Our Natural State of Open Awareness

Justine Toms: Here are just a few of the thoughts I jotted down while preparing for this interview with spiritual teacher Amoda Maa.

She affirms, any attempts to right the wrongs of the world must not be done from a place of division, but from stillness, like the stillness of a martial artist. Unless we move from stillness, there is no power in what we do. Right action will arise when you move from stillness and wholeness, and from a space that has no self-righteousness in it. It’s actually coming from a place of unknowing. From this place, our actions will have power.

These, I'm sure you'll agree, are provocative words, thoughts that beg for a space to contemplate. To search our own inner being for the ring of Truth they may hold for us.

Our dialogue today will be an invitation to awaken from our agitated mind and rest in our true nature with our guest, Amoda Maa. Amoda, thank you so much for being with us today.

Amoda: Thank you, Justine, for inviting me to your radio show.

Justine Toms: Thank you. Thank you. It's my honor to have you. I'd love to begin just a little bit in briefly helping us to understand a little of your background, a little of that place that sparked your path, and then what opened the door to this path leading to the teachings that you present.

Amoda: Well, where to start with the background? Like many people, my childhood was somewhat painful. Perhaps I'll jump to my twenties, my early twenties through to my mid-30s, perhaps even a little later. But definitely in my 20s, I was a very alienated young person, always feeling outside of society, very solitary, and subject to depression. In fact, I would say it was chronic depression, clinical depression even. And very much locked into my head. I was somewhat of an academic then, and very self-conscious and unable to relate to other people. And subject to many suicide attempts, in fact. So, I have a history of darkness and difficulties and many difficulties in the actual life, many changes, many shocks, many unexpected happenings, many losses.

I went on a long journey of self-exploration on a psychological level, on a spiritual level, on a metaphysical level, on an esoteric level and found myself totally immersed in that exploration, mostly searching for meaning and happiness. The turning point really was going to India and energetically, viscerally, being “invited” by India, which was very raw in the days that I was there. It was not a tourist destination so much back then, but it was a very raw experience, a very wild experience.

India invited me to surrender. And I kind of “got it”. It sort of seeped into my being, into my cellular being. From being a very closed down, fearful person I learned to surrender. And in that surrendering to “what is”, something relaxed, something opened up. I would say that was the beginning. Although it certainly wasn't the end.

It was the beginning of something, so that when I returned to the United Kingdom, where I lived in London, even though my circumstances were still very painful and difficult, something had shifted. And yes, there was still drama and yes there was still pain and yes there was still some seeking for a deeper happiness or peace, but throughout it all I stopped fighting or resisting "what is”. I truly came to a deep acceptance of whatever was unfolding within me as my experience, my emotional experience, my internal landscape and in the circumstances.

And I think that was a turning point. I didn't know that at the time, but some years later, I asked a fundamental question of myself, and that question really went deep. It was like dropping a rock into a pool, a pebble into a pool, and it went really deep. I asked: “What is the nature of suffering?”

You see, by that point, I wasn't really looking for anything. Many things had fallen apart and I stopped looking for the solution, for the happiness in any external circumstance or in any relationship. And I was very much alone at the time. But still there was this subtle suffering. I wasn't depressed. None of that was happening. All of that had come undone, or rather I’d moved through it. But I noticed a very subtle kind of suffering. And I asked the question, what is the nature of suffering? And that opened the door. A door that actually allowed me to meet the root of suffering within myself, but also within humanity. It's not personal. It's not collective. It's universal, I would say. And in that moment — there's a little bit more to this than that, but I'll just summarize by saying — in that moment, I awoke out of the dream, I awakened out of the dream of the separate self, out of the dream of this psychological construct of “me”.

Now, I didn't totally understand that at the time, but something fundamentally changed. And from that point of view, my whole relationship to life and to the way of seeing completely changed. It had nothing to do with an intellectual understanding or even a spiritual understanding. It was like the veils of perception came undone, the scaffolding of the separate self, the “me” self came undone. And that was the beginning. It took many years after that to become “a spiritual teacher”.

Justine Toms: What you’re saying when you're talking about all of this and coming into that oneness of life rather than separateness, a lot of people would identify that as, okay, oh, she's talking about non-dualism. That's like up in the culture right now and we've all heard about that. But you, it's very interesting. I was just shocked when I was looking at your work and looking at these conversations that you’ve had printed up in the book with some of your students or people who come to you who are seeking, you said the nature of life is duality. I mean, I loved it that you actually said that and yet there's a paradox.

And I know that you do not subscribe to any particular spiritual path or tradition or it's important to you that you're not starting some new spiritual tradition. But let's talk about the duality and non-duality of life.

Amoda: Well, first of all, let's say that, yes, the term non-duality is very much a part of the zeitgeist, and one that is very much used in different ways. And I would say fundamentally, in many instances, it is misunderstood. Having said that, in my day, back then when this awakening took place, non-duality was not a thing. It wasn't a term that was used. It just wasn't a genre. It wasn't the zeitgeist. So I had no conceptualization of that. But I did understand, I did know in the depth of my being, in the depth of my knowingness, that what had been experienced, what had opened up and became the whole way of life was actually non-dual. Not non-dual in a conceptual understanding, but as the visceral experience of ending the separation so that “I and life are one”. And all of life, all of this that I experience takes place inside the totality of awareness.

JWT: Exactly. Let’s remind our listeners, I’m here with teacher, Amoda Maa, and we're talking about non-duality, and we're talking about falling open, and whether it’s okay to fall apart.

I really want to talk about that, because you really say it's okay to fall apart, and I'm going, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm thinking of myself as let's say I'm a mother and I've a house full of kids and I would say I've got to hold it together, because I've got to make the meals, I've got to get them to soccer practice, I've got to make the dentist appointments, and balance my checkbook. It's like I have to hold on. I have to. I cannot allow myself to fall apart. And you're saying, no, it's okay to fall apart.

So, what does that mean? Unpack that for us, please.

Amoda: Perhaps it's not the most valuable way to say it's okay to fall apart, because falling apart in the conventional sense does mean that I can't cook anymore, I can't take care of the kids anymore, I can't pay the bills anymore and that kind of falling apart. It's more about falling open.

What does that mean? It can feel like falling apart, but it's not. It's simply loosening the grip. Simply softening the way that we respond to life. And, the conventional way, let's call it the ego identity wants to hold on and wants to control, because then it feels in charge, and then things go my way and so on and so on, and then I prevent bad things from happening. But this is a big illusion. It's not the ego that is in control. There’s a much greater intelligence within us when we just let go, and I spoke about surrender earlier. And that's exactly what I mean.

I mean, I'm just going to use the example of India, but it's the same everywhere. But India has a particular vibration, at least in those days. It was like a very loving and wrathful teacher. The chaotic nature, the wild nature, the untamed nature of some parts of India and the Indian psyche maybe, or even the Indian infrastructure, demand surrender. If you impose your Western mindset on it, it'll come back and slap you in the face. And actually, things flow much more easily and beautifully and in your favor, if you just go with the flow, I know it sounds like a cliche, but it's true. And life is like that.

And so, falling open is not falling apart in the way that we think of falling apart. Falling open is the end of the ego identity, so that we can discover who we really are. And so that's really what it's pointing to.

Justine Toms: I know that openness is really part of your teachings.

I've been working on a definition of God. And it has to do with consciousness as being fundamental in this field of infinite intelligence, and goes back to the physicist Max Planck in 1931 talking about that. So, in that definition, I have to say, Amoda, you're changing my view. You have helped me to expand that, because there's something that you said about openness. It's about it being the true reality of life, the true nature of life. It made me think I've been using the word consciousness, but I have placed a limitation even though I say consciousness is all pervading and all every place. You said, it has no borders. And this made me want to say, oh, that's something that feels so different in my psyche than consciousness. Openness is a state of being. It gives me access in some way to that state. So, I'd love for you to say anything you can share with us about openness and about that softening and that relaxation into it.

Amoda: Yes. We could say openness is open awareness.

It's not so much about our capacity to open or close from the periphery of ourselves. We can have tension and resistance, and that's a kind of closure. And we can have a relaxation and a surrender and so on, and we can call that openness.

But when we talk about the fundamental nature of reality, and also the fundamental nature of who we are, it goes even deeper than that. It goes to the source, not the periphery. To the source, to the depth of who we are. And that is fundamentally open awareness. It's the open space within which we experience everything. That open space is what we might call non-dual, because it's without boundary, without beginning, without ending. It's timeless. It's eternal. It's everywhere and nowhere.

In that sense, that's non-dual. However, everything that we experience as human beings, including ourselves and this body and this mind and this thought and this emotion and everything, is experienced inside, that open awareness. And that which we experience always has a duality. There’s always a polarity, black and white, up and down, me and you, happy and sad. That's the nature of life.

So, duality exists within non duality. But when we examine what is always here even when experience comes and goes — I feel happy, I feel sad, any feeling. Or an object, a thing, a person, an event, a happening, a loss, a gain. What remains? What's always here even when that is appearing and disappearing? What's always here? We go to the source. The source is the open space, which is awareness, that's always here. It's like the room. It's the space inside the room. You take the walls away; the space is still here. You take the objects away; the space is still here. We can come to know that directly. And that's the source of peace. That's the source of freedom.

Justine Toms: When we look at this, we might ask ourselves in these turbulent times and challenging times, our natural tendency is to want to make a difference, to want to contribute in a positive way to life.

And there's a word that you use in your teachings and it's called tenderness. I'm thinking for example, how is it, if I feel strongly about the mass shootings that are happening in the US in particular today, and about legislation about gun control or gun legislation? Where does this ultimate reality and where does tenderness then come in and assist me in not being so agitated, but being effective in my life to make a difference?

Amoda: A somewhat tricky and touchy conversation that we're going to hopefully dance lightly on, because the world is built on opinion. The world is built on righteousness. There are right things in the world, and there are wrong things in this world. There are good things in the world and there are harmful things in the world, and so on. And of course, action must be taken, where action must be taken. So, it's not going to the other extreme and just becoming a passive and uncaring or detached. But the problem is that the world is built on division. The world is built on “I'm right, you're wrong”. The world is built on the veils of perception that each individual carries. And those veils are created out of cultural conditioning, familial conditioning, educational conditioning, historical conditioning, gender conditioning, karmic conditioning … and media conditioning.

So we cannot see clearly unless we're free of the veils of perception. And without the veils of perception, there is no self-righteousness. We can feel compassion, we can feel hurt, there are many things we can feel, but if we take action from the righteousness, from an inner violence, even if it feels like it's absolutely right, then we're perpetuating the division in the world. Without narrative, without opinion, without position taking, we either move or we don’t move. And that makes a big difference in the world.

Sometimes we think we're doing the right thing, or we have the right thought, we have the right viewpoint, and actually it's very misguided. So, we have to be very careful how we respond to reality and how we are effective. Because there’s change that can be created and there’s change that is simply adding to the divisiveness. Now, I'm not here to speak about political or social situations or what to do or what not to do. I'm here always to talk about liberation from suffering, to awaken to our true nature so that we live fundamentally from a whole new paradigm.

Justine Toms: I'm here with teacher Amoda Maa and we're talking about the nature of reality and how we can best be effective in our lives.

One of the things that you talk about and you teach and you bring up is something about our inner authority. What I was struck by, is you really brought to me how the inner authority could be our inherited beliefs. I mean, that becomes a kind of authority figure. I mean, we think of outside authorities, figures, but that these energies live within us, these inner authorities. And you even describe it as an inner patriarchy. I just delighted in hearing that.

Tell us about that internalized voice and how we can cope with that and make it less a stand in our life.

Amoda: Yes, I think you described that very well, Justine. These are the internalized beliefs that we have about ourselves, about others, about the world; beliefs that are based on essentially an unexamined view. Again, they're the matrix, the matrix of beliefs that we've inherited from parents, from family, from culture, from media, from this and that and the other, from religion. And we internalize those and then believe that's who we are. But that this belief is really made up of the many layers of the ego identity.

When unexamined, we're really operating on an unconscious level, very much like, dare I say it, automatons, because we're reacting from an unexamined standpoint, mostly. And that means we're operating in the matrix. We can use that metaphor. And that's a prison. That's a prison that we either see or we don't see. At some point, if we look within deep enough and seek for freedom from our own suffering, then we'll start to feel or sense that we're living inside some kind of prison wall. And then how do we break free of that?

And so, authority, true authority — again, I prefer to use the word innate intelligence, or let's call it life's intelligence — is not based on any belief system, it's not based on anything inherited. It arises out of an inner silence. An inner silence that is not one that is repressing anything, I've got to be quiet, or I've got to have no beliefs, but the true realization of our essential nature. We go back to open awareness.

As open awareness, there is silence. And out of that silence, there's a natural intelligence that responds naturally, spontaneous, organically, not from a place of self-righteousness or opinion or belief, or even thought activity. It's not based in thought activity, because thought is not trustworthy. It has a different function. Thought is a function that is pragmatic. It can focus in on a task and then it can be effective. But thought activity when it is not functional, it's just simply thought activity. Then that's like the flotsam and jetsam on the surface of the ocean. It’s not trustworthy. So we're invited to come to that which is trustworthy, which is much deeper than any thought activity.

Justine Toms: Oh, and we play so much emphasis on the mind and that activity. It's so good to take over, take control and become, as you would say, the master of us. And I think you're absolutely right to point that out.

There is something, Amoda, that you talk about that just is totally provocative. You say, and this has to do with spiritual bypassing … you say spirituality won't save you. It just imprisons you. Oh, my goodness! Wait a minute.

Amoda: Did I say that?

Justine Toms: You did. You actually did. But I know that on the surface, it may sound like something like, what is she saying? You write about that, answering a question from a seeker. You're describing spirituality as not as a pursuit per se, but there's something more. So please unpack that for us a bit.

Amoda: Yes, I mean, it really depends on the context.

We can't take these statements as blanket statements because in the context of what is offered in the book at least, they are direct answers to direct questions from individuals. I speak to that individual, so it's not really a blanket statement.

But there is a little bit of a blanket there, which is that, mostly — and I've spent my whole life in a spiritual pursuit — the spiritual identity of “I’m being spiritual and practicing spirituality” is like a carrot that's dangled in the hope of salvation. And yes, spiritual pursuit in the sense of true self-inquiry is absolutely necessary to waking up out of the dream of ego identity. So that's why it's not a blanket statement in that sense.

But to hold onto it as an idea of who I am, “I'm a spiritual person, therefore I'm going to progress, or I'm going to get there, or I'm going to be saved somehow from the human experience” … that's what the mistake is. It doesn't save you from the human experience. The human experience is always here. Remember duality within non-duality. That's what it's really pointing to.

JWT: Yes, I get that. We can get so focused on the pursuit. It goes back to that openness, doesn't it? It goes back to that striving and pursuit, and I'm going to arrive someday, and maybe I'll get it now, and maybe it's going to take me out of the mess of my life, or the messiness of life, per se.

Amoda: Yes.

Justine Toms: And so, you're always pointing us back to just fall into openness. And that's what's always available to us. I mean, it's always here right now. It's not something to strive for. It's just, I guess I said to myself when I was reading your responses and talking about openness, I was thinking, oh, all right, how do I do that?

You talk about softly falling into it, so to speak. And I'm thinking, oh, just imagine myself just sort of falling into a deeply feathered bed of some sort and just like relaxing into this soft, downy mattress that's just holding me and softly enfolding me. I guess I needed that as a bodily thing. Do you hear what I'm saying?

Amoda: Yes.

Justine Toms: I wanted to go into openness, I wanted to feel it in my body. Any suggestions there?

Amoda: I think there are many ways. I mean, that's one way is to experience it energetically. That's what you're speaking of … it's an energetic, visceral experience, as if the body relaxes and opens. What I like to point to, is the direct way. The direct way is rather than trying to open, is to see how the ego forms itself in every interaction. And if we see it, there’s a visceral sensitivity to it.

To see that it forms itself whenever we create a resistance … “this shouldn't be happening.” It forms itself when it finds a position for itself … "I’m this or that”. “I'm lucky, I'm unlucky.” Something good happens … “I'm blessed”. Something bad happens … “I'm cursed”. Whatever the identity formation is in that moment.

And becoming sensitive to resistance is one of the most direct ways of seeing this. It's in that moment that we can actually stop. It's in that moment that we can see that “stop” is the surrender. And it's that. That's true inquiry, true seeing, clear seeing. It's this that allows our fundamental nature, as openness, to reveal itself. So, we're not trying to open, we're not trying to relax. Although these are helpful supports along the way, these are from the periphery of the self.

This is about allowing the periphery of the self to come undone, that's what I mean by falling open. You don't have to do the falling. What falls open is the egoic structure, instead of being a closed knot of identity self, it comes undone. And in that, your true nature as openness is revealed, and you start living from that. So, you don't have to do the openness.

Justine Toms: So, there's no doing. It's being. This is really what you're talking about.

I want to bring up when you talked about resistance, that's kind of a key. And I would wonder about just how is it, what help do you have for us, to actually be conscious of the very fact that we're in resistance?

Amoda: Well, we all know when we're suffering, when there's tension, when there's a fight with reality, an argument with reality, “this shouldn't be happening”, or “I shouldn't be feeling like this”. We may feel sadness, we may feel brokenhearted, we may even feel anger. We don't like it. We don't like uncomfortable emotions. Or something happens in our lives, and that happening, yes, it brings up a feeling. We might be scared, we might be uncertain. We don't like it. And so, we try to stop that. We try to either numb it, or distract, or replace it with something else. There's an argument.

I think we all really, if we were honest, know when we're arguing with reality. Now, we may not know and see what the root of that argument is. And that's really what I offer and guide people to — through dialogue and inquiry — is th see the root of that suffering. So, the only offering here really is to notice and be honest where you're arguing with reality. And to notice how that creates tension, mentally, physically, emotionally, how it creates fear, and that's resistance. All of that is resistance, and resistance is suffering. You are not at peace. You are not happy. You are not still.

It's not about getting rid of the emotion. It’s about ending the argument with your experience. And ending the argument is a kind of tenderness towards the experience … “I'm sad! Oh! I'm scared!” Even before you say, “I'm scared”, “I'm sad”, there is just a kind of texture. A texture that I might call sadness. But, if I'm just sensing the texture, it’s got no name. Well, already resistance has come undone.

It's like the sky kissing the clouds instead of the sky trying to reject the clouds. So, we come to sky nature. That's the source of peace. The feeling may change, and it probably will. Just like clouds, they change. The circumstance may or may not change, but that's not the point. The point is your relationship, how you meet it. Is there a kindness, a tenderness, an openness? That's the beginning of transformation.

The clouds are always changing, whether the clouds are turbulent, stormy, dark, gentle, wispy, or not there at all. Sky is always here. But that sky can only be known or recognized, when we stop fighting with the reality of the weather.

Justine Toms: I'm reminded of the idea of self-righteousness. Like, “I really know how it should be” or “I know what's wrong with the world and society”, and all of that. Self-righteousness is a big one. Do you have any comment about that?

Amoda: Yes, I think that self-righteousness, whether it expresses itself in relationship to society or the world or our own lives, that's an expression of the matrix, the prison, we can use a whole load of different words here, but the matrix, the prison, the knot of the ego identity.

And when it comes down to our own experience — never mind the projection onto society — self-righteousness expresses itself as “this shouldn't be happening”, “I shouldn't be feeling this”, “this should not be my experience now”. And then we either suppress, deny, turn away from, pretend or try and control, get rid of. And therein lies the root of suffering.

Justine Toms: Right, exactly!

So, you're saying that to continue to stay immersed, and again, I'm going back to the words of the messiness of life, of the all that's coming at us, it's to hold that in a bigger container that is not dual, that doesn't put me at war with that which is emerging out of society or out of the climate, or whatever it is.

Amoda: Yes. I think that we often look at it almost back to front. We're looking at society, the world and the climate and this, that and the other and trying to find a solution. There may be pragmatic solutions, but I’m talking about solution as a remedy to our own angst. We need to look right here, in the immediacy of our own experience. We need to look at where we are at war with our own experience. That's where change happens. When we stop the war with our own experience — in other words, ending the argument with reality as it's experienced here and here and here and here —then a fundamental change or shift in consciousness takes place. We are liberated, we wake up out of the matrix of that argument-based perception, and then everything changes. The way that we relate to ourselves, the way that we relate to others, the way that we relate to the world, the way that we relate to society, the way that we relate to the climate … everything changes from the inside out.

That's where the war has to stop first. Otherwise, there's no change. Otherwise, we're trying to control ourselves on the surface. And that might be a temporary solution, but it's not the ultimate solution. Change must happen from within.

Justine Toms: What you're talking about is, that even if the world is broken, we need to stand in some sort of unbrokenness in order to have right action and have power.

Amoda: Yes, when the argument ends within, our direct experience becomes like a new paradigm within us. From that place, we're going to be less concerned about fighting what's wrong from a place of self-righteousness. A whole new dimension of creative, infinite potential opens up. We're probably more likely to have a solution, a creative solution, the birth of something new that is not a fighting against anything. It’s a bringing forwards of something creative and harmonious, whether it's in our own lives or on a worldly level, through whatever modality of our work, our passion, our mission. It'll give birth to something new and that's a whole different paradigm to self-righteousness.

Justine Toms: For sure.

Amoda: Action is taken. And that's what I call intelligence, true innate intelligence.

Life's intelligence and its infinite possibilities are revealed to us when we end the argument because there's no more noise, there's no more division.

Justine Toms: So, I'd love to, we only have a moment, two minutes left here to really…

I'd love to go out with Grace. And what is Grace?

What is this level of being and how is it? How can we access it?

Amoda: If you're speaking of Grace, it's very hard to define. It's a little bit like openness. You can't really find a definition for it, although I'm sure there are many definitions out there.

My only knowing of Grace is that everything is Grace. The river of life when it’s experienced from a place of the not knowing. I don't mean intellectual knowing, but the living of open awareness. And now everything flows through this experience like a river. I experience that as Grace.

Justine Toms: Beautiful, beautifully said. Thank you for that image.