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- Direct Experience, Not More Conceptual Information -
This work is not about trying to feel good by gaining or adding something new. Integrative Awakening is about letting go, about releasing cognitive and emotional misperceptions of reality and directly experiencing one's True Self, the Heart. This is the experience that brings deep transformation. The work of Integrative Awakening is about feeling what is Real. It is about coming into emotional sobriety and Intimacy with Reality!
The work of Psychospiritual Integrative Awakening is not for those who want excitement, entertainment, or more stimulating intellectual information to add to their mind. This work is not about trying to feel good by gaining or adding something new to ourselves. The unfoldment and expression of our Awakened Nature takes place through a process of letting go and relaxing into Reality; relaxing into the experience of one's Innate and Natural Condition.
This work is about relaxing and dropping through the more complex and fear-based layers of the psyche and experiencing what is simple and real. It is about coming into emotional sobriety; about coming into direct feeling contact with Reality. This work is for those who are truly dedicated to inner growth and to a deeper union with the Fire of Love and Intimacy in the Heart and Body.
Though the years, we have been filled with intellectual and conceptual information. However, no matter how profound our conceptual knowledge of the Path of Awakening may be, this will not be sufficient for true accomplishment, unless it is backed up by direct personal experience and diligent practice. For true transformation and awakening to unfold, the love and wisdom of the heart must become a visceral, felt-experience in the body, and a practical expression in the context of our daily lives.
True inner work, navigating our feeling awareness through the body somatically/viscerally so we can understand ourselves deeply, is not a fast path or quick fix for feeling better. This type of true inner work takes place at a gradual pace, with compassion and deep, steady awareness. This work is about having a direct feeling experience of reality, so the body can actually experience and learn the truth at its own pace and in its own way. If we continue to bypass the body's natural rhythms of learning by always trying to feed and stimulate the impatient, greedy, conditioned mind with new and exciting information, we will not be able to integrate the feeling experience of the Heart into the body!
Every once in a while I feel a bit insecure about offering the Integrative Awakening work to someone with a powerful, impatient mind. This feeling comes up for me periodically because I know and keenly feel how badly we all want the magic answer which will alleviate our confusion and pain. We all want immediate results! However, I also know that true psycho-emotional transformation and spiritual realization only come about from inner work that is deep, precise, slow and subtle. True transformation comes about when the mind, heart, body and soul are learning in confluence with one another.
What I often encounter while working with people, is the unconscious emotional tendency to just want all of our unpleasant feelings to magically disappear, without ever having to do the actual work required for this to take place! We want our confusion and pain to be over right now, without putting forth the necessary effort required for this to be a reality.
This is a very common and obvious symptom of our lack of emotional sobriety and maturity. The impatient mind wants everything right now. The impatient mind just wants to feel better or get blissed out, without having to do the actual work required for this experience to be real and lasting. However, understanding ourselves more deeply, unwinding our unconscious cognitive and emotional misperceptions of reality, and awakening the heart—this kind of inner work actually moves at its own emotionally intelligent pace. Inner work that brings true and lasting results always moves slower than the greedy, grasping mind that impatiently wants everything right now.
In this way of experiential, body-centered learning, at a slower, non intellectual pace, our body receives a deep and profound education. The emotional body or feeling self learns at its own pace, without being pushed by the impatient mind. In this way, Truth penetrates and integrates itself into the depths of our human experience, becoming practical and embodied rather than intellectual or conceptual.
Will our modern day fixation with business, technology, speed and the intellectually conditioned mind (that is afraid to feel) end up conquering the Heart? It already has! The symptoms are obvious and they are everywhere to be seen. However a New Paradigm of the Heart is blossoming slowly. The Reality of the Awakened Heart and Body, patiently waiting for each of us, is quiet, gentle, wise and tender. This Reality moves at a completely different pace than the impatient, intellectual and greedy self who is always hungry for the next thing which will hopefully fill its unending hunger and dissatisfaction.
I feel strongly that heart-centered, experiential and feeling-oriented modalities for transformation are the new psycho-spiritual paradigm for bringing about our collective human evolution.
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• More About Integrative Awakening
• The SourcePoint Experience
• The Bodily Location of
Awakening
• Secrets of Somatic, Body-Centered Navigation
• The Esoteric Significance of
This Work
• Conscious Relationship
• The Voice of Heart
• The Treading of the Way: Guidance and Inspiration for
Those Who Serve
• Quotes from the Heart
• Links / Resources
"Neil's work is experiential;
it's beyond my capacity to
capture its profound subtelty
in words. However, I will say
that Neil is a brilliant and
original teacher. Sensitive,
insightful, bold, inspiring,
and very funny too! His
genuine humility creates a
space where we can discover
ourselves in true intimacy;
a place not bound by the
defenses of the personality.
It's wonderfully freeing."
- Rachael Hand
Operations Manager,
Mountain Community
Television Channel 15
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