happening is that I have been to a Satsang Retreat in my area recently and am in a great expansion, experiencing the vastness of being and the wonderfulness of unlimitedness but... after a discussion with some friends about the separation and HOW IT FELT (the incredible guilt and shame and shattering feeling of it) I started feeling weird. I was not aware that I was resisting the contraction that arose around this. Something (smile) made me start reading the book where I had left off on Chapter Fifteen. AHA! The answer! I also AM the contraction. I don't have to resist it any longer! I can just land kerplop right in it and still maintain awareness of the expansion! An incredible peace has come with doing this. Waves of gratefulness should be arriving there before this e-mail reaches you, have you noticed them? (smile) I am setting an intention to visit you soon and in the meantime may I keep writing to you? With love and joy and PEACE AT LAST! C December 1998 A few weeks ago I wrote to you. My name is C. I am living the book, Waking Down and want to tell you again how grateful I am for it. No one else seems to tell about awakening in such graphic terms. I love it! I wallow in it! I am in a state of wonder and of awe of all that is happening to who I thought I was. I really would like to connect with someone, (anyone!) there. How can I do that? I would like to come to San Francisco or wherever you-all are but that is not feasible right now. I would be more than happy to communicate by E-Mail or telephone and of course I would want to extend financial support to you. I've just been reading chapter 19 (working my way slowly through the book) of Waking Down and am completely taken by the idea of mutuality. This is what I have been hungry for, for years. But in my attempts to find it I have consistently run into barriers and upsets that I have attempted to cover over with phony love. I don't want to do this any more. Is there a safe place to be real? Are you it? I hope so. Anyway this is my attempt to connect again. With love, C December 8, 1998 Dear C, Gosh - I'm so sorry you haven't heard from us! I sent you a reply soon after receiving your first note... here's a copy of it: Dear C, Wow! What a great letter! Saniel laughed out loud (in glee) for quite Awhile after reading it. It's so delightful for all of us to hear how Waking Down affected you so deeply. And how wonderful that you were in a position to receive the liberating effect that that simple piece of information can have. You have made us quite happy by writing to us about it. Feel free to keep writing, and also to call us to talk in person. We'd love to meet you! Sincerely, Ted Strauss . . . . . . . . . . . . . So, now that we're almost caught up, let me say that I was just as thrilled to receive your second note as the first! You are amazing!! We'd LOVE to talk with you. For starters, call us toll-free at 888-741-5000. During our first talk, we'll consider who you may want to have some phone sessions with. If you call during our office hours, we might even be able to get you on the line with Saniel for a brief chat if he's in. And... YES - YOU CAN BE REAL HERE!!!! Making it safe for all of us to be real with ALL of who we ARE is our constant challenge. We would so love to have you be a part of what we're doing, even if it means having to put up with using the phone and email. I greatly look forward to speaking with you! Sincerely, Ted December 1998 Hi, Ted. Thanks for your wonderful reply to my e-mail letters. I must have prevented the first one from reaching me by my anxiousness to connect. Parts of me are very scared and other parts are hopping in frustration because its too slow. Oh well! I have been reading your articles and really enjoying them. You have a magnificent way with words. I particularly identified with the boat people analogy and see myself like this: I have been rowing about in a half-submerged wreck forever(?). My main big idea and focus has been to avoid the big boats with their terrifying wakes and just "do it myself". This has been a rather lonely process and so there arose within me a great desire for mutuality, as you call it. I began by trying to connect with others in small waffely boats but always ended up protecting instead of connecting. And so here I am on your doorstep and my boat is entering a current over which I have no control. And I love it. I don't understand it and am at a loss for words to explain what is happening even to myself. But I know that peace lies in the direction the current is taking me. I have no resistance to speak of. Something I trust is taking me where I belong. With great thanks and blessings! C _______________________________________________________________________ December 1998 Ted. Since I talked to you yesterday. Today when I woke up. As the day progressed. What is it? It feels like an intensity. It feels like being inextricably caught up in a current leading to a waterfall. At first I wanted to get the hell out of here. Do anything. Go anywhere. Eat something. But now I have settled in for the duration. Anything could happen. Or not. Perhaps its all a neurotic delusion. Or not. A part of me is so excited it can hardly contain itself. Is that part, me? I'm reading everything on Saniel's website and in Waking Down and crying and smiling and...waiting. I want to scream. I want to explode. Just a report. No action on your part necessary. Have an incredible Wakedown Weekend. Thank you for being there for me to write to. C December 14, 1998 Dear C, My heart is exploding just reading your note. Wow! I am totally here with you. Thank you for writing. Thank you for making yourself that vulnerable. Thank you for feeling all this. Because of your extreme readiness, it feels to me quite possible that you are already going through a major shift through our long-distance relationship. Did you ask Saniel about his book "The White-Hot Yoga of the Heart" yet? If not, let me know. You should have a copy of that at this point in your process. Keep up the good work in your investigation of Being. Let me know if you want to set up a phone session with me, Saniel, or anyone here. Love, Ted ______________________________________________________________________________________ December 29, 1998 Saniel, I am writing to you because I must communicate with someone and Ted, whom I have been talking with on the telephone, is unavailable. I am filled with such an urgency. But it is an urgency that seems to have no object. I am in a hurry, but I don't know where I'm going. The tension is incredible, but I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Ever since I started talking with Ted an intensity has taken over my life. I still have moments of forgetfulness where everything is painfully ordinary and excruciatingly boring but I can't stand to stay there anymore. I have to move on. I have to. I am reading and re-reading Walking Down and listening to your tape of it. And I have just finished reading "While Jesus Weeps". I was taken by the parable on page 56 where they start talking about being fish caught in the Master's net. THAT is my intensity. THAT is how it feels. I am also reading "The Conscious Principle" and find myself struck by certain phrases in it, and not ready yet to understand some of it. Books have always been my gurus. My life has revolved around them in many ways. And so Adi Da's question (which you quote in "The Conscious Principle"): "Avoiding relationship?" seems to have great significance to me. I HAVE been avoiding relationship for as long as I can remember. In the actual physical presence of another person I tend to freak out and go into hiding mentally. I am way below normal in this area of life. And so I am attracted to your work. At one point Ted said I should ask you how to obtain a copy of "The White-Hot Yoga of the Heart". I am interested in reading it, if you are willing to sell it to me. I will trust your judgment on this. I am grateful and happy to have found you. Thank you for all you are doing and for being there and being so available. C January 7, 1999 Dear C, Hi - this is Ted. I think the reason you got no reply by email over the holidays is that nobody was checking the email. I'm really sorry about that. But, now we're back! I'll forward a copy of this to Saniel. And I look forward to our next phone conversation. When Saniel heard about our mutual photo gazing session, he was excited. I think that you and I may have discovered how to make the remote support work with maximum intensity and effectiveness! Love and Blessings, Ted February 23, 1999 Ted, was I ever in a strange place when I talked to you yesterday. I was feeling fat and stupid at the time. And at the end when you said you wanted me to get in touch with my ferocity I went into a tail spin for it felt as though I had done something wrong, like I had been caught being sickeningly nice and being a phony. I went about the evening stuck in my stuff which is nothing new. I tried to find someone to talk to about it but no one was available. So finally about 3 hours later I sat down with my journal and much to my surprise the Queen spoke up. We had a delightful conversation involving several subjects of the Kingdom and now, this morning my head is clear and I am out of my mind. (Smile) The King was in the Counting House, counting out his money. How's that for ferocity! C Dear C, Oh, Dear! I didn't mean to suggest that you were being sickeningly nice. I wasn't feeling that way. I was just nudging you toward the parts of your power that are still hidden. It takes awhile to totally reclaim those parts, and there are levels of ferocity that cannot be reclaimed until after the second birth. Thanks for sharing the "fat and stupid" self-judgment. I don't know any woman who doesn't have a tendency to make herself wrong. Men seem to have the opposite problem: they tend to make themselves RIGHT most of the time. In any case, see if you can notice the pattern: I feel icky, therefore I'm bad, wrong, defective, whatever. A new disposition to try on: I feel icky, therefore I feel icky. No translation. Just feeling what you feel. I'm glad you had a chat with your royal family! I'd love to hear more about that. Love, Ted April 22, 1999 [After 2nd birth] I thought the airport would be new, gleaming stainless steel, flashing sunlight on deep carpets with greetings by royal coachmen waiting to take me to my castle. What am I doing on this strange planet in the middle of a weed infested field, totally alone and now somebody has dumped all this baggage on me? This is not what I expected. My head is reeling and where is the confidence in Being that I am supposed to exhibit? And where is the wonderful radiance someone mentioned? I guess I haven't got that part yet. Not that I am complaining, mind you. I was warned that it would not be anything like I expected. But "obvious"? Obvious? Not the word I would use. More like devastating I would say. So I picked myself up and started going through my baggage, Let's see....shame (oh that feels awful)...abandonment (Is ANYBODY out there?)...self-pity (Oh poor poor me I'm all alone and nobody loves me). What do I do about all this baggage I asked myself. Well I cried a little while and then I shrugged and started to explore this place. I took Ganesh with me, at first as a talisman, but then as I went along I realized that I WAS Ganesh and since Ganesh is the remover of obstacles, I am the remover of obstacles and I felt a little better. Then I started to notice that this landing place has an unprecedented view and even my stuff, my baggage, looks different here. I can see where it came from now and No, it wasn't dumped on me by somebody else. I created it myself. Well I had a little help from my "friends" but they were as overwhelmed as I was. No wonder we made such a mess of things. Look where we were. No viewpoint. I still don't know just where I am and what I am supposed to be doing here but at least I know a few things: I asked to come here; I'm not separate from anything and I am responsible for whatever comes next. I have always loved to explore and this is the most unexpected adventure I have ever encountered. I think its going to be a doozy. How's that for confidence in Being? Maybe the wonderful radiance is down the next road. Guess I'll find out. With love, C __________________________________________________________________________________ Dearest C, Wow - C in Wonderland! Welcome home!!! Sorry about the dusty landing platform and the scruffy ground crew, but we were low on cash when it came to building the fancy airport and hiring the royal assistants. Still, we got you down here safely, which is all we advertised. If you can scare up some money, I'd love to build the proper airport. Yeah, this is not what any of us were expecting. But I guess we get to call this polluted, weed-infested marble home. Even the confidence is not what we expected. It certainly doesn't mean we always feel like we know what's going on. Far from it. In fact, here's where we finally get to notice that nobody has a clue. It's all an outrageous mystery. What the fuck is going on here? Beats me. But I can tell you three things for sure: I'm here, I'm real, and I am the Onlyness incarnated as Ted. As far as the radiance, well, just close your eyes. The feeling of endless awareness as this body just keeps right on going. Sometimes, it gets really intense and seems to glow and sort of sear through everything. But even that kind of energetic phenomena is really not so big a deal, compared with your fundamental wellness of Being. Which, after awhile, turns out to be also pretty ordinary. As time goes on, ordinary turns into stark. And stark becomes raw. Your word for it - devastating - fits well. What's "obvious" is not some idea of a vast, God-like sublime state. Just that you're HERE and that you are not separate from anything, therefore you ARE everything, therefore there is no other God. You're IT. That's all. Not at all what we were expecting. But it does terminate the seeking impulse, which is a plus. I'm honored to have you along on the adventure! Love, Ted |
