Amoda Maa on Living Your Awakening

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good Wolfe, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is a Mota Ma, a contemporary spiritual teacher and author. She's the author of How to Find God and Everything,

Change Your Life, Change Your World, and Radical Awakening. Her new book is Embodied Enlightenment, Living Your Awakening in Every Moment. Hiamoda, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thank you for having me on the show. I'm happy to have you on. Your book is called Embodied Enlightenment, living your awakening in every moment, and I really enjoyed it. And we will get into the book here in just a moment, but let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's

a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And

the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It sounds to me that the bad wolf is the ego self, the part of us that's seeking to protect itself on a psychological level. It's one thing protecting ourselves on a physical level, but on a psychological level, which leads to blame, attack, defense, all the armoring that we put up to to to protect our sense of

self as a separate self. That's the first thing that jumps out out at me about the parable. I would not call that bad, though I would not call that evil. And that's where I would digress from from the parable. Certainly in the work I do and in my own life, I think it's true that we do in some sense feed one or the other, the other being who we really are, beyond ego self, who we really are as an expression of being, as the one consciousness. So I guess one is born out of separation and the other

one is born out of non separation. And I think it's true that we do feed one or the other.

We feed the sense of self as a separate me when we are defended, when we relate to the world from a defended place, where we see an enemy out there, when we see ourselves as either superior or inferior to what's out there, when we are reactive, responding from reactivity from condition self, and if we unconsciously give our attention to that, then that's the wolf we're feeding, and that's the vast majority of the collective ness that we currently

find ourselves in. And then if we give our attention two, something that is more more deep, deeper than the surface of who we are as a separate me. If we give our attention two, not the beliefs in our in our minds, not the conditioned responses, but if we give our attention to the tenderness of the heart, then we come to know ourselves as the open space, which is the place from which love and compassion and kindness and

generosity flow from. And if we keep giving our attention to that, which is quite a challenge mostly, but as we feed that more and more, then actually it becomes, at least in mikes orients and also you know that's part of my teaching. It becomes the natural state. It's not a battle anymore between the two, because infinite intelligence or innate intelligence lives in and as the depth of who we are, and that is far more preferable, far more natural than the training and reactivity that we've had

through social, cultural, parental conditioning. So to me, it starts to become like an endless river that flows, so it's no longer a battle. Yeah, excellent. UM, let's talk about awakening, because awakening is a lot of what you talk about. UM. I think you use the word awakening sort of interchangeably with enlightenment. But talk to me about awakening. I want to read a line that you have here first to start,

because I really like this is a description. Awakening is the discovery of that which is still here and unchanging even when thoughts and feelings change. Yes, awakening is the waking up part of the dream of separation, where in thinking and in feeling, when we're identified with our thoughts

and we're identified with our feelings. In other words, I I feel bad and so I am bad, or I feel good and I am good, or um, you know, having negative thoughts, we tend to beat ourselves up about that and think that we failed or haven't got it right, or we need to improve ourselves. So we're identified, we're are thinking, and we're identified with our emotions, both on

the negative side and the positive side. And then we attempt to change our thoughts and change our feelings in order to become a better person and or to become a good person, or to become an improved perfect person, or to become a spiritual person or whatever. But waking up awakening is waking up out of that dream that

you are your thoughts or your feelings. That doesn't mean not taking responsibility for thinking and feeling or being just a passive passenger in that, but it does mean that our route identity is in a much more profound place within ourselves, not on the surface of our human experience, and waking up out of the dream of separation frees us from the idea of being me here and the

world out there. Everything is inside. I recognize what you're saying a lot, but I have a question for you that I sometimes wonder, and your book brought the question up again for me, because some of what you're describing sounds like being more psychologically healthy. Right, I don't see the world as a threat, I don't feel bad about myself. I'm more psychologically healthy, and I don't think that's what

you're referring to here. So can you help me understand the distinction between sort of just being psychologically not so hard on myself or not feeling so endangered by life versus what awakening is. It actually doesn't matter what your psychological state is. You could still wake up out of

the dream of separation. So I'll just backtrack. As awakening flows into one's life after awakening, then let's call it psychological health or psychological wholeness becomes more likely, but it's not a precursor for awakening, if at quite the opposite. Very often that very traumatic situations or experiences, very dark personal experience is can wake us up out of the dream of separation. And certainly that was the case in my in my experience in that psychological suffering became my

doorway to liberation. And I was somebody who didn't have strong self worth and I didn't feel good enough, didn't feel loved enough. So it doesn't matter what your psychological status.

So it's yeah, it's very different. It'll be described in different ways, but for me, it was emerging with the totality when I finally stopped looking for an answer to my psychological pain by becoming a better person, by improving myself and working on myself, and actually surrendered two the brokenness of it, to the darkness of it, to the

existential abyss of it. There was a deep let go, a deep surrender, a surrender of the need to uphold myself as anything, and that was the route of the transformation. So if anything awakening is a surrender, is a surrender of psychological self, right, right, It certainly does seem to be that ability to let go completely is the basis of lots of transformation and awakening being one of them,

and the desire to control things. You say that personal evolution begins when the desire to be free of the tyranny of ego is greater than the need for psychological safety. Yeah, And I guess that's what I was just touching on. That the need for psychological safety is what gives rise to the egoic movement towards becoming something more, or having

something more, or getting something more. In other words, the hope of salvation or the opposite direction of running away from what scares us, hiding from what scares us, retracting, contracting um, staying in the in the personal comfort zone

psychological comfort zone. And that movement, which I call a horizontal movement, the horizontal movement of egoic mind, is that unconscious desire for psychological safety that keeps us trapped in the sense of being a separate me here that needs to protect itself from the world out there, and then that gives rise to all sorts of things like greed and judgment and division, seeing seeing the world through the

eyes of division, good and bad. Wrong and right gives rise to righteousness, and righteousness always has defense and attacking it, and so starts the war, the war within and the war in the world, and at some point the pain of that because it creates personal suffering, the suffering of discontent, the suffering of fulfillment, and then the loss of that fulfillment and the seeking of that fulfillment usually from the external world, but eventually it turns into the internal world,

and that never brings any real fulfillment. And finally we might have the courage and the willingness to turn our attention two. What is unknown? Because beyond that psychological safety, it's an unknown dimension, and then the possibility of surrender is available to us. You say that the true purpose of the question who am i? Is to serve as a pointer to dive in into the unknownness of this unbounded moment. So you're talking about the tradition there of

some degree of self inquiry, right of asking who am I? Yes, and it can really be any question. It doesn't have to be who am I? And any question that arises from the depths about being, like why am I here? What am I? What is my purpose? Where is true happiness or whatever the question is. It's all forms of the same arrow of self inquiry, and its purpose isn't to find an answer. It isn't to land on some

absolute truth that is satisfactory or satisfying to the mind. Um. It's it's about coming up to the edge of mind, the edge of mind that cannot find anywhere to stand. It's a groundless place, and that's when the possibility of real transformation in the sense of waking up out of

the dream of separation, is possible. But that that edge means that we come up to what I call an existential abyss, where the not knowing of who I am, what I am, the not knowing of whether I exist or don't exist, it actually brings up a lot of primal terror, but the capacity to face that within oneself. And when I speak with people about this, most people don't understand intellectually what I'm saying, but they understand it somewhere in their being nous, because terror comes up at

that place of deep let go of self. So that's the place that if we can just soften into and not turn away through this egoic mechanism that wants to pull us in this horizontal way, then we can drop into the verticality of being. And that's where freedom is. And it sounds complex or it sounds out of reach, but it's actually very available to us. It's actually just a willingness to soften and open right here, right here, wherever you are. Yeah, as humans, we don't like not knowing.

It's not culturally smiled upon, and in general I think we we don't like it. I just did a mini episode probably out by the time listeners hear this, but it was about there's that old kal quote about you know, living the questions, you know, about not always having to know the answer, but being able to live your way into the answer. And I think that's what you're talking about, is that I have no idea what the point is, or what the purposes or all those different things, and

I don't turn away. Yes, I don't grasp for an answer that doesn't really exist. Yes. And and um, I'll add something to that, which is it's about not having an agenda of the outcome. If we examine when we're doing things, or acting or making decisions or just meeting reality, meeting our life circumstances, it doesn't have to be a big decision thing or a goal thing. But just when we're meeting life, we tend to have an agenda of

the outcome. If I open to this, if I soften to this, if I open my heart towards this experience in my life, there's a hidden agenda. I want something back. I either want peace, I want goodness in terms of feeling good. I want goodness in terms of what I might get on a physical level, on an emotional level, on a security level. So we have an agenda around opening ourselves to our experience and really meeting it as

it is, and it's a very tricky place. Once we start to see that, then we have a choice, which is to meet it as openness. Meet it in openness, which is a great vulnerability without any agenda. That's the not knowing. I don't know what it will give me. I don't know whether it will be good or bad, or safe or unsafe. I meet it anyway, And that's

that's the feeding of the good wolf. Because as we do that more and more, we start to live life without a safety net, without a mental safety net, without a mental agenda, without a mental emotional strategy, and that brings us into real intimacy with what is, and that intimacy is love, and that love is intelligence, and that

intelligence is goodness, and everything changes. Not only are we free from the divided inner state, but we're free from suffering, and that brings such a depth and richness to life. It becomes exquisite whatever is happening. So we're not lost on the surface on the waves. We're actually operating as the open hand of the ocean, which has no boundary. And initially that feels very vulnerable, but actually it's the

place of our invincibility. It's the place of our true strength, not the strength of an ego self, but the strength of let's call it divinity or that. That's not a word I would normally use, but you know, the strength of of life's intelligence, which is what is always moving us anyway. So let's talk about getting to that point, because, as you said, not having an agenda is one of those things that sounds relatively easy to do, but as

a human it almost feels like an endless loops. Are times like, okay, I don't want to have an agenda because but it all circles back in some level to reaching towards pleasure, recoiling from pain, which is so very fundamental, and I'm kind of curious, from your perspective, what are ways to help people get to that point where they can be open without having an agenda. The word that comes to mind for me a lot is curiosity, right, because when I'm curious about something, I'm less agenda driven.

I'm much more like I just want to know. But

it's not entirely there. And I also think, you know, maybe you can just wrap this in your response also, but a lot of us come to the spiritual journey as a place of moving away from pain, and then comes this point where the pivot almost has to happen where we say, okay, whatever I find for myself very difficult to get to pure places of motivation, Like I'm like, okay, well, you know, most of me I think is pretty pure here, but then there's that other part of me that just

wants to feel better. You know, it's it's it seems like it's it's very difficult to find that place, which I guess is is why so few people maybe do find it. Yeah, there's no real abc. You know, maybe there have been attempts to provide a method, a roadmap how to I find that that doesn't work. That's not how it works. There's there's almost a ripening that happens in the individual. That ripening is when you finally had

enough of running away from pain. Finally, because you've run away from pain your whole life, in all sorts of strategies, hidden and not so hidden. When you've seen and felt in the depths of your soul that you've used this strategy of running away from pain for lifetimes, then there comes a point when you're sick and tired of it because there's no relief in that, there's no final freedom in that. That's what I call the ripening of the soul.

Then the willingness to meet that pain with curiosity, which is the same as openness. It's okay being curious about something that isn't so scary, But when it comes to something that's terrifying, whatever that might be a feeling in ourselves, an emotion that comes up, you know, a dark space within ourselves, then it's not so easy to be curious. But at some point, because it can't be approached with the mind, it's like the mind strategies finally come to exhaustion.

Then it's as if the ego lays down its weapons, it bows down to the unknown and sacrifices itself on the altar of that unknown nous. That's called surrender. Then there can be am urging of the small me, the separate me, the ego self, with the totality which we can also call the god self, the vastness of existence, consciousness itself being nous. And all these words are going to mean different things to different people, so I always use them in many different ways, but not getting attached

to the words. But to sacrifice the ego on the altar of that which is greater than ego self, which is always unknown to the ego. Therefore it is frightened of it, terrified by it, and we'll run away from it. But finally that can happen. That isn't something that we

can do, that is grace. But we can ask ourselves the question when something comes up that we're frightened of and we notice our contraction are tightening, our resistance, are turning away from our manipulation, are begging and battering and bullying with reality. T in that situation, in that circumstance, in that feeling, when we notice that we can ask ourselves am I willing to meet this as it is? Come what may, even if that means I am annihilated as for me that I think I am. Am I

willing or not? And it doesn't matter what the answer is. There's no right or wrong. There's no spiritual brownie points. There's only the self honesty. Now that's self inquiry, never mind the question who am I? This is self inquiry. Then we can start to be honest, and that's what starts to change it because finally, at some point we might say, yes, I'm willing. I don't know how, but

I'm willing, and that is when grace enters. I'm fascinated by this idea of trying not to try, or you know, the zen idea of like, well, you know, if I'm perfect as I am, why do I meditate? You know? Just this magic sort of place that you talk about with the openness or something that you say that speaks

to this a little bit. And I love this phrase you talk about true fulfillment being an emptying of the spiritual shopping basket, because I think that you said earlier, when we get to the point where we realize there's no running away from our pain, and I think most of us come to the spiritual path because the obvious things. Okay, so it's not money, Okay, it's not sex. Okay, it's not you know this or that I've I've tried that, and for I've either tried it and failed or tried

it and succeed. But whatever reason, I've seen through that and now I come to the spiritual search. But my mentality is very much the same as it was before, and I think, at least for me, that has been a long journey of finding my way through that. Like, Okay, it's like I picked a different channel on the TV, and frankly, I picked a channel that's more likely to lead me to the truth. Right, I'm at least in the neighborhood now, But ultimately I have to let go

of that resistance. And for me, it's been the moments when by whatever method, and it isn't a method, but by whatever thing happens that I truly let go, that something usually fairly magical happens. But trying to let go is still trying. So it said, it's that paradox, like you said, And there is no ABC, and yet I ask everybody because I want one. Yeah, the ABC or it's not an ABC, it's just an AU. Is the

ability to see. When you start seeing the strategies such as the one that you described, then there's a possibility of something fundamentally changing from the horizontal dimension of consciousness to the vertical dimension of consciousness, which is where true change and transformation happens. And much of the time, yes,

the spiritual search is still on the horizontal dimension. The shopping basket I refer to is not just the accumulation of practices and techniques and tools and methods and teachings and ideologies, although it's definitely that's a large part of it, but it's also the shopping basket mentality where we're filling ourselves up with or accumulating agendas, the agenda for the outcome.

If I'm on the spiritual path and I follow it and I dedicate myself to it, then there is an agenda, the agenda that I will become enlightened, or the agenda that I will be free from suffering and pain, the agenda that I will become a better person. And I say very often, but I actually think I mean always that the core agenda is worthiness. If we examine everything that we believe we're going to get from doing something

or immersing in ourselves in something or following something. The core belief that drives that, the core agenda that drives that motivation, is the need to feel worthy, the need to feel good enough, and that is rampant in spirituality as well as in the rest of the world and the secular world. That if I wake up, I'll be more worthy, if I find spiritual fulfillment, I'll be more worthy.

Somehow we believe ourselves to be worthy in that, and so that just perpetuates the polarity, the ping pong between worthiness and unworthiness. Then if we don't achieve that, if we don't get that, if we don't have that experience, if we don't get there, we're still carrying a belief that we're not good enough. Now that has to finally be surrendered. And that's a big one. So that's all

part of the spiritual shopping basket. The accumulation of either things physical things, structures, ideas, beliefs, or the accumulation of good feelings, the accumulation of self identities me as a good person, me as a spiritual person, me as an awakened person. That all comes tumbling into the spiritual basket along the search. Pretty much unconsciously, we're not aware of this.

But as we start to see that and examine that, then true inquiry can start, and then we can start to clear the shopping basket and eventually throw the shopping basket away itself, so we're no longer shopping for anything. In other words, we don't have an agenda, the motivation, the desire for simply meeting life as openness in which I am totally undefended. I have laid down all my weapons of defense and attack, and I meet reality as it is, come what may, even if it destroys me.

That's no shopping basket, no contents to the shopping basket. But that becomes the motivation, for that is for its own sake. It's not for my sake, it's for its own sake. What does that mean? That means that love is seeking itself, Love is seeking to know itself, and then it becomes a very pure motivation, if you like, and that changes everything. But that's a kind of purification

that happens over time, and there is no abc. There's only pointers, support, guidance, listening and speaking from the truth. I listened to people that come to my gatherings, I really listened to them in ways that they probably can't listen to themselves. And and then from that place they speak. And so it's listening to the truth and telling the truth.

That's the purification process. Yea. And I think that that last piece about telling the truth is also telling the truth about where we are if we might still have the motivations, the agendas, all that, you know, And it's being willing to say I'm still there, or that's where I'm at, not even I'm still there, but that's where I'm at, Because then is that's the truth. And and it's like you said, there's only there's only pointers and

I love the word ripening. I'm going to ask you a slightly different question here and then, because we're nearing the end of our time. But you say silence is ever present in everything? What does that mean? It means as you start emptying yourself of agenda, as you start emptying yourself of all the negotiations and contortions around one's own experience to protect oneself, to push something the experience away, to to possess the experience, and so on and so on.

When all that comes to an end, there's only silence. That's not a silence in the head. It's a silence of being. It's the silence of openness and brings a great piece. And that silence is always here, whether there's something noisy going on or not. It's it's a it's an inner silence. And I think the best way I can point to it is exactly that which I said.

When all the mental and emotional acrobatics around one's experience, especially when it's not wanted, when it hurts or it's difficult, or it's challenging, or it's irritating or it's threatening, that's when we create a whole barrage of inner noise, the inner reactivity to protect ourselves from that, to push it away. And when that comes to an end, all there is is the open space of what is and that silence.

And I love in the book the way you talk about the fact that silence is kind of always there, even as you said, if there's a noise outside, or even if my brain is busy, and and I first heard this from from Audi Ashanti, and he pointed out, for whatever reason, it hit me that it was like, you know, silence is the space that all this stuff is moving in. It's always there. And I kept looking for or waiting for the moment that silence would appear or okay, all this stuff would shut up so I

could have some silence. And there was really interesting for me to start to say, oh, wait a minute, silence is there. There's just this other stuff that's sort of on top of it, but silence is all around it. Um. It just was a different way of of seeing for me and really helped me be able to touch a

slightly i don't know, deeper place. Yeah, it's it's really about seeing and experiencing the world reality once one's experience, one's inner experience and one's outer experience from an undivided state, the divided states says this is not good, this is good. I don't want this, I want this, This shouldn't be happening. This should be happening. And that's a primary one and that divides us. We so we so we live from

an inner noisiness that division. But when there is no shouldn't be happening in our experience, then we meet reality without any resistance. That's lack of resistance itself is the silence. It doesn't matter whether it's thinking or feeling, because when there's no resistance, our attention isn't caught up in the thinking and feeling. Thinking and feeling happens just like the waves on the ocean. But that's not where our sense

of self is attached. We are the space within which all that happens, and that that brings such a such a freedom, such a piece that hasn't got anything to do with whether we're um, you know, having a challenging experience or a or a gentle experience. Excellent, Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. We're going to have a post show conversation here in a couple of minutes where I'm going to ask you about dealing with irritation and about the books that are

on your bookstand back there. But for the purposes of this conversation, we are done, and so listeners, if you want to hear the conversation afterwards, uh, supporters of the show get to hear it. But amoda, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed talking with you, and I really enjoyed your book, which again is called Embodied Enlightenment, Living Your Awakening in every moment. Thank you,

it's been a pleasure. Okay bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slosh support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.