25 YEARS AFTER - A CONTEMPLATION on AWAKENING
… and a campfire story about sitting on the hot seat of the teacher …
By Adima 2025
Around 22nd January 2000 something happened in my life that in the spiritual world is called ‘an awakening’. The word has always left me with a slight feeling of discomfort, since it can be interpreted in so many ways. But let’s have the expression ‘an awakening’ for lack of another word. Discerning a difference to “The Awakening” - as in final or total enlightenment, which is definitely not what I declare. Neither do I know what that is.
I believe I have met a man who embodied it - the Indian mystic Osho - and met a few teachers who were close to it as far as such differentiations exist. I can only talk about “awakenings”, which keep happening and I see happening also to people around me. Those happenings need integration in the body through conscious experiencing of living daily life.
I also call this first noticing of an awakening event in my life “a shift.” It set a mark into the timeline of the personal life history, which creates an apparent “before and after”, while in being present in the here and now there is no time and no story.
Actually the shift revealed that awake-ness is always here-now. That which is awake is always awake. It is timeless and eternal.
This shift confirmed that the character Morpheus in the movie “The Matrix” pointed into the right direction when he says to Neo: “What is reality other than bio-electrical signals interpreted by your brain”?
The revelation in that was that “I” does not exist as a separate entity. “I” is merely a psychosomatic mechanism within the soma of the brain.
This simple truth did change the world and “me” in it. It took “me” away as a doer and owner of happenings and at the same time it kept me in the realm of practicalities and learning, and also returning - or watching attempts to return - as a doer.
Somehow enough holes had opened up in the cheese of “me and my story” for truth to look at me. And truth did look at me, clearly. Sometimes it felt a bit dry, as if love would be missing, but clearly and distinctly truth stared me in the face and tickled the tip of my nose.
I longed for guidance and received support from a few of the then rather famous new breed of truth teachers in the Satsang Scene. No-one “confirmed” anything in that way. They had dignity and grace. But they confirmed having gone through similar awe and wonder about not being able to be the doer or the owner of one’s story any more, and also deepening in the peeling of layers upon layers of challenging patterns in the deeper programming of the subconscious.
My prayers were heard, I received solace and guidance from embodied and disembodied wisdom and trusted to find my way of manoeuvring in this shift. Clearly there is no how to do it, right or wrong.
This first shift of awakening crossed over a certain zenith, which I call “a point of no return”. The pivoting was just enough to disable re-glueing back into being the owner of my story. Thus it became extremely difficult to lie to myself.
It felt - and still feels - like a “baby buddha state”, opening the possibility to live true to the truth in the moment, including noticing the clouds and the shadows.
It is about seeing it all, seeing and being the fear here and now, seeing and being the joy, and as well seeing and being unaware.
Consciousness-presence notices awareness or unawareness, both, without having to evaluate either as better or worse. Noticing, accepting and being the shadows always invites and ignites the light. Our job is to see it all, to be aware of what is going on.
My commitment was and is simple: to be here, to see and feel in this moment, 100%. Herein the light and the shadows reveal themselves from the deeper nooks and corners of the programming in this human body-mind-apparatus. Sometimes in clarity and purity, sometimes with shadows.
It is a common belief or assumption that with awakening, certain functions of “I” and the related experiences of the human individual would either stop or alter towards something that appears better. In my experience so far this is not the case. If the “I” function did fully “disappear” as some people imagine, it would mean that this incarnation ends up like a cabbage… just vegetating. It needs an “I” - someone who remembers one’s name - to communicate with others and manoeuvre through daily life in this world.
In the wake of this event, the human experience did not become less, or less intense. In a way it became more intense by taking on a quality of being more direct - in the middle of the moment. Direct experiencing does not run through filters of either intellectual judgment or emotional evaluation. Even though one may notice that judgement occurs in the mind or emotional experiencing happens. Being willing not to be run by it is what enables wisdom of discernment. I assume that shadows can and will always occur. I am aware of clear direct experiencing as well as of being cloudy or muddled. In being it as it is any next step will happen on it s own accord.
The great revelation and relief was and is: there is no INSTEAD solution through awakening or any other 'spiritual states'. Enlightenment - whatever it is - is not INSTEAD of how and who I am now, we are now.
I had no plan to join the then growing crowd of new truth teachers. One look at a list on the internet in Germany, showing the names of traveling truth teachers, made me think that there was no need to add to the trouble. At the time the list was less than one page in print, nowadays it is several pages.
What clearly changed was about suffering. The being stuck, the looping in the suffering of wanting myself or life to be different, began to wither
By suffering I do not mean feeling pain, physical or emotional. This happens when it happens. What I mean is the carousel of mind trying to figure it out or do anything about - well - anything.
In my experience, once we jump out of the first layer of victimisation (victim of circumstance), we are being tested and presented with deeper layers including layers that look like they are not even “mine” … The truth is that I am also you. We are one. Over time it became rather irrelevant to whom the stuff belongs that appears in awareness in this moment and wants to grow from darkness into the light.
The impulse to fix or alter reality, within or without, also began to lose its power. A capacity to be with or within everything opened up and continues to expand.
My life became simpler. Finally I could leave Adima alone - and also the former versions of her by other names… ;) - as far as fixing her was concerned. Teaching anything looked rather like an absurdity. No-thing does not fit into words, nor does the simplicity of seeing this.
While I relaxed into a simple and peaceful life, in which my former enemies began to like me, and also former friends turned away, I had good laughs about my job as a teacher, healer, therapist, which easily involves expectations of “fixing and teaching.”
For about two sabbatical years I was lucky not to have to work. Life took care in other ways in the material. I had no plan or ambition to continue any ‘helper career.’ I felt that what is needed is love and felt rather a beginner at that.
So, how come that I ever climbed on a teacher chair ? It so happened, unexpectedly, that I received an invitation through inner or disembodied guidance. Just a few days apart in time, two masters appeared in my consciousness, one in a vision during meditation, the other as a total magical surprise when leaving the house for grocery shopping.
To the master, who I had met during his life time, the Indian mystic Osho, I am grateful every day for what I received. He left a deep imprint in my heart and psyche. Sometimes I hear his voice inside. I can also imagine it, but the hearing I refer to is different, it is a happening. In this spontaneous and unexpected way I heard a message from him while sitting silently. A few days later a very similar message came to my awareness from another master. This happened more mysteriously. When I opened the front door to go for groceries, the face of Ramana Maharshi appeared in the blossoming cherry tree opposite the door. Clearly and unmistakably. His eyes looked very real and alive and so did his voice sound.
From both - Osho and Ramana Maharshi - I heard the message that people who can speak about truth and love should do so, because it is the only way that others can hear about it, become curious, and can grow and learn. I recall Ramana saying ‘you will be used for this, but do not worry about it. It will happen on its own accord.’
The event of receiving this was deeply touching. Despite the mythical nature of it, it felt very ordinary. The message made sense and not knowing how, what, when felt relaxing. I did not have to “do this.” The mystical transmission wasn’t followed by any action for another couple of years. I needed to wait and see what happens on its own accord, so that the response could be authentic.
It was at a birthday celebration in September 22 with a bunch of friends, in fact eight couples, that sharing truth with friends began. It so happened that I said something about love and relationship …. and was asked by the end of the evening “When is the next Satsang?”.
For a while I struggled with the word ‘Satsang’. Inquiring ‘who was I to give Satsang?’ … revealed subtle tendencies toward a painful separation in a hierarchy of being a lesser good being; inquiring ‘who was I to deny Satsang?’ revealed trying to play humble as being even more interesting food for the subtle spiritual ego.
I watched and felt the fire of such mind activity. Again I waited and became available as best as I could. About half a year or so later I found myself meeting with a bunch of friends sharing inquiry, listening with awareness, responding with words. We kept meeting regularly every eight weeks. Almost every gathering brought forth an invitation to another place. There was no marketing or apps involved. Just mouth to mouth, which was exactly what I liked.
So there I was, following invitations to sit on the hot seat to answer questions of spiritual seekers and also guide with therapeutic tools. I never declared “enlightenment” but nonetheless I had to meet the consequences and effects of people’s projections in that direction. I noticed what felt flattering and what didn’t, and the irrelevance of both.
I have met and drunk from the presence of full embodied enlightenment. There is a kind of orientation in the reflection in this. The truth is the same truth, the light is the same light. I am not separate from the master, but I am not 'the same'. A teacher and friend in India described it like this: Osho embodying a full sun, shining in all directions. Most other teachers share a ray of the same light of the sun.
The teacher chair is clearly an alone place. I love being alone and I love being with people. The visitors, guests, students, devotees of truth need personal freedom to project on the teacher figure whatever they need to project or to look into. There were comfortable side-effects for me as well, because people in the form of helpers and assistants behaved very well around me, which might not always have been authentic, it varied from real to phoney - and in both I could feel the person’s being and their heart. The climate around the spiritual teacher chair can be quite a challenge, checking on hierarchies, arrogance and vanity and it can go a bit sterile, too …
If I would share honestly how I noticed the mind making suggestions when in the car after satsang, on what I could have said better in the meeting, or that I noticed the vanity of being impressed with my own words, people thought I was joking.
Growing into friendship, sharing in equality without same-making, became the real challenge and also this expresses my deep wish.
If anything, I rather hold a tendency to prove my “normality” than to separate behind walls of pseudo spiritual achievements or their imitations, even though I have found myself in all of that too. I noticed trying to ‘demonstrate naturalness’, which is as painful an endeavour as demonstrating anything else. There is no way and no need to ‘prove’ anything. Just to be. Alone and with each other.
My visiting crowds inthe open door events were never big - around 8 -30 people, a few times up to 50 or 60. Quite many people returned over the years. This was beautiful, so the small croaks got to know each other. Something grew vertically …
In 2004 I put out a wish to the consciousness known to us as Osho for a name for my work. The asking happened in a meditative contemplation. A little while later I received the name “SATYAMITRA” in a dream. Sat means Truth, Mitra means Friend… “Friends in Truth” was born.
“SATYAMITRA” is a work in progress. Maybe for us all or for many. Meeting in equality without same-making, meeting with an open heart and mind, sharing our light and shadows without judgement.
I love Richard Rudd's quote "Awakening is a series of softening." Also it is all-inclusive, a rather choice-less affair. Sharing with friends in a field of consciousness enriches everyone with the light that we all are.
As I see it there is no spiritual life versus a normal one - even though that exists in language. The only relevant difference is either I am awake, aware and present in the now or I am asleep and dreaming a dream of being spiritual or normal or other-wise.
We meet, we see what we see in this moment and share as best we can.
After all - nobody is perfect.
It is the wisdom of GENE KEYS and the love present in its community, which at this point in my life I feel blessed to have found. Every path and every life style fits and is welcome. With gratitude to Richard Rudd, its founder, and the other hosts and friends who share so abundantly in a spirit that I heard about years ago as “The New Man." Before I could give up hope... here we are happening towards the Future Human!
With love
Adima