Getting to know quite a number of teachers over the last couple of years, and finding so many points of resonance in our views and orientations, Linda and I feel more and more that we are part of what I am coming to call a “Global Living Lineage” of teachings, traditions, transmissions, and teachers.
In the isolated sacred cultures of the old world, at least in highly elaborated practice traditions such as those in India and Tibet, a practitioner might have a “root guru” or home school. Yet he or she might also take instruction from any number of other teachers, and even cross lines into substantially different lineage “clans.” But none of this would represent a fundamental separation from the original teacher or teaching that the seeker established a heart-link with to begin with. Or, therefore, from the whole precious stream of grace that that link had opened and kept alive for him or her.
In today’s global culture, the same is practically the case across all previous lines of traditions and teachings. I’ve long observed that people who enter the Waking Down in Mutuality work feel free–and we bless them–to explore all kinds of other schools and forms of liberating, healing, and evolutionary work. And we see people coming into our process from an enormous variety of other modalities of such work.
So it seems to me that it’s time for all of us to begin accepting that we are all now participants in and beneficiaries of a single Global Living Lineage. This grand lineage tradition includes all cultures and traditions of sacred transformational pursuit, EAst and West, indigenous and modern. And the more each particular school and lineage can recognize this and grant its participants blessing to partake of other offerings within the greater Global Living Lineage, the more each of us, whether teacher, apprentice, or seeker, will begin to relax into the recognition that everyone’s journey is unique and there is no fundamentally wrong or sinful place in the greater lineage for our heart’s prompts to take us.
Linda and I encourage all our teaching colleagues in all schools and traditions to accept this as the reality of our lives and times and come to peace with it. And when our students find themselves impelled to journey elsewhere for further growth and clarification, let us therefore bless them liberally, knowing they are never really leaving either our own hearts or the Heart of Being itself. And where and when we find ourselves so moved, let’s have the courage to act and to bless our own freedom too!
This kind of blessing, generously and openly extended, could contribute much to true peace and tolerance among all schools, traditions, teachers and lineages within the Global Living Lineage. So be it.
April 13th, 2006 at 2:36 am
wow! lucky me! don’t know if this comments feature is new, but it feels like an honor to be the first to post a comment here.
i joined in the teleseminar (”healing the spirit/matter split”) last night and posed the question, ‘is this teaching – and, specifically, the “transmission” described in this “waking down” work – in any way comparable to the teaching and the “direct transmission” of tibetan dzogchen?’ and saniel’s reply was that there are, indeed, “very, very profound similarities.”
tonight, i’m here to download “the conscious principle.” waiting for the email confirmation and download link now.
i have been an informal student of adi da going back to the publication of “breath and name,” and a student, as well, of a fairly broad swath of the Global Living Lineage before then and since. it was in an adidam publication, perhaps “crazy wisdom,” that i recall being first introduced to dzogchen in an article regarding chogyal namkhai norbu. i was deeply smitten, shall we say, and remain so, often tending to interpret my own spiritual journey in terms of my simple understanding of what dzogchen and its three steps encompass.
i’ve concluded that step one - direct introduction or transmission - what in this work is comparably described, i gather, as “second birth” - was accomplished or by grace revealed in my case about 12 years ago (i am 47 now). even here, my dzogchen analogy is a bit crude as this introduction was unmediated. i had no formal relationship with a guru or spritual teacher then, nor before, nor since. if, instead of residing at the time in lawrence, kansas, i’d resided in southern india, i might have concluded that Arunachala was my guru. isn’t any guru but the moon reflecting the light of the sun? in any case, i did more or less presume some link, some grace transmission, deriving from adi da (from all of the teachers i’d adored, really) and wrote to the “daist communion” about this. but i did not pursue any connection beyond that - informal student still. instead . . .
reflecting on the intervening years since then, i suspect that my life is proof not only that one can “wake up” and uncover “the location of happiness” in this lifetime, but can proceed to surrender and abandon that awakening, drifting deep down back into samsara’s soup in the very same lifetime, too. can someone receive this pearl beyond price and then squander it? i think so. i think i did just that. the light of this jewel has not gone out, but has been obscured by the depths and the dark i’ve carried it into.
unaided, nominally speaking, when i crashed heaven’s gate, i subsequently plunged (i suppose i can say) back into the “core wound,” lanquishing, to be honest, in this heart space more or less and similarly unaided since.
what’s the best time to plant a tree? anybody? answer: ten years ago. the second-best time? today.
similarly, i sorely want to become engaged with other men and women who also wish to be open and honest and responsible about our awakening and our woundedness. this hermit gig has played itself out. and so far, drawing nearer to this waking down work feels like coming home. it’s time to take another step.
i’ve rambled on enough here. (you can expect i’ll ramble on again, later.)
thank you saniel and linda and everyone involved in this work!
peace and wholeness!
June 16th, 2006 at 6:45 am
So be it indeed! The Global Living Lineage (I like the caps, makes it a real thing) is already the case, as Saniel is suggesting, so let’s acknowledge it and celebrate it. The “GLL” parallels our bumping-up-against-each-other cultural traditions which can be seen everywhere in the global community. The bump spots are hotter but offer richer learning possiblities imo than do the single stream. They’re unanticipated mutuality.