Tag: nonduality

Byron Kathleen Reid (or "Katie" as she is called) became severely depressed in her early thirties. She was a businesswoman and mother living in a little town in the high desert of southern California. According to Katie, for almost a decade she spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom. Then, one morning in February 1986, while in a halfway house for women with eating disorders, she experienced a life-changing realization. She described her experience as similar to spiritual awakenings described in Buddhist and Hindu traditions under various names; she called it “waking up to reality.” In that moment of enlightenment, she says:

I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.

Soon after her realization people started seeking Katie out and asking how they could find the freedom that they saw in her. People from her town and eventually from elsewhere came to meet her, and some to even live with her.

Katie is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell, who co-wrote her first book, Loving What Is and her third book, A Thousand Names for Joy.

Katie calls her method of self-inquiry The Work. She describes it as an embodiment, in words, of the wordless questioning that had woken up in her on that February morning. As reports spread about the transformations people felt they were experiencing through The Work, Katie was invited to present it publicly elsewhere in California, then throughout the United States, and eventually in Europe and across the world. She has taught her method to hundreds of thousands of people at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, shelters for survivors of domestic violence, universities and schools, at weekend intensives, and at her nine-day "School for The Work".

Katie is the author of three bestselling books: “Loving What Is – Four Questions That Can Change Your Life” (with Stephen Mitchell), “I Need Your Love – Is That True?”, “How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead” (with Michael Katz) and the recently published: “A Thousand Names for Joy – Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are” (with Stephen Mitchell). Her latest book is “Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie”.

Avinash, born in Brazil, spent many years living in Pune, close to the Indian mystic Osho whom she first met in 1977. From those years she draws a vast experience as a therapist in tarot-reading, chakra- and breath-therapy.

In 1991 in the presence of the Indian mystic Sri Poonjaji (Papaji) in Lucknow she realised her true nature. Together with her partner Gyandeva she spent six years in the community with Papaji who instructed her "to speak the silence she has found". Since then she expresses this silence through words, and lots of people come to her meetings and sessions in Brazil, India and Europe.

Unpretentious, with a clear vision for the essential, Avinash takes people directly to their hearts and to the freedom of the moment. This direct experience of the reality she calls "Simply being".

More Info about Avinash and Gyandeva
www.avinash-gyandeva.com

Arjuna Ardagh, born 1957 in London, was educated at King's School Canterbury, and later at Cambridge University in England, where he earned a Master’s degree in literature. Since the age of 14 he has had a passionate interest in spiritual awakening, and began to practice meditation and yoga. After graduating from Cambridge, he devoted himself more fully to the call he felt inside him, and studied with a number of prominent spiritual teachers.

In 1991, after returning to India for prolonged meditation, Arjuna met HWL Poonja. With his help, the author went through a radical shift of perspective. Rather than attaining anything of what he had dreamed of, he had the profound realization that he had been seeking for what he already was, and always had been. He realized that it was in the abandonment of seeking and wanting that the heart found its fulfillment.

Arjuna has also developed the Living Essence Training, which prepares people to be facilitators of this shift in consciousness with others, and to cultivate translucence. He and his staff have trained more than 450 practitioners in the U.S. and Europe. He speaks at many international conferences, and has appeared on TV, on the radio and in print media.

Arjuna lives in Nevada City with his wife Chameli and his two sons.

More Info about Arjuna
www.livingessence.com and www.translucents.org

Ameen was born in Israel in 1966 and growing up in the Israeli society his passion for freedom was awakened. Although Ameen was never interested in religion or spirituality, he lived unconsciously the life of a spiritual seeker. Even rather young he felt that life in Israel was too restrictive and aggressive. So he was rebellious and critical and his longing for freedom grew. At the age of 18 he was suffering from depression. At that time, being in loneliness and pain, the self began to show itself. Not really knowing what it was, Ameen continued his life. Many years later his longing for freedom guided him to Asia. While meditating in Osho’s Ashram his real self appeared again. In 1998 his personality dissolved completely and awakening happened. After years of integration and understanding Ameen started teaching. His way of human liberation, which he calls "guidance through awakening", is focussed on deepening of the silence and the development of clarity and understanding as a door to the now, the true self.

In Satsang and single sessions Ameen leads through the individual way of awakening and he shows the simplicity that freedom can be found by everyone if he lives a silent and honest life.

More Info about Ameen
www.ameen.be