REAL LOVE is BEINGNESS ITSELF.
assume will lead to love. Real love is “beingness” itself. It is the essence of existence. As Peter and I surrendered to the force of what was happening to us, a relational field awakened between us. The Mutual Awakening practice was born out of our ever-deepening surrender to the love that had engulfed us.
During the time that we were together we made love physically at least once and often many times a day. The deep physical intimacy and passionate love that I shared with this truly meditative man generated an ongoing intensity of presence and depth of consciousness between us. Over time we began to continuously abide in a miraculously telepathic state of awareness.
We were not practicing tantra; in fact I didn’t know anything about tantric practices and wouldn’t hear about them until years later. Making love was not a practice for us. We never manipulated our lovemaking. We surrendered to it and followed whatever was unfolding between us until eventually we were consistently swept away by something much greater than us whenever we made love. Like the masterful dancer who realizes the dance is dancing them, love was making love with itself through us with great delight and endless creativity.
The result of our openness, presence, engagement, interest, and commitment expanded beyond our physical intimacy into a living vortex of continuous transformation. There was an undeniable catalytic power awakening us together. It was purifying us and demanding that we continually open to something so much greater than ourselves. The way we were together seemed to unleash a power similar to what people often find with enlightened teachers.
During this time maintaining a continuous sense of connectedness was simply our way of being together. The thought of developing a “practice” out of it would never have occurred to me. The intensity of love and the desire to be as close as possible was the only thing moving us. I remember once leaving our apartment on West Fifty-sixth Street in
New York City and going to the grocery store nearby. We were putting things in our shopping cart, occasionally kissing and feeling very light and connected. We got to the checkout, and Peter’s energy closed down just slightly. Our commitment was to never consent to a contraction in the space between us, and so when we left the store I asked him what had happened. He said he had noticed an attractive woman in front of me dressed in European fashion. He said he had started to judge me because I dressed like an American. I laughed and said, “Yes . . . I do dress like an American.” And immediately the space between us opened up again. The secret to true intimacy is so deceptively simple. It will always be found in paying attention to whatever comes between us.
On another occasion he was sleeping late while I had been awake buzzing around, getting things done. I finally came in to wake him with a cup of tea. As he sat up in bed, taking the tea from my hand, he said, “Where’s my woman?” in a soft German accent. I thought he was joking, and I said, “I’m right here.” He said it again, with more seriousness, and I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. I answered, and he said it yet again, this time looking deeply into my eyes and pulling me onto the bed in a powerful embrace. He was asking for my full presence, and the intensity of his gesture melted my being. He said softly, “There you are.” We kissed and fell into a deeper state of consciousness than we had ever shared before.
Now I see that what we shared was an ongoing demand for a “higher order of relatedness.” I also recognize that there was an evolutionary impulse or optimizing force at work in the dynamic love and conscious creativity that was alive between us. Perhaps that is what some would call the “Holy Spirit” and others “Eros.” Whatever it is called, it had the transformative power to shatter the imposed isolation of ego structures that would block its access to our union.
Peter and I were together for four years. He asked me to marry him, and two weeks later a terrible car accident left him badly brain injured. Eventually he died, leaving me in an impossible situation. I had to shoulder the tremendous grief of losing my fiancé and dearest love as well as the dual awakening that had been driving my every moment. He was gone, and yet I felt our ongoing connection. It was very confusing. I had no idea how to navigate through the shock, and no one seemed able to fully understand what I was going through or could help me in any real way.
After a period of intense grieving, I innocently concluded that because I had been capable of this level of connection once I would be able to have it again. I was driven to understand what had happened to me and recreate it in my life. I initiated a deep examination of my experience to truly discover what it was that had made that dual awakening possible. Eventually I realized that what had happened to us didn’t live in the romantic level of our love—even though that was where it had arisen.
I continued my journey, teaching and learning, hungry to deepen my realization and gain a clearer understanding of all the dimensions of my experience. For nine years I studied with A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali) in the Diamond Approach. I have often called Hameed the “Einstein of spiritual realization.” His comprehensive and fully embodied brilliance in all dimensions of awakened consciousness allowed me to complete a certain level of awakening, especially in the experience of what he calls “the pearl,” which is the unique dimension of the soul.
It is now clear that the full understanding and true potential of what I had experienced years ago can become widely available. Culturally we have not been ready to awaken in this level of relatedness and were not able to see it for what it is. After decades of intensive individual work, we are now ready to awaken together. In fact I am certain that there are levels of development that we can only reach through the kind of unified field of consciousness that Peter and I had been so deeply immersed in.
The dual awakening experience holds the key to the future. At this point in history we must develop the ability to turn towards the space between us in a stance of receptive surrender. When we do, we enter into a dimension of unity and connection that as human beings we know is not only the truth of our connection but what we need to live together. It activates and unleashes a profound level of spiritual creativity and care that will move humanity’s consciousness to the next stage.
For years I kept asking, “How do I give people access to this powerful and catalytic dimension of consciousness?” Eventually I began to discover how to do it. I found myself able to use simple exercises that would consistently give people access to true mutuality. Gradually I came to understand how to come together and initiate the miraculous unfolding of dual awakening. This was the birth of the Mutual Awakening Practice.
The work of the Evolutionary Collective is committed to creating a new paradigm for a higher order of human relating. The opening that Peter and I had was the initiation point of this work. Our love created an access point for dual awakening, and now more of us must enter on the path of awakening together so that a new expression of divine love and creativity can move through us, as us. “It” needs us to be available so that something much bigger than us can happen. Peter and I made ourselves available for heaven to manifest on earth between us. It is time now for a much larger coming together.