Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Thomas Hübl. Thomas is a contemporary spiritual teacher who invites people to experience a deeper dimension of self-awareness and individual responsibility. He is the initiator of the Celebrate Life Festival in Germany and the Synchronized Humanity Tour. He founded the Academy of Inner Science in 2008, creating a space for the exploration of contemporary mysticism, which directly contributes to awaking culture.
With Sounds True, Thomas Hübl is publishing a new audio series, The Power of We, as well as a forthcoming book on Awakening in the Relational Field.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Thomas and I spoke about two competencies that he feels are needed for the process of spiritual awakening—a competency of stillness; and a competency of movement or expression, particularly in relationship with others. We talked about the importance of asking the question when we find ourselves triggered in relationship: “What am I avoiding?” Finally, we talked about what really constitutes transparent communication and how awakening can only be experienced in its fullness if we are attuned and responsive to other people.
Here’s my conversation with Thomas Hübl, who stayed awake late in Germany one night to talk on Insights at the Edge about Awakening in the Relational Field.
Thomas, to begin with, I’d love to know what spiritual awakening means to you. I think it’s an experience—a breakthrough—that people understand differently. There’s also a lot of misunderstanding about what spiritual awakening is and is not. So, right here at the beginning, I’d love to know what spiritual awakening [is] to you.
Thomas Hübl: Oh, that’s a big one. I think we can fill a whole hour just with this question. But maybe to make it more simple—for me, it’s as you say, spiritual awakening can be something very fundamental that can hit us like lightning. Suddenly, the normal perspective that we have on life opens pretty strongly [in a way]. We see that whatever [I was] identified with until now is actually not my true self so that the separation we experienced in my life maybe until today—and the way how I think, how I feel, how I perceive, how I breathe in that separate self—suddenly gets fundamentally changed. That’s the word I would use.
So, the attachment to my normal psychological process—to my normal perception in life—is being suspended into something much greater. Usually, the feeling of separation actually melts into kind of a unification with everything. So, that’s one [way] that we could look at awakening.
But usually, what I experienced in the last 10, 12 years of my work [has been] that that’s pretty rare. So, it’s much more likely that we give ourselves to the deep desire in our heart for a kind of spiritual path—a path that arises out of questions; out of difficulties in our life; out of a deep desire, for some people; [or] out of a crisis. We have small awakenings, [such as] that our perspective on life in different areas expands and that we find a greater synchronicity [and] coherence with life step by step by step.
Usually, this step-by-step process can also have setbacks—or often has setbacks. It’s sometimes accompanied by high levels of creativity. Sometimes, also by very dark moments. So, it can be described in a way like a bit of a struggle of the soul to find its freedom.
That’s usually the path that I see much more often than a fundamental awakening experience where form, formlessness, and experience literally are totally unified. I think, for most of us, it’s a gradual process of arriving more and more and more in the perfection that I was missing my whole life.
TS: Now, in your own life experience, was there some type of thunderbolt—some type of lightning? Or has it been a gradual opening and deepening for you?
TH: I think, in my life, it was a bit of a combination. It was that I—as a medical student, I was very much into studying medicine until I—when I was 19 years old, I had a very strong feeling to have a kind of silent space every day. It didn’t really have anything to do with meditation. At the time, I was pretty much into science and medicine.
Only later, I found out about meditation, yoga, and I tried many things. I was really into it. Then, I had the feeling, “OK, that’s it. This needs to become my life. This needs to become my first priority,” and I left everything when I was 26. I went through a kind of intensive four years of retreat. One could say that I had a very intense studying time in these four years. At the end of these four years, I had a fundamental experience of—something happened, which changed a lot.
After that—slowly, slowly—it took me a year, basically. I was still meditating a lot. Just mainly on my own, for myself. Then, slowly, it opened my path to do the work that I’m doing today.
So, I think it was pretty much both. I felt a very strong calling. I had a very strong inner guidance during those four years. And at the same time, something fundamental also happened. So, it’s a combination.
TS: Could you describe in more detail for me? I have quite a high curiosity about this. The fundamental shift that happened? Meaning, was it one night at four in the morning? You know—that kind of specific thing? Or how would you describe it?
TH: Of course, in these four years I was meditating many hours a day, often. I was literally exploring different spaces in human consciousness—different levels of our existence or dimensions of our being. So, I more often [had] kind of sudden revelations in that time.
But, there was one fundamental moment in my meditation practice where suddenly, fundamentally, things changed. It’s very hard to describe. The only thing that I could describe it as is that the way how I looked at life before was not there anymore. But what has been left was—like what I said before, [it’s as if] the borders of separation somehow merged into something completely different—more unified and on the one hand, much more simple. On the other hand, deeply connected.
It’s very hard for me to find words for this, but I know that there was one moment where suddenly everything was different. This is the closest that I can describe this. It took me a year or so to—in a way—to come back into life or to start teaching what I’m doing now. Or actually, life [taught] me and invited me to teach.
But this was a pretty strong moment. My whole perspective—how I looked at life before—somehow dissolved. It’s the closest that I can describe it with words.
TS: Now, in the new audio series that you’ve created—The Power of We—you begin by talking about two competencies that we need in the spiritual awakening process, if you will. You talk about these two competencies as “stillness” and “movement” or “expression.” I wonder here, at the beginning, if you can talk to our listeners about stillness and movement, and how you see those as core competencies—if you will—in the awakening process.
TH: Right. So, first of all, in many spiritual traditions and the mystical parts of the traditions—which I call the “inner core of the great wisdom traditions”—[are] the real, true knowledge—the true practices—[and] have been passed on for often thousands of years. We hear a lot about the practice of stillness, the practice of inner space, the practice of presence, of mindfulness.
So, I believe that one stream of our spiritual practice needs to show us this very eternal moment—this timeless quality that deepens and deepens and deepens until, in a way, the experience dissolves into stillness and simplicity. It’s so simple. I believe that it—very often—[doesn’t] feed into the complexity of our life.
I think one part of our meditation practice needs to be an emptiness practice or a stillness practice that shows me my eternal—or the eternal—presence. Equally important—and I think something that needs to be explored [more deeply] is, “How does my spiritual practice not remove me from what we call society, culture, or the marketplace, but actually gives me higher competencies to live in society, culture, and the marketplace [in order to stay] a creative or evolving movement as well? So that my life stays a creative impact in life?”
So, I believe that the creation process—as it’s described, for example, in the Kabalistic tradition, in the Jewish mysticism, or the monotheistic traditions—is an equal, important part of our practice. That’s where potential comes into play. That’s where the future as something that we can develop into comes into play. This where accountability, responsibility, groundedness, body-mind-spirit—all the aspects that I can say, “OK, this is a quality. This is a form. And these are competencies that I can develop.”
Stillness is something that I can realize by dropping in and dropping in and dropping in, or [with] inclusion and transcendence. Movement is participation, refinement, excellence, [and] human intelligence. I believe [that] if we find a contemporary path that really allows us to practice both deeply, then we will realize eternity—but we will also become a higher version of what we are today as individuals and as cultures.
I think that many listeners that listen to this program—who are connected to Sounds True—are also people that live in the marketplace. [They] co-create culture. So, we find many difficulties in co-creating culture, especially when you listen to the news at the moment. You hear many aspects that are difficult to survive.
So, I think when my spiritual practice actually gives me competence, it is to deal with the difficulties in my life and turn them into higher movements, deeper competencies, or more love [and] compassion. That’s what sounds to me [like] a very appealing spiritual practice.
TS: It’s interesting to me, Thomas—the way that you’re linking stillness and movement. I think many spiritual teachers talk about stillness or “practicing the presence,” quieting the mind, finding emptiness space. Then I hear other kinds of people talking about changing the world, creative arts, and expression. How do you see the two of these linked in the awakening process itself? How are they combined in your view?
TH: So, one aspect that I am really interested in is healing. In the healing work, what we are interested in is how to create a higher movement in the places where we reduce our movement. In the spiritual practice and the silence practice, we are interested in how we [can] include and transcend—which means disidentify from the form and energy, and drop back into the ocean or the stillness. The eternal present.
What I [actually] found out in the last 10 to 12 years, is how positive it is when we learn to look at the movement of life with competency so that the deepening of my presence and my awareness can actually help and support me. [This helps] to integrate my shadows, to be more inspirational or to be more inspired, to be more intuitive, to have a higher capacity of perception, [and] to be more connected to the depth or the complexity of the moment.
And so, I actually don’t see any difference between those two paths. I actually think that what happened in the past is that people went and maybe went to monasteries—or even to caves in the Himalayan Mountains—and looked for more solitude in order to deepen their spiritual practice. But what we find nowadays often is that many of the people that we are connected to are also co-creating culture and having an impact in life [and] on life.
I think, therefore, [that] nowadays many of us are being asked to develop both. Actually, for me, there is no difference between stillness and movement. I think the true, nondual realization is not just realizing stillness, but to realize the stillness within the movement so that the eternal face of the divine—and the developing or evolving face of the divine—are actually not two.
So, I believe they are deeply interwoven. More so, they are not two. There is no activism or spiritual life. I think the best activism is the one that is coming from that more awake perspective.
TS: OK. So, help me a little bit. I’m imagining someone who—in an abstract way—says, “I kind of get what you mean and it certainly sounds beautiful and poetic, but in my experience, stillness often comes to me when I’m sitting in a chair, and I’m in nature, or I’m lying on the ground, or I’m doing a meditation practice. Then, expression comes when I’m involved in a creative art form, or I’m speaking, or I’m at work. How do I find the stillness in movement and the movement in stillness?”
TH: Right. So, the interesting thing is: how can you take what you experience in the meditation practice or when you sit in nature—is there a possibility to not lose that space and that inner centeredness—that inner space of presence when you talk to your boss, when you talk to the people that you your project with, when you talk to your clients, when you talk to your family? So, how can we actually merge all those transpersonal qualities into our personal engagement in the world?
So, in communication for example, our interaction [and] our participation in the world are being infused by the capacities that those deep spiritual practices give me. So, when I talk to you, I am able to hold the present space that includes you and myself, [as well as] the space in between us. And, at the same time, [it] includes the information and the qualities that you bring into the space and that I bring into the space—or my intimate partner, or my child, or my working colleagues. And I am able to stay in that transpersonal self while I am engaged in the world [and] while I am engaged in a deeply intimate personal relation to you—in an accountability to you. I am taking responsibility for paying my bills.
So, I think the beauty is when we bring those qualities of sitting in silence and being in nature actually into the most hectic, restless places on the planet. Can I stay in the transpersonal space when I am in Israel, where there is a war?
I think that these are very deep questions because sometimes—at least, how I look at it—in some spiritual fields, stillness is actually made higher than the movement. I believe true nonduality doesn’t make this distinction.
For me, it’s a very great challenge: how to be, for example, in our groups [to] really look at the difficulties, at the shadows that we bring, at the places that we often want to avoid. How do we create a higher willingness to participate in the most beautiful moments and in the most difficult moments equally? I think that’s when my deepest humanity becomes my highest possibility.
What I mean by that is: what if I will really [also] give myself to the difficult, painful moments with that inner space and with the deep willingness to practice my deep meditation practice or contemplation practice while I meet those difficulties? I think, for me, that’s something where I feel that when I look into the world, [it’s] how the world looks like at the moment—when I don’t see the world just as an illusion, but also as the manifest body of the divinity that I practice.
So, then there’s a caring, there is a compassion, and a giving. I believe that the combination of both gives me much more power and willingness to give [and] to participate.
TS: So, again Thomas, I just want to make this extremely practical and—in a sense—comprehendible in people’s everyday experiences. So, I’m imagining someone who has been on some type of deep retreat—maybe it was only a few days, but they touched this sense of unification that you are describing. “The ocean of being.” They come back. Their intent is to bring that into all of their interactions with other people, and it doesn’t take long for there to be an interaction—with their intimate partner, let’s say—where they’re starting to notice a rising irritation, and then a kind of tuning-out. And before you know it, lots of frustration, et cetera.
So, what do you recommend for people in that moment, where we’re seeing our connectedness and our deep peace eroding in an interaction? What do we do in those moments?
TH: The eroding that you mention is very interesting, because it means that I am not aware of what I am avoiding in that specific interaction with my intimate partner. Therefore, exactly because of this example, I think it’s so important that we will focus part of our spiritual practice on movement, which [also] means shadow integration [and] a very high awareness within the process of my daily life on how I actually distance myself internally from the experience that I am having—which means from you, but also from what you cause in me in my first reaction.
So, it looks like the intimate partner makes me feel angry. So, in that moment, I might not like the fact that I am getting angry, jealous, [sad], whatever. And then, I start avoiding these inner sensations because I have made it the idea that I should stay in that open space that I experienced in the workshop. In the moment, I have an idea about the moment, and the moment is different. I already feel that the beautiful inner space is actually collapsing.
Because of that example that you brought, I think this shows the importance that—when I want to stay as an integral part of culture and I don’t decide to go to a cave in the Himalayan Mountains where I will have to face other difficulties. But if I decide for what some people call a more “tantric” or “embodied” or “manifest” spiritual path, then it’s even more important that I will become aware of all the places that I am not aware of. Usually, these are the places that we run into when we see that beautiful, meditative space vanishing when we come back into culture. That’s one thing.
The other thing is that whenever—I call it “the first test,” [which] is that we realize something or we heal something. The second test is that we bring this realization or this integration back into our life. So, the first test is usually easier because [it’s] something that’s opened up, we learn in a retreat, or we experience in nature suddenly—or within our therapy. But then, when we come back into our life, the context of our life is designed or co-created by our former self. But my former self is not me anymore.
So, when I come back, I come back into this old shoe. And now, the second test is actually, “Will I embody my realization?” So, I think that’s how cultural evolution works. We are, for each other, always evolutionary impulses where we push each other in our limits and we push each other forward. We show each other our shadows, and we show each other our potentials.
I think that’s a very beautiful process if we [really] take those things as growth impulses. Which means, for example, one part grows in a retreat, and there was a deep opening or more clarity or more intimacy that the person is able to live. Then, he or she comes back to the intimate partner—but the intimate partner gets scared from this realization, from this growth, from this power, from this clarity, or this power of loving.
So, how do we deal with these parts that I think we all know—if we see other people develop—where we see other people grow? It might be that one day I find myself being jealous, feeling envy, feeling afraid, wanting the other partner—or my partner—not to move so fast in his or her development.
These are really interesting questions if you’re interested in the cultural awakening. Literally, our culture is growing because that’s what we are facing. Therefore, I think what you say is so key to many people’s experience, because I think [nearly every one of us knows] the workshop experience and coming back to life. These fundamental, groundbreaking awakenings that happen and then they stay for the rest of our life—they are pretty rare. But we will need to learn to be in these ways.
[Usually], what also happens is that the person that had this beautiful experience will try to stay attached to that beautiful experience as it’s eroding or vanishing. So, this creates an even faster vanishing of that beautiful space. I think, once I understand the dynamic that’s happening there and once I watch, “OK, what is actually the fullness [or] the richness of the moment that I experience right now?”—if I like it or don’t like it, it doesn’t [actually] matter. Three-hundred-sixty degrees of my experience belongs to that moment.
So, then I will find out more and more [about] what I am actually avoiding. What do I not want to have to [deal with?] The more I think I will practice the refinement of this, I will learn to embody my realizations. I think most of all the knowing [is] that these things need to happen. In most of the cases of the people that I know, these dynamics that you describe happened. And if I don’t release them—[and] I see them as my natural process—for sure I will be more willing to explore them. This curiosity and exploration, I think, are key for me to find out more about those dynamics.
TS: So, it sounds like a key in the way that you’re presenting this is asking this question: “What am I avoiding?” So, someone asks this question—“What am I avoiding?”—and I’m avoiding my rage or I’m avoiding whatever it might be. My impatience or who knows what it might be. What do I do once I identify what I’m avoiding in this situation that has me clearly no longer in a place of peaceful stillness?
TH: Right. So, yes, as you said—first of all, I will learn to explore what [I am] avoiding. Then, clearly to see an attachment to this state that I was in is not necessarily helpful in living myself fully in that moment with my intimate partner.
So, I come home. I would really love to have this harmonious or deep space with my partner. Suddenly, my partner comes from a very different life, and he or she is actually already a bit irritated when I come home because I was away, and she doesn’t really know what happened. Then, the whole dynamic actually develops in a whole different direction than I expected.
Once I see that—for example, as you said, that I am also getting angry—if I am actually emotionally healthy, that anger will be processed through me without contraction. When I see that the meditative space is vanishing, it’s just a subjective experience of me contracting—contracting back into my conditioned self.
Once I see that my conditioned self is a composition of conscious and unconscious parts, then I know the importance of [actually] finding out what the rooms in my house [are] that I am not aware of. If rage is something that I am familiar with—that I am living in, that I am grounded in if it’s necessary—rage won’t lead to the fact that I lose my witnessing consciousness or this meditative spaciousness. If rage is something that I have been trained to avoid—or trained myself to avoid—then that’s definitely what’s still going to happen because that meditative space didn’t help me to integrate my shadows.
Once I meet life again, the energy or the movement—the content of my experience—becomes important again. Therefore, the movement part would be how to integrate—for example—the movement of my emotional system, my mental system, and my social systems in a way so that they start flow experiences. If my anger can flow through me and I am able to express it healthily if it’s needed, then anger won’t throw me out of my unity experience. But if that’s not the case—or even [if] I have the spiritual concept that I shouldn’t be angry—then that certainly will happen.
Let’s say the practice of, “What am I avoiding in this moment?” helps me to realize, “Oh, I am contracting the sensations of my anger and [making] it smaller.” Therefore, [I am] feeling that I am falling out of something or my meditative openness is vanishing. Then, the more I reconnect to the sensation of anger and I presence myself in it—or relax myself into it—and this can flow through me, I will see that my meditation space is coming back—or I realize it more again.
I think, therefore, the openness of my humanity is so important because that’s usually where I start to tumble or where I start to contract again when I meet life. This [also] means that the wisdom is not just this transpersonal space, but also the embodiment of the transpersonal space in my most fundamental emotional experiences, sexual experiences, and social experiences.
TS: I want to take this even further for a moment, because I think what we’re talking about is so important. What I’m thinking of is how you mentioned sexual experiences—and it could be sexual or just deep intimacy—how for many of us in such experiences, some very deep, mostly unconscious trauma can be evoked in the relational field (as you call it). So, here we’re faced with something that seems so difficult for us to stay with—almost impossible. It’s so painful.
So, I’m curious: how do you recommend people work with that in the context of awakening in relationship?
TH: Right. That’s a beautiful question.
So, of course—from what I would call a mystical point of view or mystical knowledge—we would look at trauma as a reduced movement in a certain aspect of our development. We would call this a “cosmic address.” There’s an area of my being that is reduced in its movement and reduced in my conscious awareness of it. So, the body-mind actually gets turned off partly. The content of that experience vanishes into the unconscious.
So, when that kind of sexual trauma gets activated through an experience, I don’t experience my trauma directly. What I experience are symptoms of that reduced movement and of the filter system that it created when I perceive the world. Which means, in other words, every traumatized area—in this area, I will not see the world as it is because I am looking through filtered glasses. That’s also why the experiences that I have in the area of my trauma are [usually] perceived as being stressful or painful or very challenging, because I cannot even perceive this situation in its full extent and in its full information.
I’m giving a bit of a context because that’s important for how we work with it. So, first of all, I’m a fan of we-spaces when it’s around learning and when it’s around healing—because I believe that when we create we-spaces, [they] have certain qualities that are very, very beneficial to wake up together. One is that we commit that presence, mindfulness, and attention in the moment together. Another one is that the quality of my perception—I will explore the quality of my perception, because I believe that human beings have the ability to perceive much more than many people usually think that they can.
Given these two qualities together means that I learn to hold spaces of presence, to be present with the relation, and that I refine my ability to teach, feel, and perceive what’s really going on right now—which I call “to move my awareness from the smoke to the fire.” Or, “from the experience to the essence.”
So, I believe that when we are in a relationship where we develop together—when we are in working relationships, when we are in communities that develop together—then those two qualities just intensify the space—the intensity of our relation, of our communication, of our meetings. What this means is that we will become more and more precise together—to see, to learn, to discern symptoms from essential places—or the essence of what’s really happening right now.
One example that I think many people know is—I often say in my talks that when you go into a communication, into a team meeting, or when you speak to your intimate partner—or speak to anybody in the world—and you leave the communication feeling more tired than the way you started the communication, you know that something happened that you didn’t see. That life energy is actually an amazing indicator for truth, presence, authenticity, and connectedness to life.
So, when I run into a certain situation and I leave the situation [feeling] tired or happy that it’s over, I know that I couldn’t perceive the situation in its essence. I got stuck in some symptoms. That’s very important because this gives me one indication when I entangle myself in symptoms and when I really [am] coming to the core of a situation—to the core of a communication. I think we all know how that feels. If we either see something together with someone or if we [really] get seen by someone, we know when the strings of life or chords are really resonating.
I believe one way to healing is that we will pay much more attention when the strings of the musical instrument start to resonate. When we see and feel seen more and more often, and this creates intimacy. For example, one aspect that I often say—one symptom—is pain. Usually, I don’t understand the word “pain” when it’s around emotions, because I believe that when somebody says that something is painful, it’s already an interpretation of what the person is feeling.
So, when I take the symptom of pain—and I’m not talking now about really severe, medical, bodily pain. Usually, we [say] “painful” when we talk about feelings or emotions. So, the symptom would be to say something is painful, and then my main interest is already to go, “OK, when take this interpretation away, what is actually what we really feel?” If in life I go deeper with that, I will definitely come more to the fire of what I learn—maybe even through very strong, dramatic experiences—not to feel because it was so overwhelming.
Of course, the intensity of the trauma will also determine how much professional help I need with this. For some things, I will need a very trained person that can help me to go through the different levels of my pain—which means to press through unfelt feelings [and] sensations in a material [way], to come to my core, and to reawaken this part of my being.
But some things we can also practice with our spiritual friends, with our partners, and we can definitely learn some tools—how to at least take the main symptoms that human beings describe and not get stuck in them.
TS: Thomas, I’m wondering: I think it might be helpful if you’d be willing to share a personal example of this—we could call this a kind of shadow integration process that you’ve been referring to. But I’m wondering if you could share a personal example of working with symptoms in your own life—and then getting to core of something—and how that worked for you.
TH: Yes. Let’s see. So, one personal example was that, some years ago, I was making a decision of becoming a father or not becoming a father. There was a part in me that I felt that becoming a father [would] definitely take energy from my work. I will not be as free [anymore] as I wanted to be in order to do whatever I am feeling called to do—and to follow my path fully.
So, by exploring this, what seemed like a strong commitment to my path, I could—after some time—really find out that actually the opposite is true. Behind my own worldview was a kind of fear that by embracing it and not even fully integrating it, but just becoming aware of it, staying in these sensations, and seeing how my mental process would help me to find good reasons why not—I learned to drop into this more and more and more until I could go with the decision.
Actually, the experience of becoming a father helped me to integrate and heal those fears, [as well as] open my own grounding or rootedness in life even more. [This] actually made my teaching much stronger.
By dismantling the symptoms of the process, there should [maybe] be some kind of explanations for why my spiritual path is more important than becoming a father—and whatever I might not be able to do. Detaching [more] from that and resting in the fears that were behind it helped me to [actually] move my life in a direction that was actually deeply healing as a path of life—and actually deeply enriching for what I am doing.
I think that’s just one thing that I could stay more in the story of the whole process—or, really go through the sensations and feelings that are more uncomfortable [to] stay there even if I didn’t know fully where they are coming from. Also, the decision actually helped me to heal that and integrate it, [as well as] open something in my own energy that was very fundamental.
So, that’s maybe one personal example.
TS: One of the things you talk about in the audio series The Power of We is the importance of being willing in this process to go beyond comfort—to go beyond what’s comfortable. To go into—if we need to—what’s uncomfortable. I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that.
TH: Right. Yes—that also relates to the question that you asked before, with the trauma. I think that a very high spiritual value is when we make a commitment to something that is bigger than comfort and discomfort—to when I know, “OK, I’m here. I’m committed to life, and I’m committed to presence.” No matter if this moment, this conversation with you, this experience I go through is comfortable for me or uncomfortable for me, I know that I am here—and I know that I am committed to life more than to what I like and what I don’t like.
That’s for sure a practice. That’s not [that] I decide this, and it’s working. If that’s something that becomes a value for me, then I will see, “Wow, if I give a talk and if I feel very good with what’s going in the talk, great. When people are criticizing me [and] I feel ashamed—whatever—I’m equally practicing my presence and my commitment to that moment, and to find out something deeper in it.”
I think that’s a very high liberation because then I [actually] see that, for example, when someone gives a talk and then you are afraid that something might happen that you don’t like—but it’s actually not that we are afraid of the external situation so much. Usually, we are more afraid of what we feel according to this external situation.
But if I practice more and more, it actually doesn’t matter. I will explore the difficulties as much as the pleasurable moments. Then, I will suddenly find much more inner freedom to be in the given life situation, and be free in it. All I was afraid of was my own sensations. Once I learn to infuse my sensations with presence and I can relax into those—and even stay curious—then I have made a big leap towards awakening—and also to freedom in life.
Then I can become a much more skillful player in different situations because I know that I am not afraid to feel uncomfortable. I am not afraid to be in a conflict. I am not afraid to feel ashamed. I am not afraid of my jealousy. And, if I know that I experience something difficult in my development or if I was traumatized in my life, I know that I will research, go into, and be with that [in order to] find the appropriate support I need in order to grow back into this area of my being—and to embrace it.
Therefore, I am often talking about avoidance or potential challenges, because I think that’s such a big, fundamental step towards awakening. I think our shadow material is burning in the presence of my willingness to be with it. If I see once, twice, three times, four times, that that really works, then this becomes an ability that I have.
By the time my inner light or spirit starts to shine through that ability, people will feel this. Even when we have a conflict, I’m not leaving you. I’m still with you in that kind of difficulty that we have together. I think that’s a very beautiful, human ability.
TS: So, Thomas, I’m totally tracking with you about being with uncomfortable experiences and uncomfortable sensations, and being willing to hang in there. And at the same time, what’s coming up for me is I’m imagining—in my own life and in people I know—certain experiences where it’s just like, “I’m totally freaked out! I can’t be with that. I’m just too freaked out. It’s too overwhelming, too scary, too terrible.” Whatever that might be.
How do we awaken in those situations?
TH: Right. I’m not talking about the people [who] violate themselves in certain situations. There are certain situations that are too overwhelming. There are people who are very traumatized. So, then we need first to build resources to be able to process such an overwhelm. For some people, it’s actually counterproductive to stay in this big overwhelm because there is just not the ability to handle that.
So, there is a differentiation that I think we need to make. Given this big trauma, we need a different kind of treatment. In any given moment, I can just go as far as I can go. I think there’s a limit to my ability to do that.
And then, there might be situations that are truly overwhelming. So, that’s what’s happening now. So, I will need to leave this situation for a moment. I need to take two days off [from] my partner or I simply need to make a step in order to balance myself.
But, I think the main thing is: I see this more like a flower that starts growing in me when I make a commitment and a recommitment to that commitment in my life. It doesn’t mean that from that time on, it will work all the time. But I know that I am finding out how it works even a step more.
I said at the beginning that I think that we all will have setbacks in that practice. Sometimes, we will have situations where we will freak out, become reactive, and will not be able to handle it. But I think that’s part of the process. I think that if I manage to not take that too seriously—like I failed or I did something wrong or I will never make it—but I know that I will. I am walking my path.
More so, I think one spiritual illusion is that there is an end to the path—that there is at the end a paradise or the white sofa that I can really rest on, and suddenly everything is done. If I drop that idea, then it’s about what’s really here. In what’s really here, I am walking. I keep walking.
If we are freaking out in certain situations, that’s what’s happening. Then, we will simply make a loop in our life so that we come back to the situation sooner or later. But that’s part of the process. That’s part of the experiment.
I am focusing more on this flower that’s growing in me with my practice. I have seen many people that have also had difficult situations where it didn’t work at the beginning. But then, there is a kind of inner strength, inner stability, or a kind of emotional inner world that is growing. So, we can see that people build the capacity towards it. [There are] actually less and less situations where we get so overwhelmed that we cannot handle it.
But I think if that’s happening, then it’s happening [anyway]. So, in that moment, there is not the conscious awareness to contain the process—or in the mystical knowledge, we would say there is not enough space to contain the energy. Then, we simply go through this experience. But I think that’s part of being a human being.
TS: Now, Thomas, you talk about something you call “transparent communication,” and how important transparent communication is in this process of awakening in the relational field. What do you mean by “transparent communication?” How do I do it?
TH: Transparent communication means two things. I often say that relation consists out of two qualities, again. As we said at the beginning, it’s being able to hold an inner space for the experience that I am having—which means also to have enough inner spaciousness to experience the moment that we have together. And the other thing—what we are training, often—is attunement.
So, I can see an image in a very low resolution or I can see an image in high definition. In the high definition, I have much more clarity. I have many more details available than in the very low resolution. So, when I combine those two—so that I am mindful and I am present in our communication, and I am also attuned—I increase my resolution of my experience moment to moment to moment. [This] means that when I listen to you, I can listen to the surface of our communication or even I can be hypnotized by the words that I hear.
Or, I can listen on deeper and deeper and deeper levels to what motivates you to say what you say. From which level of your being are you talking at the moment? How open or not open am I to you—to hear what you are saying and to receive it? Often in communications, [I think] we don’t see the words that we are seeing. I am not even being heard. They’re being heard physically, but not energetically.
So, I say: When in the leading edge of communication, I believe it’s not any more about self-expression, because [there] is a lot of work already on self-expression. But the leading edge of communication, I believe, is I am aware of what I am saying and from which place I am saying it. I am also aware of what you are hearing—and with which place you are hearing it.
So, I am [actually] aware of the space that contains you and I—and also both your being and my being in a high resolution.
It’s transparent because it gives us access to much more essential information that is often happening in communications that we often don’t pay attention to. There is a lot of subtle information that is happening in a communication. If I train myself to hear it, it gives me a much more satisfying and complete—or deeper—experience in the moment.
When I say “complete,” what does it mean? It means that the possibility that we experience together reaches whatever it can reach right now that is the highest potential of this interaction. We [often] see that this [doesn’t] happen. I think many people know this experience—that you talk to someone, for example; you talk with your partner—and then you leave this communication, and you feel bothered in your heart. You feel that there is a leftover, and [two hours later] you still think [on] what you experienced in that moment—and what you didn’t experience in that moment.
This is what I call “a leftover energy,” where the experience couldn’t fulfill itself fully out of whichever reason. So, one of the spiritual practices would be, for example, not to ignore that or to just wait until it dissolves—but to really look at what was actually in that communication, to reflect those moments, and to see if we can find later on in a meditation or an exchange with a friend—to find at least a step deeper clarity [about] what happened in those moments.
I think that if we do that, then that’s kind of the permanent shadow work, which expands my human vessel.
TS: I’m noticing, Thomas, that I just feel so happy to be having this conversation with you. I think the reason is that I talk to a lot of people about spiritual awakening in general, but they don’t talk about it in terms of spiritual awakening in the relational field. I’ve watched a lot of people who have had supposedly profound experiences of awakening. But when I’ve watched them interacting with other people—not all of these people I’m referring to, but many—I’m like, “Wow, this is a little weird. You don’t seem very attuned in the relational field. You don’t seem very caring in the relational field. You seem to be avoiding all kinds of things. How awake is that, really?”
So, I think you’re actually pointing to something that hasn’t been pointed to very much. I just wonder what your comment on that might be.
TH: Totally true. I totally underline what you said right now, and that’s actually a sentence that I say myself more often: “What does awakening mean if I’m not aware of what this moment holds?” What is the dynamic of this moment?
I agree very much with you when you say, OK, people have experiences. But I believe that awakening shows itself in every moment and in every interaction. So, my awareness of that interaction is actually my state of awakening in that moment.
So, yes, people might have great experiences. But they are only fully embodied when they actually touch every aspect of my life—when I can live these kinds of realizations in every aspect of my being. This doesn’t mean that this awakening didn’t happen, but it means there’s more potential to it if it really saturates or infuses itself into the aspect that you mentioned—that sometimes you watch people—and I see the same. Sometimes, I look and I say, “How can you give this speech back to this person that’s totally not what’s in the dynamic of the moment?”
This shows, in my opinion, that in many spiritual traditions, silence has a higher ranking than movement. Silence [is] often not being disturbed still by the noise of the world. I think [that] as long as silence is being disturbed by the noise of the world, it’s not fully nondual.
So, I think our practice—even if we have some great awakening experiences—is the movement of my life, my incarnation, and all the people that I speak to. Every time I create movement, I’m being creative. Every time I say a word, I’m being creative.
So, if this process is truly infused, [it] shows us my awakening—which means a high level of awareness. And what are we aware of? We are aware of the content of this very moment. We are aware of the content of our conversation right now.
If we are not aware of that content, something doesn’t work—because awareness is awareness. We need to be aware of something.
I think that, also, the [recent] work in the last decades of many people is to combine many paths of modern psychology, psychotherapy, integration work, and the practice of mystical knowledge and higher states of consciousness. So, that’s really a contemporary path that is able to create a healthy, breathing, creative, potential reentered society. And I think that’s truly exciting. That’s what awakening is—when those two come together.
TS: We’ve been speaking with Thomas Hübl. Thomas is the author of a new audio series with Sounds True called The Power of We: Awakening in the Relational Field, and also an upcoming book of the same title.
Thomas, thank you so much for being with us. I know you’re in Germany right now and it’s midnight or something while we’re recording this here in the USA. So, thank you so much for staying awake and having this conversation with me.
TH: Oh, thank you Tami for the invitation. I highly appreciate that. Thank you so much.
TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
